The Longest Wenesday of My Life

Hi,
Sorry I haven't posted lately, but we were off island from Wed. Sept. 28 until Oct. 31.
We went back to the states to visit family and had a great time. However, what I want to tell you about is our experience traveling military space-A. (that's space avaliable for you civilians).

The way space-A works is you sign up at the airport you want to fly from, up to 90 days before you want to fly. This gets your name on the list. You are assigned a category based on who is traveling. For example, retired military are category 6. The children and I were category 4 when we traveled without Root and category 2 when our Root was with us.

Now the way you get a seat on the plane is you show up at the airport, after calling to find out if there are flights going where you want to go. Then they announce there are so many seats avaliable for this flight. Then they start at category 1, and call the names in order of who has been on the list the longest. Then they progress down the categories until all the seats are filled. Thats why you want to get your name on the list as early as possible, so you can be at the top of your category.

Now that you know how the selection process works the next step is we had to contact the airport to find out when flights are going where we want to go. This is the tricky part because they will only give out flight information 24 hours in advance, so you have to be ready to go to the airport and try and get on the plane.

Anyway, the children and I wanted to meet Root in HI the last week of  Sept. His leave started Oct. 3.
So I started calling on Sunday andthere was a flight Tue., but it got canceled. The next flight was leaving at 3:30am Wed. morning. Now during this time a typhoon was developing and suppose to be coming to Guam so if we didn't get out before the bad weather we would be stuck until the next week. So I get up at 1am and plan to get the kids up, leave by 1:30 and be at the airport before 2am. However, I decide to call and check before waking the kids up. Good thing to because the flight had been pushed back to 4:30am, so I decide to let the kids sleep a little longer. I call again at 2:30 and you want believe it. The flight had already left!  Yep, due to the storm coming in the pilot requested and immediate turn around, so they landed on/off loaded and took off. Ok no problem the next fligt is Wed. at 11pm. So I go back to bed and about 5am Adrian and Malia wake me up thinking we had missed the plane. So I had only been asleep about 2 hours, but up I get.

Well, Wed. goes by in blur of fatigue. But we arrive at the airport around 9pm. Roll call, when they let you know if you get a seat on the plane is at 11pm, but I'm not taking any chances. So they finally tell us there are 20 seats on the plane. We start off on the list at seats 8,9, &10, but as it gets closer to 11 we move down and finally end up at seats 15,16,&17 so I breathe a sigh of relief. I'm pretty sure we are getting on the plane. Roll call comes and our names are called. We check our luggage and purchase our box lunch. ( These are military flights and some of them offer a box lunch for $5. This is pretty good with a sandwich, a drink and a couple of snacks, otherwise you have to bring your own food and you cannot take drinks on the plane, although they do provide water.) Then we wait to be called through security. Then there is a call for about 10 of us to come to the desk. Due to the cargo they only have 10 seats. . So we are waiting to see if they can rearrange the cargo and the answer is sorry, no.  So they give us our money back for our lunches and  our luggage back.  But wait, we don't head home yet. I was told to hang out until the plane leaves the ground so we are hanging around and about 15 minutes later they come back in and say they have 21 seats now, not just the original 20. This is great because there was a retired couple that were number 20 and 21 on the list so one was getting left behind, but now they both got to go. So we recheck our luggage and buy our lunches and wait.

By the time we go through security and take the bus out to the plane it is 2:30am Thursday morning when we finally get on the plane. The good thing about this is that the children slept almost all the way to HI. However, it was really cold. ( I had been warned that it probably would be) There was a big pipe blowing cold air on us so we had our jackets on with the hoods up and the kids each had a blanket. Since I was in the middle they kept me warm. It was kinda funny, because the seats are jump seats on the side of the plane. The cargo was 2 big boats on trailers and we had to go around one boat and then up by its side. Sweetpea, was in the first seat on that side of the plane and the boat trailer was close enough for her to prop her feet up on it.

Well, the flight was uneventful, and we arrived in HI around 1:30 on, you guessed it, Wed. afternoon.

The rest of our trip was much easier. On the way back to HI we were in a refueling plane and got to lay down in the tail bubble. It was so cool, it was like laying on a bubble under the plane on your stomach. The children even got to see down inside diamond head as we came into HI. Also, Bud got to be in the cockpit during take off and Sweetpea got to be in there during the landing. I'm sure it is an adventure they will never forget. I know I want.

The best thing about traveling on military flights is everyone is so friendly with each other. Also, the crews try to be as accomodating as possible. Our return flight got stopped in CA for crew rest and they helped us all get accomadations at the lodge on base. Also, since they didn't offer the box lunch, when we ended up waiting an extra 4 hours in the terminal they went to the chow hall and got everyone who wanted to buy it a plate lunch. We met a lot of really great people. Although during the flight there is little communication since you have to wear earplugs due to the loud engine noise. Our trip back was really fun because there were 2 other families traveling with children so we had time to talk and the children had time to play. You know the military has its good and its bad just like everything else. But this was really a great experience.

Until next time we are blooming where we're planted, here in the middle of the Pacific.
Stem