Safe Arrival

We made it!! Finally!! After the world's longest day of travel, we finally arrived in Honolulu at 11:15pm, local time. Translate, 4:15am Missouri time. But i'm getting ahead of myself, let me back up. The day started at 7am Tuesday morning when I awoke to say goodbye to my parents. Dan wanted to go to a dive shop to get some snorkeling gear so we had to leave early for the airport. We spent an hour and a half at the dive shop until sufficient gear could be found and then made our way to the airport, arriving just a weee bit early due to my "freak about schedules" nature.(don't ask me how i ended up with Dan, any of you who know him know what I'm talking about). So we were there early and this leads me to my first story about our trip.
After going through security at the airport and while waiting for the officials to make sure Dan didn't have a bomb in his laptop, I noticed this asian man with a few airport people around him. This man was probably in his early 30's and is crying!!! and speaking in broken English. The men around him are trying to calm him down while telling him that he is not in trouble.One of the seemingly head guys tells him that they would have already have him in handcuffs and taken away by now if they were going to do something. I am straining my ears to hear what is going on when I hear the airport man say, "so you're saying the knives mean nothing to you? you don't want them?" and the asian man crying and saying, "no no, i dont' want them, i didnt now". I immediately began praying that this dude was NOT on our flight.
We finally take off at about 230, me clutching Dan's hand so tightly i believe he still has nail imprints and head for Phoenix!! Upon arriving in Phoenix, we excitedly get off the plane and begin to look for the tv monitors to find our next gate, thinking we only had 45 minutes. WRONG! Next to Honolulu, where the flight status is supposed to say "On Time", it reads, " more infor @5:00". This presents a problem since our flight was supposed to leave 4:30. So we make our way to the gate and question the stewardess about the flight and she tells us she doesn't know anything except that it is late. I calmly ask her where the flight is coming from and she tells me, "the hangar". Bad news, bad freakin news. So we wait, and we wait, and 5:00 rolls around and we are waiting some more. Finally about 530 the lady comes on the speaker and says that they are trying to find us a new airplane and that the one they think is coming is getting in about 615, with a scheduled departure time of 730. Grr. So everyone who was so anxious to get to Hawaii treks about 8 miles to the new terminal where our new plane is supposed to be coming. Dan deals with the desk guy and secures us some $10 food vouchers and we hang out and talk with some natives of Hawaii and find out the best, non-touristy places to go. We finally board our flight about 715 (phoenix time mind you, 915 missouri time, 415 hawaii time) and head for the beautiful islands of Hawaii.
Our seats on the plane were prime. Three seats for 2 of us, room to stretch out. Then we discover the row across from us is completely empty! Heck yeah, after we get in the air i was heading over there for some much needed R&R. HOWEVER, before i could do that some girl moved in on my seats, stretched herself out peacefully and slept for 6 hour flight. Poor Dan, i spent most of the flight hogging the two seats and using him as my pillow. The flight was good and we finally arrived at 1115, hawaii time. I was knocked out when i climbed into bed but did manage to wake up 5 hours later, at 5:30am since my body is out of whack. Now we are waiting for the light morning rain to stop so we can walk to the beach, where I will promptly be calling some of you to let you listen to the sound of the ocean!!:) Keep watching the blogs for updates and pics to follow. The sun is just now rising so we can see Hawaii in the daylight!! It smells beautiful!!