Ein Schickes Autohaus

You'd think you'd walked into a five-star hotel.

The restroom has a cushioned bench and framed original art, not to mention full height doors that provide complete privacy in the toilet.

The counter top is solid granite, graced with high-end Kohler faucets.

The waiting lounge was clean, fresh, warm, with a touch of modern decor.

And a bar stocked with complimentary Fiji water and espresso, and not one, not two, but THREE flat screen television sets, two of which provide a live feed from the work shop.

Where was I? If it weren't for the faintest hint of the smell of rubber and car wax, like I said, you'd think you were in a five-star hotel lobby. Except, right on the other side of the waiting lounge are the latest models of cars from two-door coups to four-door performance SUV's. This was a car dealership. No, not just any car dealership. A very fancy car dealership.

The kind of dealership that complements you a very nice loaner car to drive while your car is being serviced in that high-tech, state-of-the-art shop to which you have a live view feed from the waiting lounge.

Don't let the Dodge logo fool you. The loaner car may have been made in Michigan, but this was no domestic car dealership. Verstehst du?

Auf wiedersehen.

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He Called Me Baby

Ah, once again I took the Island Hopper flight from Truk to Hawaii. Yes, I love that flight, except for when I can't sleep on the Majuro to Honolulu portion because of all the Cokes I'd drunk from Truk to Kwajelein. Continental merged with United in the last year, and is now part of the Star Alliance group. Upon taxiing to the runway a pre-flight video presentation is shown on the cabin monitors, in which Jeff Smisek, the CEO of the newly merged companies, makes two statements which catch my attention.

1. Hundreds of  airplanes have been repainted. When the plane landed in Truk I noticed that UNITED, in bleak, straight font replaced the once graceful "Continental Air Micronesia" on the plane's flanks.

Chuuk (Truk) International Airport

I asked the ground staff for a complimentary upgrade to business class. There were none available, but that was okay because I got to sit next to Mike, a slightly built, handsome flight attendant based out of Guam. Our conversation started by his complements about my brown clogs. He used to wear a black pair until the seams on the toes gave out to constant wear and tear from the cabin carts.

We were greeted by ominous clouds over Pohnpei (Ponape), an omen for the weather at my final destination.

A treat that one MUST get in Kosrae is their tangerines. Oh, they are sweet and absolutely juicy. I left my purse on the cart at the airplane so I didn't have any money on me. Thank goodness for the friendliness of the Marshallese people, for I bummed two dollars and fifty cents from a young man who was actually very happy to help me out. "They're that good?" he asked. Oh yes, they were worth more than the extra fifty cents I paid him back when we got back on the plane.

Tangerines in Kosrae.

I just had to show off my ecstasy from having gotten my palate on a whole bag of this food for the gods.

I was very surprised when the cabin crew announced that taking of photographs on/of Kwajelein was not permitted. I didn't want to find out what the punishment would be, so I kept my camera in its bag until we landed in Majuro. This is where the young man who loaned me the money to buy the tangerines disembarked. It was dark even before we landed, which made me look forward to a four and a half hour snooze en route to Honolulu.

But alas, sleep evaded me. I sat in "premium" exit row seats, which don't recline. Talk about torture! Which brings me to the second statement made by Jeff Smisek:

2. Along with eighty thousand employees, we provide great customer service. In Honolulu I had to deal with the United Airlines ground staff, which left me steaming and feeling very insignificant. By the way, it seems that women are the unpleasant (to say the least) staff. Come to think of it, the women flight attendants are the worst! It's like they hold a grudge against the customers. Once, I asked for help to stow my bag in the overhead compartment, and the woman flight attendant simply stated "I can't, I have a back problem," and walked away without even getting someone else to help me!

I asked the woman behind the counter in Honolulu for help. "It'll be a while before I get to you," she said as she arranged and rearranged rolls of stickers on the counter tops. I was at the Elite/Business/First Class check-in counter. Go figure! So I sought out a man at the economy class counter, asked him for a complimentary upgrade, and I got it!!! Triple exclamation. So as the sun peeked out from behind Diamond Head, and our airplane raced down the runway, I adjusted my headrest just so, wrapped a sterile smelling blanket around me, reclined the seat, and fell hard asleep until we touched down in San Francisco. (The woman flight attendant didn't wake me for breakfast.)

But that was not the best part. As I gathered my senses, getting ready for the last leg of my journey, I kept hearing Mike's, the Guam based flight attendant on the Island Hopper, Chamorro accented voice calling me "Baby." Baby, do you want another Coke? Baby, do you want more pretzels? Baby, have a safe trip home, and come fly the Island Hopper again soon! (I told him I loved the Island Hopper, and he loved me for that.) By the way, the flight crew on the Island Hopper was all men.

Yaaaaaaawn!


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Things To Do in SFO

Things to do when you're transitting through SFO (San Francisco International Airport):

1. Get your shoes shined for $12 (ACK!).

2. Have Tita M's chicken and raisin empanadas for dinner (YUM!).

3. (My personal favorite) Tell the guy who's asking you why you're taking the pictures "That's my Ferrari, and I'm taking photos for insurance purposes..."

But of course #3 would work only if the car was indeed a Ferrari.

Sandals on the Grand Canyon

How the striking of the great clock, whose hours are millions of years, reverberates out of the abyss of the past.

-John Burroughs

I visited the Grand Canyon South Rim for second time, and, as with the first time,  it took my breath away!

The mile deep canyon beckoned us to look down at her grandeur.  

Be careful, PaB.

All five thousand feet from the rim to the Colorado River below made 5-Star Scotty and PaB feel like they were on TOP of the world. (See them with their arms spread like wings, in the upper right corner of the photo.)

What river, you ask? 

The one MaK is pointing at.

PaB is an expert tree-climber. Do not try this at the Grand Canyon. 

DO NOT TRY THIS AT THE GRAND CANYON.

Besides, the photo is a camera trick.

The South Rim is very visitor friendly. The lookout points are located near enough to each other that you could walk from point to point. Granted, you'd be gasping for breath because of the thin air, but it's totally doable. Even in sandals.

 MaK got separated from us. She took a trail that lead down, down, DOWN. Her good sense told her to stay against the canyon wall, and go wherever the trail lead back up, up, UP. When PaB and I discovered that she had "hiked" for quite a distance, he wanted to do it. He wasn't going to let MaK take all the glory of having "hiked" the Bright Angel Trail. 

Kudos, PaB! In his loafers, no less. (MaK wore zories.)

I'm currently reading a book called Death in Grand Canyon. Did you know that many deaths from falling off the rim have been from photographers ignoring safety measures to get the perfect shot... 

 

... or crazy folks who put themselves in danger to have the most daring photo?

This outcropping is perched three hundred feet from the ledge below. I
crawled to get out there, and back. And I purposely left my hat and coat
rolled up in the bushes so that they don't get blown into the abyss.
Because my instinct wouldhave been to catch them in mid air if
either of them took flight in the wind.

 Yes, I reiterate, I wore sandals on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Which is not proper footwear for hiking the Bright Angel Trail, or any other trail for that matter.

Embarcadero in San Francisco

The first thing that comes to mind when San Francisco comes up is the Golden Gate Bridge, and, for me, Lombard Street.  

I always visit the GGB  every time I go to San Francisco. Which, by the way is not golden at all. It's red... or, terra cotta... um, burnt orange... or whatever.

And my favorite street, the crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street.

On this visit we stuck to the wharf area, right along Embarcadero.

Before I moved to the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco was my favorite city on the west coast. Now, it's my favorite city to visit on the west coast.

Maj Oh Maj

After a seemingly normal Island Hopper through three previous islands, we finally arrived in Majuro. Only to find out that we were stranded. Here is the story. A plane load of travelers disembarked the ailing aircraft, and were checked into hotels by rank of seniority. Passengers who embarked in Guam, the origin of the eastbound Island Hopper, got the luxurious Village Hotel; passengers from Truk and Pohnpei got the newer, upgraded Long Island Hotel; the rest... I didn't even stick around Air Mike (Continental Air Micronesia) terminal to find out.

So this was our hotel room.

Majuro is an atoll, which 5-Star Scotty so accurately describes as a string of link sausages. Indeed, the "island" is made up of tens and tens of long and narrow islands connected by one road. One. If I had to ask for directions to Long Island Hotel, I would have gotten "chuss trife town teh roht." Just drive down the road. No, there is no left or right turn. Just drive, and you'll get to it.

Sure enough, there was our hotel, just as the directions would have been. Just drive down the road.

We, the stranded hotel guests, all had pancakes, scrambled eggs, ham, and a choice of coffee, tea, water, or orange juice. Quite a limited choice, but it sure beat airplane food.

On the up side, this was right outside our hotel room.






On the down side, I didn't indulge. We were violently awakened by the telephone; it was the front desk telling us that our plane (a new plane that specially flew in from Guam to "rescue" us) had arrived, and was leaving at nine thirty.

"It's eight forty-five..." said 5-Star.

Yes, and the bus leaves at nine o'clock sharp.

We HAD TO be Stateside by May 7! We jumped out of bed, barely washed the shampoo out of our hair, and ran out to the lobby with clothes still sticking out of our carry-on bags.

There was no bus. 

Noooooo!

But wait... there were a good dozen of us milling around. In fact, there was probably another half dozen stranded travelers having breakfast in the hotel restaurant next door. So we decided to have breakfast as well. And that's how the pancakes, eggs, and ham story came to be.

I still wish I had had time to take a dip in that water...

On the ride back to the airport, we saw pristine ocean to our left...

And crystal clear ocean to our right...

Kids played and did their Saturday chores on this breezy May 7th morning in Majuro.

And just up the road is our rescue plane that would take us Stateside, where May 6th was coming to an end.

The clock ticks for us, but for some fellow travelers, Majuro was welcome interruption.

And the locals sit in the shade without a care on the atoll about what day or time it is.

When the ground crew finally called our row to board the aircraft at one thirty in the afternoon-  yes, four hours after the hotel morning call told us-   we rushed down the tarmac as if wasps were flying after us.

We HAD TO be Stateside by May 7 for this.

Island Hopper Gone MAJ

It was the 6th of May in Truk. Our goal was to get to the States by the 7th of May. We got through airport security screening in plenty of time for our flight. We were excited!

Then we waited.

And waited. 

I had a feeling something was amiss.

Two hours later, we were still waiting. And I knew right away that we weren't leaving anytime soon when I saw ground crew take our luggage back into the shade of the terminal awning.

Come to find out, our plane was half way to Truk from Guam when they had to turn back because of mechanical problems. The plane that finally landed three hours later was a different plane, a replacement. Our only consolation for the lengthy delay was that we were given emergency row seats. We had to study the emergency pamphlet, but, ahhhh, leg room.

Our first stop was Pohnpei. For those of you unfamiliar with the Island Hopper flight from Guam to Hawaii, let me explain briefly. You stop over five Micronesian islands en route to Honolulu, dropping off and picking up passengers along the way. And each stop requires a security sweep of the airplane cabin, where the passengers have the option of stepping off the plane during such sweep.

 Our stop in Pohnpei took an hour- thirty minutes longer than usual. Turned out, a "failure" light kept going off during the short flight from Truk, and lucky for us there was an available part on the island to fix the problem.

 And on we flew... to Kosrae...

 To Kwajelein...

 To Majuro... And that's where all hell broke loose. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We will be performing a test on the aircraft, which requires that all systems be turned off for a few minutes. At this time the emergency exit lights will illuminate...

 Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain again. I am very sorry to inform you that we are not able to continue our flight to Honolulu at this time. We thought we had fixed the problem in Pohnpei, but this test indicates that it was just a temporary fix, which allows the aircraft to fly only short distances. There is no way this aircraft can make the four hour flight from Majuro to Honolulu.

It was now close to midnight. 

 *ACK! We must be Stateside by May 7!*

At this point, there was no more consolation in our roomy seats.

Despondently, we gathered our belongings...

And trudged off the no-good airplane for a night of uncertainty in Majuro.

 Both ground and flight crew were not enthusiastic about any of this.

MAJ. The airport code for Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands.

It's hot, humid. We're hungry, sticky, and delirious with lack of sleep. We had been traveling almost nine hours now. No amount of frequent flier miles would get us any further at this point.

Now it's a matter of which hotel we'll be placed for the night.

 In Guam they say Hafa Adai.

In Truk, Rananim.

Pohnpeians say Kaselelia.

In MAJ it's Yokwe.

And on the US West Coast it's  Good Morning America! (on May 6, one day behind...).

To be continued...