Saturday, January 4, 2025
We got two companion tickets from Alaska airlines and invited Gary and Julie (the original) to join us on the island of Hawaii.
Gary told us that he had unfortunate luck with TSA and to expect him to be stopped. We abandoned him and Julie to go use TSA precheck. I can love someone but still leave them behind if it means I don’t have to take my shoes off.
We waited at the exit of the regular line. Finally, I saw Julie. She was standing, looking back at the line. It seemed like things weren’t going well for Gary. Then I saw Gary. He walked to Julie, then did a 180 and disappeared.
Mmmm.
It happened again. Then they both disappeared. Julie came back and sat down to put on her shoes. Finally, they both came out to meet us.
Gary’s shoes had been troublesome.
There are no signs before the checkpoint to tell you what to do. This bothered Gary and it always bothers me. If you tell me what to do, I will do it. If I have to guess what you want, I will likely not guess right. Gary assumed he would have to take off his shoes, so he did. The TSA guy berated him for doing so. He told Gary to put his shoes back on. Gary suggested he go through the scanner with just socky feet. TSA man says NO! Put on your shoes. Obviously, TSA man isn’t in his 60s with two replaced knees. You can’t just put on your shoes with no bench or place to lean. Gary ended up trying to go as quickly as possible because he was holding up the line. He got everything in bins and went through the scanner. BEEP BEEP BEEP New TSA man says go back, take your shoes off and put them in a bin, and come back.
Seriously?
The binned shoes beeped. They got kicked back to a different line of bins (rejected bins). One woman was SLOWLY inspecting all of the rejected bins. It took a while, but everyone made it eventually.
I don’t remember the flight to Seattle. I was tired. We left home at 5am, so that feeling never really went away today.
We went to a lounge in the Seattle airport. After being up for 6.5 hours, if was still breakfast! They had a tasty breakfast, but it wasn’t as interesting as the lunch. They brought it out just when we needed to leave to get to our plane. Oh, well.
It was 6.5 hours to Hawaii. The airport is mostly outdoors. We went out to dinner. We are so tired now it’s hard to keep our eyes open.
Greetings to Gary and Julie… And sorry about the TSA mess. Most of those folks are so kind – sorry Gary had to snag an out-of-sorts dude. All of the green stuff and flowers are REALLY cheery on a 21 degree day in northern lower Michigan… Have fun!
Now that it is over, it’s just a funny story, I think. He can add it to his TSA issue streak – who doesn’t love a streak?!
Our one trip to Hawaii was set on the Big Island. I loved our visit there. We stayed on the Kona side but did get around the whole island. In retrospect I wished we had taken in some history too, but we mostly visited gardens. Oh, to see abundant blooms in March! So many garden hosts would say they’d been raised in the cold Midwest.🌸🌺🌸🌺🌸🌺🌸🌺🌸
We are following an audio guide and driving around today. We may learn something!