The expedition began on Monday, January 11 at 12:30 pm after I turned off the water, flipped off the hot water heater circuit breaker, and set the thermostat to hold 60° F. The outside temperature was 22° F. I took a taxi to the Princeton Junction train station. From there I rode New Jersey Transit to the Newark Liberty International Airport station and then the AirTrain monorail to the airport. At 3:30 pm I checked in at the Marriott Newark Airport. Channel 15 on the television in the room displayed more than 100 flight departure times.
The reason for staying in the Marriott was that my scheduled departure time was 6:35 am. Lee told me that when he and Melinda stay at a hotel at the airport because they have an early morning departure, they stay at the Marriott because it is right at the airport. As you can see from my photograph, it really is right at the airport.
With a 3:30 am wake up call and catching a 4:30 am shuttle I arrived at the terminal and had my travel documents checked by 4:50 am. Then I saw the TSA inspection line. It went on forever. It looked like it would take hours to get through. Fortunately is was really four or five not so long lines that were arranged serially (so it just looked like one very long line).
US Airways flight 679 to Phoenix, Arizona was on an Airbus 319. Only 44 of the 123 seats were occupied. I spoke with a flight attendant. He stated that, "It is the after the holiday lull. They didn't make any money on this flight." Maybe they made a little. They charged me $25 for my bag. The flight arrived one hour and 20 minutes ahead of schedule; there were no headwinds.
The next flight was US Airways flight 432 to Kahului, Maui. One of the pre-flight announcements encouraged people to buy food in the airport. "It is a long flight." Food was available for purchase on the plane. The Boeing 757-200 with 190 seats was almost full. Before landing we had to fill out a State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture form stating that we were not bringing in any agricultural products. The pre-landing movie with instructions for filling out the form also stated that Mark Twain called Hawaii "the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean." Landing on Maui we could see many fields of sugar cane. The flight landed 15 minutes late; there were 100 knots (about 115 miles per hour) headwinds. Total time from first departure to second landing was almost exactly 14 hours. Local time is 4:00 pm. It is going to be a long day.
I was the last person in the group to arrive. Interesting thing. The airport had a roof, but no walls. The weather is so pleasant so much of the time that the airport building doesn't have walls!
I took a taxi to the Makena Beach and Golf Resort. Here is a picture of the courtyard. Yes, there are koi in the pond. One curious thing I noticed on the way. They have what I will call left turn acceleration lanes. For some left turns into a busy road, once a driver sees a break in traffic coming from the left, the driver can cross those lanes and turn into a left turn acceleration lane, and then wait for a break in traffic coming from the right before merging into traffic. We had a group orientation meeting and dinner. Interesting thing about the room. The room has a standard hotel room door. You enter the room through a short corridor. At the end is a door with louvers and with a dead bolt. So if you choose to, you can open the main door, close and lock the louvered door, open the door onto the patio, and have cool ocean breezes pass through the room. Tomorrow, up close with my first volcano.
