Day two of the trip has been very long but not at all frustrating like the first. I caught the plane to Honolulu this morning with no troubles and considering the length of the flight it wasn’t at all bad.

The middle aged woman sitting next to me who has worked for the past 25 years as a machine operator in a meat-packing plant in Nebraska made surprisingly interesting conversation. She told me all about her family reunions, grandchildren and frequent trips to Hawaii. And in exchange I told her about my family, discussed the war and shared what little information I have on the video game industry. I was all quite pleasant and helped a great deal in passing the time.

This morning when I noticed there was an 8-hour gap between my flights I was a bit let down considering I still had the longest leg of my trip ahead of me but I could think of no better place to wait for a plane than Hawaii.

I hopped on a bus to Waikiki, which was quite a ways off and gave me a great chance to tour the island. At Waikiki I did a little walking in hopes of finding some interesting local shops but I was disappointed to see so many familiar chain stores here. It was Home Depot after Starbucks after Banana Republic after Pier 1 and so on. As if seeing all the same stores wasn’t enough I spotted a few people from Boston (or at least I assumed they were, based on the Patriots and Red Sox hats shirts and even tattoos). The Pro Bowl is on Sunday so there are quite a few football fans in town.

The people all seemed very kind and interesting. I listened in (unnoticed I imagine) on quite a few conversations throughout the day. One woman was on her way to meet a friend whom she had not seen in 28 years. She was the maid of honor at this woman’s wedding and that was the last time they spoke, she didn’t mention why and since it wasn’t my conversation I couldn’t really ask any questions.

I’d love to visit again with more time and with someone who can show me around. It seems that when you don’t know where to go you tend to fall into the tourist traps and don’t really get a chance to explore the city.

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I’ve been trying to stay awake the whole day so I can sleep on the flight tonight and arrive in Sydney tomorrow morning refreshed and jetlag free so that I can hunt down the luggage that decided to go on ahead without me. I have sufficient time between flights so I’m not too worried about it… Yet.

It’s all been much more eventful than I had expected but I prefer it this way. I feel like I would have missed out had things gone according to plan.