This blog is mostly about solo travel. But sometimes the best travel stories are the ones where you’re doing it alone specifically so you can show up for someone else. This is one of those.
It started with a phone call.
My best friend called me to tell me they were going to Hawaii for her husband’s 40th birthday and did I want to come?
I told her I couldn’t. Work. Life. Busy season. Can’t make it work. Sorry.
We hung up, and I immediately called her husband.
“Hey. I just told her I’m not coming. I’m absolutely coming. But don’t tell her.”
It took me maybe an hour to make a fake gift certificate in Microsoft Word. I designed it to look like a gift voucher for the restaurant at the hotel where I was staying, the same hotel where I’d booked dinner for the three of us on the night I arrived. The hotel she didn’t know I was staying at, but that I pretended had the best restaurant on the island and “you have to eat there so here, have dinner on me”.
I even printed it on fancy card to make it look real.
Would it fool someone who knew what that restaurants gift certificates actually looked like?
Not even a little bit.
Did my best friend know what they looked like?
Not even a little bit.
I sent it to her, via snail mail, with a note: “I’m so sorry I can’t be there. Here’s a gift certificate for dinner and drinks on Wednesday night at a fancy pants restaurant. It’s on me. Go and enjoy. You deserve it!”
And she believed every word.
Did I feel bad?
Not even a little bit.
Ok maybe a tiny little bit. I hate lying.
Fast forward to November 2018. I finish work, I grab my suitcase, and I head to Newark Airport.
Getting to the train station. No issue.
Getting on the bus. No issue.
But what happens while I’m on the bus? Snow happens.
There was no snow in the forecast!
Welcome to New York.
I get to the airport, check in, get through TSA and find my gate all without any issues… and then I watch the departures board start doing the one thing you never want to see a departures board do while you’re waiting to board a flight.
Cancelled.
Cancelled.
Cancelled.
My flight, New York to Seattle (and then Seattle to Honolulu the next day), is delayed.
Just delayed.
Which in my opinion is worse than cancelled, because at least cancelled is a decision. Delayed is limbo. And as much as I hate lying, I hate limbo more.
Let me paint you a picture of the situation I’m currently dealing with:
My best friend thinks she’s going to dinner with her husband at a fancy pants restaurant with a real gift certificate. In reality, it’s a fake gift certificate that I made on my laptop because I’m meant to be there to cover the costs. The dinner is the night I land, which is the night after they land, so if my flight is cancelled, there’s no one there to pay for dinner and the whole surprise is ruined. What makes it worse, is that they’re on a flight while this is all unfolding with no wifi and I have no way of contacting her husband to tell him what’s going on.
Did it cross my mind to call their airline and ask to speak to the pilot of their flight to have him deliver the message?
It definitely did. But I didn’t. We aren’t there.
Yet.
Newark Airport is under construction (I think it’s always under construction) and I need a drink. So I wander up and down my terminal and find the only place that’s open.
It’s a Mexican bar.
Perfect. When life hands you lemons, find the tequila.
I sit down at the only open bar seat, order the biggest margarita on their menu, and eat chips and guacamole with a group of strangers whose flights are also being cancelled.
One by one, as more flights are cancelled, the strangers leave until eventually it’s just me and 4 others waiting for the airline to make a decision on our flight, which is still showing as delayed.
7 hours later (yes, 7 hours… I sat in that airport longer than I slept the night before, longer than I worked that day, and longer than the flight time from New York to Seattle) we had a decision.
BOARDING!
Hallelujah.
My flight was the very last flight to leave before Newark shut down completely.
We sat on the runway while they de-iced the plane and then we took off into the snow, landing in Seattle at midnight, seven hours later than planned.
Originally, my Seattle friend would pick me up, we’d have dinner, and I’d go to bed early so I could be back at the airport at 4am.
Instead, I taxi-d to his place, had the world’s fastest shower, a 3ish hour nap, coffee at 330am and then left again. What I didn’t do was see my friend. I just let myself in, and then let myself out.
I made my flight, landed in Honolulu, picked up my rental car, checked into the hotel, went straight to the pool for a quick dip, a cocktail in a pineapple, and then back to my room to get ready for dinner.
I also sent her husband a message.
Boy do I have a story for you. I’m here, what’s your ETA? Does she know?
Getting ready. Coming soon. She has no idea.
WE WERE ACTUALLY GOING TO PULL THIS OFF!
I made sure I was down near the restaurant early so I could position myself somewhere that I would see them, but they wouldn’t see me.
I picked a spot at the bar across the pool. I sat down, ordered a drink and acted as what I can only describe as very suspiciously for someone who was not actually doing anything wrong.
I guess I didn’t realise how suspicious I looked until the people sitting next to me at the bar said something.
“Are you okay? You keep looking over there.”
I explained everything. Best friend. 40th birthday. Fake gift certificate. Doesn’t know I’m here. Should be walking in any minute.
And they were immediately invested.
One of the ladies said: “What if I take your phone, go over and tell them I work here and that I want to take a photo to send to you, but then you actually sneak up behind them and I’ll get the whole thing on camera?”
Best idea I’ve ever heard!
Eventually they walked in and I froze. I knew they couldn’t see me, but at that moment, I was pretty sure the wall was invisible.
We waited for them to sit and then my new friend took my phone, started filming and walked over.
Her acting skills were second to none! She explained that she worked at the Hotel, and that I was so sad that I couldn’t be there and did they mind if she took a photo to send to me.
Meanwhile, I’m sneaking through the restaurant trying not to be spotted.
I walk up behind my best friend
“Excuse me? Is this seat taken?”
She turned around, and said hello in a way that her brain couldn’t quite comprehend what her eyes were telling her.
We hugged for a really long time. And then everyone cried including the strangers at the bar who had just watched the whole thing go down.
I’m pretty sure her husband cried too, although I’m sure if you asked him, he would deny it.
Dinner was amazing. The food was delicious. The cocktails were perfect, including the one that came out in a Spam can (to be clear, it wasn’t a Spam cocktail, it was just in an empty, very well washed, tin).
I had arranged a 40th birthday cake to come out. We ate, we sang, we laughed and we enjoyed an evening that was very very close to not happening (Thank you Mother Nature).
The next few days looked like this: a road trip around the island, the pineapple plantation, Dole Whip, Pearl Harbour, a rum tasting, a rubbish chute, the Hard Rock Cafe where my niece became completely obsessed with the guitar-shaped plate her meal came out on. I found the same plate at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York when I got home and sent it to her.
Some things are totally worth the cost of shipping.
My bestie and I snuck away one afternoon, just the two of us, to a bar across the street. We “are going to get some food and will be right back” which actually translated to “let’s sneak away and have a few drinks and go back when we feel like it”.
We were busted, obviously, but it was worth it.
Those are the moments that make the fake gift certificates and the Newark margaritas and the 3am airport runs worth it.
I travel solo because I love my own company and I’ve learned to trust myself out there in the world alone.
But sometimes the best reason to book a trip is someone else entirely.
Sometimes you get on a plane by yourself, in a snowstorm, on the last flight out, so you can show up for the person who would absolutely do the same for you.
Happy 40th, friend!
Worth every cancelled flight.
Nobody’s Watching You Eat is a blog about solo travel, solo dining, and all the things you figure out when the only person you have to answer to is yourself. Subscribe below so you don’t miss the next one.
