Sunday: Things get worse

Morning in Phoenix:

Quick scan of the hotel room:

Western style lamp.

This guy was on the wall. I think he's playing a flute? Sure. Why not.

I have never seen a toilet not be square against the wall. Maybe Arizona has different building codes than sane people the rest of the country?

While searching my luggage for clean clothes, I discovered this:

A TSA inspection notice next to the bottle of BBQ sauce I was bringing back to Hawaii. I guess BBQ sauce looks like a bomb? At this point, I thought that the TSA people had stolen my only clean shirt, as I thought that I'd packed it. I actually found it at home when I returned, so I guess I have to apologize to the TSA for suggesting that they'd stolen it.  They may be bad at their stated goals, and largely useless at everything, but they aren't thieves. At least not of my stuff.

Side note on that point: if you tuck a note into your bag that says, "Dear TSA, please don't steal my shirt like the people in Austin did. Thanks!" you just get the TSA inspection card placed on top of your clothes, and they don't seem to inspect anything.

The hotel has a free breakfast buffet for people that USAir has screwed over, so I took advantage of it:

Southwest potatoes (with a bit of tasty salsa), sausage, bacon, "sticky bun", ham, apple-filled pancakes, pineapple, watermelon, strawberry, coffee, and juice.  I like breakfast food, I just hate making it.

Back at the airport, I opted out at security, which confused them, and they had to find someone to do the check.  While waiting, I had a quick conversation with the girl at the gate ("sorry it's taking so long, we're really understaffed this morning"), and watched as they attempted to get two 80-90 year old ladies to go through the radiation box one at a time.  Eventually (like five minutes later), they decided that they probably weren't terrorists (given that they could really hardly walk), and so they let them go through the magnetometer.

The flight to OGG wasn't as empty as the aborted flight the day before, but it was sufficiently empty that I could switch around to get a window seat:

 West Maui.

 Molokai? I think we're too far away for that to be Oahu.

West Maui again.  It was kind of annoying to listen to the loud guy one row up tell his wife(?) that we were flying over the big island when we clearly weren't.  The approach to OGG is kind of cool, as you fly over Kahului, cross through the central plain out over Kihei, back over the ocean to turn around, and then back over the plain back to the airport.  The flights from HNL just land normally, without the cool aerial tour.

Once I got off the plane, I realized that I'd been lied to. There were no United agents anywhere. I went down to where the United gates are, but they were abandoned.  The Hawaiian agent suggested that I had to go out to the check in counter, and ask there.  She tried to find my reservation, but wasn't able to.  Out through security again, and down to the opposite end of the airport to the United counter.

"We don't fly to Honolulu from here, so you must be mistaken. Go talk to Hawaiian."
"We don't have your reservation, but it looks like your bag is flying to HNL on Island Air. Go see them?"
"Yeah, we have your bag, but your reservation wasn't done correctly, so you can't join it. Go talk to the USAir baggage lady?"
"I know nothing at all, and only handle bag claims.  Since this is a destination airport, I rarely have to do anything except hold bags that people forgot to pick up. Maybe call the USAir phone representative?"
"Wow, that's a terrible trip, let's see what I can do.  Yeah, it looks like the reservation wasn't done correctly, so that's why no one knows who you are. I'd like to magically fix this, but you'll have to fly home on Hawaiian, and I don't have direct access to their reservations.  Usually we have a 24-hour wait period for these flights, and that's probably why your other reservation didn't go through. Go talk to the counter people and give them your phone."
Back and forth with the phone rep, the Hawaiian counter rep, the Hawaiian manager in back, and me getting frustrated that everyone agrees I should be allowed to go back home, and USAir is totally willing to pay for it, but no one knows how to make this happen.
Phone rep: "I'm going to hang up and try some things here, and call you back when I sort it out."
Me: "Ok." Email: "Probably going to miss work tomorrow."
One minute later: "Here's your boarding pass! Everything is magically fixed!"
Me: "Sigh. Thank you."

So in the end, I was able to get home, and it only took 27 hours longer than my original plan.