'Destination Girls' version of todays events

4 seconds to spare –
I leisurely open my eyes glance across to my beautiful husband secure in the knowledge of a wonderful day to follow when I notice that the sun is rising – holy shit the sun is rising how is this possible the alarm was to go off at 4.15am Hawaii time, how the hell is the sun coming up. I struggle to find a time piece, (of course this should be easy we have two watches, 2 i-phones, ipad and a bedside clock all register the same time) 5.55am – our plane is about to depart at 7.15am we are at least 30 minutes from the airport on a good day, we need to get changed, taxi to airport,, get through agricultural inspection, check-in, baggage depository, customs and get on the flight in 1 hour 20 minutes – naturally we ain't gunna make it, I rush to the phone, call Qantas frequent flyer they can’t help as we booked through Flight Centre and they can’t see the booking, I then called Flight Centre 24 hr hotline to discover that I was placed in a queue.
Now all that know me well, can make the assumption at this point that I was spitting chips, Bradley was calm, collected and not fazed at all – “don’t worry I am sure that this will happen multiple times over the next year” he says, my reply “you do realise that we could be stuck on this $%@& (paradise - interpretation for parents) rock for several days”. Brad decided that silence was the best approach with me from then on.
Anyway I wasn’t getting anywhere so I made the call to go to the airport anyway and we would just try and shortlist for another flight later that day to anywhere on the mainland that could get us a connecting flight to Las Vegas.
The phone calls cost $40, another $1000 for flights, loss of potential accommodation the cash register in my brain was going crazy and the whole time I wanted to blame anyone for our misfortune but was struggling to find a scape goat.
We arrived at the airport, slowly got our luggage out of the taxi, and as we were in the process of putting it through agricultural security in what could only be described as a ghost town, a lovely angel from American Airlines yelled – 'hey you two, you’re not going to Los Angeles are you?", We replied "Well we were but we understand that the plane is leaving in 34 minutes”. The angel replies “Well you best be hurrying up then, if you can get to me in the next 4 minutes I will let you check in”.
Stil in shock the AA rep grabs our bags, says that mine is overweight and we have a excess to pay, we say don’t care will pay anything you want, she organises our boarding passes, the baggage guys moves our luggage around, everyone is moving in fast motion and Brad and I can’t believe what is happening. Somehow we don’t get charged for excess baggage, I suspect it was all too hard and they wanted to go home or my Qantas Ruby class finally paid off. We run to customs, get through there with minimum fuss, we run to the gate (naturally it’s the furthest from customs), they call our names over the intercom, we run faster and arrive at the gate to find a queue to board the airport and we aren’t in fact the last ones on the plane.

Sitting here in the Admirals Lounge In Los Angeles still can’t believe that the airline wanted us at the airport 3 hours before the flight as we have proven you only need to arrive 34 minutes beforehand and still beat people on board.
Lesson 1 – although more stressful to catch a plane – doing it our way you get more sleep,
Lesson 2 - don’t turn off your i-phone if you have set an alarm – they don’t operate the same as blackberrys,
Lesson 3 - get a wake up call, set all the alarms in the room.
Lesson 4 - always take time to find a scape goat
Lesson 5 - I should have waited until Brad posted 1st somehow I think it will be slightly different.