Saturday, December 29, 2012

Springfield MO to Kauai

We received an alert at 3 AM that our first flight had been rescheduled due to crew availablity.  However, we decided not to change our wake up times and get to the Springfield MO airport to see if there was an earlier flight. No, such opportunity existed so we found some comfortable chairs and just hung out and talked.

Our rental car was a Huyndai Elantra. I would prefer not to get one of these again, the accelerator was non-deterministic; sometimes it would work, sometimes not. That is a recipe for a traffic accident. I have rented from Enterprise a lot over the past two years, but this was the worst experience ever. The guy did not go over the car with me and there are some damages, it is a 10k mileage vehicle. So we will see how that works.

Then we went through security and to the best of my understanding there is only one food option at Springfield. I had a roast beef sandwich and Kathy had the potato soup. And we wandered to our gate and slept a bit waiting for the crew for US 6106..

Then there were signs of life. The crew had not/could not show up yet because they got in late last night and there are minimam rest rules. Those are the last rules I am going to complain about; I want my pilots to have enough rest. But the ground crew did collect the carry on baggage, this was a puddle jumper, and that saved time. Kudos to the team for that!

The flight crew showed up and I believe we made our newly chosen departure time in Springfield and thank heavens for that. When we got to Denver we raced for the gate and only beat the boarding announcement by five minutes. We had scored first class on a United 757-200, but there is limited room in the overhead bins. Worse, one of the flight attendants put their bag in sideways using two spots. But we were at the front of the line and got to smile when other folks who scored first class on United could not find a spot for their bags on UA 97.

Anyway, love the new seats and entertainment console. The service was excellent. A very happy 7  hour trip across the ocean. Thank you United.

Peter has dropped off a pile of tangerines, avocados, and lemons. So we had a glass on tangerine juice and some brown rice for supper. Great to be back!

Sunday morning we got up to go to church. Kathy made some green tean in a glass blender jar ( the blender motor died ) and we used it to fill our travel thermoses. We don't use a lot of caffeine any more, but with a five hour time change it seemed like a good idea. Bruce Baumgartner taught an inspired sermon from 1 Samuel 19, showing how David's faith wobbled just a but as a result of the onslaught from Saul. Then we ate lunch and went swimming, a good day.


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