In Which John Spends a Day in Hawaii

Apparently, there was some mechanical issue with the plane, resulting in an unplanned trip to Honolulu. We arrived at 6am. The next plane to Sydney wouldn't leave until 11:45pm. Since waiting at the airport was out of the question, United Airlines provided free accomodations at a hotel near Wakiki Beach and told us to have fun for the day.

"Does this mean we'll never get to Australia?" asked Roo.


Don't worry, we'll be there tomorrow. We'll miss out on all the stuff I had planned for us to do, like barbeques and hiking in the Blue Mountains. But look at where we are! This island is beautiful!

I held Roo up to the window and he looked out. The weather was beautiful. The ocean was gorgeous. The air smelled wonderful. I proposed that we go and have an adventure.

"I'd rather stay here. If it's not Australia, then I don't want to be out there."

Suit yourself.

As we checked into the hotel, I started making plans with Brooke and others from the plane about what we'd do that day. Then I saw Pierre Chang in the lobby. For those of you who don't watch Lost, you should. Mr. Chang is a character in the show who is shrouded in a lot of mystery, especially with his connections to the Dhrama Initiative and the island. Lost is filmed in Hawaii, so it was not unusual to see one of the actors at our hotel. But it was still cool.

After getting showered, I planned to find my new friends and spend a day at the beach. Unfortunately, I couldn't find them. So instead I had some breakfast, provided free from the hotel, and then went outside to go on a personal excursion. That's when I saw my friends return. They forgot to come get me when they left for the beach and now they wanted to nap. No problem, I thought. I could still enjoy the weather by myself.

When I was a block away from the hotel, it started raining. HARD. I returned to my hotel room drenched and miserable.

"Why did you go swimming with your clothes on?" asked Roo.

I ignored him and decided to fool around on the internet in the hotel room after getting changed.

After watching Lost, I decided to give my "friends" another chance. They had just woken up from their nap, just in time for lunch.

I was still full from breakfast, so agreed to join them and keep them company. They wanted to eat at a Chinese restaurant located in the hotel. The restaurant was closing their lunch service in two minutes, but they still let us in. What followed can only be described as sheer madness.

As soon as we sat down, a waitress came by with a cart with a couple of food items on it and asked which we wanted. After turning down the first item, we chose the second item and another waitress with a cart came up to me. She showed me some of her food and I tried to turn it away as a third cart arrived with more food. Five carts visited us in a span of 15 seconds. I made it out alive with only tofu in coconut milk. My friends weren't so lucky, as they had piles of dumplings and other appetizers crowding their places.

We didn't dare open up the menu.

After lunch, we strolled back down to the beach and had a loverly time sunbathing and strolling in the water.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and getting dinner, but as Brooke often pointed out, this was not Australia. We needed to get back to where we were going.

After the sunset, the 300 of us from the plane gathered up our belongs and swapped stories of the day. Some people went whale watching, others went to Pearl Harbor, and some just slept all day.

Hawaii was a nice little detour, but Roo was getting very anxious and insisted we go to Australia.

The problem with spending a day in Hawaii was that we had to go through the whole airport process again. Almost everything was the same. Even the in-flight entertainment. Apparently Bill Murray was in some recent movie called City of Ember. I've never heard anything about this movie before, but now I've seen it twice with the sound off. Think "Stardust" meets "Alien from L.A.", Max.

Ever since Lost started, I always look at the group of people I get onto a plane with, and think about how we'd survive a crash together as a group. What factions would form? I learned today that all the old people stick with old people, all the young people stick with young people, and all the pilots would stay far away from the passengers, lest they get yelled at. Roo and Brooke both had some choice words for the pilot. Apparently "Heffalump" and "Woozle" are Hundred Acre Wood cuss words.