shannon_a

A lazy yet exhausting final day on Oahu.

We had another breakfast at Lulu's and got to look out over the beautiful Pacific Ocean one more time. Then we finished packing up our hotel room.

The plan was to go to a museum today. We'd originally planned to go out to the Bishop Museum, but I was less then enthusiastic about hauling around our heavy gym bag of games and stuff, and Kimberly decided she'd done more than enough walking in the last few days. Then we took a look at the Honolulu Museum of Art, which we've visited a couple of times, and saw they had some amazing looking exhibits, including an American Impressionist (Mary Cassatt) and photos of the islands in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. But it turned out they weren't open on Mondays.

Ultimately, we decided to catch one more movie on the way home.

That was Fantastic Four: First Steps, which we enjoyed, though it wasn't quite up to the quality of Superman, IMO. (In the main, I thought the directing in Superman was amazing, and FF was fine.)

But, lots of things to enjoy in FF.

The actors were great. All four of the core characters were amazing (fantastic).

I loved the really positive spin on all the characters, rather than the more bickering dynamic that I remember best from the 70s and 80s. Johnny Storm in particular was a real surprise, as an earnest and responsible member of the team, without losing his youthful spirit.

Galactus and the Silver Surfer were both impressively terrifying. Really nicely done.

The 50s/60s SF aesthetic was very well done. It made me nostalgic for golden age science-fiction.

I think overall, FF really showed Marvel's strength, in its willingness to delve into different genres and categories of movies.

I'll be really intrigued to see how these folks are mixed into 616. (I mean, I know the how, if Hickman's Secret Wars is used as the foundation, I'll just be interested in the dynamics of how it works out.)

An uneventful trip home, and an exhausted trip through some grocery stores upon our return. (Did we say we weren't going to do that again because it was so exhausting? I think so, but we were talking about long trips from the mainland.)

Cats are excited to see us.

We are excited to be home.

A busy, busy day. I walked down in the beaches in the morning. Kimberly and I played Harmonies before lunch. We found a new dim sum restaurant out in Chinatown that we liked. We sat and read aloud on the River Street promenade just past Chinatown. We returned to swim at The Walls in high tide around 5pm. And Kimberly got some Zippy's dinner she'd been craving.

A funny bit of dialogue overheard yesterday:

Tourist1: "I can't believe we both forgot to bring sun screen."

Tourist2: "We're going to get some really good tans."

(Yeah, not how it works, dudes.)

But the highlight of the day was a play that Kimberly found: "Prescription: Murder", the original Columbo play, at the Hawaii Theatre, which is right next to Chinatown (hence the lunchtime and reading locales).

It was terrific fun.

The play is pure Columbo. "Just one more thing." Brilliant investigator who plays as a doddering fool to trick his suspects. It was arranged much like Poker Face is nowadays: the first couple of scenes were the setup and the murder, and then we got to see how Columbo figured things out (but without the neat backtracking timeline usually found in Poker Face.)

It was a really nice, classic mystery, and I'm a fan of classic mysteries. Murderer sets himself up with unbreakable alibi, and Columbo figures out how to break it.

So, neat play, but everything else about the production was neat too.

First up, the venue. The Hawaii Theatre is a gorgeously restored theatre from the 1920s. (Some images here: https://theclio.com/entry/77050)

My favorite story of the restoration was about the Lionel Walden mural over the stage, called "The Procession of the Drama". It apparently partially came down in a big storm in the 1970s, and then what had come down was thrown away(!!!). It was restored from photographs(!!).

Second up, the play starred Joe Moore and Pat Sajak. Yes, that Pat Sajak. When he first came on stage, his ever-so-familiar voice was weirdly disorienting, but within a few minutes, I was able to just enjoy the show. (And yes, that Joe Moore, he's obviously less known, but a Hawaii television journalist, and an old friend of Sajak's because they served in Vietnam together!).

We hadn't realized that this was the last show for Prescription: Murder. I've often been a fan of last shows, because it really seems to bring out the emotion in the actors. And we really hadn't realized that Sajak and Moore had decided this would be their last show together. (Sajak said they were getting old and decrepit. And to be fair, they both served in Vietnam a long time ago.) They've apparently done 7 shows together in the last 24 years, and in the process had raised $1 million dollars for the Hawaii Theatre.

As a result of all that, there were some emotional goodbyes and thank yous and gifts to close out the show, which were pretty cool to see.

Sajak and Moore talked some back and forth and I was struck by how amazingly charismatic Sajak is. Not only could he grab the attention of the whole room with just a few words, but he also knew right when to take over for other people on the stage to get things moving. One can see why he became the longest running game show host ever.

We'll definitely be returning to the Hawaii Theatre on future trips if there are cool things going on, but I suspect it'll take a lot to match this fairly amazing afternoon.

By the by, it was The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis that we were reading out on the promenade. Kimberly and I have both read it before. I've in fact read all of the Oxford Time Travel series and adore all four (and like the short story). We just started it at the airport on Friday, so it'll be with us a few months more.

The framing story of The Doomsday Book is set somewhere in the 21st century, with Oxford college using time travel to go back and look at past times. But I think one thing struck both of us: this book published in 1992 talked about a pandemic in the 21st century!!! What a scary bit of prescience. Willis quoted 65 million deaths, and our real pandemic fortunately wasn't quite that high. But the count of excess deaths since COVID suggests the number for COVID may be somewhere between 19 and 36 million.

Makes one wonder if Willis has a time machine of her own in her basement.

I neglected talking about the mall yesterday, which was a sort of surreal experience in the best way.

When I looked up where to see the Superman movie last night, I just got the address and passed it straight on to our Uber driver. I had no idea where it actually was, especially since there was a confusion about which "Consolidated Theatre" we were going to (which was also how our starting time got confused).

It's the type of thing that could only happen in the age of the internet, where we ordered a ticket online, then told a driver where we were going, without really knowing anything except how far away it was.

So anyway, the Uber driver offloaded us at a mall, and we went in and headed straight into the theatre.

I always find it a little disorienting when I emerge from a movie theatre, when two hours in a darkened other world are suddenly translated into reality. But moreso last night, since we'd been delivered to this mall and we had no idea what it was (and just barely where it was).

When we emerged into this fantasy land following the showing last night, we had to explore it.

It was the Kahala Mall, on the opposite side of Diamond Head, past where we rode our bikes around the crater over a decade ago, past where we saw Mamma Mia at the Diamond Head Theater last year.

A slightly up-scale mall, slightly touristy, though neither as upscale nor as touristy as Ala Moana. (That's not saying much.)

Nothing particularly notable, other than a few shops with Hawaiian crafts. But it was fun to explore a place we'd never seen.

I'm somewhat shocked how many malls seem to have survived in Honolulu, when they're all but dead back in the Bay Area. But I've been to at least five or six I can think of. Lots in Waikiki, sure, but this was off the beaten path.

I guess it might be a reaction to the warm, humid temperatures here: malls offer a way to get out of the sun.

This morning I went for a walk in the morning before eating. I love being able to walk down to the ocean early, here in Waikiki, and see it when it's a little less crowded.

I walked down to The Walls, which was the area of the ocean Kimberly and I had been watching while eating at Lulu's yesterday afternoon. I'm sure I've seen it before, but it had never really registered that it was a protected little swimming area, with those Walls being a stone pier off to one side and then rock walls along the back.

So my other point in the morning, besides just enjoying the ocean in the morning, was to check out whether the Walls might be a nice place for Kimberly, who is not that confident in the water.

The back rock walls were maybe two feet out of the water (which made me wonder about the stories of kids climbing over them as an initiation when they were ready to swim in the waters outside, as that seemed a bit high when you were scrambling up wet, slimy rock). There'd be an occasional wave that would send some spray over the walls, but the water inside was relatively tranquil.

When I came back to the hotel, I reported back to Kimberly that it looked like a good place to swim, maybe in the afternoon.

Because Kimberly had a BTS-related concert to see today (livestreamed to a theatre), with some Oahu friends, she headed off around 10. I lounged around a bit, mostly reading (as has been my wont for our vacation), and then went out for a meander around Waikiki.

My plan was to bike out along the far side of the canal along the Lei of Parks trails then to walk back along the beaches of Waikiki.

Biking out requiring using a Biki bike. Sadly, Biki has devolved in the last year. I used to be able to pay $20 as a resident for 300 minutes of Biki without the silliness of making sure any ride was no longer than 30 minutes, though sadly those minutes expired after a year. But Biki increased all of their prices last year. Most went up 10% or 20%, but the 300-minute pass jumped to $55!

So, none of that. I opted for just the $5/30-minute/one-ride pass. Except I couldn't get anything to work. I just kept getting an error every time I tried to unlock a bike. It turned out that Biki had swapped over to a new app sometime in the last year. Once I got that figured out, I was able to have a nice ride along the canal, taking me from near our hotel, on the east side of Waikiki to the far, west side.

I then walked back along the beach, as planned.

The most notable thing was that some of the beaches along the way were the least crowded since when I was out here in 2020 in the middle of COVID.

There was a reason for that, and it wasn't a global pandemic.

For years and years, the county allowed the hotels fronting the beaches to jam up the entire beach area with rental lounges. Not even RENTED lounged, but rentals. They just filled the beach area in front of their hotels every morning, blocking everyone else from using the public beaches.

Sometime in the last year, Honolulu cracked down on that, still allowing the hotel to do the work of dragging the lounges out to the beach and setting them up, but only after they've been rented.

It's clearly working. One of the beaches that used to be 100% jammed with rental lounges was now only a third full. Further along, I actually saw staff dragging a lounge back into the hotel after it was no longer being used.

You used to be able to walk all or most of the beach on Waikiki, but last time we were here, a stone walkway that was a vital connection was blocked off. Since then it's been torn down. It was actually some of the coolest part of the walk, as you were right up against the ocean, and could get splashed with waves. But, that's either why they took it down or else that closeness eroded the walkway, I don't know which.

In the afternoon, after Kimberly returned from her livestreamed concert, we went down to The Walls to swim.

As we got down to the shore (just two blocks from our hotel), I realized that the rock walls protecting the area from the ocean weren't visible any more. The beach was mostly gone too. It turned out that the walls were just under the water level (looking at the charts, the water had risen a bit more than two foot since I was there), so the (huge) waves were still breaking on the walls, but the waves were also carrying very large swells into the protected area.

It was not at all what I expected, and I think Kimberly was intimidated at first, but it turned out to be great fun. Yes, there were big swells, but within the protected area they were't breaking, just churning everything up and down.

Dinner was our anniversary dinner, which was back at Lulu's, but this time for their fancier dinner menu.

They'd laid out a "Happy Anniversary" card for us, which was very sweet.

The meal was delicious.

And we got a gorgeous view of a nice sunset. (I predict it's going to be better tomorrow as the vog rolls back over the island, but tonight it was impressive enough that our server stopped to take a picture as we were finishing up.)

So, 25 years, semi-officially. (Our real anniversary is in 3 days, after we get back, but we planned the trip over the weekend, and this was our anniversary meal.)

Vacation! (Had to Get Away)

Kimberly and I are on Oahu to celebrate our 25th anniversary. Yowza. I have no idea where that 25 years has gone. We're here for just a few nights, but we can do that when we're just one island over, and it's a twenty minute plane ride. And when we land in Waikiki, it really feels like we're on vacation, because it's so touristy compared to almost anywhere on Kauai (which is thumbs up for a vacation).

We actually had a bit of concern in the morning that we wouldn't make it!

We headed out a bit more than two hours before our flight, and I largely coasted Julie (the Benz) down to the highway, because it's pretty much downhill from our house. And then when we turned onto the highway, I realized that I was getting almost no traction. Julie's engine was revving up to 6000 RPM to go 25 mph. I was worried for a second that the park brake was on, but nope (and Julie would have beeped long before the highway if it was).

So I pulled back into our neighborhood at the next street and turned around to do a loop to try and assess if Julie's engine was really being as flaky as I thought. Yup.

Way back in the day I used to do tech support for a NASA Project at UC Berkeley, so using skills learned from that, I turned the engine off and back on. No problem, suddenly Julie is running 1000-2000 RPM again, where I expect her, maybe pushing up to 3000 RPM on a big hill.

Freaky. I was on pins and needles the whole trip into town, feeling what the engine was doing. And I do have some concerns on what she'll do when we get back into town, but that's literally a problem for another day.

We had to take a detour into Koloa on the way into town because the highway was a mess.

But otherwise, the trip to the airport was uneventful. Parking was easy (for a year or two, repair was being done on some of the parking lots at the airport, and there wasn't enough parking as a result, and you could literally get there and have nowhere to put your car).

And the trip was uneventful.

(I say 20 minutes to fly to Oahu, but it's really 20 minutes in the air, plus 20 minutes taxiing various places, plus 20 minutes loading and unloading. And then we took the bus for almost an hour and a half to get from the airport to Waikiki, so Oahu is close, but it still takes time to get over. We left our house about 9.45 and hit our hotel about 2.15.)

We had lunch at Lulu's. This is a nice second-story restaurant at the southeast corner of Waikiki that we've eaten at before. It has a gorgeous view of the ocean, which we watched while we ate our very easy-going meal.

The waves are super impressive right now. I know we had a high surf advisory on Kauai right now (and my dad and I went for a swim on Thursday, and they were pretty big), so I'd guess they do here too. It was delightful watching the waves smashing against the rock walls that protect the tranquil(er) inner water at Waikiki. And watching all the surfers and boogie-boarders enjoying those waves, beyond.

Food was good too.

We had wanted to see Superman while out here on Oahu. It did get a week or two showing at the Waimea Theater, the only movie theater on Kauai, but we're more inclined to see a movie while out here.

I found a showing that I thought was at 4.40, so I figured we could just make it if we called an Uber and headed out after we got all situated in our room.

So we did, and I got our tickets while on the way.

We arrived at the theater at about 4.35 and discovered the actual start time of the movie was 4.20. Woop! But of course with trailers and stuff that means we just barely missed the start. When I looked at the time the movie ended, I decided we must have missed the first three minutes or something. No big whoop. Except the movie seems to start pretty en media res, so it was more disorientating than you might think. (In fact, the events three minutes in or so seem so climactic that we wondered at first if we were in the wrong theater, and instead seeing the end of the movie!)

Anyway, great movie. James Gunn is a terrific super-movie maker (a super-terrific movie maker?) and the actors are all great. I loved the take on Superman, on Lois, and on Jimmy (and was thrilled to see the last played by the actor who players Gideon on The Righteous Gemstones, which we hit the halfway mark on yesterday when we finished season two). Krypto is of course wonderful. And oh gosh, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner? He knocked it out of the park. I am so ready for a Lanterns TV show.

And putting together the Giffen-era JLI as the Justice Gang? Pretty neat too. Gunn is clearly a big fan of the source material.

And the movie's Lex was awesome as well. He felt super-dangerous and effective as a ultra-rich tech expert.

And my favorite action sequence was probably with Mr. Terrific. There's a fight scene with him and Lois that was just amazing cinematography and felt like it was straight out of Guardians of the Galaxy (in the best way, not in any sort of derivative way).

Anyway, all around fun movie, and so positive, so much more enjoyable and more Superman-like, IMO, than the Snyder era (which I didn't bother watching because it all seemed so dark, though I hear Clark and Bruce made friends when they discovered they both had moms named Martha).

Just to complete our busy day, we played Harmonies after we returned to our room.

It continues to be a favorite because of its varied and quick play.

Yes, we dragged games out to Oahu with us, which was definitely part of what made those bags heavy when I was schlepping them around airports and buses. Which is most of why I'm so tired and achey this evening. (Granted, we ran around a lot too.)

Next time, I bring our wheeled small suitcase rather than the gym bag the games and other sundries are in. (I just figured it would be easier to have the bag on airplanes and buses, but lesson learned.)

I've barely hit the internet today. I've barely worried about anything. Definitely the pluses of a few days away.

Here's the headline: THE KIDNEY STONE HAS PASSED.

After I got home yesterday, I had pain ramping up again around 4pm. I was a bit worried about that but one oxycotin followed by a hot bath helped it to subside within an hour or so.

Today, I just had sharp jabs of pain here and there as the kidney stone made its way through my system, then passed it around 4pm. Total elapsed time between when I first suspected I had a kidney stone Sunday morning and when it passed: about 54 hours. Yay.

Mind you, I am still beat between not sleeping well last night and all the energy consumed by pain in the last day and a half, but feeling good beyond that.

Now, I never wrote about the last day of our Oahu trip. And I kind of wonder if airplane travel gets kidney stones going, as I remember also having brief symptoms in both Berlin and Boston after air travel there, when I had my previous kidney stone floating around for a long time before it started causing problems.

But exercise can also get kidney stones going, and I definitely did a lot of that Saturday in Oahu.

We had a relaxing morning. Croissants in the hotel room and then lounging around 'til they kicked us out.

Then we had expensive sandwiches at a top-end mall in Honolulu, west of Ala Moana Center.

And then it was headed toward Kimberly's time for her movie. A BTS movie, which was the reason we went to Oahu. So I headed out. (Not to the movie!) The weather reports had been threatening (c.f. the massive storm the night before we left), but it looked clear. So I checked out a Biki bike, rode as high as I could on the hill, up to the last Biki return station, and then hiked from there to Punchbowl Crater.

I'd wanted to do this one other visit, but decided I didn't have the time. Which was a good decision previously, as it took at least twice as long to get up to Punchbowl as Google said. It's not that it was super steep. But it was a long climb in the blazing hot Honolulu sun & humidity.

I was a bit surprised that there were houses, and even a major middle school, on the way up. I'd kind of expected desolate roads where I'd have to scrunch off to the shoulder, but no, there were sidewalks all the way. And so I made my way up.

Punchbowl Crater is, as the name suggests, a volcanic crater. But it's also a military cemetery and national monument. So I wasn't entirely surprised when the gates had signs up that restricted people from frivolity. They said, "No Exercising", "No Biking", "No Pets", and "No Picknicking". Against those restrictions the constant flow of tour buses in and out, with barkers on their loud speakers pointing out the sites, seemed somehow inappropriate.

The main crater is filled with the graves of soldiers, each just marked by a plaque laid in the ground, stretching as far as you could see in every direction in neat rows across the crater floor. It was solemn and awe-inspiring.

The Honolulu Memorial is in the back. There's a mighty staircase heading upward to a statue of Lady Liberty, with four "courts" to each side. Most of the visitors (not that there were a lot, the tour buses just came in and out without unloading as far as I could see) headed straight to top and then walked through a set of magnificent maps portraying WWII in the Pacific.

But the courts were what were really moving. There were just over 28,000 small plaques among them, each with a name engraved in white stone. Each the name of a soldier whose body was lost in WWII, the Korean War, or (later) the Vietnam War. MIA, buried at sea, or just lost. Some of the plaques, maybe one in 20, had a star on them to mark the body had later been recovered. Much like at the Vietnam Memorial in DC, you could just feel the weight of all those young lives lost. The courts were the most memorable part of the visit, and I'm sorry most people just rush past them.

A little further along the crater, there was an outlook with views of Honolulu, and I enjoyed that less than I expected because there are so many skyscrapers in every direction in Honolulu that they just block seeing the city as a whole.

So that was my afternoon on Oahu and the hike that likely got my kidney stone going. Afterward I hiked back down Punchbowl and out to Chinatown, where Kimberly and I had Vietnamese food before our trip back home.

It feels a million years ago around, but yesterday was quite the day.

I've grown quite fond of Waikiki. It's our little home away from home that we visit a few times a year, when we want a bit of big-city life (yay!) or when we need to have some medical care off-island (boo!). We've been here somewhere between half-a-dozen and a dozen times since we moved out to Kauai (two of the times staying in Honolulu proper rather than Waikiki), and I've gotten pretty familiar with the neighborhoods, the thoroughfares, and the services.

I often frown at people treating Kauai like it's Disneyland. By which I mean, stopping their car in the middle of the highway to take pictures, racing around the grocery store like they're on the playground, and otherwise treating the island like it's not a community where actual people live, work, and die. But Waikiki seems much more content with the idea. This whole little corner of Oahu is almost entirely given over to tourism, so we have hotels, restaurants, villages, and beaches all around us.

And Waikiki at night: it's intoxicating. The weather is just a bit balmier than at home, likely in part due to the acres and acres of asphalt and concrete here and in part due to our location atop a big windy hill at home. The streets are lively and filled with people. And compared to our old urban home in Berkeley, it feels very safe. It's nice to take a wander and enjoy the thronging masses of happy humanity.

Last night I wandered down to the Hilton because it looked like the Friday night fireworks had at last begun again. This was a tradition prior to the pandemic, but they got cancelled when a year went by with no-tourists-welcome. More surprisingly, they'd never restarted. (I wandered there on at least one of our other Friday-night visits here, but was disappointed, other than the fact that I watched a fire-dancers-show instead.)

Last night, the fireworks were indeed back. With said throngs of humanity, I watched them from the shores of the lagoon near what I call Establishing Shot Hotel. (If you ever see a TV show that has scenes set in Waikiki, they show Establishing Shot Hotel, which has a big rainbow mural painted on the makai side of the hotel, facing out to the lagoon at the ocean.)

Just 5 or 10 minutes, but it was an enjoyable spectacle in the warm Oahuan evening.

FREE TRADER BEOWULF. My first history book in a decade (where does the time go!?) came out today. This is Free Trader Beowulf: A System History of Traveller. It's 296 pages (110,000 words) detailing the history of that singular game system across four and a half decades. It was a joy to write, and I think it's my best book to date. Mongoose Publishing has the product page for the PDF and/or preorder of the hardcover: https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/products/this-is-free-trader-beowulf. My original Designers & Dragons hardcover through Mongoose is pretty rare now, so don't miss out on this one!

I was sitting at the airport this morning, waiting for our plane which had already been delayed more than hour, trying to finalize my Designers & Dragons article on the release of This is Free Trader Beowulf, when I idly flipped to Lihue's departures page and saw *)(@#$@ that our flight had been cancelled. We were off to the races.

THE STORM BEFORE NO CALM. Last night we had a heck of a storm. It was just pouring, for hours. The poor orangies spent much of the evening hiding under the couches. Our mud room had an influx of water, which happened one other time during a really bad storm. (I think it has to do with the dryer vent, but I'm not sure as it's been pretty mysterious both times.) There was thunder and lightning! (Very, very frightening said the orangies.) I eventually buttoned up the house as tight as possible before bed. Wow. When I got up in the morning I almost felt like a disaster survivor, stumbling around in the curious calm.

BUT THE STORM EFFECTS REMAINED. We're going out to Oahu for just a day so that Kimberly can see a BTS-related movie that was just showing twice, once a few days ago and once tomorrow. I could see how fierce the storm had been as I drove into the airport. At one of the major crossroads, there was mud all over the road and a bit of flowing water; the "flooding" signs told the story of how it had all been underwater at some point in the night. Did I mention we apparently got a foot of rain over night? Yow!

THE TSA SOUP NAZI. During what would be our first fight through TSA, they were tremendously understaffed, with just a single person checking IDs and boarding passes. She seemed to be the TSA Soup Nazi. She was constantly yelling at people to move up to certain places as she tried to coordinate the Pre-TSA, disabled, and plebeian lines. And she wasted SO much time doing so, as she argued with just about everyone about getting to the precise right places so she didn't have to wait 1 second for them to step up when it was their turn.

She also was discriminating against the disabled people, which was particularly obvious to us because Kimberly currently uses a wheelchair at airports (though hopefully she's now on a path to improvement for her knee after a good meeting with a physiatrist on Wednesday). But the TSA Soup Nazi would pick several people from each of the pre-TSA and plebeian lanes before she took someone from the disabled entrance. I'd never seen anything like it.

Real LEO agencies sometimes try to test out people who should *NOT* be in law-enforcement/authority positions. Apparently, the TSA needs some work there, because Soup Nazi was a Bad Cop stereotype.

BLOOD, BLOOD EVERYWHERE. At the airport, the departures board was a sea of red. Every single flight was delayed by an hour or more. Yes, including ours. (I'd checked that our plane was on time before we left the house. Hawaiian helpfully emailed me about the delay sometime after we'd already fought through TSA.)

I skimmed through the other flights and discovered one incoming flight had been cancelled. It was about 15 or 20 minutes before our departure, so I was pretty suspicious about that because Hawaiian turns their airplanes right around for their interisland flights. But Hawaiian said ours was just delayed, so I just kept a careful eye on things ... and then sure enough our flight was cancelled as well.

GETTING BACK ON TRACK. We were nowhere near the gate, so I knew we weren't going to get any help from what's one typically overloaded gate agent. I also felt pretty good about being able to get through TSA through the combination of us currently being on the disabled list and having pre-TSA, so back out to the main desks we went. Where we found a line 100 people long or so. Sigh. So Kimberly and I got into line, and I started keeping a hold of her wheelchair with one hand and calling up Hawaiian with the other. We only had moved several feet by the time I got an agent on the phone.

The online agent was able to get us a flight at 2.30, which was about 3 hours after our original flight, about 2 hours after our delayed flight, which was good enough. Thankfully Kimberly's movie is tomorrow not today. So, just an annoyance

We decided we'd better get lunch, since Oahu was receding further and further into the afternoon. So instead of a tasty Oahu lunch we had McDonalds. Ah well.

BACK INTO THE HURLY BURLY. Somehow our new tickets got printed without Kimberly's wheelchair this time, so when we got back to the airport, we had to wait in the ticket line, only a dozen or so people long this time. Then it was back into security. Fortunately, Soup Nazi TSA seemed to be gone and their staffing had improved, so back into the airport it was.

Ah, security checks twice in a day. haven't done that since last time I reentered the United States from Europe.

NO MASK? NO MASK! Astoundingly, planes seem to be back to no-mask classic. Besides Kimberly and myself there seemed to be just one other person wearing a mask on the whole plane. Seriously? Costco has more mask wearing! (But Costco also likely has more residents and fewer tourists than the average interisland plane.)

BACK ON OAHU AGAIN. And we're back on Oahu again, safely ensconced in our room before we go out to eat some dim sum, pay the sunscreen tax (because you can't take sunscreen back and forth between the islands unless you check-in luggage) and otherwise enjoy our evening out.

Two months later, we're on Oahu again. It's for medical reasons, which has been #1 on the reasons-to-go-to-Oahu, on our Family Feud: Hawaii Edition.

This time it's because K. messed up her knee while I was in Germany. It's doubtless due to long-standing issues dating back to when she was off of her foot for years due to nerve damage from a previous surgery. But it managed to hit some crisis point in September when she had to do all the cleaning and feeding of the cats.

It's only gotten worse since, and we had a few frustrating weeks where her new doctor, who seems to be firmly on the retirement track, refused to get her any type of imaging to see what was going on until she headed out to a physical therapy. After three sessions of that the PT refused to do any more work until she honest-to-goodness got some imaging.

And then sucky doctor sent her in for a worthless X-ray, which we knew would be worthless, though it actually showed _something_ was wrong. (That one at least was probably an insurance requirement that he couldn't do anything about, but I'm pretty sure a good doctor would have fought on the other issues, like the PT when she could have been hurting herself.)

And then we ran into the problems of living on a small island: it would be more than a month before she could get an MRI. We were told that the Kauai hospital could get her in faster if the Doctor marked the MRI request as 'stat', but he talked about how important it was to do it immediately and then didn't; and we were told that she could get it faster if the Doctor talked to a Tech, and he said he would, but he wasn't able to, and apparently wasn't ever willing to walk down to Imaging and sit on them.

So we called up the hospitals in Oahu and one of them offered Kimberly an appointment today, which was about a week after she requested it. Her appointment was at 7pm tonight, so we made reservations on a 4.30 flight and then had to make hotel reservations because the last plane left back for Kauai at 8-something.

Which all seemed dandy until I got email around 2pm telling me that Hawaiian had cancelled their 4.30 flight and we'd be leaving at 6 instead.

(We don't know what's going on, but they seem to have cancelled approximately every other flight between Kauai and Oahu today. Our seatmate thought it might be weather-related, as we have a Kona Low coming in. I just hope they're not in their death throes, because if we lose one of our two airlines that flies interisland, we're screwed.)

The hospital is about 15 minutes from the airport on Oahu, so that wasn't terrible. Except our new seats on the new plane were in row 26. And we were supposed to wait for Kimberly's wheelchair. All told, I could see these adding 15-20 minutes to the process.

So K. called the hospital and let them know we might be running up to half-an-hour late, and they said no problem.

And then we started squeaky-wheeling when we got to the airport. Despite the plane being full, we managed to get bumped from row 26 to rows 9 and 10. Five+ minutes saved. We'd earn another 10 minutes from an early departure, but then lose five of them when our pilot missed the runway and had to circle back, something I haven't seen since the '80s. (He claimed a plane had failed to clear the runway, which I guess is a good enough reason not to land.) And one of the flight attendants agreed to go to the gate at Oahu as soon as we got there to warn them of our immediate need for a wheelchair. And she did.

K. can still walk, just not much. So as soon as the unloading got to rows 9 to 10 we headed out. We met her wheelchair heading down the ramp, and she hopped in and then we wheeled out to rideshare. (As I told K.: remember when there was a taxi stand, and you could just jump into a taxi without waiting? We called an Uber as soon as we knew we'd get there before it, and we still waited two or three minutes.)

The highway was pretty clear despite the rain, as rush hour was winding down.

It turns out that imaging is one floor up, but right at the front of the hospital. So, close.

We got there at 6.57, three minutes before we were told to.

And K's appointment had been moved back 45 minutes to 7.45.

(Don't get me wrong, we were thrilled they rearranged things to ensure she could get her MRI today, and this whole trip wouldn't be a _very_ expensive trip to a Dim Sum restaurant. It would have been nice to know though, so we weren't as stressed in our mad rush to Straub.) They actually took her in a bit after 7.30.

And now I'm sitting in a deserted waiting room. The admin here in imaging left at 8pm. K literally has the last appointment.

So that's November's trip to Oahu. We're staying at a hotel a few miles away, and then we plan to get driven out to Dim Sum tomorrow before we get a mid-afternoon flight back.

I mean, hopefully, because Hawaiian was cancelling half the planes from Oahu to Kauai too today, because they pretty much have too, else planes would stack up on our island. So I'm not totally convinced we won't suddenly have a flight an hour earlier or later.

--

Oh, and when I first drafted this earlier I didn't know about the Uber drama we'd have trying to get out of the hospital.

Uber Car #1 pulled up _immediately_ after we called, dropping someone off at the hospital. Yay. But before we could get in the driver took off. K. called her and she said, "Oh, Uber just tells you to drive around sometimes, so I'll be right back there." Five or ten minutes later she called to say she was at our hotel and we weren't there. Yeah, she'd somehow marked that we'd been picked up and then blindly followed her app's directions to our destination even AFTER we told her that we were right where she'd dropped her previous ride. Ride cancelled, though Uber insisted we were in the car.

Uber Car #2 agreed to pick us up then headed 3 miles in the opposite direction. They didn't pick up when we called, so we cancelled again.

Uber Car #3 told us it was going to pick us up some blocks from the hospital. K. called them up and told them we were at the hospital and all was well. We finally got into a vehicle.

(All told we waited about 20 minutes before an Uber finally picked us up. Thank goodness that didn't happen at the airport when we still thought the appointment was at 7pm.)

--

The Aston Executive Center turns out to be not particularly Executive. All the good will won for the Aston brand by the Aston at the Banyans, several miles over in Waikiki, has been lost.

One of the first things we encountered was blood stains in the carpet between the table and the kitchen sink. Classy!

Much of the cabinetry looks like it was done by an amateur carpenter who didn't believe in keeping things even.

The suite just barely is a suite, by dint of a kitchen table ad microwave, but there isn't even a couch. (In fact, I'd call it a flat due to the lack of actual rooms. And cheap due to the lack of actual furniture.)

We had some mediocre packaged 7-11 food since we'd eaten "dinner" hours before on the way _to_ the airport. Ah for ABC stores which had great food (for packaged food) when we were starving the first evening of our last stay here. (We should have stayed in Waikiki, but it made sense to be out here by the hospital and airport, or that was our theory. Next time we'll just go into Waikiki, as the other Aston was no more expensive.)

Ah well, we're only here a night. I hope the suite I got for our Berkeley stay this Christmas isn't as disappointing, or it'll be back to AirBnBs (which I abandoned after my disappointing stay in Köln followed by the great Holiday Inn in Frankfurt).

--

Nice view of the city.

I get a call today while we're sitting at the airport and it's a Seattle area code, so I ignore it, but then they leave a message and it's some weird thing about them finding a box of my stuff in the woods, with some ARTICLES in it, and I'm like "WTF!?"

So I call up the number and a gentleman walking on the wooded paths around the golf course by our house has found an opened-up box with the ARTICLES HE MENTIONED in it.

And I'm still like "WTF!?" And I'm trying to figure out if somehow our trash has ended up out at the golf course, or worse if someone has broken into our house while we're gone. But I finally get him to tell me what the ARTICLES are, and he says there's a list in the box, and it says "Sins of Sinister" and "Swamp Thing: Green [mumble]". And I *finally* figure out what's going on.

It's a comic-book delivery from Instrocktrades.com that got dropped off yesterday and sat on our porch over night. (The Swamp Thing is Green *HELL* by the by.) And some friggin' porch pirate has grabbed it. And that friggin' porch pirate had indescribably shitty taste because he'd also ripped it open, seen it was some highly anticipated comics, and cast it to the side.

I mean who steals a box, finds they're comics, and throws them aside?

So happy ending that I got my package back, but sad ending that our part of Kauai which I'd ranked pretty darned safe has thieves in it. We're apparently going to have to keep a much closer eye on our packages and/or figure out how to make an explosive confetti box.

==

This morning we went to see a parade. It's a big floral parade in Waikiki that we happened to be in town for.

The parade started at 9am just past the far side of Waikiki and was supposed to continue until noon. So after a quick breakfast, around 10am we headed over to the parade route. I figured the parade started 2 miles away and would likely be going somewhere between 1.5 and 2 mph, which would likely hit our corner between 10 and 10.30.

There were people congregated on the street, but it wasn't a dire crush. We sat down just back from the curb behind some nice ladies who K. talked to about braiding leaves into leis.

We were in the shade, but the sun continued to shift, and soon we were less so. Some of the other people near us retreated back across the sidewalk to be up against the building.

And then we heard another woman, on the other side of us, talking on the phone and she said, "He says, the parade's started."

So we'd kind of thought the parade might be on "Hawaii Time", and that would perhaps mean it started 10 or 15 minutes late. But we hadn't expected at least an hour late. Which by my estimate would put it by us somewhere between 11 or 11.30.

With the sun increasingly beating down us, we decided that perhaps we wouldn't see a parade after all.

==

We had a backup plan. If the parade fell through in one way or another, we'd decided to go out to the Bishop Museum of culture & science & history. So after at last checking out of our room, we hopped on a bus and headed west out of Waikiki.

Just before we passed over the Ala Wai Canal to exit Waikiki, probably at 10.45 or so, we heard the increasing loud sounds of a marching band. And there was the parade, ever-so briefly taking up half the lanes on our road before turning toward the seaside.

As we sat at a stop (where our bus driver talked to a would-be rider and somewhat inexplicably went running after him when he exited the bus) we watched that band go by, then a truck with a single floral arrangement on it, then some other marchers, then a larger floral float.

And then we were off!

But we did see the parade, ever so briefly.

(And I think it indeed wouldn't have hit our corner until 11.30 or so.)

==

Bishop Museum is amazing and weird.

It's a whole campus with at least four major buildings.

We spent the early part of our stay there in the Science Adventure Center, the best parts of which were a big volcano model, a weird underground walk with illuminated displays on the origins of Hawaii, and a talk about volcanoes and the formation of the islands.

We then spent another hour or so in a huge hall full of cultural artifacts from Hawaii (and discussions of gods, which were pretty neat too).

We'd allocated two hours and I don't think we even saw half of the campus, so we'll have to be back to Bishop Museum some other day. It was pretty amazing.

==

I manage to miss a step when coming down the stairs in the Hawaiian Hall at Bishop Museum, just as we were leaving, and twisted up my ankle a bit. Hopefully it'll be better in a few days, but that's unfortunately going to keep me from working on the lawn tomorrow, which has been waiting my attention since before I headed to Germany(!). (Fortunately it's been hot and not too wet so it's been growing slow-for-Hawaii.)

But Kimberly and I got to have his-and-hers limps in the afternoon, thanks to her hurting knee and my twisted ankle.

==

Porch pirates, twisted ankle, and a mostly missed parade.

I don't care, it was still a nice day and a nice couple of days away.

MAMMA MIA!

Happily, the reason for our trip to Oahu was a success. We saw Mamma Mia! at the Diamond Head Theatre and were thrilled by it. Among other things, it made us realize that what we're getting on Kauai is definitely local theatre (some of which we've definitely enjoyed), but Mamma Mia! was more of a full-throated production like we would have seen at the Berkeley Playhouse.

Here, the actors playing Donna and Sophie were very obviously professional singers (along with some of the dads and best friends). And there was a huge cast. And major props were moved in and out for scenes. It was great to see (even if a little expensive to come out here just for a play).

It was also great to see the original musical that the successful movie was based on. It was interesting to see how much more terse its dialogue was, while still getting the point across. And there were a few ABBA songs in the musical that didn't make it to the movie. There was a great "Thank You for the Music" where Sophie meets her dads that suggests she gets musical talent from them and was quite sweet and also a "Knowing Me, Knowing You" duet between Sam and Sophie where he talks about his failed marriage and was a wonderful bit of connection. (It was also one of a few bits in the musical that I felt portrayed Sky in a worse light than he is in the movie.) A few other songs I didn't care as much about, including a dream sequence "Under Attack" that leads off Act II and just seems to disrupt the flow of the story.

Overall, great experience. Nice theatre too, a bit larger than any of the theatres we attended in Berkeley, except maybe the second Berkeley Rep stage, but not by a lot.

BUSING AROUND WAIKIKI

We've been taking the bus a lot while out here because K. is having knee problems, as she's still trying to get back to walking well after years off her feet. But, they've been surprisingly efficient. We bused up to the Diamond Head Theatre (which is about a mile and a half from our hotel and would have been a fine walk in other circumstances) and back.

Then this morning we took a bus from the middle of Waikiki to the Aquarium.

Besides being efficient, it's also nice to have a rational fare system, unlike the confusing, codeworded system in Germany. You put money on a card. It deducts $3 for each trip, but tops out at $7.50 for a single day, as that's the cost of a Day Pass. Easy!

(And for the future I have a Holo Card for these buses, but hopefully we'll be able to bike and/or walk more on future trips.)

DONUTS & THE AQUARIUM

Today we had a pretty laid back day. We wandered out to get some taro donuts in the mornings from a place called Holey Grail (there's also on on Kauai). I had a chocolate one this time that was amazing. Then we bused over to the Aquarium.

It's a fairly small aquarium, focused on fish, with some jellyfish, and some seahorses and seadragons too. We quite enjoyed it, mainly for all the attractive tropical fish, some of which we recognized from Hawaiian waters, and some of which we did not.

We picked up this year's Christmas Tree ornament there, a fish of course, and hope it'll survive the trip home. (We just packed backpacks for our two days, to make the trip easy and to allow us to easily lug stuff around before checkin our first day and after checkout our last, but that leaves things like fragile ornaments much more vulnerable.)

A RELAXING

The rest of the day was mainly relaxing.

We've been reading aloud _The Magicians_, which I've read before, and which I continue to love this second time. We found a nice little park between Kuhio Beach and the Aquarium and read some there, but also read some back in our hotel room.

We had a nice lunch at a place we've eaten at before called Lulu's, which has good food and a beautiful view of Kuhio Beach. That was probably our splurge meal for the trip, especially since it included booze, a real rarity for either of us. (I had a delicious LavaFlow.)

We both napped some in the afternoon. Probably aided and abetted by the booze. That's vacation R&R!

And I did a bit of a ramble along the shoreline and back in the later afternoon (though I was disappointed to find that my favorite little walkway, right at the ocean, now has its center closed; not only can you no longer walk along all of the western side of Waikiki's shoreline but that enchanting little bit where waves sometimes splashed up at you is blocked off, probably since waves sometimes splashed up at you.)

Alas, but it's been a great couple of days here, both for enjoyable events and enjoyable time spent with K. after too many months in a pressure cooker.

Would you believe I'm off-island again?

Kimberly & I had wanted to go to Oahu for our anniversary last month, but we couldn't due to cat-care needs. But before I left for Germany, I noted that the Diamond Head Theatre was putting on Mamma Mia!, starting just before my return, and suggested we might go out there to see it after I returned if the situation had changed.

Sadly, the situation had changed for the worst by the time I returned, but a few days away to try and achieve some R&R still sounded like a good idea. So I looked up Mamma Mia ... and it was ALL SOLD OUT. Alas!

But apparently some ticketholders (maybe season ticket holders?) cancel here and there and seats can open up. So I looked again on Tuesday and discovered a pair of suits were available ... for the performance on Thursday.

I wasn't sure I wanted to rush right out the door, and I wasn't sure I wanted to turn around a trip to Oahu in two days, but ...

ABBA. MUSICAL.

So I grabbed the tickets while they were available and by evening we had hotel and plane as well.

We were able to take an 11.30am flight over this morning, which was a luxury because it gave us a whole morning at home. (For my last three flights I had to get up at 6am, 7am, and 3.30 am, if memory serves.)

The flight was absolutely nothing. I was able to read a few issues of _Black Science_ and by then we'd gone up and down and landed.

We took the bus out to Waikiki, which is a slow, meandering course, but there was no hurry because our checkin was at 3pm.

We stopped in at our favorite dim sum place in Honolulu and had several of our favorite dishes, none of which are available on Kauai.

Then we took the bus the rest of the way into Waikiki, arriving at our hotel a minute or two after 3pm, which is some timing!

Our hotel is the Ashton at Waikiki Banyan. As K. notes, it's on the slightly seedier side of Waikiki (out on the far side, overlooking the zoo). But the hotel seems nice. The rooms are all suites as far as I can tell, just over 500 sq ft. each, which is very nice. Not only did we get a kama'aina discount, making it quite cheap, but they also upgraded us to a "partial ocean view", which has Diamond Head on one side and Kuhio Beach on the other. It's gorgeous.

(And though we'd decided when we booked that it wasn't worth the extra $50 or so to get mountain or ocean views, we're certainly very appreciative of them, and the Ashton has won some loyalty as a result.)

Hoping the Abba tonight will be great.

Hoping we can get some relaxation and enjoyment after four very tough months. Even if it did mean leaving my island again for a few days.

LUCY IN OAHU

THE FINICKINESS. After a week of eating well, on Sunday morning we decided not to tube food Lucy. Morning has always been her most finicky time, but she ate three quarters of her plate of food with just some urging, so we were quite satisfied.

A few hours later, after yardwork and our own lunch I then gave Lucy her steroid pill, which we'd been giving in her tube for the last few weeks. Plus her appetite stimulant in her ear. And we changed her dressing on her feeding tube.

Somehow, everything changed from there.

She slept most of the day. She didn't do any begging for food. When we offered her dry food, she didn't eat any. So we went to my dad and Mary's house and when Kimberly came home (while I went off to swimming), Lucy also had zero interest in wet food. By the time I got home, she ate part of a plate, and then ate part of a plate again near bed time. But each time, she was very slow again, and each time we tube-fed her the rest.

So Kimberly and I talked it over. We had hypotheses, like maybe it was because we'd taken her off the anti-nausea pill (but I counted up the half-lives and determined that she was at 1/16th of a pill left in her system when she ate _great_ on Saturday) or maybe it was because she was upset over the renewed pilling.

But ultimately, it revealed that the eating that we thought had stabilized after a solid week of eating well (minus her drugged-up state after her sutures were replaced Friday) was actually extremely fragile. Still.

THE PLAN. We started talking about whether it was time to take her in to the E/R, as we'd been advised to do by both our vet and the E/R if she took a downturn. Kimberly called the E/R to verify there would be an internist in today if we brought her in; they said yes and it sounded like we should bring her in. So we agreed and they put us "on their board for 11.45-noon".

THE RESERVATIONS. That time was based on us getting a 10.30 flight out of Lihue, which meant we should be at the airport by 9 and thus leave the house at 8.30. It was about as early as I was willing to go since I'd been sick to my stomach from stress Sunday evening, and I wanted to give my digestion some time to even out in the morning.

Getting the 10.30 flight was another challenge. First I couldn't get Hawaiian's online ordering to work (possibly because I was using Brave on my laptop, and so I ended up ordering them on my desktop). Second because I had to spend 15-20 minutes on the phone with a Hawaiian staffer to get Lucy OKed as in-cabin luggage.

But by 11.30 or so last night we had tickets. Just $44 each out to Oahu, though it looks like the return is going to be a lot more expensive.

THE NIGHT. Slept like crap last night. Couldn't get to sleep after all the excitement just before bedtime, and when I eventually did, I never had very restful slept. I woke at about 6am. My Fitbit lies that i got 5h16m of sleep and was *only* awake for 58m over the course of the night.

THE TRAVEL. We headed out to the airport at 8.30 and got there just in advance of 9. The airport parking lot was already pretty jammed. It's just not big enough any more, so I hope Kauai managed to block the four new gates that the Feds were trying to require to get certain funds a year or two ago, totally irrelevent to the overtourism of our island and the various infrastructural insufficiencies.

We had to go to physical check-in and spend another 10 or 15 minutes dealing with cat paperwork.

The administrator actually kneeled down to make sure that Lucy could stand up in her cat carrier (which she can, she's a small cat). If they'd done that when we flew out here three and a half years ago we would not have been able to get Callisto onto the island, and boy would that have been a pretty mess at 7am on January 1 with our hard cat carriers already on a boat.

TSA was pretty mellow. I just pulled Lucy out her carrier and carried her through TSA (making me the carrier, I suppose). The only problem being that they questioned her feeding tube and collar to protect that tube. But when I explained, they nodded and didn't make me disassemble it or anything.

The plane flight stressed me out, just because I was worried about Lucy.

Then the Lyft ride stressed me out because I was increasingly concerned if Lucy would need to use the bathroom, and we were in someone else's car.

And we finally arrived at the vet which turns out to be in a pretty bad part of Honolulu (but i5 seems a pretty nice facility).

THE VET. Because we were "on the board" at the ER vet, we had hopes that we might get Lucy in (and out) pretty quickly. Not so.

They're apparently short-staffed, as everyone continues to be, and had a lot of emergencies, most of them seeming to be dogs having troubles walking.

We sat around for about three and a half hours, with one apology and explanation, and then finally got to see the vet.

The vet says the most likely problems are a continued inflammation of the colon (which we'd control with prednisone and diet, except we're already giving her prednisone and diet and it's not controlling it) or else a small-cell cancer (which would be slow-moving and we'd control for a a while with chemotherapy pills). I'm not convinced that it's either of those, especially with her weird agitation when she eats, but the vet's the boss.

It had also gotten so late that they wanted us to leave her for the night, which we did, paying a large estimated bill to dos o (much of it for "nurse care", which she really doesn't need, but was what was needed to leave her there so that they could keep testing and such, and our cat insurance should cover half of it or so).

We're hoping to know more tomorrow. I mean, we're hoping to get an answer. I'm not sure I have faith that doing much more than our Kauai vet did, but maybe they'll be able to interpret the results better, particularly the ultrasound.

THE STAY. So, we're staying overnight. We got a room at a hotel on the corner of Waikiki where it turns out that I've stayed before (though that was ironically in a suite without Kimberly, and this is in a single room with her, but that's the difference between renting a private room through Air B&B and renting a hotel room from their web site).

We walked out to Ala Moana to get dinner at a dim sum restaurant, because we might as well make lemonade if we're stuck here with the lemons for the night.

And we're hoping that tomorrow we get answers, get Lucy, and get home.

My dad is going to go check in on the orangies in the morning. We hope no one has knocked out any screens (we closed them up as best as is currently possible before we left) and the house is still standing.

So the main event yesterday was visiting with family. Jason, Lisa, Julian, Lucy, Rick, and Tracy.

We got together for lunch and had a terrific time talking (and noshing). There was a constant flow of adults about the table as various people ran off to the beach at various times to keep the kids happy. I couldn't really keep track of who was around at any moment (though maybe that was in part the one Mai Tai), but I was happy to talk with anyone there, as they're all terrific people.

Afterward, Jason and the gramps were going over to the lagoon so that Julian could swim. He's apparently very fond of everywhere that he gets to swim. But I had no swim suit. (It was at the apartment just a few blocks away, but it would have taken time to go there and back; I guess I should have worn the tourist uniform of constant-swimsuit while on Oahu.)

But, Lisa wanted to get a new phone cover because hers had broken, so I went trekking out with her instead. Which was terrific. Not only did I get exercise, and to offer my limited knowledge of Waikiki to find her a phone case store, but we also had a good time chatting, probably more one-on-one time than I've ever had with my SiL.

While we were nearing our final phone accessory store (after striking out at the Apple store), Lisa received a frantic call from Jason that the kids were getting tired and ready for naps, but we still had time to find her her phone case and hike back to meet them at the car.

And then the whirlwind meeting with family was done!

I was thrilled to see everyone. Well worth the trip to Oahu.

The previous night while on the zoom with my RPG friends, one of them expressed confusion that I'd fly to Oahu to see people. He likened it to someone flying from the East Coast to Arizona while I lived in California, and me flying out to see them.

I think you have to live on one of the neighbor islands to understand how casual it is to fly over to Oahu. Oh, it's $100 or a bit more round trip. But it's a short little jump, and you don't have to get to the airport that early on the neighbor-island side. I could really have flown over Sunday morning and back Sunday evening if I wanted. And we have done that before.

But I'm happier spending a few nights. Which is more expensive. But gives us a bit of urban time away from home. (Or in this case, gave *me* that.)

I didn't do much else yesterday. I was pretty zonked out after an afternoon of socializing and a few miles more walking.

(In fact, I was surprised to find my feet blistering after two days of walking. I was surprised because it wasn't unusual amount of walking. 6-10 miles or something each day. But the difference was that I'm not walking great lengths on PAVEMENT any more when I'm not on Oahu. If I do 6 or 10 miles, it's on dirt mostly. So I think the feet aren't up to the city walking I used to do any more, alas. In any case, after I got the blisters, I mostly wore my new slippas that I'm still breaking in, and they didn't hurt my blisters at all, though I'm still wearing one bandaid with them, for the aforementioned breaking in.)

As night approached, I got up the gumption to go out walking again and picked up some dim sum near Ala Moana which I brought home for dinner (and for breakfast today). Dim sum has definitely become an Oahu treat.

This morning I went for one last walk along the water front. I love the Waikiki waterfront, even if it's a bit crowded.

Then it was back to pack up the AirBnB and check out.

I was planning to do one more walk, out to Ala Moana Park, but I realized I had the time of the flight wrong in my head, and was thinking about arrival instead of departure, so I hopped on a bus instead. (Total transport costs this trip: $6. If you ignore the plane, of course. But Uber back and forth to the airport can be almost the cost of a plane ticket if they're doing gouge-pricing. So, bus is a lot cheaper!)

I discovered a bit of a disaster on the bus back to the airport: I'd left the shopping bag of BTS "merch" that Kimberly and I carefully picked out (via video) back at the AirBnB. I _almost_ hopped off the bus, which likely would have resulted in me missing my flight, but thinking it through I realized there was no way I was getting back into that hotel suite, because it was past check-out time and it was an independently owned apartment, so no way as the hotel letting me in. But, I contacted the host immediately, and even though they're some big corporate thing, by evening they'd located the bag and say they'll be sending it over tomorrow via USPS. Hopefully all there and arrives in one piece, but I'm feeling much better about it now, fingers crossed.

Honolulu airport was a MESS. I've been seeing it get worse and worse since our first trip a few months into the pandemic. Probably mostly normal now, which is not functioning great. There were such lines for TSA, that they almost backed over the end of the Pre-TSA line. And of course you often have to walk miles at Honolulu Airport. But I eventually got to my gate and tried to sit as far as possibly from all the people eating under the "No eating or drinking in holding area" signs.

I had a better boarding number this time because I checked-in within a minute or two of being able too. But somehow every overhead bin was full by the time I got onboard. I set down next to a polite couple who looked like they were wearing their masks properly, and it was a fine flight, even if I had to rest my feet on my backpack in the squashed seats.

It was very sad Kimberly couldn't make it to Oahu. As a result I had a big suite that I barely used. I think in the "bonus" half of the suite (as the suite was basically two hotel rooms put together), with the living room and kitchen, I only made use of the dining table, one plate, the microwave, and the ice maker and water in the fridge door. Which was still worthwhile. But there was a whole living room that I barely touched.

Ah well, next time.

Happy to be home, though that of course means I'm back to all the things that need to be done, including two days of Blockchain Commons work starting tomorrow (and finishing up my tax packet and getting some tax forms sent off and ...)

Technically, I've never been to Oahu on my own.

I say technically, because when Kimberly was in the hospital two days for tests when we were out here in the middle of 2020, I had those days to myself, but I mostly spent them working(!). I'd figured I'd have more time to be about on my own later, but her week of tests ended up being just those two days.

But this weekend, we were planning to come out to Oahu to see my brother, Jason, my sister-in-law, Lisa, and family, and the day before our departure, Kimberly came down with a cold. So I ended up coming out on my own.

(And I've been watching like a hawk for symptoms that might suggest that I caught her cold. Which is annoying. So far, so good, I think.)

Southwest Airlines. My first trip on the other carrier that flies interisland. I've always called them "cattle carrier" airline, and that seemed pretty accurate. There was an unending sequence of people with different letters and numbers lining up to get on the plane.

I had a really late number, because I checked in on the morning of the flight, since we were still waiting to see if Kimberly might have recovered over night. Thus when I hopped on the plane, it was practically standing room only. Well, middle-seat only at least.

Finding a middle-seat with some space above to place my backpack, I scrabbled into it. And then found myself in a horror movie. The women to my right illegally had her mask under her nose, the woman to my left had it off entirely. As left-hand scofflaw started coughing into the window, I scrambled back up, telling right-hand scofflaw, "I'm going to sit somewhere with less coughing". So that's an advantage of Southwest: if you end up next to assholes who act like there's not a pandemic, you can get up and leave. Though it's sadly *more* likely you'll end up next to assholes, since Southwest seating ensures your party of two is broken up if you don't get an early number.

Continuing backward in the plane, I watched more carefully for masks, and eventually found a seat between an older gentleman and a kid who were both wearing their masks properly.

After landing, at Mary's suggestion, I took the bus into Honolulu. Kimberly and I did this before way back on our first stay in Oahu in 2016 or something, but the trips since have been all amidst pandemic, and often they've been focused on medical needs, and always they've been colored by the needs of Kimberly's knee scooter, so we tended to Uber.

The bus was so much less a horror show than the plane. Proper mask wearing, and more notably, about 80% empty. The trip was maybe a little longer than an Uber since we made about 20 stops, but it was also $3 instead of the $30-60 that's Uber from the airport (depending on whether they've got gouge-pricing on or not).

I got off at 'A'ala Park, because it was on the bus route, and it had a few things to do right around there. What Google Maps hadn't show was that there were homeless encampments all around and the park was partly taken over as well. So I mostly skirted the park.

But on the other side was "College Walk", a set of pedestrian walkways on either side of a little canal. Past that were Chinatown, the Arts District, and Hawaii Pacific University, which I perhaps should have explored, but my goal up at the end of the canal was the Foster Botanical Garden.

Foster's was a nice little garden. I may have been less struck by it because I see so many tropical plants on a daily basis. But it had a neat "prehistoric" section and also some art exhibits at the back, one of which was an amazingly looking plant actually made out of surfboards and plastic bottles! There was also a nice conservatory with orchids and such and a butterfly garden that had lots of Monarches.

The other great thing about the Botanical Garden was that it was absolutely *full* of shaded places to sit. Obviously, it was a local hang-out, and someplace I'd regularly visit if I lived in the area. (My kama'aina admission was $3; if I was local I'd get a $25 annual pass.)

After walking around the garden a bit, I was pretty tired out from being out and about in the sun. Oahu always seems much hotter than Kauai when I'm rambling about. So I sat about and read for a while before it was time to head to the AirBnB. (Check-in was at 3; we'd planned early time to go to the Bishop Museum, but given Kimberly's absence, I decided to save that for next time.)

Biking! The other reason I choose the Park to hop off the bus is because it was right next to the westernmost Biki bikes on the bus line. And the stand was very full, unlike the denuded Biki stands one finds deeper in the city. So after the Botanical Garden I hopped on a Biki and rode it out to Waikiki.

I know a few of the cycle tracks in Honolulu now, so I was able to ride on streets where I felt almost entirely safe, either because they were empty (bus/bike-only) streets or ones with bike tracks or lanes. Just one block on the way to the AirBnB inexplicably dumped you into traffic, but it was all clogged up with slow-moving cars, so no problem.

I eventually dropped off my Biki at a stand right in front on one of the 7-11's on Kalakaua, which I knew was there because I've picked up a Biki from it before.

The AirBnB is really more of a hotel. A hotel suite. They call it a "individually owner apartment" in the hotel, or some such. But, it's pretty much two hotel rooms smooshed together, one the bedroom & bathroom, the other the living room & kitchen. It's a plentitude of space, but it has an institutional feel and design to it that you don't get even in pretty small apartments.

I'm perfectly happy here, and it's really nicely furnished and has the best kitchen I've seen in an AirBnB even including the luxury of water and ice in the door of the fridge. It also has the advantage that if my cardkey gets stolen while I'm out swimming I can easily get back into my place. But at the same time it's not going to be high on my list for return visits.

After arriving I went for a swim in the lagoon, which is just around the corner, but it turns out that it's a little hard to get to because you have to backtrack to get across Ala Moana Blvd, which is very busy.

The lagoon's always fun. There was beautiful ocean nearby, but I have that on Kauai, not so much a fake lagoon with fake island and tons of little paddle boats.

My card key was not stolen.

Next plan was dinner, and I decided to go out to Ala Moana Mall, so that I could see if I could surprise Kimberly with a visit to the BTS Pop-up that she'd been upset to miss because of her non-attendence.

Success! I was able to get in even though she'd either cancelled her reservation or had it lost. I was able to video call her and show her all of the (relatively scant) items in the store. She picked out a bag of them which I purchased (and then got a chicken cheesesteak while there as well, at the Mall, not the BTS store, something not available on Kauai as far as I know, but which left me sick to my stomach this morning :-|).

It's DunDraCon weekend out in California, so Dave S. had organized a "Virtual Rainbow" for all of my old roleplaying buddies to get together. Having finished up my other activities for the night, I logged in about 7.30, after it'd been going for an hour and a half or so. I sadly just missed Eric R., but I got to talk to most of the rest of the old gaming crew, none of whom I'd seen since the end of 2019, and some of whom I hadn't seen for a few years earlier. Bill F. was even there, giving us a collection of folks from the East Coast to Hawaii.

We had a great chat. Some folks also did some great drinking, but I had no such supplies to make a rainbow of drinks at the AirBnB (nor a particular desire to get drunk before seeing family the next day).

I also learned that not only is Dave P. pretty regularly visiting Kauai, but he also tends to stay in Poipu and go over to the Small Boat Harbor in Kekaha, which puts him within two blocks of my house during the transit. He apparently visited in December, though it easily could have been while we were in California.

So, he's going to check in next time he's on the island.

Night. Sleeping. I was very restless, mainly because I woke up constantly when the AC boomed on. Tonight we'll try that with the lanai doors open instead. I'd wanted to muffle the street sound, but I now suspect that might be quieter than the AC.

(Otherwise, the apartment is fine, and I'm sure I'd get used to the problem with the AC noise. It even has a huge 8-nozzle shower panel that I have named Otto.)

Plan is to meet up with Jason, Lisa and family at 11 this morning, get some lunch and walk about Waikiki.

One thing I love about being back in a city: the ability to exercise so much more easily. I got almost 25,000 steps (10+ miles) yesterday, mostly just going here and there, let alone the swimming and biking.

So it's been a few days and I haven't written about the rest of the Oahu Surgery trip for Kimberly because yeah, it's been exhausting.

TL;DR: Kimberly's surgery went fine. Exactly as expected. The doctor found a nerve entrapped in the scar tissue in her foot from the botched surgery in 2018. He traced it back until he found a safe place to cut it and tied it off into a muscle. It'll take a while to find out if that has a beneficial effect on her pain, but from what she's said so far, the increased deadening of her foot isn't bad. So, plus on that side.

From my side, the surgery was exhausting. We got there at 1.30pm, her surgery was scheduled for 3.30 and actually happened at 5.00. The doctor called me at 6.00 to tersely tell me the results (called me because no one seemed to understand I was in the waiting room right there) and then the nurses called me at 6.30 to say Kimberly was in recovery. At no point was I able to go anywhere except the waiting room due to COVID. And I was only able to stay there because an article had told me to photograph my vaccine certificate and put it on my phone, which I had. So It was six hours of sitting in a chair, trying not to run down my laptop battery, with the constant drone of Hawaiian college sports in the background. (That's right, we're playing sports, but I can't go in to pre-surgery or recovery with my wife, because priorities.) They finally wheeled Kimberly out around 7 and we made it home around 7.30.

The catch was that Kimberly needed pain and anti-nausea drugs picked up. There was fortunately a Longs Drugs at Ala Moana that was open until 9pm which I headed straight out to get the meds from. By 8.15 or so, after several death-defying events of handing over my Driver's License (which I of course needed to get home), I had the meds and dinner became the question, but there was fortunately a Jack in the Box at the Ala Moana where I could pick something up really easy.

Temporarily Closed. Because COVID.

I spotted another Jack in the Box another three quarters of a mile off, started heading there, and my phone died. Because like my laptop it hadn't been charged since we left the AirBnB at 1pm. (Note to self: next time bring all plugs to surgery waiting room.)

Fortunately I've gotten familiar enough with the Waikiki corner of Honolulu that I managed the navigation to the Jack in the Box and to the AirBnB without a misstep. Still, unnerving to wander a somewhat foreign city after dark with no phone.

We came home Thursday. We had first class seats, so I watched the animals in the First Class lounge for a while at Honolulu (lots of Karens, including I-don't-need-to-show-you-my-boarding-pass Karen, who was subsequently kicked out), then we got in our First Class seats. The whole goal of all of that was to make sure Kimberly was as comfortable as possible. She was able to put her foot up in the lounge, then the first class seats at least gave her a little room to put her foot on a backpack, so mission accomplished, though the whole trip home was obviously going to be the most difficult and painful part. My dad picked us up at the airport, and we made out way home. Ordeal ended? Healing begun?

Obviously, Kimberly is still in a considerable amount of pain and needing a considerable amount of help because she can't really move around, but that was all expected.

The big problem is that atop that, Lucy is also still ailing.

She seemed fine enough when we got home, Thursday, other than the fact that she was frequently sneezing. It looks like Paradise Animal Clinic got her sick by insisting on keeping her all day last week rather than just seeing her, testing her, and handing her back.

But then Thursday night she peed all over our bed. Maybe it was just her being angry at us being gone, we said, we hoped.

So today I went out to get a bunch of cleaning supplies for cat urine, hoping to better clean our bed and sheets. (Plus a cooler and water bottle to help Kimberly in her convalescence.)

And then this afternoon Lucy started doing the same thing she did last Wednesday, which is wandering around, squatting, and failing to pass anything.

I called the vet, Paradise Animal Clinic, they said they'd have the doctor call us, and that they couldn't see her. I don't know what the *)(@# the point of a vet is if they can't see an animal in an urgent situation.

We of course had her in last week for this EXACT problem, and they first tried to prescribe something to help with constipation, even though it's increasingly looking like a urinary issue.

The vet still hasn't called back, and they've now closed. (I called over two hours before closing.)

I tried the next closest clinic and they said they could get her an appointment in October. I think I mostly cussed them out after I'd hung up, though I did opine Lucy might be dead by then due to their lack of help.

I messaged C's aunt, whose number he was kind enough to pass on last week, and I'm not really sure if that's a way to go, but why not?

There's one other vet that's reasonably close enough that I might try them tomorrow if Paradise Animal Clinic fails us yet again (and thus far: it looks like it). I decided to wait mainly because Lucy settled down, though she still seems uncomfortable, and is doing lots of circling around and around to try and lay down comfortably, which I haven't seen since our older cats were getting increasingly sick, a decade ago now.

I've still got bed and sheets in various states of cleaning that I need to finish with.

At least we've got Kimberly setup with lots of snacks and her devices, but her foot was still hurting a considerable amount this afternoon.

And we won't even talk the incomplete nature of my writing projects for August, since we've been in Oahu three times. The actual mini-vacation, at the start of the month, seems a long long time ago.

It's a little much, all together.

Our third trip to Oahu in August. Ay. But it's the natural follow-up to last week's appointment. The orthopedist that Kimberly saw agreed that surgery was the only possibility to try and somewhat alleviate the constant pain Kimberly has in her foot. And they scheduled us for nine days later, so here we are.

Kimberly had major annoyances before our trip because she spent Monday trying to contact various medical people, leaving messages, and having absolutely no one reply to them. So by evening, we didn't know the result of her COVID test, we didn't know if had been sent to Oahu, we didn't know if her nephrologist had any additional advice on remaining hydrated prior to the surgery, and we didn't know if her surgery had been moved from its original 3.30pm time to help with her hydration.

We could do something about the first two, so when we drove into Lihue Monday night to get post-surgery snacks and sundries, we also stopped by the place that did the tests and made them print a copy of her results (which were negative, of course, though we'd previously had slight concerns that an asymptomatic case could mess up all our plans and there was some danger of it given our recent trips to Oahu).

My dad was kind enough to drive us to the airport, and to watch over and pay attention to our cats while we're gone.

The airport bit was uneventful, other than the fact that Nellie, Kimberly's adventure scooter, necessary for the sidewalks of Honolulu, got pulled over by the TSA, I believe when they did their swab for potential explosive material.

The TSA staff seemed upset and unbelieving, like they didn't want to deal with the annoyance. But then they gave Kimberly and her bag a thorough screening. And naughty Nellie too.

It was still only 10 minutes or so from curbside to our gate. We definitely know the speed of the Lihue airport at this point. At least with TSA Pre/Global Entry. We can't ever let those expire.

We'd been having some very wet weather in Kauai in the morning, because we're getting the remnants of a tropical storm that blew itself apart. But it was like night and day when we landed in Honolulu. Oh, a bit of overcast, and we had rain spitting at us a few times, but it was generally hot and dry.

Which has been our general experience of Honolulu. There's a reason Kauai is/was the wettest place on Earth and Oahu isn't.

Kimberly finally talked to the surgery people on our ride from the Honolulu airport to our AirBnB. She's still set for 3.30pm (and they later advised her to drink some Gatorade this evening to help with the hydration).

Of note, our Lyft from Daniel Inouye airport to our AirBnB was $76 before tip. (We _always_ tip when a driver has to deal with Nellie the explosive adventure scooter.) Our tickets from Lihue to Honolulu were $33 before fees. It literally cost us more to get that last several miles than the 100 miles over the ocean.

We got a nice AirBnB, because I wanted to make sure Kimberly was very comfortable on the night after her surgery and because we wanted to make sure there was plenty of room for her scooter, particularly after the surgery when she can't put any weight on her foot. So it was a bit more than $200 a night, which is not obscene for Waikiki, but at an AirBnB you add on a similar amount to a night's stay for the cleaning fees after your visit, and then of course there are all of Hawaii's tourist taxes.

But it indeed is quite nice. Decently sized, filled with sunlight when we arrived, and well furnished. It's actually got two bedrooms, mainly because that's what it has, but if Kimberly wants her own bed after the surgery, she has one.

The funny thing is that if you go and sit on the balcony (which is one of those semi-circle balconies jutting out from the building, which always freak me out a bit because they don't seem to be supported), you can look directly at the balcony of the place we stayed at two and a half weeks ago. (We'd actually looked at that place first, but it wasn't available on the short notice, but on balance this new AirBnB is better under the circumstances, even if it's a few hundred dollars more.)

That's not coincidence. AirBnBs in Honolulu are restricted to Waikiki as far as I can tell, and for both of our overnight trips we got one in the northwest corner of Waikiki, last time to go to the convention center, this time to go to the orthopedist.

We had dim sum again for dinner, at the same 'ole place by Ala Moana. It was surprisingly empty for dinner, after being quite busy for lunch.

And we're now settled in for the night.

Tomorrow I need to sneak off for lunch because Kimberly can't eat or drink after 4am. But she's suggested I go to Popeye's, one of my favorite fast food restaurants not available on Kauai. We're right at the Ala Wai canal, so it's an easy ride along the length of Waikiki, with Popeye's on the other side. Hopefully it's a safe eating establishment. (Hopefully it's too low-brow for tourists.)

I do like our balcony, despite its unnerving nature. Beautiful views of the sunset in the skies earlier, from up here on the 11th floor, and fun views of the city by night now, including the Waikiki Landmark condos right across the street from us. Easy to see why this condo is $200-something a night rather than $100-something, and I think that's actually somewhat of a deal given Waikiki prices.

I told Kimberly that we're really Hawaii residents now, because we flew over to Oahu for a day trip. Monday: over on the 10am flight, back on the 7pm fight. (We would have been happy going back an hour earlier, but the 6pm flight was about $100 more for the pair of us, we presume because it's more a commuter flight.)

As with two of our three trips to Oahu since we move to Kauai, it was for medical purposes. Kimberly has essentially been unable to use her left foot since a botched surgery at the end of 2018 left nerves entrapped in a scar. After trying a number of various solutions, they finally told her to wait and see if the nerves slipped out of the scar by the one-year mark, which would have been October 2019. But then there was a cancer scare, and meanwhile we were moving, and then there was a pandemic ....

We finally talked to a new pain doctor about it early this year. He suggested that the only real solution left was surgery to tie off the affected nerves, but needed to consult with a surgeon on Oahu to see what he thought. After which, Kimberly spent months trying to convince him to make that call. Eventually we got an appointment with the Oahu doctor, unfortunately a week after our vacation to Oahu.

So we landed in Honolulu Monday morning for the appointment. We were hours early because we didn't want to be stressed about making it in time.

What do you do with a few hours in Honolulu? Lunch at a good Vietnamese restaurant, the first good Vietnamese food we've had since we left California. Then Kimberly went to visit some Korean stores while I walked and biked around Honolulu some more.

I dunno why I keep doing this under the noon sun. It was tiring.

But I used my Biki account again and grabbed a bike and biked up to just under Punchbowl Crater. There I was disappointed to learn that the only way into Punchbowl Crater was through the back. There's all these neighborhoods right under and they don't have stairs up into the crater of anything. As with too much in Hawaii, it's tourists favored over residents.

From there I walked back down to the civic center, which has a lot of nice greenery and some ridiculous sculpture. And then I biked back to the doctor's office, by one of the couple of cycle tracks in Honolulu. (Not many: most biking in the city proper occurs on sidewalks because the streets are hellish vehicle-murder zones.)

We spent a few hours at the doctor's office and got very surprising news. First, they agreed that Kimberly had tried everything possible for her foot, which wasn't the surprising part. Second, they were scheduling her surgery for NEXT WEDNESDAY, which was the surprising part.

I mean, other doctors in California made her wait like a month TO REMOVE A TUMOR. But they're doing elective (but crucial) foot surgery in a week.

So it'll be back to Oahu for a third time in August. Ay.

And as for the hoped-for results? There's apparently about a 50% chance of improvement for her pain and just a very small chance of things getting worse, so fingers crossed.

And fingers crossed that the escalating COVID numbers all over Hawaii don't cause a cancellation because we'd be out most of $1000 invested into the trip accomodations.

We also had a few hours after the appointment, again to minimize stress. We walked down to the Ala Moana center, which we'd never been to.

Worst shopping center I've ever been to. You know all those super fancy high-end, how do they stay in business because who'd spend that money, stores that normal malls have one or two of? That's almost all that Ala Moana has. Cartier. Celine. Dior. Gucci. Michael Kors. blahblahblahblah.

The food court was more promising because it was huge and had a big variety of food and it looked much more low-brow, and thus I suspect was rare, affordable food near Waikiki. Except it had tons of people. No way they were abiding by the 50% seating that's supposed to be required for all restaurants in Hawaii now. We slipped in to Jamba Juice, which was just inside and seemed safe and then scuttled off with our fruity drinks.

The trip to the airport and our island was uneventful. We unwisely had made the decision to do our weekly shopping after the trip, because we were in Lihue, and that feels like forever away, even though it's only 20 minutes. That was exhausting. Never again after a day trip like that.

But at last we were home.

Unfortunately, it's also been exhausting since.

I had my two days of fulltime consulting work afterward, which always takes the entirety of my energy.

And I had to make plane & AirB&B reservations for next week (both a little posher than usual, hence the $1000: a pretty nice AirB&B and first-class seats back, but we wanted to make sure Kimberly was comfortable coming back from surgery on Oahu with a wounded foot.)

And meanwhile Lucy seems to be ailing. She was agitated part of yesterday and then this afternoon she was clearly distressed, to the point where I pretty abruptly cut my gaming short.

We talked to the vet on the emergency number and he thinks she'll be fine overnight, but we have an 8am appointment for her in the morning.

Hoping that turns out fine and I get a little downtime before we go BACK to Oahu. but there's a lot on my calendar and I'm increasingly falling behind on my own projects for the month. (At least I've begged off Blockchain Commons work. I already knew I needed a week break to not burn out, I just hadn't planned it'd be another medical week.)

So this morning we puttered around the condo for a while, and then finally checked out to go to our 10.30 brunch reservations.

It was a cute little place attached to a hotel on the far side of Waikiki. They didn't even post their prices, so I assumed they were grossly over-priced, but they totally turned out to be California-reasonable (which, for the uninitiated, is cheaper than Hawaii reasonable, which is cheaper than Waikiki reasonable). Dunno why they were so reasonably priced, with their location pretty much on the beach, but the food was tasty, and I'm 99% sure we'll be back.

Our goal for the day was to see animals, so we first went over to the Waikiki Zoo. We'd been watching the line snaking in throughout brunch, but when we got over there we were pleased to see it was just 10 or 15 minutes.

Rather than detail all the animals we saw, I'll just say the Honolulu Zoo is disappointing. I mean, part of that is obviously (now) that noon in the middle of summer isn't the time to go. It was hot. We were hot. The animals were hot. They mostly just lay around. One of their "twilight tours" would have been much better.

But there were also empty enclosures. And enclosures that only had one of an animal, like that one poor meerkat, forever looking for his tribe. And no one seemed that happy. Except the African penguins. They were terrific. But it was too hot, and in some cases too lonely, to be happy.

Kimberly, unfortunately started suffering from heat exhaustion while we were out there. Did I mention it was hot? Fortunately, after traveling the savannah, we stopped at the cafe. She got some water, and I, who'd previously been dreaming of shave ice in that hot sun, got the worst shave ice I've ever had. The ice was much too hard, and the flavor was mostly absent, except for a bit of a taste of soap where my "strawberry" and "vanilla" met. I have to assume they used low-quality syrup besides not knowing how to shave ice.

So, zoo trip was a failure, but fortunately the only failure of the trip.

We'd been planning the aquarium next, but it was obvious that Kimberly really wasn't thinking clearly, so we just went back to the airport and hung out in the AC for a few hours until our flight arrived.

And then it was back home to Kauai.

We did overall have a terrific trip, especially at the art museum and the Van Gogh exhibit. And the dim sum. If the zoo failure was on the last day, shrug, no problem. Not like Oahu is some big exotic destination.

We're actually going back in a week, but that's just to get Kimberly into a consultation with a surgeon about her foot. I'm sure we'll have another fun trip out there next year some time.

A day in multiple parts.

I. Early Morning: A Walk. I go out for a walk while Kimberly is sleeping. I'm trying to link up my various impressions of Honolulu. We'd previously stayed at my dad and Mary and Melody's condo, which is two blocks almost straight makai of us. Then last year I stayed at a hotel that was a number of blocks mauka from us and a few blocks into Honolulu. So this visit I'm seeing places I recognized on one or both visits.

I'm surprised to find quite a bit of green space as I head further into Waikiki and turn toward the beach. I'd previously walked the beach line in Waikiki a few times, and also some of streets that businesses were on (probably Kuhio, which I'll return to), but I hadn't realized there were pleasant open green spaces this side of Waikiki. I enjoy them and eventually hit the beach where I circle back to what I think of as establishing-shot lagoon (which I'll also return to). It's a cool little lagoon just off the ocean with a hotel rising above it that's used as the establishing shot for Honolulu in just about every TV show or movie with scenes set here.

As I leave the lagoon and head mauka to our condo, I accidentally wander into a hotel, look touristy for a while (fortunately I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt today instead of one of my t-shirts), wander out the other way, and make it back to our temporary home.

One thing I note: everyone in the city parts of Honolulu is masked, which is a big change from the really indifferent attitude I saw to masking 14 months ago. But as soon as I hit the green spaces in Waikiki, no one is masked. It's not just that they're swimming or on the beach, no one there is masks. Residents vs. Tourists, I suspect.

II. Late Morning: Van Gogh. Our whole purpose for the trip was to see the Beyond Van Gogh exhibit at the convention center, which is just a few blocks from our condo. So, after Kimberly awakes, we go out there.

We're unimpressed by the first room which is just Van Gogh history and quotes against blown up backgrounds of his paintings. I am somewhat more impressed that everyone is actually staying in an orderly queue and reading every single bit of text. I mean, I've seen a lot of museums, and a lot of peoples' reactions to exhibits, and maybe 1 in 4 people actually reads the text. Has this changed because of the clever setup of the Van Gogh exhibit, which suggests a reading queue even if it doesn't require it? Are people just unwilling to stride ahead because of the pandemic? Or are people on Honolulu more literate?

Despite being unimpressed, a few times we say, "I didn't know that!" Like when Van Gogh studied to be a preacher after failing as an art dealer. Or when he signed his named Vincent because he thought people won't know how to pronounce Van Gogh. (Kimberly is less sanguine on the veracity of the latter statement.)

Past a kind of psychedelic room that messes up my equilibrium when I try to walk, and a long hallway, we finally come into Beyond Van Gogh proper. We *are* impressed here. It's a huge room, with a few pillars and Van Gogh projected onto all the walls. And the floor. And the pillars. We expected this, but it's still impressive, and there are a few things that make it better.

One is that there are animations. Names write. Stars twinkle. Water moves. One of my favorites is when they show one of Van Gogh's village sketches and then fill it in with color, presumably transforming from the sketch to the final painting. Another cool element is the ability to show multiple pieces all together. So we get one cafe under starry night and another shrouded in darkness. We get a whole room of portraits that Van Gogh drew of various people (which I found quite affecting) and another just of Van Gogh. Often multiple paintings on the same theme or even scene adorn different walls, and so we see them together like we never have before.

I've seen Van Gogh all over the world. Kimberly and I saw a large exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (I think) that had many magnificent pieces including a wall of large starry nights. But this is still a unique and wonderful experience. I'm very happy we came over to see it, even if the COVID situation is worse than we'd like. (Over 600 cases again today, probably technically our worst day, since the only other 600+ day included some delayed cases from previous days.)

After Van Gogh we eat more dim sum. That's enough for the trip, though it's again very tasty. The service is also terrible this time, but we forgive it because one of the poor girls on staff is literally running everywhere, as she answers the phone, seats parties, and cleans tables, but apparently does not produce bills. I keep trying not to laugh as she literally runs by.

III. Early Afternoon: Swimming. We go back to our condo, and Kimberly heads off for a nap because she's exhausted still from our walk yesterday, which I've learned is the longest she's ever scooted.

I'd already been thinking about establishing-shot lagoon before I walked by it in the morning, so I head out there to swim. The water is colder than any Hawaiian water I've swum in recently. Yikes. But establishing-shot lagoon is fun because it's full of people doing things like biking around huge water-trikes and trying (and mostly failing) to stand-up-paddle. Two kids float by on a stand-up-paddle board, singing "We're castaways! We're castaways". They are not standing up or paddling.

I also love the fake little island in the middle of establishing-shot lagoon, with its fake little waterfalls. I take two laps around it before calling it quits.

Unfortunately, establishing-shot lagoon has been somewhat taken over by the homeless, probably a result of COVID, just as we saw the giving away of five of our beaches on Kauai to a small community of homeless. Today it has about a dozen permanent-looking tents. So I worry more while I'm swimming about my shirt with key-fob for our condo being stolen then I should have to. But it's fortunately all there when I finish up.

IV. Late Afternoon: Biking. Earlier in the day, I set up a Biki account for Honolulu's bike share. I've been spoiled by world-class bike shares such as in the one in Prague which was like a dollar an hour to use, actually supporting alternate transit methods. Here, even with their Kama Aina plan, I have to prepay $20 to get 5 hours, which is $4/hr. And I have to use them within a year. I mean, not a big deal at all for our finances, but I just hate to see a public-transit system of any type that's not built to heavily encourage its use through financial support.

(With that said, I laugh when I read someone's complaint that when they rent two bikes it was the same as an Uber ride. I mean, it's $4 for a one-way 30-minute trip for a tourist, which you could easily use to cover 5 miles even if you're slow. What Uber ride were they taking that was only $8? Two blocks over? Then perhaps they should have just walked.)

Anyway, I take my Biki account and my Biki app on my iPhone, and I head out to the Biki bikes located across the street from our condo. It takes about half-a-dozen tries, but I manage to get a bike unlocked, and then I take it up to the Ala Wai canal, which has the Lei of Parks trail, which I've walked before. It's a nice ride, other than the fact that the bike sucks. It has three gears, and it's not easy to ride in any of them. Also, I'm not sure the brakes actually exist.

So I get to the far side of Waikiki, and I'm thinking about biking up and around Diamond Head, which I've done once several years ago. But no way on this bike am I making it up the grade. So I dock my bike (which takes several tries and never proves to be easy) and check out a new one.

That's the theory. Because I start getting the error "Can't get bike codes" when I try to check out a new bike, there on the far side of Waikiki, probably 2 miles or more from our condo. I wonder if there's some limit on checking out at the same station, so I wander to the next, which is about half a mile. No luck there. Then I wonder if I didn't dock the first bike right, even though the web site shows it checked in, because that's what the FAQ suggests on the Biki website, so I wander a half-mile back, and still no luck. I restart the app. "Can't get bike codes".

It's going to be a hot two-mile walk back. Or more.

And then I see that the app is still showing me with 299 minutes left, while the web site show 270 or so, so I think the app is out of date somehow. I log out of it and back in, and suddenly I can check a bike out.

Stupid app. But at least I don't have to walk the length of Waikiki like I'd thought I would. But it's too late to go around Diamond Head.

I bike back by Kuhio in Waikiki, which is one of the quieter roads, and eventually dock back by the 7-11 across the street, one of the two 7-11s within 100 yards of our condo, and call it a day for biking.

I've got 4 hours or something left, I suspect.

V. Early Evening: Rock Dinner. Kimberly and I decide to eat dinner next door at a touristy rock-influenced diner, so that she doesn't have to scoot far. In fact, it's so close that she walks.

It's our most expensive dinner here, but decently good. I do get a delicious chocolate soda, the second of the trip, proving Honolulu is a civilized land.

VI. Fireworks. It's Friday Night, so I go down to see the much-hyped fireworks over the ocean. Except they don't happen at 7.45 when they're supposed to. So I google and see they're at 8 in the summer, through the end of August. I wait longer, and finally decide they're not happening at all.

I'm pretty sure COVID is the cause. They were cancelled last March. But since then the Hilton Hawaiian Village has restarted their Starlight Luau, so I figured the fireworks were going too. Apparently not, probably because they can monetize the luau at $199 a head, but the fireworks are marketing, which is a more invisible profit-maker.

I'm not too put out. It's a lovely walk down to the ocean and back, my third for the day, and I really enjoy the nighttime city walk, something I haven't done in almost a year (and here, in a city where I don't feel the need for eyes in the back of my head, as was required here and there in Berkeley).

I also catch part of the luau, which is fun.

A busy, busy day, but it was our full day in Oahu.

It's always been our plan to go over to Oahu a few times a year, to get a bit of culture, including plays, museums, a wider variety of restaurants, and the other things we don't get on the very rural island of Kauai. Yeah, it's $100 roundtrip nowadays, but that's 12 or so round trips from Berkeley to SF on BART, or a full tank of gas, so it's comparable to other potential trips when it's just a few times a year thing.

Obviously, the pandemic got in the way of that. We were out to Oahu one time last year, around June, but Kimberly was in doing tests at Queen's, and I spent some of the time visiting her and most of the rest of the time working — though I had at least one nice walk the length of Waikiki (and got to walk through Honolulu every day to go see Kimberly, which was less nice, but started to familiarize me with the city).

Well this year, back in May, we started seeing ads for "Beyond Van Gogh" in Honolulu. Not only were we just past the 14-day mark of fully vaccinated at that point, but the islands had been offering vaccines to anyone who wanted them for about a month. So we decided to go, but to push our trip all the way to the end of the Beyond Van Gogh run, and got tickets for the next to last week of the show. Because we figured that the pandemic problems would be really great by then, because sufficient people should be vaccinated at that point, and COVID, already at low numbers, should be in complete retreat.

Ha.

(We'd have done better to go before July 4th.)

We knew that people were people anti-social adolescents throughout the pandemic. That they wanted all their freedumbs, but without any responsibility, like they were 13-years-old or something. But I think the numbers for vaccination stalled out more than anyone expected, and certainly we didn't think that a new grossly contagious variant was going to kick up.

But it did, of course. The kowtowing of Trumpists, conspiracists, faith healers, and crunchy-granola science deniers to the Delta variant is going to be another mark of shame in this pandemic.

So last week we had the highest daily COVID count ever for the island, at more than 600, but there were some delayed results in there. The next two days we hit 400s or 300s, also higher than the previous highest day.

We did actually talk about whether we should still go. Because Oahu is having somewhat worse problems than Kauai.

But, I mean, we're vaccinated, and we knew we'd be masking. Is there some point where we can say it's still responsible (and relatively safe) to do stuff? I dunno, but we kept to our plans. We caught a plane to Oahu this morning.

An incredible act of kindness from the Hawaiian airlines staff at Lihue. After Kimberly popped in to get a tag for her knee scooter, the clerk then came back to us without prompting and exchanged our boarding passes for seats 20A and 20B for boarding passes for seats 5A and 5B, because she didn't want Kimberly to walk too far.

Which was indeed very helpful for us.

The amazing thing was its unprompted nature. She just saw Kimberly's scooter, and figured out a way to make life better for her.

OK, Hawaiian, you've come off my s***-list, though I'm aware this is probably about the character of people in the islands, not in the corporate offices.

I choose an AirBnB out on the corner of Waikiki and Honolulu, mainly because it was pretty close to the convention center where our Van Gogh exhibit is. But it turns out to be pretty nicely located, as we can get to some of the more urban stuff in Honolulu and I could also walk over to the nice lagoon I like in Waikiki. (Will I? Dunno.)

The host for the AirBnB is extremely hands on, which is somewhat nice because he's a friendly guy, who was even willing to let us in a few hours early so that we could drop off our bags, but he just doesn't seem suited to running an AirBnB because he's really paranoid about the place being damaged, and has long lists of rules as a result, and says that he threatens people to not mess up the AirBnB, even if they're twice his size.

But the AirBnB is nice. A compact little place, much much better than a hotel room, nicely furnished, and with enough space not to feel cramped.

After we landed at the AirBnB the plan was to scoot out 2 miles to the Honolulu Art Museum, getting lunch on the way out and (possibly) dinner or the way back. (We weren't entirely sure how long we'd spend at the museum.)

Lunch was dim sum, which was great, as it's not really available on Kauai. For dinner Kimberly got Indian, while I got a portobello sandwich elsewhere.

In between was the museum.

Which was much nicer and had much better content than we expected.

To a certain extent, it's a hodge-podge, with a lot of small, eclectic collections. There's a pretty rapid move through a huge swath of American art, a similar fast-forward through European art, and a wide scattering of art from different Asian cultures.

We found something to really like in almost every room, from impressionists (of course) to Hawaiian art (mostly art of Hawaii, not art by Hawaiians) to Indian statuettes to daggers from a variety of cultures to a lot more.

The whole museum was also really beautifully built, with a number of open courtyards that had tables for sitting out in and were really attractive and pleasant.

All around, a great little experience, and we'll definitely return.

Upon returning to our AirBnB we learned that the front window moans like Myrtle for some reason. Fortunately, we won't be able to hear it in our bedroom.

The islands hit a new high for COVID tests today, again over 600.

Meanwhile, as has been the case all summer, the islands refuse to take any counter-measures, because maintaining the tourist season is more important.

I'm guessing there will be lockdowns the day after Labor Day, as our politicians don't even seem to hide the fact that they care more about tourists than residents.

But in this case, that means we get to tour.

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Entries tagged with oahu

Oahu Anniversary (Fantastic) IV

Oahu Anniversary III

Oahu Anniversary II

Oahu Anniversary I

Kidney Stone's End & A Visit to Punchbowl

Fireworks at Establishing Shot Hotel

Whattaday (Free Trader Beowulf & Oahu)

Back to Oahu

Bishop, Pirates, Parade (in Oahu)

Mamma Mia & More

Out to Oahu for ABBA

Lucy in Oahu

Fraternity on Oahu

Alone on Oahu

The Rest of the Oahu Surgery Trip

The Oahu Surgery Trip, Day One

There and Back Again (Again)

Back in Oahu, Day Three: The Zoo

Back in Oahu, Day Two: Beyond Van Gogh

Back in Oahu, Day One: The Honolulu Art Museum