Recap

I’m back in Brooklyn safe and sound with P-. Here’s the last part of the travel recap; some summary thoughts to come this weekend.

Tuesday: Can’t get a late checkout, so we have to get packed before noon. I get my laundry done early, chatting with a couple from Florida and a guy from Minnesota. Then the clothes are compressed with Travel Space Bags that we got from the As Seen on TV store at the Ward Center Mall (they actually work – you roll the bags, forcing the air out a valve at the end, that creates a vaccum and compresses your clothes.)

Get on the road by 11 am. We take Interstate H1 to Interstate H2 (just think about that one for a moment), and then up the Kamehameha Highway to the North Coast. We make a pit stop at the Dole Plantation and spend an hour trying to get out of the world’s largest outdoor maze (this was a roadblock on the Amazing Race one season). Continued further north to Haleiwa and the row of shave ice stores including the famed Matsumoto (all the Japanese tour buses go ther) and competing store Aoki (pretty much the same, except nobody goes there — personally IMHO, I think that Waiola makes the best shave ice with the finest ice crystals – Matsumoto and Aoki are too much like snowcones for my taste.) Had lunch at Haleiwa Joe’s on their outdoor deck and spent most of the time swatting at flies that wanted a free lunch. Saw a monster rainbow over the nearby bridge; drove farther up the road and had a clear unobstructed shot at it.

Drove back and got off at exit 2 on H2 to load up on gas at Costco. $2.59/gallon is much cheaper. While waiting on the gas line, saw an extremely rare double rainbow – see the pictures.

Got back to the hotel, where they let us use a hospitality suite to take a shower, and then we went to the Ala Moana Mall for last minute shopping, a haircut (the Vietnamese-Chinese hairdresser on the ground floor pulled off an excellent haircut in 7 minutes for only $11!) and buying an airplane/cig lighter adapter for my laptop to replace my lost adapter. Race to the airport, blowing past the rental car lot – made a quick U turn and made it in. We check in, and P-‘s baggage is 6 pounds overweight. After a quick redistribution, we get it just within 50 lbs.

Meal #1 = turkey sandwich from the airport. P- gets the AA snack pack, which makes me sick. We get into LAX, and I get Burger King crossandwiches, which is the only thing open at 6 in the morning. This no food thing just sucks if you’re in a rush. I don’t know what’s up with the seats either, but after 12 hours, my tailbone was just in so much pain. At our final landing at JFK, we hit the ground pretty hard – a couple of the gas masks fell out of the ceiling in the forward right compartment. In any case, we were 1 hour ahead of schedule and got back safe, so not too much to complain about.