After fumbling out of bed this morning at 3 AM, Ashley and I arrived at the airport via taxi cab at 4:30 AM. We made it through the long US Customs line (we were near the front), though the tightened security (all shoes come off now), and finally, onto the plane – where we proceeded to nearly freeze to death for 20 minutes as they kept the door open. It took off, and we noticed a strange thing – our ears kept popping and popping…but it didn’t quit like it normally would. Lo and behold, ten minutes into the flight, the pilot comes on the intercom and tells us that there’s a problem with the internal pressure system, and because of the altitude they have to rise to for the flight, they had no choice but to turn around and fly back to Calgary. We landed, hoping it would be a quick fix and we could stay on the plane – no such luck. We went back into the airport, and eventually they fixed the same plane, moved it to a different gate (just to psyche us out I think) and off we went – leaving at 9:30 AM or so. Much to our frustration though, our connecting flight into Honolulu was slated to leave Seattle at 8:40 AM, so we missed the flight. What sucks even worse? The next flight wasn’t departing until 5:30 PM. And today being Thanksgiving in the US of A, none of the local shopping malls or stores are open – so no visit to Fry’s Electronics for this geek. We wandered around the airport, got a 30 minute massage each, did some shopping/browsing (we’ll pick up some stuff on the way back when we ALSO have a five hour layover…). We also had to cancel our Cirque du Soleil tickets for tonight, because the new flight gets us in too late to catch the show. Double suck! Thankfully a kindly worded explanation to the ticket lady resulted in us getting a full refund (despite the stern warnings on the bottom of our receipt). It’s 4:48 PM Seattle time, and we’re just about ready to board the flight to Honolulu – let’s hope it’s uneventful and we get there on the first try!