The military has something called Space Available (AKA Space-A) flights.
You see the Air Force is constantly flying planes to and from all their other bases and many times there are empty seats on these flights and these seats are offered to military personal and their families for free.
That’s right, free flights. Score.
Now it may not cost any money to fly Space-A but it does cost patience.
With Space-A, like flying any sort of stand-by, you never know if you will get on the flight or not and you have to be flexible.
Now I will go much more into detail on how Space-A works when I tell you about my trip back to Hawaii.
For the flight to the mainland, it was a breeze though not at all what I expected.
What I expected was to get on one of those huge C5s and be strapped into the side with a tank in front of me.
Instead I walked up the stairs (my first experience walking onto a plane outside, I had to fight the urge to turn around and wave when I got to the top) and into a normal plane cabin.
It looked just like a commercial flight except it only had about 6 rows of seats.
There were stewardess and everything!
During the flight I was seated next to a ’09 Naval Academy grad.
Warning: Rabbit trail ahead
This Navy guy was a redhead too and it reminded me of all the illogical thinking that goes on about redheads.
First: The silly thought that all redheads look alike.
I have been told that I look like: Lindsey Lohan, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Cate Blanchett and any other famous person that was ever a “redhead” for any significant amount of time.
Also I have been told that I look like like any friend, relative, aquatence or sister’s dog walker’s aunt’s neighbor's cousin who's a redhead.
But if you were to take any of those supposed lookalikes and dye their hair blond or brown we would look nothing alike.
But somehow the red hair and fair skin makes people completely look over facial features.
Second: And this is actually related to my story, the thought that two redheads in close proximity must be connected in someway. As if it were impossible to fathom that two redheads could be in the same place and not know each other.
So the guy I was sitting next to on the plane was a redhead and people kept assuming, even when we were just standing near each other at the terminal, that we must be married.
Now this makes no sense! I could get assuming that we must be brother and sister but married?! As if its more likely that two redheads would be married than just happen to be on the same flight.
It was a bit awkward because people kept addressing us as a pair such as “So where are you guys headed?”
And I would say “Well, I am going to visit family in California.”
End rabbit trail.
I had a good time talking to my fellow redhead about the Academy and asking him what its like winning the Army vs Navy games and hinting that maybe they should just let us win for a change of pace.
He told me he was on his way to San Diego to surprise his wife (did I just hear an “awww”?) who is also in the Navy and has been stationed there while he has been stationed in Hawaii.
So all in all it was a good flight and we landed at Travis Air Force Base with no problems and my dad picked me up and took me home.
I spent two days in Napa (not counting the day I flew in and the day I flew out).
On Friday my parents and I went to Healdsburg and on the way made the mandatory stop at this place:
If you’re ever in the Napa Valley, you must go to Bouchon Bakery and get some of these:
Macaroons.
They are heavenly.
So then we headed up to Healdsburg and wandered around that adorable town where I was talked into getting these:
If you cant tell, they're feathers.
Here’s how it happened, we were having lunch and our waitress was this cute, trendy girl probably around my age who had a feather in her hair.
My parents and I got to talking about how cute her hair was and the feather so my dad ended up asking her about it and she said she got it at a salon nearby.
So lunch over, we wondered around the town and found that we had a good amount of time to spare before our dinner reservations.
So naturally, my parents decided that I should get a feather.
And so the search was on (something you should know about my dad, if he’s anything, he’s persistant).
My dad went back to the restaurant to ask the waitress what salon she got the feathers from but she had left already.
Then he was on his smart phone looking up salons in the area.
Then he started calling around.
Then he got the name of one that does them and we walked over.
The girl who does them wasn’t in that day but we were told of another salon in town that does them.
So then we went over to that salon (told you he was persistent) and viola feathers!
I felt well prepared for the trendiness of Seattle.
Spent Saturday visiting with the in-laws and the grandparents and then Sunday it was up to Seattle!
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