Things are winding down

After our flight back in the luxurious Gulfstream IV, we faced a 9 hour layover in the Honolulu airport. It started off with me, Paul, and Sabina going through the Delta check-in line 3 times. The first time we learned that the ice chest with the microscope and drill weighed 60 lbs. They told us where there was a scale to use if we wanted to redistribute the weight to some of our other check-in bags to avoid the fee. We went over there, but because the ice chest was so well packed and taped up with miles of duct tape, we though the grant could afford to pay the extra $25 for the overweight ice chest. So we got back in line only to discover it was $100 for the overweight bag not $25. Since we had many hours to fill before our flight left, we went back to the scale and de-duct taped the ice chest trying to preserve as much of the tape as we could to re-use. We ended up moving the drill, a drill bit, and the base plates into Paul's checked bag which had room and was relatively light. Except for the microscope, most of the rest of the stuff wasn't very dense and was being used as padding such as my wetsuit, booties, knee pads. Removing the above mentioned items we got it down to 49 lbs. After all that work carefully re-duct taping it, TSA ended up choosing only the ice chest among all our bags to open and inspect. With all that tape, it looked suspicious.

ice chest covered with TSA inspection tape

The good news is we had an uneventful flight back to SFO, and everything I have unpacked so far survived the trip. I gave the microscope to Cheryl today to re-assemble and make sure it is OK.

Here is a photo of the Paul and Ron posing for the camera before we took off from Palmyra.

Paul Leary & Ron Harrell - diver dudes with shades

Paul became quite skilled in making hats out of palm fronds and was also instructing others on how to make them. Here are a few examples of the results of his work. He left them all behind for the Palmyra residents as he was not sure Hawaii would allow them through the agricultural inspection one faces both on entry and when exiting Hawaii.

palm frond hats by Paul and his students

As with last year, I may do a few more posts like this one, but soon this blog will go into hiatus until hopefully I return to Palmyra next summer to complete the 3 year project.