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Friday,
January 30th, 2003. |
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It has been a little over a year since our trip, and it is now two years to the day that I asked Tami to marry me. I wanted to add another page to reflect upon our Tahitian honeymoon, and to finish up with what happened after getting on that plane home. Not that it is entirely important, but I wanted to get it down in writing before it was gone entirely. After finding out that we could board the plane and waking my parents up with a midnight call, we settled in for the long flight home. I typed my journal entry on the plane and finally put it to close by shutting my laptop for the last time that trip. When we arrived at Los Angeles Airport, we entered another world completely. Not only were we in another country, but everything had changed forever since we left… airports will never be the same as they were before our honeymoon. No cars were allowed into LAX, and almost every flight had been cancelled to anywhere within the U.S. I checked on our flight to Sacramento and found that it had been canceled. I tried flights to Fresno or Bakersfield without any luck. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get back until I called my parents Cellular phone & discovered that they had begun calling the airlines after we had called from Tahiti. They already knew that our flight had been cancelled, and had driven down to Los Angeles to pick us up! However, since no cars were allowed into the airport, we had to take a shuttle several miles out to meet them in a parking lot. Tami and I decided to take a taxi to speed things up, and had him drop us off on the corner of the very large parking lot in order to avoid the crowds. I ran (and ran) over to where they were waiting with several hundred other families, and walked silently up behind my mother and began talking casually to them as if I’d been standing there the whole time. My mom turned around and began crying as she hugged me. We went to the car and drove over to where Tami was waiting with the luggage. They drove us to (Somewhere that Tami and I have both now forgotten – see the benefit of writing things down?) where we met up with Tami’s parents. They drove us the rest of the way home. What a hassle it was for everyone… but it was nice to be home. Not because of the desire to return from Tahiti, but because of the chaos that was going on in the world at the time. How do I feel after re-reading our experiences now? I am so glad that I took the time to write about every small experience we had. Very few weeks go by even now without one or both of us making comments about our honeymoon and the beautiful islands that we stayed on. We still have a few bars of our Tahitian soap… I am trying to make it last as long as possible. The smell still takes me back. We both know that we will go back for another vacation there someday… hopefully sooner rather than later. We want to return to the same islands… and possibly add one more. There was nothing that we regret doing, and very few things that we hadn’t done that we wished we had. (Swim out to a private motu, Parasail, more diving, smuggled some pineapples, and bought a couple dive shop shirts) It was a perfect experience for both of us. We still salivate at the thought of the bread & pineapples, still fantasize about the perfect water, and still wish we were back on Bora Bora. Once, while we were watching a movie (Vin Diesel’s "XXX") with her parents, they cut to a scene on Bora Bora at the end. Guess what! It was shot at the Sofitel Motu resort where we stayed… only two or three bungalows down from ours! We looked at each other in the darkness of the theater and just knew. I realize that this was a very expensive trip for us, but it was worth every penny. The memories that we have and share are more valuable than any other possession we now have. That was OUR honeymoon, and nobody else in the world has one like it. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It truly was a beautiful way to tie up the perfect wedding to the perfect woman. |
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