Hawaii: Tropical Paradise Or Heaven On Earth?

I have been keeping up a little bit with news while on this trip, but really, not with enough interest to have any sort of serious opinions on the subject, so no news stuff while I'm here, although I will go out on a limb to say that I'm happy that the Eagles had such a good game, and sad that they chose to wear those ass-ugly throwback jerseys such that every time ESPN is going to show footage of their one good game of the year, we have to keep seeing bright yellow and sky blue all over the place.

Anyhow, on Monday, after sleeping in a little, Mikey, Kristie, and I went to an 'orientation meeting' run by the timeshare complex. In true capitalist fashion, it was a way of introducing us to many of the various activities that we can partake of on the island, while also trying to sell us something. In this case, the 'something' was a Diamond Card, which is a discount card that would allow us to buy all sorts of services, from tickets on a cruise ship to a helicopter trip around the island to horseback trips up in the mountains, for a discount from retail.

To 'buy' the Diamond Card, Mike and Kristie were going to have to sit through a presentation by the complex's concierge trying to sell them more timeshares. I was thinking about volunteering to be the guinea pig, since there was really no way that I could be sold a timeshare if I were not at gunpoint, but it turns out that they only offer the presentations to married couples, which I'm pretty sure violates some federal law or other, but this didn't really bother me enough to raise a stink.

Anyhow, after that, we headed up into Kailua-Kona town to try and find some rental snorkel gear for Kristie. We stopped at a Japanese restaurant for lunch; not for sushi so much as the noodles-and-things type of Japanese. It was great, definitely the best Japanese food I've had since leaving Japan. Although, several people I knew in Japan would probably tell me that this was because I had, finally returned to Japan. Lots of Japanese people basically consider Hawaii to be Japanese territory where you happen to spend dollars and have to speak at least a little English to get around.

Anyhow, after this we wandered around the coast a bit, snapping pictures like this one:
Not bad, huh?

After that we headed back to that beach I was at the first day. We did at least another hour of snorkeling, maybe more. I got some pics with one of those underwater disposables, although it remains to be seen whether any of them came out at all. I'll be sure to let you know after getting back to the mainland. One of the cool touches this time is that two sea turtles had come into the bay and were hanging out about 3 feet offshore, feeding on the rock formation there. So I got some cool up-close experiences with them.

On our birthday, we got up early and headed down to the dock for a snorkeling trip. We rode out on the Seaquell, with captains Matt and Doug. First we headed out to the bay where Captain Cook's monument is. Here's the monument itself:

Then we headed out to Kealakekua Bay, which is quite remarkable. 40 feet deep, and you can see it as clearly as if it was in the air instead of underwater. Entering the water, Mikey insisted on doing the 'Jacques Coustou', which was captain Matt's name for doing a backflip off the side to show off. Needless to say, instant karma hit, and his snorkel fell off his mask and to the bottom of the 30-foot bay. Incredibly, Captain Matt dove in and, after a few false starts, recovered it, earning himself a healthy tip at the end of the trip.

After that, we were back to the monument, although with a few stops in various sea-caves along the way. Here's the view from inside one of the caves:
The rest of the day was mellow, as we lased around the apartment and nursed our imminent sunburns. Turns out that swimming around in the water for 4 hours of blazing sun with your back up, that there is basically no way of keeping your back from burning. Ah well - I regret nothing!

That night we went to a great luau, where we learned about the cultures of 4 different Pacific peoples; Samoan, Hawaiian, Maori (New Zealand), and Fijian. We saw some traditional dances. Here's a pic of Bob the resident Samoan opening a coconut, and also a Maori fire-knife dance.

Yesterday was 'lase around and do nothing' day, which was great fun. Today we are off for the rest of the island; coffee plantations and roasters, black sand beaches, waterfalls, and Volcanoes. I'll be sure to have some good pics whenever I log on next, which will probably be not until I get home on Saturday.

Mahalo!

Aloha III: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Jetlag

And an update from this morning: happily, I was able to get to sleep pretty easily after picking up Mike and Kristie at the airport, and slept well until 7 this morning. So, my usual traveling strategy
for defeating jetlag wins again. It's pretty simple, really. Just don't sleep nearly enough, nor eat enough, while you're flying. By the time you land, you've so thoroughly confused your body that it has no idea if it's tired, or hungry, or whatever. It's a great place to be. You can kind of muddle along for hours and hours and hours. Whenever there's food in front of you, you realize you are hungry and eat it. Whenever you lay your head on a pillow, you're asleep within minutes. But you can keep in this state until bedtime, and then when you wake up you are reasonably close to adjusted to local time. Hooray!

The time difference here is a little weird. Having all the same shows on TV, only being 6 hours behind Eastern Daylight time, is rather strange. It's 8 AM and I'm watching Ahmadinejad talking at Columbia. Not much in the way of meat to the speech so far, but maybe he'll get to some interesting stuff a bit later on.

Saw a lot of talk on the morning talk shows here about some pretty raucous baboons in South Africa. I wonder, in particular, if the restaurant in the article serves wine from twist-open bottles, or if the baboons have figured out how to use a corkscrew?

Also, very strangely, people on the morning news crews here (in other words, the people who break in for the local weather and news updates) wear Hawaiian clothes like Hawaiian shirts and leis while they are talking. This is weird. I would be surprised if, while watching the Today Show in Dallas, the weather man was wearing chaps, spurs, and a Stetson (stereotypically Texan clothes), or the news woman had huge hair and giant fake boobs (stereotypically Dallas outfit). Okay, the second wouldn't actually surprise me much.

Today: an introduction to the island run by our resort, some more snorkeling, and who knows what else?

Aloha II

And here's the second:

Now I'm in Kona. Can I just say I hate jet lag? I'm too tired to do anything, but somehow I can't get to sleep, either, even though my internal clock thinks it's 11:30 PM and I've slept about 4 hours in the last 24.

Landing in Kona is pretty frickin' cool, I must say. You come in over the ocean, and because you're coming in from the cloudy side of the island, you're above a pretty solid cloud cover. Looking out the right side of the plane, where I was sitting, and all of a sudden: holy shit, there's a mountain poking out through the clouds!

Then you're through the clouds and over the open blue ocean, and like Red says at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, it is every bit as blue as it is in your dreams.. As you get near the land, you can see coral formations in the shallower water. The only downside of the landing is that the first land you pass over is a mudflat, not a pure sandy beach. But still, you are going parallel to the shoreline as you land, and the ocean is maybe 300 feet away. Hard to beat.

As for the island itself...well, I can definitely see why they felt that this was an appropriate place to tape Lost. It's pretty, um, amazing. Gorgeous. Beautiful. I went snorkeling at a beach which is about a mile from the timeshare condo, and it is completely ridiculous. 10 feet from shore, and there's 5, 6, 8 inch fish swimming around you. 100 feet from shore, and it's like you've dropped into the saltwater tank at the Baltimore Aquarium (or Shedd, or Ocean Adventure, or what have you.)

The unfortunate thing is that Mikey's flight was delayed, so they are landing sometime after midnight local time. Which is something like 4 AM by my internal body clock, but fortunately my internal clock is so damned confused that it might not mean much of anything at that point. I'm hoping I can sleep a little bit before then, at least.

Maybe that should be Hawaii's new motto: “All the jet lag of international travel, only you don't have to change currencies!”

Aloha!

Okay, I'm posting now from the lodge we're staying at in Kona. Internet is not actually free here, so I'm not sure I'll be on every day to post, but I'll do my best. I did write a couple posts yesterday while travelling, here's the first:

A few quick thoughts while I write, but not post, from my layover at SFO airport.

• 2:45 is an entirely inappropriate time to have to wake up in the morning, I don't really care what the hell the reason is.

• It's good to know that American driving standards have fallen to the point that I will get tailgated at 3:05 AM in the right lane of a 65 mph highway, at least until I slow down to 45 to convince them that they really want to be in front of me.

• One upside of the whole 'I got hit by a car' thing was being able to beg myself an Economy Plus seat on the Denver-to-San Fran leg of the trip. For the San Fran-Kona leg, the very nice but not very helpful gentleman told me that I could also have an Economy Plus seat for the low-low price of $54, or $10.80 per inch of legroom. I decided to pass, since I currently have my own two-seat row to myself, although I might try the old 'wait until everyone else has gotten on the flight and take the best seat left' trick.

• The only upside that I can see of taking a 6 AM flight is a phenomenon that I remember from my childhood, but had pretty much forgotten about, kind of like Fraggle Rock: the empty middle seat in a 3-seat row. Good stuff, legroom.

• Being in San Fran, I am viscerally reminded of the existence of Asian people. This is probably no surprise to any of my faithful readers who, for instance, live in Asia. But living in the metro Denver area, it's easy to forget that the world isn't just a whole bunch of white people, with a few token blacks and hispanics thrown in for diversity's sake.

• Okay, they're starting to board the plane, so more later.

Ponnuru Guilty Of Broderism?

Ramesh Ponnuru proves, again, that he is one of the most clear, coherent thinkers on the right in today's column about taxes in the Times. But he proves, incidentally, the way that wacko Republicans consistently beat out the Dems in political struggles; their willingness to simply say things that they have no intention of following on, while actually putting effort into putting their true agenda into place.

I think this is the fundamental problem with Broderism, a.k.a. the High Church of Centrism, which holds that the solution of every problem is for people to compromise, find the center, and enact the policy. Which is great, if both sides are actually interested in solving problems. But if one side is only interested in using the issue to score political points, there's no compromise to be found.

And here, Ramesh makes the mistake of assuming that, because Giuliani and Romney say they are interested in the welfare of the middle class, that arguments about which tax policy would best advantage the middle class might be productive.

Unfortunately, that's just not the actual position of the elite Republican class these days. They have drunk deeply of the yummy grape kool-aid of supply side economics, so the answer to every question is 'cut taxes on the rich!'

To me, the money quote that shows how Ponnuru is swimming uphill here:

Many of the working-class social conservatives on whom the party relies are parents trying to make ends meet, or young people who want to start families but have financial worries. They have no particular attachment, or hostility, to free-market principles. A Republican Party that found a conservative way to meet their economic needs would both hold and expand its base.

He is making the rash assumption that the Republican Party is 'conservative'. And the fact is, on tax policy, that concept went out the window almost 30 years ago...

This Shit'll, Like, Blow Your Mind, Man

So wait...there's a doping scandal in pro cycling?

I am shocked. Shocked!

That's Not Something You See Every Day

An article at ESPN.com's Page 2 about why the University of Delaware (Fightin' Blue Hens) refuse to play Delaware State. Honestly, I always assumed DSU was a Division III school, not I-AA just like UD. Interesting article. It does seem pretty clear that Delaware is ducking the game, mostly out of a paternalistic attitude towards the state's mostly-black college that is really astonishingly offensive in 2007.

But still. To see the word 'Delaware' in an article in any publication other than the Wilmington News Journal? Well, it just brings a warm feeling to the cockles of your heart, dunnit?