Oahu: Day 5

Our last day on Oahu.

Having fun, Captain Midnight?  "You betcha!"

How 'bout you, Miss V?  "I LOVE IT HERE!"

But there was still one vacation-y thing that Captain Midnight and Miss V were keen to do: snorkeling.

So the fam all suited up and headed down to Turtle Bay (not to be confused with Turtle Beach, which is a different place).

Well, most of us suited up.  I was lame and chose to stay on the beach due to BIG FAT TUM AND THE THUNDER THIGHS, which if you're wondering is not a good name for a rock band.  Yeah, I know it's stupid.  I'm not self-conscious about my age or my height, just about appearing in public in a swimsuit.

So instead, I went and looked at tidepools.

You don't want to fall over on these rocks.  They're pretty sharp.  And the wind was coming in pretty strong that day; I was in some danger of falling over.

The tidepools featured some modest flora and fauna, including one little black crab who beat a hasty retreat, muttering crabbily to himself, as soon as he saw me coming.

I also proved there are shells to be found on Oahu beaches, though they're not very impressive.

Meanwhile, Little C was busy looking for monk seals...

...and Captain Midnight and Miss V were busy snorkeling.  They saw lots of brightly colored fish in the bay, including the humuhumunukunukuapua'a featured on CM's shirt.  (It must've thought they were groupies.)

 Seems legit.  And sandy.

Misses E and V had themselves a good time.

The rest of the fam had fun goofing around in the water as well.

Since CM's mom and I were both out of the water, we decided to walk around to the other side of the hotel...

...where conditions weren't nearly as sheltered.  You can't really tell from these pictures, but the waves breaking on this other beach were huge.

No surfers were crazy enough to try them in this weather.

Beautiful, though.

We went back to the house, had some Thanksgiving leftovers, and just happened to be around when a couple of wild piglets got into the cul-de-sac and started roaming around.  Unfortunately, none of the pictures we took turned out very well.  Maybe Little C has better ones on her camera.

Then Brian, Captain Midnight and I went out geocaching (and waymarking) while V and E biked over to nearby Kahuku to do some shopping.

Captain Midnight also had to stop by the university ceramics studio to see how his pot was doing (he'd thrown a few pots with Brian a while earlier).  This one has a nice shape, but it would be a challenge getting it back to the mainland.

We also took a look at this island...

...which decided to look back at us.  Eep.

It really was idyllic.  At any moment I expected Mr. Rourke to appear and announce, "Welcome to Fantasy Island!"

We had many adventures in geocaching which were not photographed, including getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and meeting up with a couple of homeless guys who were hanging out near a local cache. Afterward we headed back to the neighborhood to get Shave Ice: The Sequel.

For dinner, the whole family reconvened and drove to the Kahuku Grill.

If you go here, expect delicious food, but don't expect it to be fast.  Their single chef takes orders only as fast as he can cook them, and it's easy for things to get backed up during the dinner rush.  We were there for nearly 2 hours.

After our meal we scampered home, did our last-minute packing, piled into the rental car, drove down to Honolulu and promptly got lost by following the driving directions on CM's phone.  Only after we'd followed its advice to two different dead-end streets did we decide to ignore the phone and suss it out by ourselves.  This turned out to work much better.

Once again I had to go through a patdown at Honolulu Airport, because I steadfastly refuse to go through the Cavity Search Photo Booth.  (Boo.)  TSA bigwigs, take note: I will gladly walk through a metal detector.  I don't have any problems with getting my luggage screened.  But when your stooges start treating me like a convicted criminal without any proof I've done something wrong, I do have a tendency to get uppity.  What happened to the legal concept of "innocent until proven guilty?"  Especially when there's a good chance I will miss my flight back to the mainland because of the Kabuki-theater crap you're pulling at a checkpoint.  We all know just how effective it's been at finding terrorists so far.

But we needn't have worried about missing our flight.  United Airlines had us sitting on the tarmac for two-plus hours after we boarded, while the maintenance crew worked on the plane.  At some point during these shenanigans, the experience became

Day 6: Welcome to Bonus Stage

If I'd known then what I know now, I would've booked another direct flight home with Alaska rather than playing patty-cake with United.  They had set us up to catch a connecting flight in San Francisco.  Needless to say, after 2 hours of delay on the tarmac in Honolulu, that flight was long gone.  So we sat in the San Francisco airport on Tuesday morning, bleary after the red-eye flight, while Captain Midnight engaged in a pitched battle with United's customer service.  Their idea of a generous offer was to toss us a couple of complimentary drink tickets and a coupon entitling us to a percentage off our next flight with them (neither of which was particularly appealing to a by-now tired and frustrated Mormon family), and to put us on a flight leaving near midnight. Uh, no. Don't get me wrong, San Francisco, I like you a lot, but I didn't want to be cooped up in your airport all day, nor did I cherish the thought of dragging multiple pounds of luggage all over the city.

Fortunately we noticed another United flight at a gate just across from ours, scheduled to leave for Seattle later that morning.  We took the initiative to put ourselves on standby, the flight turned out to have some seats free and we were on our way home, no particular thanks to United's tepid customer service.  The general caliber of our experience led us to make a firm decision regarding future flights with United.  I'll let you figure it out.

And that should bring us back up to speed.  We went to Hawaii!  It was awesome!

Thanks for having us, Brian and Caryn and family!

Oahu: Day 3

So after days of semi-patient waiting for her particular kind of fun, Miss V was finally rewarded on Saturday.  After a leisurely start, we drove down to Honolulu to shop at the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet.

This temporary shopping center rings Aloha Stadium and is filled with all manner of goodies to warm the cockles of your materialistic little heart.

It's about a mile's walk to complete the full circuit of the swap meet.  You can find everything from souvenirs to food to clothes to cell phone accessories on sale.  Even green coconuts, which were being sold out of the back of a pickup truck by a wizened little guy with a baseball cap, a cigarette and a machete.

I picked up some postcards and a package of li hing mango for my mom.  Captain Midnight got himself a Lava Blues T-shirt emblazoned with a humuhumunukunukuapua'a.  And Miss V?  Well, she went a little crazy with the whole "7 T-shirts for $20" concept.  Let's just say she's not going to run out of casual tops any time soon.

Now, I'm well acclimated to the rain and cold of a Pacific Northwest winter.  But "Hawaiian winter" looks and feels a lot like "Northwest summer."  Plus I'm diabetic, woefully out of shape and chronically dehydrated.  What did this all add up to?  Why, the magic of heat exhaustion, my friends!  I completed a mere circuit and a half of the swap meet before the dizziness and nausea hit.  Gleah.  Captain Midnight went forth and picked me up in the rental car, gallantly running the A/C while I panted like a German shepherd and sucked down a bottle of water.

Eventually we dragged Miss V away from the premises.  We then embarked on a drive that would take us more or less on a circle route of Oahu.  First stop: the island shopping paradise known as Costco.

Yeah, I know, "why Costco, Sooz?"  After all, the Costco experience is pretty much the same everywhere you go -- your basic big ol' steel-trussed box fulla economy-sized goodness.  But each one carries local products unique to the area, and lemme tell you, I have never seen SO MANY MACADAMIA NUT PRODUCTS in my entire life.  Plus they had some Korean barbecue flavored pork jerky for sale.  It was pretty much a moral imperative.

(By the way, if you ever get the chance to buy Korean barbecue flavored pork jerky, do it.  Seriously choice.)

More driving.  Along the route I spotted this sign, which filled my soul with equal measures of poetry and glee:

Is this the street that launched a thousand memes
And burnt the cheezburgers of lolcat fame?
Sweet Ohai, be thou immortal on this blog!

Um.  Clearly I'm no Kit Marlowe.

Our next stop?

Pineapple Central!  Also known as the Dole plantation in Wahiawā.

The inside of this place is full of souvenirs...

...including my own personal favorite, the tried-and-true penny smasher.  Plus they're pretty much selling pineapple-flavored everything as far as the eye can see.  And Dole Whips.  Mmm.

Captain Midnight and I wandered around outside for a bit to take a look at the grounds.  We did not take the Pineapple Express train nor get lost in the world's largest outdoor maze, but we did walk through the exhibition gardens.

Yes, those are little pineapple plants underneath the directional arrows.

Also, does anybody happen to know what kind of tree this is?  The odd stripy bark caught my eye.
ETA: Captain Midnight did his homework and informs me that this is a rainbow eucalyptus.

Speaking of eyes, CM and I noticed a feral cat living in the drainage hole just at the entrance to the plantation.  He had the most amazing luminous green eyes.  Unfortunately, he skedaddled into the hole the moment he decided we were getting too close.

Having satisfied our lust for all things pineapple, we drove on to Haleiwa where we met up with Brian and Caryn and the kids and had a late lunch at the Grass Skirt Grill.  Mmm, grilled ahi plate.  Plus I got to steal some bonus fries from Captain Midnight.  Forbiddenlicious.

We continued up the North Shore to Laniakea Beach, informally known as Turtle Beach.

It's quite beautiful, even without any turtles on the beach, though Miss V and Little C did spy some turtles in the surf.

Then we drove on to Waimea, where they spied a few surfers in the surf.

Another photo, another chance for Miss V to be fabulous.  She was really loving the beach, and wished she had brought her swimsuit with her when we left that morning.

I didn't take all that many photos on the beach because I was getting lazy and tired.  Rest assured, though, that there were wild chickens on the premises.  Then we completed the loop around the top of the island and back down to La'ie on the windward side.

A long day of fun requires a shave ice when you're done.  Brian and Caryn's neighbors down the street make and sell shave ice concoctions right from their driveway to help support their son, who is currently off being a missionary.  They didn't have any sugar-free syrups, so I just had a snaky lick of Captain Midnight's shave ice instead.  Mmmm!

Next: a day of rest means almost no foties.  Sorry.

Oahu: Day ½

[Backdated to reflect the day on which these events occurred.  Right?  Onward!]

Miss V's early-out day is every Wednesday.  This is especially handy if you decide to scamper off for an island vacation around midweek, as we did.  I picked V up from school at noon and we proceeded to cover all the last-minute details... like, uh, packing.  Pretty soon I drove off to pick up Captain Midnight, who does a great job of hurrying things along.  I would never get anything done without CM.

By the time we reached our gate, Miss V's fun light had gone out.  A TSA screener at SeaTac had pulled her out of line because she'd forgotten to remove her school laptop from her backpack, she hadn't eaten since breakfast and her blood sugar was dipping low, and we were already cutting it close, so there was no time for a meal.  She filled the gap with a peach smoothie before we boarded, but was still hungry on the plane.  A flight from Seattle to Honolulu takes a good six hours.  So we caved and bought some airline food.  Not precisely ambrosia, but it wasn't bad -- especially when a flight attendant gave us a chocolate truffle bar to thank us for waiting patiently.  Twist my arm, won't you!

Otherwise, Captain Midnight napped.  Miss V played games on his tablet.

Me?  I crocheted.  A lot.  Used what may be the world's biggest ball of pink yarn to finish one baby blanket and start another.  (An older passenger congratulated me on "being so productive" as she passed by in the aisle. Heh. I guess you could see it that way, but it's not as though I was going to stare at the back of an airline seat for six hours.)  By the way: no, Mom, I have nothing particular to report.  These blankets are a church project.

When you disembark at Honolulu Airport, you get the immediate feeling you're not in Kansas any more.  Hawaii is a U.S. state with a unique culture, due to its former status as a separate island nation and its current status as the de facto crossroads of the Pacific Rim.  You'll see untranslated words and phrases in both Hawaiian and Pidgin, the airport uses the blunt-to-American-eyes term "toilets" rather than the widespread euphemism "restrooms," and -- maybe the strangest sight of all to a mainlander used to periods of inclement weather -- there are no visible precautions against cold, because there's no point.  (Hawaiians are so acclimated to year-round balmy weather that they put on socks and sweaters when the temperature dips into the 60s at night.)

We wandered past an open-air cultural garden right in the middle of the airport, taking in the marvelous scents of flowers along with the warm night air.  Caryn met us at the baggage claim, embraced us and presented us with leis.  Did I take any pictures of this?  Nope. Once again I'd forgotten the camera in my purse.  (Don't worry, though; I eventually remembered it was there.)  We wandered out to the car rental area, where CM picked up our car, and where Miss V got hit on by some random guy who wiggled his eyebrows at her every time she looked in his direction.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser cannot lie.

Then we drove to the place famed for selling the best Spam musubi on Oahu: the Aloha Gas Station and 7-11 in Kāne'ohe.  (Gotta love a place where you can buy quality musubi at the gas station.)  There we met up with Brian, bought a couple of musubi and a manapua filled with char siu, and proceeded to fill the car with the joyous sounds of OMNOMNOM while driving up to the North Shore.  (And asking ourselves the Zen koan of the night: Why is Spam so awful?  Yet why is Spam musubi so tasty?  Ponder this strange alimentary paradox with us now...)

Darkness had fallen, so we couldn't see much of the scenery on our drive in, but on several occasions the road ran right along the beach, and we could catch a glimpse of the long curls of breakers gleaming white against the darkness.  Sometimes the waves blow spray across the road.  It took us a while to get to our destination on a "highway" where the average posted speed limit is 35 mph, but eventually we made it to La'ie. And there we found the niblings: Miss E, Little C, Bonz-I and Goldilocks.*  There was also Teddy the Wonder Dog, aka the Jack Russell Terrier on Valium.

Little C (who is not all that little any more) seemed pleased to see us.  And we were pleased to see all of them.  But most of all we were pleased to see the bed, which we promptly hit with gusto and vigor.

What of tomorrow?  Stay tuned.

*as always on this blog, names of people under 18 have been altered. I don't want anyone to be under the impression that my in-laws named their kids with the intention of starting a rap group.

What I did on my summer vacation, part 1

We were looking for something unusual to do for our family reunion, and Captain Midnight (with his wily technomage ways) had learned something new at work, so he tried hollering "STOP THE FLOW OF TIIIIME!"

Apparently, however, you shouldn't perform this techno-spell without the proper plug adapter. Thus it happened that we were accidentally flung into the past...

...and entered the primeval world of the dinosaurs.

There were a lot of them.



No really, there were a lot.



More than you might imagine.

"RAHR!"

CM helpfully offered his sour melon Powerade to a thirsty dino.
"THANKS MAN! HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?"

From the! Town of Bedrock! It's a dino out of his-to-reee!

Here Miss V, Miss E and Little C are fabulous on the dinosaur skull...

...then nearly fall off the dinosaur skull...

...and do the haute fashion pose on the tortoise.

The closest modern relatives of the dinosaurs...

...are thought to be birds.

V was astonished by this discovery.

There were a number of dinosaur relatives on the property.

Some were quite familiar with their ancestors.

Nuff said.

Dangerous creatures get thirsty too.

After we had goofed around sufficiently in the past, we returned to the present and visited a museum of bones, fossils, rocks and other funky stuff found in the earth.

A bit of stibnite, which I thought pretty strikingly resembled the Skeksis castle in The Dark Crystal.

And a bit of bismuth, which looks like an apartment complex designed by Frank Gehry.

A big swirly ammonite shell. This thing was huge, about the size of a spare tire.

Purty.

Fossilized leaves...

A fossilized maple leaf, looking as though it had just fallen off a tree.

Did we have fun? Why yes, yes we did. Thanks to CM and his delightful family for providing this trip Forward Into The Past!