The furthest away from home I’ve ever been was when I traveled to Waikiki with the football team for our season closer against the University of Hawaii in 2016. I’d never been on a flight for more than three hours, so I was nervous at the prospect of a 4 1/2 flight to Utah and then another 6 hour flight to Hawaii. Who wouldn’t be if they’re phobic of turbulence and averse to using a bathroom at 30,000 feet? There wasn’t much I could do about that if I wanted to go, so I sucked it up and have absolutely no regrets that I did so. We chartered a flight on Allegiant (a/k/a Cheap Bastard Air) out of Barnes Air National Guard base in Westfield, and of course since it’s UMass Football, we took the Tina Turner approach to travel: “we don’t do nice and easy!” -there was a bomb threat that put us almost three hours behind schedule; add to that a two hour time change in Utah and I had no idea which end was up by the time we got to Provo. While we were there, I met the lovely Kara, one of my favorite cross stitch YouTubers and we went to Ogden to do some stitch shopping at Shepherd’s Bush. The day of the BYU game, I got a private tour of the facilities by a couple of alums who played basketball in the 60’s – just the nicest group of people ever. We got our butts kicked in the game and on Sunday morning, we left for Waikiki. I was too excited to be terribly nervous about the flight and the view from 30,000 feet as we flew over the southwest was amazing and before I knew it we were over the Pacific. As we landed, we flew in over Pearl Harbor, and even at that distance, it was a sobering sight. The time change really messed me up, but there was a party at a tiki bar across from the hotel that the athletic director had planned, so after a quick change of clothes, I was there. The view was beautiful and I tried some wild foods including calamari that came from the belly of the squid instead of the tentacles (quite mild and not chewy), taro bread (taro is a root vegetable and it’s like our potato bread, only purple with a slightly vanilla taste) and Hawaiian barbeque. I got lei’d and took a lot of pictures, but I hit the wall around 7:00 (1 a.m. back home). The next morning, I was up at 5:00 a.m. (11:00 back home) and went for a walk on the beach. By Tuesday, I had acclimated to the time change and was surprised by how quickly I got used to it. I bought my first Swatch in 30 years, experienced the most heartbreaking moment in our history (pre 9/11) at the Pearl Harbor Memorial, helped my husband film practice at Aloha Stadium, got a massage, tried a lychee nut (ewwww!), had dinner with one of Bill’s colleagues, learned that the closest approximation of my name in Polyneisan is Kini and that “meli kalikimaka” isn’t actually a real Hawaiian phrase, walked around everywhere in my bare feet, and cheered like mad for my team, even when the refs blew a pass interference call that cost us the game. We left around midnight and arrived in Las Vegas around 6:00 a.m. and after an hour layover (where I stood the whole time and many of the coaches departed for recruiting trips), we headed back to Westfield. I’d never been so glad to be off a plane in my life, but it was an amazing adventure and the best trip I’ve ever taken.
New York and Hawaii are the farthest I’ve traveled, but didn’t have the excitement you did!