Back from Hawaii Part II

2 Weeks ago Jodi and I were back in Hawaii for my Peak Performers trip for work (sales incentive trip). This time the 3 night tab was on the company...all expenses paid. They put us up in the Grand Wailea Resort in Maui, which was awesome. What's better than 400 young sales people from around the world, pool bars, and adult water slides? Lot's of things but go with me on this one. Anyway, before we got to experience this awesomeness we had to fly into Kona and then take a 737 over to Maui. We landed in Kona no problem, but our flight to Maui was a disaster. After two failed landing attempts and instability at low speeds our pilot came on the loud speaker. She said, "well folks, as you can tell we have the plane very stable right now, and we are very much in control. We are having a problem with one of our flaps and as a result the plane is unstable at low speeds. We'll let you know what our options are as soon as we know."

Now I'll be the first to admit, I was having some anxiety after hearing this, and I'll tell you why. I noticed the the wing would dip to one side when we slowed to land. I also know that you need to slow down when you land. So by that logic, I was pretty sure we would dip a wing into the ground when we went to eventually land. The pilots attempt to convince us that the plane was stable at speed was not doing much for me. Jodi was solid as a rock but as I looked around the plane people were not looking so good. First I look at some of the locals and they are looking concerned. Then I look over at my buddies 5 mo. pregnant wife and she is visibly praying. By this time I'm having some pretty bad thoughts. Let I remind you I fly a lot, and 3 weeks prior had no problem landing in Chicago with 1 ft of snow on the ground and heavy cross winds. That was another day at the office.

No, no, no, this was different. 15 minutes pass with high speed, low altitude (3-5K ft.) island fly overs. I'm thinking "Todd calm the F#$% down....read a magazine or something." But then the other voice in my head barked right back "You idiot, do you really want to be reading Sky Mall in your final minutes." Finally the pilot comes on, "I have decided to head back to Kona to take advantage of the LONG runway. We will attempt a high speed landing. Just so you know we will be greeted by firetrucks but this is standard procedure." Somehow I liked being greeted by snowplows in the Midwest a lot more. Long story short the pilot nailed the landing, fire trucks and all, and yes we were hauling @ss, and yes we used the whole runway. After a flight to Honolulu, and then eventually to Maui (yes 4 flights in total) I was ready for 10 Mai-Tais. That was until Aloha air lost our luggage. It took another hour to basically tell Aloha to send the bags to our hotel when they showed up.

Jodi and I finally checked in to the hotel and headed strait to the dinner event. 13 hours later we had arrived and the Mai-Tais could not come fast enough. The rest of the trip was awesome and we partied like rock stars.

All I have to say is church was awesome this weekend :-)