A Big Change of Plans

I was supposed to return to Maui on Sunday. After spending the night with my fun friends, I spent about an hour packing. Sarah Sto-Gregor came and drove me to the airport. I got to the airport about 50 minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off. For domestic flights you must be there at least 30 minutes before. Despite being the fact that Hawaii is in the U.S, it inexplicably counts as an international flight. This means that you have to be there an hour early. I did not know this and arrived only 50 minutes early. I was told that I could not board. I started crying. I had had an emotionally charged weekend and very little sleep. This did not put me in the best position to receive this sort of news. The lady at the counter made some phone calls and told me she could get me on the same flight but the next day. She also said she got the okay to waive the 1200 dollar flight change fee. I guess the crying paid off. I don't see why they would have made me pay double what I paid for the original flight. That is just ridiculous.

At the point that all this went down, I thought my parents were still in Brenham, an hour and a half away. It turns out that they were back in Houston so I gave them a call. They were cool about it. My dad came and picked me up and the experience was a hundred times better than when he had picked me up at the beginning of the weekend. He was nice and not acusatory about me missing my flight. It was the perfect reaction since I was already upset.

I called people in Maui to get everything squared away for my job and the volleyball game we were supposed to have Monday. I got a fellow-YWAMer, Calla to be in charge of picking me up from the airport and wrangling the players. She is a quality, reliable-type person so I felt confident she could do it.

I drove my aunt Nancy to the airport later and she did not miss her flight. The Astros game was on TV that day and it was so good. They went way into extra innings and won the first playoff series with a walk-off homerun. I would not have been able to see it if I hadn't missed my flight. I also ended up getting an external hard drive and video editing software so I can edit Andrew's wedding video and make other fun videos.

In the morning, my grandparents drove me to the airport very early so I did not get stuck missing my plane again. I sat next to a very talkative lady named Barbara who had Parkinson's disease. I am not that familiar with Parkinson's but in Barbara's case, it meant her arms and legs would flail about without warning or control. I got hit a few times but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she was not trying to hurt me.

When I arrived in Maui, my bags were not there. Apparently none of the bags on my plane to Honolulu had made it on the connecting flight to Maui. Yay! Calla and the volleyball team picked me up minus my luggage. We drove to the gym and played some volleyball. We didn't do too bad since we had never played together and did not know the bizarre co-ed rules. In addition to the rules I remember from intramurals in college, guys must serve underhand and cannot jump from in front of the ten-foot line. We won game one, lost game two and barely lost game three. The other team was super nice and made up of middle-aged locals. One of the guys had this really intriguing hairstyle. It was like a grey grown out mullet. The short part hung below his ears and the rest was tied back in a ponytail. He ended up being really nice and invited us to play with his team at another gym sometimes.

My team had to referee the second game. I took that time to try to get my luggage back. Luckily it was there. Then Calla and I bought gatorade and fruit snacks for our players like soccer moms do. It was pretty funny. Go YWAM wolverines!