Hawaii Part II

It’s been well over a month now and I think that it’s high time that I finish writing about Hawaii. Though in my last posting about my trip I may have made it sound like a disaster it was far from it. I had a great time. It was fun to see Heather and her brother Cam again. I always look forward to spending time with Lori. Any I had fun getting to know some of the friends and family of Heather and Alexis. Though there was rain nearly everyday it mostly didn’t interfere with our plans. When we needed it, the sun was out. The weather was really nice for the ceremony. Even if the pastor that did the ceremony wasn’t. Apparently she was pretty rude to Alexis, one of the brides, when Heather was late. She said that she had another ceremony that she had to get to. So we added her to the list of reasons not to use Turtle Bay Resorts ever again. Especially since they were a large part of the reason that Heather was late, as they had only scheduled one appointment for hair and nails and only had one person working in the salon. But both Heather and Alexis were to be all fixed up there. Then they couldn’t do room service either. I didn’t really get that story but basically they wanted to way over charge for food they couldn’t get there in less than 3 hours. I never actually heard what the girls did after that. Did they just not eat? Did they go hungry till the reception? I hope not. The reception was nice: the food was great, the weather was nice, but the bar tender wasn’t so great. He wasn’t very good at mixing drinks. But we all had a good time dancing and eating. I think that every Katherine, the vegan that made life hard for the food planners, was satisfied with the food.

The highlight of the trip for me was Saturday, after all the wedding stuff was done. Lori had a friend from high school that worked at a sea life park on the island. She is one of the dolphin trainers there. So we went and saw her shows and saw the park. She introduced us to one of the penguins and let us play with it some. Then later we got to meet one of the dolphins. We tried to get him to do some tricks but pretty much he only did it for Kelly, the trainer. She did get him out of the water for pictures with all of us. Cam really enjoyed the fish tank where you can hold a sea cucumber. He had some bad experiences with petting zoos but I think we got him over that experience. We also got to see the first know instance of a Wolphihn, half whale/half dolphin. It was an accident as they had put the female whales with the male dolphins for a night thinking there wouldn’t be any problems. Well, I guess the starts were rather romantic that night. The first question I asked and nearly every one I’ve told had asked is… is it sterile? Nope. It has had calves with a dolphin (I think). So they are ¾ dolphin and ¼ whale. They were hard to see, as they didn’t really come up out of the water for us. But we saw them swimming around. The park was small but fun. There were sea turtles and sea lions and a large tank with fish and manta rays and sharks. There’s also a dolphin adventure where you can swim with the dolphins. We didn’t do that though. I’d like to do that some time but we weren’t prepared to do it that day. That night I bought nearly all my souvenirs. Including a Hawaiian shirt for myself. I haven’t worn it yet though. It’s been a little cold for that. Then we went to a Thai restaurant with Kelly. The drive back home was a bit rough as we had trouble getting out of the city. (We did every time we were down there. Another reason to stay on the South Shore, not at Turtle Bay.) We were going to meet somebody that wanted Lori to take something back to his family in India. We were a little later than we though we would be but we got there. It was a good day. Then of course we had to pack since Lori was leaving the next morning and we had to be out by I think 11. So it was a late night of packing.

I really had a great time and if Heather does read my blog, I want to thank her again for planning things for us. We all loved our time there. I defiantly want to go back when we can see more of the other islands and get more time on the beach. Hawaii is still at the top of my list for Honeymoon destinations.

Apologies

I think I should take a minute to apologize. I didn’t realize that certain people are reading my blog. Not that they shouldn’t be. I should just be a little more careful I guess. You shouldn’t take anything that I say here too seriously. I forgot that I was writing this to keep Lori updated and that she linked my blog from hers. I wonder who else is reading my blog. Frisbee Amy, are you reading this? If you are, I miss you. Too bad I wasn’t able to play Frisbee this fall. You should call me so we can go out sometime. Amy from the Fish Market? You should call me; now that we don’t work together anymore I really want to know if that was going to be a date. Adel, I like ice cream; you can give me more any time you want. Any random customer that I’ve had that’s pissed me off, you can suck it!
Anyway, thanks for saying that my writing’s improved. That was nice of you.

Anybody Want to Ghostwrite My Blog?

I have plenty more to talk about from Hawaii but I want to take a break from that for just a sec to talk about something else. So when I was in Hawaii Lori told me that her mom didn’t think that I wrote my prayer letters for my time in India. She remembers my writing as being haphazard, poorly organized. She thought that my letters from India were well written. At first I just shrugged it off but now that I think about it, that’s a great idea. I should have had a ghostwriter for my prayer letters. What a great idea. Dave, you should totally look into that for when you go back to India. I wonder what else I could have ghostwritten. I should get a ghostwriter for my blog. Or I should have had a ghostwriter for my journal in India. That would have been especially nice sine I didn’t keep a journal. Anyway, just for the record, I write and edit this blog myself. Though it’s probably way more stream of consciousness than my letters. Good thing your mom doesn’t read this, Lori. She would probably feel all disillusioned.

Hawaii, Part 1

Last week I was in Hawaii. I was without an internet connection for nearly all of my time there so I wasn’t able to blog. Sorry, especially to Dave. So here are some thoughts about my vacation in “paradise”.

The worst part of a vacation is definitely the flight back. It was worse than arriving and having to drive around the island for 4 hours to find a place to stay. I guess when I told everybody that I was coming on Monday they thought I meant Tuesday. It was also worse then driving all over the island trying to find a place to surf. The waves were too big on the north shore so nobody would rent us a board. Tthen lessons at the one place that would didn’t start till 100. We finally rented a board on the west shore. By then we could only spend about 40 mins in the water. Not worth the 3 hours of driving around the island looking for the right spot. I never did get to stand on the board. I never figured out how to catch the right part of the wave. Every time I started to stand up the wave would leave me behind. Cam got up to a crouching position on the board pretty easily. Way to go Cam! I must admit that Cam and Chad were good companions for the journey though. We had a few laughs. Especially at the Ford 500 that was driving really slowly as we were rushing to get back to get ready for the wedding. You could tell that the three of us got ready for the wedding really quickly. Our pants were all really wrinkled. We were so sure that we would have plenty of time to get out and back that we didn’t worry about it. I took the fastest shower ever when we finally got back. Even faster than my freezing cold showers in India. Then Cam and I rushed down to meet everybody at the resort. (We left Chad to get ready at somebody else’s condo where there was more room.) Then, of course, we waited another 30 mins at the resort for Heather to get ready. That’s all right. Better we wait for her than her waiting for us. Cam was best man, so we didn’t want to be the ones holding things up. But we got there ok.

The flight back was such a pain. I really hate all the “security”. What a pain. Plus I’m not in the best mood anyway because I have to leave to return to my sad life. Then my suitcase was over weight and I had to pay extra to get it home. I almost lost it with the airline woman. I should have started yelling. Maybe I could have gotten out of paying extra. The guy next to me on the plane was nice. He let me borrow an extra set of headphones that he had for the movie. It was Willy Wonka so it wasn’t really that great a favor. But it was a nice gesture.

All in all it was a good vacation. I’ll work on posting some pictures this week. I’ll also tell about the ceremony and some of the fun times.