We're on the mainland!

We landed in Salt Lake City just a few minutes ago. Our last day in Honolulu seemed like an eternity. A combination of having to check out of our hotel room at noon, being tired, dreading the travel and being ready to be home contributed to the perceived length of the day.

The day started out with a ritualistic trip to Smorgy's for breakfast. I have never been to Hawaii without eating at least one breakfast there so I treated dad . The food was average as expected, but I was disappointed in a couple things. the little old local ladies that were busing table got new uniforms. They were wearing black pants and aloha shirts instead of the mumus they used to wear. I was also surprised by the music selection. We usually heard Hawaiian Christmas songs over and over.

After that we took out time packing up knowing that we'd have the rest of the day without a "home base." we hit the beach and ran into Greg and Danielle and Rick and his family. After about an hour, they asked us to watch their stuff while they ate. I figured that wouldn't be a problem and we weren't hungry yet anyway. Well, their half hour lunch took nearly two hours leaving us stranded with their towels and beach toys. Now I am paying the price. I didn't put sun screen on my legs because they rarely burn and I must have sweat off some of the lotion from my face because now I am a bit pink.

When they finally got back, we took off for Cheeseburger in Paradise. It was pretty go but conversation was pretty sparse. We were both tired, we sat in the font window and were distracted with people waling by and I think we were both thinking about the long travel that was inching closer.

We did a bit of shopping on the way back to the hotel, which included a trip to the ABC for some Aloe. The sun was setting so we decided to hang out at the pool for a while. It was pretty relaxing to sit in the cooling air. At about six we check into the hospitality room, which was just an empty hotel room, caught the end of the Monday night football back and showered the last of Hawaiian sand from between our toes.

The cab ride to the airport came next. I thin if this SID thing doesn't work out for me, I'm going to be a cabbie. It was amazing to watch the meeter rack up our bill. .40 cents every .8 of a mile. I was starting to wonder if we were going to have to ask him to stop by a gas station so we could use the ATM. We mad it and I think our total fare came to just under $35--a little more that the shuttle, but a lot quicker.

As we were checking in, both of us got messages saying that we needed to see a ticket agent and that the computers were unable to process our requests. I immediately flashed back to last year's travels home. But as it turns out they just "downgraded" our plane to one with fewer seats so we just had to see a ticket agent at the gate to get a seat assigned. That was fine, but when we still didn't have seats when they began to board the plane I started to get nervous again. Soon the agent called us up for our new boarding passes and we boarded the plane for about a 4-hour nap.

Now we are here in SLC and our flight was delayed an hour before we even got off the plane and it just got delayed again. I just hope we can maneuver a bit to get to Bemidji today. I miss everyone so much and would like to get home. So much for Salt Lake City being the most on-time airport in the US...

I'll keep you posted as we get things solidified.