The Longest Day

The Longest Day is not the June 6 1944 landings at Normandy. It is the Dec. 27 2010 trip from Central Texas to Honolulu.

We got up in Central Texas at 5:30 a.m. CST. We collapsed into bed in Honolulu at 10:30 p.m. HST (Hawaii Standard Time - four hours difference). That's 21 hours of airports, flights, cab rides, wrangling kids, and dealing with indifferent airline employees and rude passengers. Oh yeah - don't forget overpaying for that wonderful airport food.

We arrived in Honolulu on the heels of a series of rainstorms that triggered mudslides and flash floods. It's currently raining outside, with showers forecast for the next few days. The first item on the local news was a shark attack on a surfer. But we're here, we're all in one piece, our luggage made it, so life is good. At least we're not dealing with blizzards on the east coast, or more rain and mudslides on the west coast. We'll manage.

First impressions of Honolulu are of apartments - lots and lots of apartments, many of them the high-rise type. Makes sense, I guess. This is an island, after all, and land is limited.

The streets around where we're staying (Waikiki Beach) are narrow and crowded. Lots of high-end shops. Reminds me of a cross between Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and the Galleria in Houston.

Our hotel is on the beach. Even in this weather (drizzly, overcast, temperature in the 70s) there are people surfing.

No formal plans for today - just recover from the trip and get a feel for the place. Tomorrow we tour Pearl Harbor in the a.m., and then that evening move on to Kauai.

So far no sign of obama's birth certificate...