Oy, what a difference between the beginning and the end of my 7.5-hour red-eye flight back home! Leaving Honolulu, the weather was gorgeous, sunny, and warm, and I had a belly full of soba noodles. Arriving in a heavy snowstorm at 4:30 a.m., I found the departures board at O’Hare looking like this:
And I looked like this:
And the view from my crib looked like this:
Now I am going to have either a long nap or a short sleep. The Caturday felid has been prepared and scheduled, and I will drift off to dream of the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa swimming lazily in Hanauma Bay.
Wow, I bet the contrast in conditions was a shock to the system. Enjoy your rest.
8 weeks at +40C in the tropics, followed by 3 days of travel (including getting my visa in London) to step off a plane 2000km E of Moscow in -25C – “eeeee lad, that’s so bracing!
I hope you repacked in the meantime… shorts and tee shirt in -25C would be a very short lived experience!
Dropped the rig bag through the door, picked up the mountain rucksack, got back into the taxi. Off to Russia for a fortnight. SNAFU
And thanks for the Skeggy reference, that and Mablethorpe were my childhood holiday destinations.
What I could never fathom was that (in the 60’s) those ‘Skegness is so Bracing’ posters used to crop up in railway stations in Hampshire. Like, on the south coast a few miles from Bournemouth. Why the hell would anybody in their right mind want to go and freeze their bits off in Skegness?
2000km east of Moscow – Ishim? But I guess you were approximating.
You certainly do live an interesting life.
cr
It is a strange feeling coming home with tropical beach sand still in the seams of your shoes.
Hmmm, and yesterday I was strolling along the beach contemplating all the chicks in their bikinis. 😎
It’s our turn in the sunshine now. (He says smugly). Making the most of it…
cr
“Oy, what a difference between the beginning and the end of my 7.5-hour red-eye flight back home! Leaving Honolulu, the weather was gorgeous, sunny, and warm, and I had a belly full of soba noodles. Arriving in a heavy snowstorm…”
Isn’t this just the worst feeling? I take trips to Florida during the winter, and arriving back home to the dreary, gray skies and cold weather feels so depressing. Just a few hours prior it was 85 degrees and everything was sunshine and palm trees…
I had the ‘pleasure’ of the opposite too: once flew from Kathmandu to Varanasi (Benares) during the mansoon, a pretty short flight (with a drunk pilot, but that is a different story). In Kathmandu there was a crisp, fresh air about 12 degrees (C), when leaving the plane in Varanasi it was like a hot wet blanket hitting you in the face, 32 degrees and 100% humidity, a sauna.
“32 degrees and 100% humidity”
Yeah, that sounds just as bad, but it can’t possibly look as depressing as coming down from the clouds and seeing Newark.
Especially if is Newark, Nottinghamshire – there’s nowhere to land.
Ha! Well, thankfully, it’s not that Newark.
Perhaps not thankfully. Sometimes I think I’d rather be dead when I’m flying into Newark (New Jersey).
Climatological whiplash.
Now you can dig what’s up with all the cats who wanna go back to their little grass shack, man.
Just in time for snowstorms!
My sincere condolences. Hope the heat is turned up.
I travel almost weekly, and I have never seen a board status “Required crew rest.” I’ve been told during delays that the crew has hit their hour cap for the day, but the board always says “delay”. Maybe that’s a United thing.
They are going to Cozumel, have to arrive fit to party 🙂
I eventually decided it wasn’t worth going back to winter…
Call me crazy but I really enjoy winter, and if it doesn’t snow, I feel like I missed something. I may have been the only person in Missouri who was irritated by the unseasonably warm 60 degrees around Xmas time. I don’t think I could take your tropical way of life forever, I need seasons.
The only solution to this problem is to move to Hawaii 🙂
Your “crib”? Isn’t that cultural appropriation? Unless, of course, you really have a crib. In which case it’s too near the window!
Welcome home!
Memory: On one of our trips to Hawaii, my husband snorkeled in Hanauma Bay so long that the park was being closed and locked up for the night. Had he not eventually heard, my husband might have remained in the bay all night, perhaps. But, I was sitting on the hard, hard sand on the beach It was a highlight of his life and I’m glad he got to do it.
It’s like visiting another planet. I’m glad he had the chance. Many thousands of people must find it a life changing experience.