Last Minute Maui

Day 5

It’s Sunday and Jason and I are both in the hunt for the finals in our fantasy football leagues.  I know how this sounds, but we went to a sports bar and watch the early games.  It was cool, though.  The bar had views of the ocean, the Sunday Ticket, and mimosas.  The games are so early here that we could watch over breakfast and still have a day.  That’s exactly what we did. After the early games, we went to the beach and relaxed.

Breakfast Bar

Jason is in the water here.  Look closely!

Then we caught the Eagles game over happy hour dinner at the restaurant we went to on our first night.  From there we could watch the game and the sunset.  Win – win.

Finishing where we started.

Jason leaves tonight and I leave in the morning.  It’s just the way we were able to get th tickets so last minute because Jason needed to get to Minnesota.  So we went back to the condo and got Jason packed and I drove him to the airport.

Day 6

Today I woke up, cleaned the condo, returned our rental chairs and headed to Paia for some shopping.  It’s a cute little town with some great galleries and shops.  On the way I heard there was an accident on the road to Lahaina and I thought I was lucky to not have to deal with that and instead got this beautiful rainbow as I was driving!

Another perfect rainbow!

So I did some Christmas shopping and loaded up on food for my trip from a great grocery store called Mana.  Then I headed to airport to return my car.  As I pulled in, the guy taking my car asked where I was coming from, when I said Kihei, he said he hasn’t seen anyone from the West side of the island because of that closed road.  I thought I was lucky that I wouldn’t miss MY flight because of that and headed to my gate.  In fact, I was a little early, so I had lunch and a last rum punch and waited.

Not a bad way to wait for my flight.

My flight was delayed 2 hours because – of course – my flight crew WAS on that side of the island and couldn’t get to us.  The worst part was that I would miss my connection.  No problem, we worked it out and put me on the last flight from Phoenix to the East Coast, then from there I’ll get to Philly in the morning.

Alas, it’s not that easy.  Our delayed flight took forever to get off the ground, so I knew I was cutting it close.  We landed at 2:10am and my next flight was 2:20am.  I literally ran to the gate and got there, but as I stood there, I listened to them give away the last seats to the people on standby and I was SOL.  Luckily they got me on the NEXT flight, which was 8am and put me up at a hotel nearby.  I finally got to the hotel at 3am and set up my alarm for 6am and hit the sack.  I was so tired.

I was so tired I slept until 8am!!!!!  I missed my flight.  What can you do?  I’ve learned from these kinds of things that there is NO point in getting upset about anything you cannot control.  It will work out eventually.  We’ve definitely had worse travel days, so  I got to the airport and got on the standby list for the 10am flight and waited some more.  There were 2 seats available and I was number 12 on the list.  Worst-case scenario: I’m on the wait list for 12pm flight, and there are over 20 seats on that one.  I knew I’d get home today.  Well, it turns out that a lot of the names above mine were military and they didn’t want to get on the plan if they weren’t together, so they all opted to wait for the next flight when they could fly together.  And just like that, I got on the flight!  Home sweet home.  Now we just need Jason to get home tomorrow morning and we’re all ready for the holidays!

Mahalo and Mele Kalikimaka!