Wow, it’s been like two months since my last post. In honor
of my return to bloggery, I typed up this awesome 3 page post while I was on
the road somewhere between Grand Junction and Las Vegas. I finally had a few
moments where my only option was to just sit there and enjoy the view. Let me
assure you that Southern Utah at 2 am provides the same clarity offered up by sensory
deprivation tanks. Sadly, I lost that
post because I plugged my laptop into a non-working outlet at our hotel
room. Thanks Embassy?
Anyway instead of trying to repeat what time-travelers will
eventually recover and call “The Greatest Blog Post Ever Written”, I figure
I’ll just give you a brief synopsis of where we are in the grand scheme of
things. So just for clarification, this
is not the greatest blog post ever written… it’s a tribute. (Jack Black fans
cue smirk)
The last two months have been a whirlwind of activity. You
may recall that we had moved out of our house a few months ago and had parted
with the majority of our things. Well the time came for yet another culling.
This brings us to Reality Check #1.
Reality Check #1 – Be
prepared to doubt yourself
Think about the last time you moved. How far was it? Most
people have enough trouble moving across town or to another state. Now imagine
if you had to do that move again all in one shot. No looking back, no second
trips. Try to think of everything you need to fit into the fewest number of
boxes possible, knowing that if it doesn't make it you will have to buy a
replacement. Not only that but leave behind all of the people you have
regularly associated with for the last decade or more and realize that the
majority of them will not be able to visit you. You start to question, do I
really want to do this? I can honestly say that for a moment, I wondered if I
was just putting my family through too much.
That moment of self-doubt didn’t last very long. I quickly realized that
what we are setting out to do is the impossible. If it was easy, everyone would
be doing it.
Reality Check #2– In
Hawaii your options are 1) Deal with it or 2) Deal with it
I just discovered this lovely little rule yesterday. 6
months of planning basically blew up in my face, and apparently it happens all
the time. Saturday, my bro-in-law and I drove from Denver to Los Angeles to
drop my car off for shipping to Hawaii. Turns out that despite having a
reservation and arriving on the correct day, Pasha Hawaii decided that their
ship was full and that my car would be coming two weeks later than I had
planned. Wait what? Oh it gets better. The customer service reps helpful advice
was that I could let the car sit in the secure holding area, or I could come
pick up the car. I politely (Yes… politely) explained to her that we are flying
to Hawaii the next day and that we need our car as soon as possible. Her
response was to repeat the above options. That little snag doubles my rental car budget. So I picked “Deal with it”. I just
going to have to learn to roll with the punches. After all within 24 hours I
was expecting to be diving into the nearest ocean. Yeah not quite… Turns out we
chose the busiest day of the year for flying out of LAX. Despite leaving at
what I thought was plenty of time, we arrived too late to check in for our
flight. Oh and were also notified that Delta decided to move the departure time
forward 10 minutes to get out early. Really Delta? Way to overachieve. So again
we were forced to “Deal with it” and were informed by Surly Agent #1 at the
Special Services Counter that we could fly standby on the 6 pm flight (Oh only
10 hours later? Awesome). When I asked what our chances were she couldn't even
look me in the eye to tell me it wasn't
going to happen. Here is where things get less crappy though. After getting
through security, I started reviewing our options and ended up tweeting Delta
Assist. Best decision I've made all day. The agent on Delta Assist was
responsive and very helpful. Eventually she got us confirmed to Hawaii via San
Francisco and Honolulu. We will arrive at 8:30 pm.
Getting ready to board the first leg of our trip so I’m
going to save and upload this. More updates as soon as I’m able. I apologize in
advance for any spelling or grammatical errors…
