Home, we are, safe and sound...

Home, we are, safe and sound...  But not without a bit of drama!  Just before we boarded our plane in Kona, we heard an announcement.  Our plane was not going to San Francisco as scheduled, but was instead going to Honolulu!  It seems our aircraft had a broken HF (high frequency) radio, and without the radio it couldn't make the long flight to the mainland.  It could, however, fly the short distance to Honolulu, where they had the parts to fix our plane.  So off we went, away from home.

In Honolulu they told us we couldn't be on the plane while they tested the repaired radio, so off we all trudged.  A half hour later we were told that we were getting a whole new airplane – so they unloaded all our luggage from the broken plane, threw it all into our new plane, and then we all trudged aboard.  Finally we took off, headed for San Francisco.

We'd be arriving in San Francisco about four hours later than originally scheduled, so naturally we missed our flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City.  While we were in the air, United rebooked us onto a later flight, but not with the upgraded seats (more legroom) we'd paid for.  I had to be rather insistent before the customer service agent would set that right, but finally I did.  United has a ways to go if they want to be known as the friendly skies!

A friend was driving down from Paradise to pick us up, and fortunately we were able to catch her before she drove down for our original arrival time.  She picked us up without incident, and we had a nice drive back – got all the local news, heard about our naughty animals, and shared a nice meal at the Red Iguana.

The animal reunion was exactly as expected (especially the overjoyed canines!), except that Jahar (our Savanna cat) is still upset, and is yowling.  I expect he'll settle down after we've gone to bed...