Sophia and I had been in Hawaii 10 years and leaving the islands was difficult physically and emotionally. We had a great time on the North Shore of Oahu but felt isolated up there and our excursions into Mililani and Honolulu were all day events due to traffic. The area was beautiful and we took advantage of the beaches. That is until we almost got swept onto the rocks on Sunset Beach. That scared us so much we did not venture out too much after that. Moving from Hilo to Oahu had the advantage of loading up the car and taking a lot of belongings. Moving to the mainland did not allow us to take with us anything more than what we were allowed on the plane. Hawaiian Airlines makes a lot of money off of baggage fees so our options were limited. We packed everything up and checked on prices to ship. The postal service looked to be the cheapest and the most convenient. If we shipped it UPS we would have had to tae it downtown Honolulu and as we said that is a one day trip. We had to leave our swimming noodles which was the biggest loss as it represented our beach trips. We packed up the car with the boxes containing our computer printer, kitchen supplies, clothes, toiletries, everything that was heavy or could not fit (or get past TSA, they took my honey mustard for Nicholas in Hilo) in our luggage. It amounted to one large bin and six heavy boxes. We went to the Post office in Laia as the one in Kahuku has no parking and required carrying all the packages across a muddy field. It was 1:00 pm and it was already closed for the day. We went further down the road and ended up getting to a Post office around Kailua. Panic was already settling in and continued for the next two days. We shipped the packages, which they were surprised to see and ended up costing way more than their website calculator had quoted. They were gone though and that was some relief.
The next day was our departure date and we had it all planned out. We needed to drop off the car for shipping to the mainland and then take a cab to the airport for a 2:00 pm departure. We left early in the morning allowing a good 6 hours to get this accomplished. Traffic into the port was very light which surprised us and we arrived at the shipping dock within an hour. We turned in the car and they went to check on the car. The shipping agent came back in and said we had too much gas in the car. We needed to have less than a quarter of a tank and the indicator said we had a half tank. Usually the gas indicator drops quickly the last half a tank but this time it had not moved from us leaving the North Shore. They suggested we run the engine for a while, which I did. The indicator would not budge, so I picked up Sophia to drive around some and use up the gas quickly. We checked about having someone syphon the gas out, or having some removed but could not find anyone or a container to do this. Why is it they steal our gas in Hilo and we cannot find anyone to take some of ours in the port part of town? We drove around and around the Waikiki area, revved the engine and bought some sandwiches for our lunch because it was getting later and later. It still was not going down and we were panicking. We returned to the shippers and it was already after12 noon. The agent came out, checked the gas gauge and said it was good. Sophia called the cab and we unloaded the luggage to be picked up. Charlie's Taxi, who had been very dependable, said it would be ten minutes. Sophia waited and watched the cab pass the entrance. She called again and they said it would be right there. Well it turns out he went to the wrong pier and it was almost 1 before he got it all straightened out. We were beyond panic now.
The airport is not far from the pier and we got to the airport quickly but the driver heard about it all the way there. Now we had to deal with checking in the bags and getting our tickets as we had shipped the computer printer the day before. We had carefully weighed the boxes we shipped and the bags we were taking. Sure enough one of the bags was overweight. Hawaiian's scales must be off because we have encountered this many times including one time when Air New Zealand had one weight and Hawaiian had a higher weight for the same untouched bag. Sophia began arguing about this but time was running out and we still had to get through security. We got the bags repacked, checked in and into Ag and security checkpoint. Sophia had pre approved security check in but I did not so she got in line but I had to go to another line. It was agonizing as the time kept slipping by and there was very slow movement of the line. I got through security with only a hand swipe instead of my usual grope that I enjoy due to my hip replacement. We were at Gate 56 and looked at our boarding passes to see what gate we left from as they don't put that on the confirmations but do on the boarding passes. It was Gate 24. We took off walking as fast as we could as we had about 15 minutes until the plane departs. We still had to go through the Ag checkpoint and that was a slight bump in our progress and headed off toward the mainland flights. Luck at this point started to work in our favor. Gate 24 was one of the first gates in the mainland flights building so we were able to arrive at the gate before the 2:00 pm departure. We then stood in line to see if we could get two seats together because Sophia's ticket was purchased separate from mine. We were given two excellent seats together. We also found out the flight was delayed an hour. This was great news. We had a chance to get all of our carry on luggage rearranged, eat our sandwiches we bought trying to burn up gas and finally relax. The plane trip was very nice and we arrived in Portland late, tired and totally spent but knowing that we had a good story about our leaving Hawaii. An experience is not a great experience unless you get a good story out of it.
