On to Hawaii

With the two conferences back to back, I had one day (Sunday 8 March) to get from Tennessee to Hawaii. That was a good demonstration of just how big the USA is as it took most of the day and involved a change six or seven time zones. I say six or seven, because Sunday 8 March was the day that most of the USA (Hawaii being one of very few exceptions — I think Arizona also refuses to participate) switched over to daylight savings time. In order to get to the airport in Chattanooga on time, I had to catch the 4:00am shuttle bus, which meant getting up at 3:30am, which my body believed was actually 2:30am, as DST had kicked in at 2:00am that morning!

Getting to Hawaii meant three flights: Chattanooga to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Salt Lake City, and lastly Salt Lake City to Honolulu. I arrived in Honolulu at about 4:00pm (or 10:00pm Chattanooga time) feeling rather shattered after very little sleep the night before and a lot of travelling.

My first impression of Hawaii was the warmth, and then the openness. Given their beautiful climate a lot of buildings are very open to the elements: the airport, for one has open-sided walkways leading from the main terminal area out to the departure areas (this photo was taken at dusk when I left, so the quality isn't great — the gardens below are outside the departure-side airport lounges for first-class, etc.). Likewise, the hotel (a rather expensive Hilton) where the conference was being held had an open reception/lobby area (there were some huge wooden louvre screens along a few sides that could be closed if necessary, but I never saw them shut — you can see them in the photo below, which is of the back, more enclosed side of the reception area; the front was completely open). And many of the restaurants and bars in the complex were either completely open or had large expanses of windows or sliding doors that were just kept open all the time. The end result was a wonderfully relaxed, out-doorsy feel almost all the time.