Typical 5+ hour flight in Economy class. At least the seats were big enough to kinda-sorta get comfortable in.
No video display in the seatbacks this time, so if you wanted to watch a "free" movie, you had to download (they said) the United app, pay the $12.99 Internet connection cost, and then stream the movie over WiFi to your device. I paid the fee and browsed the Web on my smartphone, and set my wife's tablet up, only to find out their streaming doesn't support Android yet. I set up my wife's friend's laptop so she could watch a movie, and she eventually gave up about 3/4 of the way through the movie, as the video was stuttering, and "buffering" rather than streaming. Might have been a laptop problem, but I noticed other passengers were griping about it, too, so I'm guessing they just don't have the WiFi bandwidth on board to support so many streaming connections at once.
Landed at LAX about 20 minutes early, which meant NO GATE for us to pull up to.
Crept along the taxiway until we finally got a gate assignment, and wound up deplaning about 10 minutes later than originally scheduled.
Then a nice 45 minute wait for our luggage. There were four aircraft using the same luggage carousel, so naturally a quiet pandemonium ensued.....
Then out to the curb where we checked in with Super Shuttle to let them know we were ready for pick-up, and then a NINETY MINUTE wait for the not-so-Super Shuttle to gather up enough passengers to make it worth their while to make the trip from LAX down to Long Beach.
The total cost of three, two-way tickets on the Shuttle was $96, vs $80 to park for a week at LAX.
Next time I think we'll take the Jeep and park it. I thought the extra $16 would be worth it to avoid the aggravation of driving out of LAX at night, but I'd rather put up with that than sit there for an hour and a half waiting for our "ride" to show up.
FINALLY got home, semi unpacked, thanked and paid the dog-sitter (long story about how that came to be....), got slobbered on by the dog for 30 minutes, and hit the hay about 0300.
Had fun in Hawai'i, and saw a lot of cool things, and met some very nice people.
It's a beautiful place, but I'm not sure I could live there. I was astounded at the humidity (it felt like Illinois in August) compared to here on the West coast, and although the fuel prices (except for Diesel @ $4.80/gallon!) were about the same, the food prices were significantly higher.
And then there's always the worry that if TSHTF, you're stuck there with a looooong supply chain to other places for food and medical stuff.
Still, quite a marvelous place to visit.
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Started this post on Monday, then came down with a head cold, which is now progressing South. Feeling better, but still a bit woozy...... To...
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I can relate to the SHTF worries. I feel the same way when I'm up in Alaska. Be a long hike home. Or I can crash at Rev. Paul's place, I guess. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to bet the good Rev could "put up" with you....
DeleteAh yes, the lovely penalty box at LAX... :-) Glad you got back okay though! And you're right about HI... WAY too far out to survive a SHTF scenario.
ReplyDeleteOops, hit enter too quick. You'd 'survive' but then starve unless there were ships in a constant stream to HI...
ReplyDeleteThere have been studies done by various anthropology groups studying the origins of the Hawaiians, and the consensus is that even with "modern" farming methods, the islands (ALL of them together) are hard pressed to be able to support more than 500~600,000 people.
ReplyDeleteGiven the current population of approx 1,500,000, a genuine SHTF scenario will kill off a million people or more.....
If everything circles the drain, it won't matter where you are...worse off in the LA Basin than rolling the dice in Hawaii in my humble opinion.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's nice just to hang out and not care about anything...leave the cell phone in your luggage, etc. The flight back always sucks.