Update from the Islands

I wanted to pass along an update about my trip. I'm a few days behind on this. Oh, well. Don't start this unless you have some time. I went a little Tutu.

Flew to San Francisco, flew to Honolulu, flew to Kona. Aloha Airlines is awesome. They put us on an earlier flight to Kona without even blinking. The Kona airport is a very cool little island airport. Mostly open air with only roofed waiting areas. The only walls were to separate secure areas from heathens. There was a statue of a couple of island women holding leis or whatever. I remember that statue from when we lived in Hawaii, but I can't for the life of me remember whether I was actually there or just saw it on a postcard or something. It was a long time ago.

Kona was pretty cool, although touristy. They also had a ridiculous amount of traffic for a place that didn't appear to have anywhere to go. We tried to go to Southern Most Point after work one day, but we didn't get very far before we just gave up.

One morning eating breakfast at the Lava Cafe, we happened to see a bunch of humback whales playing around, spouting and breaching and such. My first humback whales, and at breakfast no less.

I couldn't believe one of the places I worked. There is a four foot diameter pipe running about 3000 feet deep into the ocean, bringing up exteremely cold seawater. They use it to grow things like lobsters and oysters and such that normally live in much colder areas. Pretty cool idea. That place I could believe, but apparently they have some extra water. So, another company takes that water, desalinates it, puts it in bottles, and ships it to Japan. Apparently the Japanese do not have so much in the way of truth-in-advertising, and they sell this stuff for something like $7 as health water. As one woman put it, in Japan they have a plant that takes water from 1000 feet down, so our water is about three times as pure. I'm in the wrong business.

The place we stayed in Kona reminded me of our house when we lived in Hawaii. Cinderblock walls, louvered windows, and no insulation between rooms. The landscaping was nice though. It claimed to be the only hotel chain in the world owned and operated by a Hawaiian family.

The trip across the Big Island was interesting. Oahu has the H1, H2, and H3 -- full-on interstate highways (yes, on an island). The Big Island has a curvy two-lane road full of potholes. Nice views of the volcanos though.

I liked Hilo. It was not very touristy, more of a regular city full of regular people doing regular things, but with a Hawaiian flavor.

We got to work at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Very cool. On the way up, we drove through the vog -- volcanic fog. It was actually a pretty obnoxious odor, but you don't get to do that every day. After we got done working, we wandered through the park and went to see the lava. We saw where the lava crossed the road and got to climb across it for a while. We could see in the distance where it was flowing into the ocean out of the lava tubes, but we didn't have time to go out to it. Maybe next time.

Flew to Honolulu, early again, and we've been there ever since. Too many tourists for my taste and it costs too much to eat, but still beautiful stuff to see. No good Waikiki sunsets yet -- too cloudy. Work's winding down. Good thing too; it's time to go home. I miss Franny and the Mizz.