Backstage
Menu
StoryBoard
The next few blog posts are about Dillon and I’s family vacation to the Big Island. This is part one of three for this series.
It was a cool, crisp Friday night as we loaded into the Nissan Altima for Memphis. We were all excited for this trip as we all needed a break, but first, we had to get to Memphis. The drive to Memphis was around two hours through narrow Arkansas roads. After two hours of slow driving through the farmland of Arkansas, we made it to our hotel in Memphis. We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott right by the Memphis International Airport. We arrived at the hotel around 7:30pm and was in the rooms by 7:40pm. We did not do much that night as we had to get up early the next morning for our flight to Dallas and then on to Kona, Hawaii. For the rest of the night, Dillon and I just watched “Shark Tank” until we both fell asleep around midnight. It is the next morning and the time is 5:30am on Saturday, March 16th. Dillon and I are up and we are getting ready to head out of our room and meet our parents downstairs so we can drive to the airport. We loaded into the car and left for the airport. Since it was so early in the morning, we had no trouble getting to the airport. We arrived at the airport but had trouble finding a parking spot. After ten minutes, we finally found a spot on the top level and walked across the street and into the terminal building. Once inside, we walked to the “B” concourse security line. Security was fast as we were TSA Pre-Checked. After going through the line, we then proceeded to our gate, gate C12B. After finding our gate, it was breakfast time. My parents went to Starbucks and Dillon and I got some cookies for breakfast. Our flight was delayed a few minutes due to mandatory crew rest. In short, our flight was delayed because out flight crew flew in the night before and got in late so they still needed there FAA mandated rest. It was not much of a delay as we actually boarded on time and pushed back from the gate on time. We taxied to runway 36C but had to go to the “penalty” box for about 15 minutes for our release time for Dallas. A release time is a time given by ATC to a specific flight to help spacing into a big terminal area. After our 15 minutes, we took off runway 36C and blasted off to Dallas. What I thought would be a quick flight, turned into an extra thirty minutes as Air Traffic Control vectored us all over the place. This caused us to land about twenty minutes later so we had to hustle to our next gate. After an hour and a half in the air, we landed on DFW’s runway 35R and taxied to our gate in the “A” terminal. After we landed and got to the gate, we hustled to our new gate, gate D28A. After arriving at our gate, we had about 15 minutes before we started to board. Dillon and I took advantage of that time and took a quick bathroom break. By the time we got back, there was about five minutes to boarding. Those five minutes went lighting speed and before I knew it, we were walking down the jetway to board our aircraft, a Boeing 777-200. We walked onto the plane and found our seats, seats 23 A-D. After that, we settled down and went through all the In-Flight Entertainment. American had a good range of entertainment from shows, live TV, music and games. Once boarding was completed, we pushed from the gate and taxied to runway 36R for departure. After a somewhat short taxi we held short of 36R. Next to us was a beautiful Boeing 787 Dreamliner. That plane departed first then we took off moments later. Once in the air, we climbed up to our initial cruising altitude of 34,000 feet or FL340. Not much happened in cruise as we were served lunch, some drinks and some cookies. The lunch consisted of a BBQ chicken wrap, some chips and some shortbread cookies. The wrap was okay and I was just happy I got some food. After that, I decided to watch some movies. I watched one of my all time favorites, “Top Gun”, “Toy Story”, “Wall-E” and several others. Those movies occupied most of my time and before I knew it, we were well over the Pacific Ocean. At this point in time, we had climbed to 36,00 feet, or FL360. We stayed there for the rest of the flight as that was the smoothest ride over the Pacific Ocean. Even though it was the smoothest ride, there was still some bumps along the way. Not much happened for the rest of the flight as I relaxed and finished my movies. After I was done with the movies, Dillon, my dad and I played some Texas Hold-em. We played for about 20-30 minutes and then went to do our own thing. After that, i decided that I just wanted to listen to music so I listened to music. About an hour from landing, I turned off the music and looked out the window at the big blue open waters of the Pacific Ocean. Forty minutes later, we were starting our descent into the Kuaila-Kona Airport. We entered a right downwind for runway 35 and flew your normal pattern that was also a visual approach. The landing was a little rough but we made it after a long 8 hours and 15 minutes. After landing, we taxied to gate 2 and deplaned. Since Kona has no jet bridges and is an open air airport, we had to deplane via air stairs. After that, we walked through the airport and went across the street to catch our rental car shuttle bus. We had to wait close to ten minutes for a bus but it was not a problem. I was on vacation and enjoying the nice and warm Hawaiian weather. We get to Enterprise and get our car. It was not anything special, just a Cadillac. After getting our car and putting all of our luggage in it, we decided to eat as it was the middle of the afternoon there and all we had on the was plane food. We decided on a local sandwich shop and it did not disappoint. After that, we went across the street to Wal-Mart and got some much needed food items for our condominium/hotel room. After that, we went straight to the hotel and just had a chill rest of the day and passed out around 8pm local. This was the first part of the three parts on our vacation to Hawaii. Stay tuned for parts two and three coming in the following weeks.
0 Comments
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2020
Categories |