I was up at about 4:45 this morning to leave for Hawaii on a business trip. I boarded the plane for the second leg of the trip in Minneapolis and was greeted with Mai-tai's - for an eight hour flight, that's either a good or a bad way to start. I used my miles to upgrade to first class and it turned out to be a great call. The plane was a widebody DC10-30 and the first class section was huge and had the fully reclinable seats with personal tv's - way different than Northwest's so-so first class seating.

I got in around 12:30PM, checked in, spent some time at the beach and met up with one of the guys on my team, Newton, who's down here for a different project. My Hilton Honors status paid off and I ended up with a great room at the hotel, overlooking the ocean, with the above view. Will has been spending a fair amount of time out here on a project and his advice to acclimate to the 6 hour time change was to stay up until 10PM (4AM EST) the first night. I can barely make it to midnight on a good day at home, so this should be interesting. I'm getting ready to head out to dinner, so we'll see how tonight goes.