We had never been to Hawaii due to the cost and didn’t see any way we would ever get there short of retirement, but things changed in a hurry when I gave a workshop for the FAA in December. One of the Captains at that workshop asked me to present related material to his industry focus group’s next meeting. I’ve been traveling a lot and was a little reluctant to go even though I thought I should, so I asked when it was. He said the 14th and 15th of January, which was during our winter break at the University, so I could take the time. I then asked where it was and was very surprised to here it was in Hawaii. Well, that was nice because the grant would pay my fare out and back and my hotel room for the days of the conference and I would get to see Hawaii. When he further mentioned that we could book the room at conference rates ($65 a night in Wakiki) for three days before and after the conference I immediately thought of bringing Monika with, kind of as a belated 25th wedding anniversary trip. My boss agreed to all this, and our super-efficient secretary set up all the arrangements in record time, so we had everything set to go by the time we left for the Florida camping trip except for finishing my preparations for my talk.

When we returned from that trip, I immediately got hit with promotion and tenure committee duties, faculty hiring decisions, and research meetings with my Graduate Research Assistants during the following week, but finally started revising and expanding my notes for the talk on Thursday afternoon. I worked at it steadily through Friday and Saturday and was still working on it Sunday morning--the day we had to leave!! Since we had to drive down to Ballston Metro station to drop off Martin (who was on his way back to college) and then drive back out to Dulles Airport, Monika knew we were tight on time and my working up to the last minute drove her crazy. Finally I printed off the last copies of a handout page for the talk and we immediately grabbed our stuff, jumped in the car, went screaming down I-66 to the Ballston Metro stop, dropped Martin off, and then turned right around head to the airport on the Dulles Access road. Fortunately, the traffic on Sunday morning was light and the access road is a very direct route, so 16 minutes later we were in the long-term parking lot and running for a shuttle bus to the terminal. All of our connections worked flawlessly, and after a very long day with two 5 and 1/2 hour flight legs on United Air Lines (Dulles to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Honolulu), we arrived shortly before sunset at the Oahu airport. Monika picks up our story from there.

Sunday, January 12, 1997

In Honolulu, dusk was falling as we took “THE BUS”, Honolulu’s bus system, to get to our hotel instead of a shuttle. After all, THE BUS was only $1 apiece instead of $18 for a shuttle. Which bus to catch was easy, it said WAKIKI in big letters in front. What wasn’t so easy is that the bus system has a rule that requires that all luggage be on your lap or beneath your seat, and we each had one suitcase and a carry-on. We could see why they had this rule when the bus got really crowded around Chinatown. We did manage to keep our 2 suitcases, laptop computer, and carry-on out of everybody’s way. We rolled through really gritty-looking, industrial-gray looking areas in downtown Honolulu, but Wakiki was prettier, with some stores having Christmas lights and decorations. But now came the problem of when do we get off?

We had a general map of Honolulu and a more detailed map of Wakiki. We kept trying to follow the bus route on our poor maps and trying to catch a street sign, but by now it was dark and it was extremely difficult to see the signs. Coupled with the twisting route of the bus, we really didn’t know where we were most of the time. So what else is new? Fortunately, once we got into Wakiki it got easier since the bus driver announced the hotels at each stop. When we heard “Outrigger West”, we got off at the right stop, but of course walked in the wrong direction! We finally worked it out and got checked into our hotel and were tired and starving. We found an outdoor market with an international food court basically across the street from our hotel, where we sampled different food every night during most of our stay. Exhausted, we went to bed at 9:00 p.m. Hawaiian time (1:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), but really eating and staying up late were excellent ways to reset our body clocks and we didn’t have much problem at all with jet lag.

Monday, January 13

We had breakfast at the Denny’s across the street from the hotel and then started to walk to the beach to get a sunrise picture of the beach and Diamond Head, which is the extinct volcano that dominates the Wakiki landscape. After walking along the beach for a while, we decided to look for the hotel that had the starting point for the Wakiki Volksmarch. We couldn’t find it but thought we were within a “few” blocks of it when we noticed we were close to our hotel again. So we decided to get ready for the Volksmarch first (belt with canteens, record books, camera) and then find the starting point.

Setting off again from our hotel, we found that the “few” blocks were more like a mile past the beach, the zoo, and the aquarium until we finally reached the hotel that hopefully held all the information for the Volksmarch. And it did--very obviously placed right at the entrance, convenient for self-service. We didn’t have to ask any questions--just decide on which Volksmarch.

The hike around Diamond Head looked the most interesting, and we decided to substitute a climb to the top of Diamond Head for the part that went through Wakiki--we had already walked most of that. So we set off, back past the aquarium and the zoo, uphill to the entrance of the crater and through a tunnel into the crater itself. Looking up to the top from inside the crater was daunting as we had already walked 3 miles and were somewhat tired, but we forged ahead.

The first part of the trail up the side of the crater was a paved path, in the sun, going steadily uphill. Of course I got hot and had to stop to pour water over me. Then the trail got interesting--the pavement stopped but the path was already being prepared for paving and was muddy and slick (it had rained the night before). I had to pull myself up on the railing. Then we came to the regular path, which was not nearly as slick except that our shoes were now muddy and slid on the rocks. We went uphill on switchbacks along the side of the mountain where most of the path was shaded. Finally we came to a tunnel. It was L shaped, so the light from the far side did not reach us until we were 3/4 of the way through the tunnel. After that came steep stairs, 98 of them, and finally a pitch dark circular iron staircase. Now we understood why we were supposed to bring a flashlight. But using the railing for guidance, we both made it to the top. And the view was well worth it. After the obligatory photo session, we found out that going down is much easier than up--even sliding across the mud was easier downhill. But our Volksmarch was only half done.

It took another hour to get back to the starting point, stamp our record books, and proudly purchase the Hawaii bar to indicate that we had done a Volksmarch in this state. Of course, we still had to get back to our hotel, which we did after a quick lunch break at McDonalds. Once there, we collapsed onto our beds and were considering whether we should do anything else. After resting for an hour, the phone woke us up. We had been given a smoking room, although we had requested a non-smoking room. They now had a non-smoking one available. Where we still interested? We were! After looking at the room, we packed and moved everything including food from the refrigerator (each room had a fridge, stove, and sink) but forgot--of course--my Kona coffee. Our new room was on the 11th floor and faced (well within 2 blocks) the ocean. We could see it between the high rises next to the beach. Now that we had had enough energy to move, we decided to do the vacation thing and go to Wakiki beach.

It was around 3:00 p.m. and the water was still warm. The beach is narrow and was crowded, but we found room to put our (newly purchased) beach towels. The water was cool at first, but I got used to it fast, Bob took a little longer. The water was shallow for a long way out and then there was a relatively mild surf. Farther out was more of a real surf and we watched surfers out there. There were also outrigger canoes holding about 8 people that paddled out to where the surf was breaking and then tried to ride a wave back to the beach. That evening, we started our dinner tradition: we would go to the food court in the International Market Place and try something different “to go” , go to our room, and watch the sun set into the ocean while eating dinner.

January 14, Tuesday

Bob’s first day at the conference let me explore on my own. I first looked at a nearby ABC store (a chain of small convenience stores) and saw a really nice pair of sandals for Bob, only they didn’t have his size. “No problem”, thought I, “there are lots of these stores in Wakiki, I’ll just keep looking.” For the next couple of days I looked in every ABC store I passed (at least a dozen). Not one even had the same type of sandals I had seen in the first one. Between shopping at ABC stores, I looked at other stores, walked along the beach and along the inland canal, and finally even spent some time at the pool, swimming, reading and sunning. When Bob was done around 4, we went for a long walk along the canal before trying something different from the food court.

January 15, Wednesday (Monika)

This was the day of Bob’s talk and he woke up during the night to work on a few more overheads. When morning finally came, we had cereal in our room and I saw Bob off. I had decided to walk to Ala Moana , “the biggest shopping mall in Hawaii”. Well, it had a pretty nice food court--at the bakery I got a free cookie with my cappuccino--but the stores were just the normal shopping mall shops. I looked at Woolworth and Liberty House (an upscale department store) to cover the whole spectrum and, of course, spent time in a bookstore before finally taking THE BUS home. It was around 12:30 and I wasn’t hungry, so I decided to go to the pool. But it was overcast--it had rained earlier when I was walking to the mall--and I was cold, so I went back up to the room and found Bob, who’s conference had ended early and who was looking for me. To get more details on how the talk went, Bob picks up the story.

Wednesday January 15 (Bob)

Today was my day to give my presentation on the use of Data Warehousing for the FAA’s Advanced Qualification Program to the focus group. I awoke at 3:00 a.m. with an idea that was triggered from the previous day’s presentations about how to present a new example with my talk, and couldn’t get back to sleep. So from 3:00 to 6:00 I prepared about 7 extra overheads which covered that example and another idea I had. I had the room light off so that Monika could stay asleep--she naturally awoke during this and sleepily told me I could turn on the room light, but I left it off since there was no need for both of us to lose sleep over this. I was working from the light reflected from the bathroom light, which was pretty dim, and I just hoped the transparencies I was making would turn out to be legible when I presented later that day. I finally ran out of blank transparencies and crawled back into bed to get warm, but still couldn’t sleep.

After a breakfast where I was preoccupied with my upcoming presentation, I zipped down on the elevator to the meeting at the mezzanine level in the hotel--a 3-minute commute!! I was on the schedule for 11:00 a.m., but they were juggling the schedule and asked if I would go first. I always prefer to have people fresh for my talks as I get a little intense and make demands on them during the presentation and discussion, so I readily agreed. Besides, that way I’d get the doggone presentation over with and could relax for the rest of the day and let other folks do their thing. The net result was that I didn’t get a chance to work up a complete set of nerves like I usually do, which was good.

Since both Delta and Alaska had made good presentations the day before which showed the feasibility of database approaches like what I was proposing, I didn’t have as much of a sales job as I could have. I fleshed out the idea of a “Data Warehouse”, an interconnected set of archived databases, at a conceptual level and gave examples of how this information could be used to answer questions about the performance of pilots during training and testing. I get so high on adrenaline that I can’t really remember much about the presentation--I hope it all made sense.

I can only dimly recall specific episodes during the talk. Since Monika wasn’t there, I could do my “German Wife” jokes. As I explained about my hand-prepared overheads for the new example, I made a joke about not waking my wife up during the night because she still hadn’t really forgiven the U.S. for bombing her in W.W.II. At another point I remember showing this non-computer audience how a neural network might work in this proposed database to identify and predict training failures. Most computer folks would see as a crazy thing to do for that type of audience and I was very apprehensive about it. Fortunately, most of them seemed to get it. Otherwise my memory of the presentation is a blank.

In the break-out discussion section afterward, I once again encountered the “98% of our tests of our pilots are Satisfactory, so why do we need statistics?” argument. So as much as I wanted to be passive and get the agenda of the air carrier’s trainers and managers, I had to actively engage in the discussion on this issue and argue for the use of good quality data for answering questions or solving problems with statistical inference or other kinds of analyses. Don’t know if I made any converts, but I raised the issues for them.

Thankfully, we were done by about 1:00 p.m. (we worked from 7 a.m. straight through lunch), and I heaved a vast sigh of relief as I headed up to my room--they were nice folks, but these meetings are rather stressful for me. The maid was cleaning the room when I arrived, so I hopped into the bathroom to change into shorts and tennis shoes before I went to look for Monika. When I asked the maid about my wife, she managed to tell me in pidgin English that Monika might be at the pool. I was just walking down the corridor to the elevators to search when Monika popped through the door--well met indeed!!

We immediately put the wet stuff in our room and headed to the Wakiki Trolley stop to use the complimentary tickets that a girl had given us on the trip in from the airport. These open-air buses are really a kick to ride--much more fun than a bus. We trolleyed over to the Ala Moana Shopping Center. Monika had been out exploring that morning and had found that this shopping center had a nice food court, so we decided to have lunch there and plan the afternoon. It was a toss-up between the Maritime Museum and the Bishop Museum, but we decided on the Maritime Museum first.

The trolley dropped us off there at 3:00 p.m., so we only had two hours. This really isn’t much for us to do a museum, because I try to read every word on every placard in every room of any museum I go to. This accomplishes two of my major goals in life: (1) I learn a lot from the museum, and (2) I drive everyone else nuts. I even outlasted my brother Terry at the Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg, Texas, one time.

To give her credit, Monika was resigned to her fate and didn’t try to hustle me through the museum. The maritime museum was small but well-designed and contained a lot of information for the space. Most folks would breeze through in 30 minutes to an hour, but I was not nearly done after two hours even though I had systematically skipped the surfboard exhibit (you have to cut somewhere!). Hearing me complain about this at the end the attendant kindly offered to give us complimentary tickets to come back on the morrow. We accepted that offer and hustled off to catch the trolley back to the hotel. Unfortunately, we never did manage to get back and we didn’t get to tour the full-rigged four-masted ship, the “Falls of Clyde”, which I would have dearly loved to see. On our way back from the trolley stop at Wakiki Beach, we bought our usual carry-out at the food court and watched the sun set over the Pacific before we read for a while and turned out the lights.

Thursday, January 16th

We had considered an around-the-island tour of Oahu, but the weather was cloudy and rainy. We finally settled on doing things in Honolulu and Wakiki so that if the weather became really crummy we could retreat to the hotel and vegetate. First, we walked over to the Kodak Hula Dancing presentation beside the Wakiki band shell. By coincidence this morning they were taking pictures for the 60th anniversary of this presentation so all the performers were posing in their regalia on the lawn while the audience slowly filled up the stands. The performance itself detailed the different types of hula dancing, mostly by the women although hula initially was the sole province of men. The dexterity and flexibility of some of the women was amazing. All in all, the performance was both first-rate quality and free, which was a nice combination.

After the performance we hopped a city bus to get to AAA to get maps. I was just going out of my mind at the poor quality and lack of detail of the free tourist maps--I could never really tell where I was or how to walk to get to someplace from those maps. I was too cheap to pay for a Rand McNally when I could get AAA maps free, so we took the bus over to South Street and walked 3 blocks to the AAA office on Queen Street. Since the bus cost us $2, I probably didn’t save much on this adventure. Anyway, AAA had the map of Hawaii with roadmaps of all the islands and street maps of all the major cities. We ate lunch at nearby Restaurant Row while we poured over the map to decide whether to return to the Maritime Museum or visit the Bishop Museum.

We decided on the Bishop Museum and found out from the bus driver that we needed to transfer over to line 2 to get there. This took a while and we had to walk about 3 blocks from the bus stop to the museum, so once again we didn’t start the museum until 3:00 p.m. We had a short tour by the docent and spent the rest of time seeing the exhibits in the main building--the second exhibit building was closed for the installation of a new exhibit. The main building, however, has an extensive collection and I had to once again skip, choose, and skim to get finished by 5:00 p.m. I never even got to see the presentations in the planetarium, but there was an authentic recreation of the Polynesian voyaging canoes on the lawn that had been sailed to the Marquesas and back, so that was a plus. We took the bus back to the hotel and tried to retire early because the start for the next day’s tour of Hawaii was 6:15.

Friday, January 17

Not thinking, I had left the phone on the side of our night stand right beside my right ear. It also turned out that the phone had an extremely loud ring. Our wake-up call at 5:00 a.m. really startled me bolt upright. What a way to wake up!!

The Polynesian Adventure Tours airport shuttle bus we met at 6:00 already had two teenage girls on it, one of whom was stretched out on the rear seat and sound asleep. It later turned out she had only had 3 hours of sleep that night. We flew the Aloha Airlines inter-island flight to the Big Island of Hawaii where we were met by Myra, our tour guide and bus driver. The girls wandered off at our first stop while Myra was picking up two more people at a hotel. When she counted folks before departing, she counted 16 but forgot that she should have had 18 with the two new people, so we left without the girls. They saw us leaving and went running through the parking lot to head us off, so we circled back around and picked them up. We all got a good laugh out of this and it broke the ice for the group.

Our first stop was Akaka falls to the North of Hilo. These falls did not have a huge volume of water but had a really spectacular sheer drop of what looked like 1,000’ or more. It was breathtaking--I wish we had been able to get closer. In the loop trail to the falls we had our first close-up looks at a variety of lush, tropical vegetation that had been planted there by the park service. After the falls, we drove back through Hilo to the other side of the island in order to drive up the Kilauea volcano.

Our first stop on the rim road around the crater at the top of the volcano was a restaurant across from the Visitor’s Center. We shared a table at the windows overlooking the crater with the two teenage girls, who were more concerned about their sandwiches than the landscape. The stark, almost surrealistic landscape of the caldera was all gray-on-gray with not a speck of vegetation. Our guide affirmed the fact that the astronauts had trained in this rocky, barren volcanic landscape in preparation for the moon missions because these conditions most closely approximated the moon’s surface. I could see why!

We didn’t have more than 10 minutes for the Visitor’s Center, but that 10 minutes was mightily interesting. The 3-dimensional model of the island and surrounding sea at the visitor’s center showed that a new island was being formed by volcanic magma flows just off the coast below. The ranger giving the talk also warned us not to scratch our eyes if any grit was blown into our face since the grit was volcanic glass particles and very sharp. That turned out to be a very useful warning.

We drove around the caldera several miles and then branched down into the caldera where an explosion around 1900 had created a new crater about 1/2 mile across inside the large old crater. Prior to the explosion, the crater had been a much smaller 1/4 mile diameter lake of continuously boiling lava for about 60 years. Mark Twain had visited it in the 1860s and written a vivid description of the experience. Although the crater is larger today, the surface has crusted over and solidified to the extent that we just saw vents of gasses, but no molten lava, which we dearly wanted to see. The gases were both smelly and somewhat poisonous--my chest started to ache a little from a combination of the altitude, the exertion of the quick hike on an uneven trail, and those gases. I felt better immediately when we were away from the gases, so I guess that was the cause of it.

We branched off the circle road a second time to drive down to the newest lava eruptions along the seacoast below. The wind picked up tremendously as we weaved down the mountain, rocking the jitney bus on the narrow road. By the time we arrived at the end of the road--the edge of the lava flow--the wind was blowing a steady 50 knots or so with gusts somewhat higher. I wondered why the wind would change velocity so extremely between the mild breeze at the summit of the mountain and the Force 4 or 5 winds at the bottom.

In any event, the wind at the beginning of the trail was so strong that we had to lean into the wind just to keep on our feet. The lava had solidified into very artistic but jumbled freeforms that kept catching my eye all around us as we walked through this bizarre landscape. Although the impression was artistic (or just weird, depending on your point of view), walking on the uneven lava with the strong, gusty wind became doubly treacherous. We walked out as far as they would let us and watched the fascinating spectacle of a huge plume of steam being formed from the hot lava pouring into the sea. Since this plume carried high concentrations of assorted acid vapors, it was a jolly good thing that the winds were blowing it offshore and away from us.

The wind was strong enough to blow volcanic grit in our faces and small pebbles were spitting against our legs on the walk back. I remembered what the Ranger had said and avoided rubbing my eyes. The folks in shorts later complained that the grit and pebbles against their bare legs had hurt rather a lot. At one point, a gust blew so strongly that Monika was actually blown completely over. Fortunately she landed on her hands and was not hurt. All in all, the walk was more exciting, albeit in a different manner, than we had anticipated.

Retracing our route to the circle drive, we drove to the Thurston Lava Tube and walked through it. Lava tubes form when lava is slowing flowing and the outside walls congeal to rock while the liquid lava still flows inside. If the liquid lava is drained off before hardening, the result is a cave-like tunnel with smooth walls. Tree roots dangled from the ceiling and gave this tunnel a distinctly spooky aura. Our guide said that spelunkers had followed these tubes for up to 9 miles from the volcano, but we just walked a short distance and then returned to the surface via a stairway. The trail back to the road was a nice example of the luxuriant vegetation of a tropical rain forest which we enjoyed seeing.

We completed the circle drive and stopped in at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut farm and factor on our way back to Hilo. They were shutting down production for the day, but the last batches were just coming out of the chocolate-coating process and being boxed for shipment. I love these nuts but shouldn’t eat them due to my diet, so visiting the factory and gift shop with Heinz 57 varieties of Macadmia nuts was exquisite torture for me. I was interested to learn that the nut was named for John MacAdam, who was also the inventor of the Macadam road surface. The story, in a nutshell, is that MacAdam was the good friend of the guy who discovered that the nut from this tree was edible and could be a cultivated crop, and the friend named the nut after MacAdam. To avoid overwhelming temptation, Monika and I escaped from the nuthouse and wandered along the small nature trail out in back. I kept busy gathering raw nuts, which was allowed. Unfortunately, we decided to discard them before returning home due to the import restrictions on plant products. As I never found a nutcracker when I had the fresh nuts, I wasn’t able to see if they indeed required 400 lbs. of pressure to crack as our guide claimed.

Although our flight back from Hilo took less than 1/2 an hour, we spent enough time waiting at the airport and waiting for the shuttle bus that we didn’t get back to the hotel room and get dinner until 8:30 or so. Had to read to relax a little before retiring, so didn’t get to sleep until about 10:00.

Saturday, January 18

Our wake-up call came right at 5:00 a.m., but I had moved the phone to the far side of the night stand so that it wasn’t as traumatic this time. We had to shake a leg to get down to the shuttle bus by 5:45, but we made it all right. Our destination of the day was Maui, and by now we had learned the ropes, like waiting at the left side of the door for Aloha airlines to be in line for seats--Aloha does not use seat-specific tickets, so it is “first come, first seated”. The Japanese are excellent at getting into the right line at an early time to get good seats. The spooky thing is how they all instantly and silently obey the commands of their guide--the rise in unison, walk over to the gate en mass, and neatly arrange themselves along the wall as an orderly group, all without making a sound.

Due to confusion (Monika feels it is incompetence) of our airport coordinator, we did not arrive at the gate early enough, and the Japanese were already massed in line. No matter, we got seats together by sitting in the emergency exit row, which requires the occupant to speak English. I expect on the Japanese airlines, the occupants must speak Japanese, but that’s an unfounded assumption. Be that as it may, we took advantage of the situation to get our seats together for the flight to Maui. During the flight I suddenly realized I had left my raincoat on the airport shuttle bus. Darn!

The airport at Maui lies in an isthmus connecting two dormant volcanoes. The smaller one is visible from the airport and looked pretty impressive in the rays of the rising sun. Our tour was a trip completely around the larger volcano, Mount Hilewea, on the other side of isthmus.

Our driver, Mr. Kenali, was largely Hawaiian (most people in the islands are mixtures), and was obviously proud of the fact that he could trace his ancestors back to Tahitians in the last great wave of migration. Considering that the Tahitians brought a rigid caste system, the institution of slavery, a legal system with an instant death penalty for any infraction of taboo (or Kapu), and a religion requiring human sacrifices, I wasn’t so sure I’d be so proud of it, but he was. He was a nice guy, nonetheless, an informative tour guide, and, most importantly as it turned out, a very skillful driver. Our vehicle narrower for this trip, only three seats across (about van width), and at certain points in our trip I understood why--we fit through with truly inches to spare and anything larger would not have made it.

We had a quick stop for a snack at a small country store at a curious town. Beside the store, the town’s major features were a gift shop and a restaurant. The gift shop had very nice, but very pricey antiques and objects de art such as a Harley-Davidson made out of rattan. The restaurant/bar was a German restaurant! Curiously, even the country store had a recording of Marlene Dietrich singing “Auf Wiedersehen” on the radio. I really couldn’t figure it out, but I did find records of German’s settling on some of the islands in the 1800s in the Bishop museum, so maybe that was it.

Continuing on the road to Hana, we drove along the shoreline while winding in and out of the mountain ridges. This type of zig-zag progress along a coastal highway reminded me of Highway 101 in California to the North of Los Angeles. Very scenic. The road was so narrow and twisty that I thought that the tour folks had deliberately put the most difficult part of the loop up front. Boy was I wrong.

We arrived in Hana about 11:30 and had lunch at the (one) restaurant there, which fortunately had a very complete luncheon buffet and salad bar. I found enough fat-free food to be both full and guilt-free, which I achieve only rarely while traveling. Afterwards we quickly scanned the offerings at the Saturday morning flea market on the lawn below. I saw several new-age hippie types there, which surprised me until I vaguely recalled reading that some hippies had retreated to the Hawaiian islands after the collapse of the counter-culture in the 1970s. One 20-something woman was selling personal effects to raise cash. A man was chatting with her about the relative pros and cons of different drugs, which just took me back in a time warp to the kind of discussions I heard on campus in the 1960s. In a slightly different twist from the 60s, another woman was giving backrubs on a portable stand. That looked awfully inviting, but she was too good-looking for me to chance a back rub with Monika around.

Continuing on, the guide warned us that the reason it was called “The Hana Adventure” was that road ahead was going to be really rough. In fact, the road on the other side of Hana became much worse. It narrowed to the point that no lane markings were used because it was essentially a 1-lane road. That would be fine except it had 2-way traffic and I kept getting flashbacks to the time a logging truck had come down a mountain at me on a 1-lane road and I barely avoided becoming particle board. Then the road became even worse by losing any pretense at pavement and having a rutted, washboard gravel surface. It was all up-and-down and in-and-out of the mountain ridges right along the seashore. This offered us breathtaking vistas and equally breathtaking sheer drops off the cliff into the ocean below us. The grandma in the seat behind us became so upset with anxiety from these drop-offs that she traded seats with her daughter to ride next to the aisle where she could not see over the side so well.

The suspension on the bus, as well as the occupants, all received a pounding even after the road changed back to “half-paved” road which had pavement, but deteriorated to such an extent that the ride was just as jolting. We stopped at a country store for refreshments, and I saw that the natives tended to 4-wheel drive vehicles, including an old VW with super-fat tires.

After our snack, we drove through a ranch on the desert side of the island that gets only about 10” of rain a year, compared to 400“ a year in wettest part of the rain forest. Our guide joked about a “Hawaiian roller coaster” and drove us over some sharp-peaked hills fast enough to lift us a little out of our seats, which made the women shriek. We stopped at the only winery in Hawaii on our way back to the airport, but really didn’t like any of it well enough to buy a bottle.

By the time we returned to Oahu the sun had already set, so we decided on our final night to listen to the live band playing Hawaiian music at the food court rather than take it back to our room. We were both sad we had to leave the next day as we had had a lot of fun. After dinner we went shopping for keepsakes for remembering the islands. Monika bought a coral necklace and I bought a hand-carved outrigger canoe. For guarding our house back in Fairfax, we bought a hand-carved Chinese dragon. We packed before turning in to help save time in the morning.

January 19, Sunday

We took the shuttle over to the airport quite early, checked our luggage, stored the carry-on items in a locker, and took THE BUS over to the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. The movie and visiting the memorial itself is a very emotionally evocative experience, very much like visiting the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C. There’s not much I can say about it that could really describe those emotions--you have to experience it. Surprisingly, many Japanese were there, and they seemed to also be suffering emotions of sorrow during the experience.

Afterwards, we walked to the Submarine Blowfish museum next door, but the Hula bowl was going to let out soon and possibly clog the streets with traffic, so we couldn’t really spend any time there. It seemed to be a very good museum with lots of placards to read--I did see the atomic-warhead torpedo which was so powerful it would have damaged the submarine that launched it as well as destroying any fleet it was aimed at. Othewise, we just looked around and hopped back on THE BUS for the airport. While waiting for our flight back, we started writing this chonicle so that we would always remember our Hawaian trip. Aloha!