Fellow fliers of the friendly skies will recognize the mystique of Micronesia.
As a New Jersey-based youth who loved traveling and maps and airplanes and those little ramekins filled with chewy, warm nuts, Newark-hubbed Continental Airlines was what I flew. Work Hard, Fly Right, Larry Kellner told us in the forward pages of every Hemispheres Magazine. But it was the back pages that fascinated me. There, one found a catalogue of planes: large 777s which took one to Paris and the small Embraer 145s which landed in Albany; terminal maps with little, seemingly random symbols for Presidents Clubs and Elite Access check-in areas; and, most evocatively, the fold out map of the world across which routes stretched like veins.
Continental’s nervous system was somewhat small: Europe, mostly, and Latin America out of Houston. Its international network never rivaled its eventual merger partner, United. But there was a region where Continental flew without peer: Micronesia. Hemispheres was dotted and lined like a brilliant jewel necklace with names in that great Blue wonder this East Coast boy couldn’t pronounce and hardly imagine: Kwajalein, Yap, Guam. Guam. Agana. Hagåtña.
As a boy back then and as a man today, those dots and the lines connecting them fascinated me more than any other on the map. From Hawai’i through the Pacific, to Cairns, to Japan, to Palau. It was my greatest travel ambition to fly these routes, none more crucially than the so-called “Island Hopper” from Honolulu through the South Pacific to Guam and onward to Manila. Last year, finally, that ambition was achieved.
I’d been to Guam and endured that horrible incident in Palau (see Somewhat Rudish issues 12-14 for the full story.) This time the plan was simpler: meet up for three nights with my best friend in Manila (after an overnight in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, of course: my acute case of United Airlines-specific avgeekdom meant that, rather than a direct flight to the Philippines, I’d fly Newark to Narita to Saipan to Guam to the Philippine capital) and then fly overnight Manila to Guam via Palau, before connecting on to Pohnpei via Chuuk, both in the Commonwealth of Micronesia, where we’d spend two nights. From there, we’d continue via Kosrae and Kwajalein to Majuro, capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands for two further nights before finally returning to Honolulu. Tired yet? Did I mention that all of this, besides the Newark-Narita run, would be aboard 737-800s? Without Wi-Fi?
Only a sick sick man would be excited. But the child who spend his youth plying the skies between Newark and Fort Lauderdale had morphed into just such a sick man, ready, aching with buoyant expectation to experience the narrow-bodied mystique of the United Airlines Island Hopper.
To be continued…
More from this Series
About Travels with Charlie
Name a country, city, island, restaurant or ballet performance and you can bet Charles Rudish has been there. Follow along as he documents his adventures around the world with this ongoing series. Charles offers a humorous and insightful perspective on travel, culture and exploring the world around you.
