Auckland to Tiramu

We got to the airport in plenty of time, with no snafus this time. Sat in the general eating and reading area and had a delicious bagel with melted cheese for breakfast while I typed. Felt like home, almost.

A few more New Zealand observations:
It is a treat to be in a place where we get to calculate how much everything costs by multiplying by 0.7. This means that every purchase feels like a discounted item, no matter the price.
Since it is summer, the fruits and vegetables are locally grown and in excellent condition.
The voice on the navigation system has a NZ accent -- we wonder if we can get one of those at home.
Every single meal we have eaten has been off of real dishes with real silverware, whether it is a fast casual place or a cafe. They don't use plastic, they don't give away bags, they have really nifty paper-based packaging when packaging is required. It is hard to get a paper napkin.

We arrived in Christchurch and spent about an hour getting ourselves organized, plowing through email, getting our bags and our car. We were not in a hurry and the airport was extremely comfortable with nice furniture and useful wifi and electrical outlets.

Any guesses on what a "trundler" is?

Then we set out, heading south.  After a while I didn't want to be on a big highway anymore and I requested a different view. Right about then we saw a sign for Rakaia Gorge, so without any more information than that, we went that way, fighting with the navigation system until we just turned it off. There were plenty of good signs. We found ourselves in extremely flat cow and sheep country -- huge farms with big herds, lots of irrigation running, and these immense, manicured hedges between the fields. These hedges were not on a scale that we have ever seen before -- they are more than twenty feet tall, solid, and about four feet wide. Then there were fields and fields of some sort of brassica -- Jon pulled over to climb over a fence and pick a leaf so we could try to identify it. It didn't taste like a strong mustard, it was milder than kale.  We decided it was a cover crop because there was just so MUCH of it everywhere.

Coming over the ridge just before the gorge. You can see some of the hedges, although these are not fully grown together.
They are a solid 20 ft high and 4-6 ft wide when mature.

When we finally got to the parking lot that seemed to be where the gorge was, we had lunch at a picnic table and then I read the detailed sign.

The gorge was a 1- 4 hour hike away, round trip.  Well that wasn't going to work. But it seemed likely that we would be able to see something if we just kept driving on the same road. Once over the river and about 500 meters up on the other side there was a scenic overlook and then 200 more meters up on foot there was a real view.  A striking blue color in the river, lots of glacial till, and big mountains to the west. This explained why all those farms were on such perfectly flat ground -- a glacier had retreated, leaving this vast open Canterbury Plain.

View from the bridge over the river looking downriver. The color of the water is an amazing light blue.

Not such a precipitous gorge but very scenic.

We headed back toward the southbound highway, seeing many more farms and cows and sheep and mountains. The cows were sorted by size and function -- big herds of beef cattle, then herds of young cows, then herds of dairy cows, then baby cows.  The animals were all sleek and shiny, eating miles and miles of grass. We saw lots of equipment dealerships with humongous tractors made by companies we have never heard of.  Dual-wheeled tractors with attachments that were mysterious. We don't know anything about large scale cow and sheep farming.

When we got to Tiramu, our next home base, we had to find a wifi connection to contact our host.  We found a shopping center that had everything we could ever want: a cafe, a large and very satisfying supermarket, a post office, a stationery store. While I sat at a table and drank a civilized pot of tea and wrote more emails (mostly to Becky who is handling all the details of setting up the CSA while we are gallivanting), Jon wandered around and shopped for dinner.

Our new host is yet another single man with a house. This house is right on a bay with a magnificent view. He grew up in this town and moved to Australia for a few years and came back home and found this house for sale. I think he could be about 30 years old, he has been working in earth moving for half his life and now he is a project manager.  A very nice person. We all ate dinner at the same table while Jon and I asked lots of questions. (We had been unable to resist some amazing looking sweet corn at the store, and it ended up being really delicious. Who ever buys corn at a supermarket? We could tell this was going to be good and it was -- giant ears with perfect kernels, yellow corn.)

View from the back of the house.

One Day in Auckland

General observations:
The soil is just like in Hawaii, brown and volcanic and sticky. The grass grows just on the top of the soil and is crunchy like the grass in Hawaii.
The flora is tropical and I don't recognize all the trees but they feel like Hawaii too.
It is about like July in Maine here, according to the calendar and the latitude. So it is hot but not too hot, and everyone is behaving like it is summer.
Every person we have encountered has a lovely New Zealand accent and is very helpful and friendly.
This is a multi-cultural city with people from this side of the world -- mostly Pacific Island and Chinese/Japanese/Korean plus Maori and European.
Lots and lots of interesting food from all around this side of the Pacific.
There is one particular flower in bloom that we haven't yet had a chance to photograph, but it is blue and perennial and looks sort of like cleome but not with pokies. I will find out the name.
Our host had Marmite out for breakfast, in addition to muesli.
The streets and towns have British and Maori names, all mixed together depending on who got to name it first. The non-British words look Hawaiian.
The only thing that really stresses me is sitting in the passenger seat on the left side of the car and feeling like the driver is over-compensating and driving on the extreme left, endangering the passenger and the left mirror. But of course nothing bad happened, it's just a scary place to be, on the left with no steering wheel.
Auckland reminds us of Seattle, in terms of architecture and plants and water everywhere and possibly the general age of the city.
I have been alert to see if I hear American accents and I am pretty sure I haven't heard one.

Very neat and tidy house -- our room on the left. No problems.

We woke up early, considering that we had only gone to sleep at 2 AM, Hawaii time.  But the sun was up at 6:00 and it felt like it was time to get up.  We arrived at The Museum (a very large Greek edifice at the top of a hill, with a grand view of Auckland and the surrounding bay) at about 9:30, half an hour before opening time.  This is the first museum we have ever encountered that opened early, just because. Where we come from that would never happen.

The moa, a little scary.

The museum had one floor for the backstory of Polynesian cultural beginnings (much like the Bishop Museum in Hawaii), the next floor up was natural history and the top floor was New Zealand in various wars.  This island has only been inhabited for about 800 years, which makes it one of the very last places on the planet to house humans.  It was home to the explorers who eventually made their way here, establishing yet another language and culture in the Pacific. In the natural history rooms we learned about all the birds that lived here before mammals arrived. The most amazing one is the moa, a huge ostrich-like bird -- the only wingless bird ever. Its bones were huge and heavy.  It is extinct but it would be quite something to see one of those in real life. We saw what a kiwi looks like (a fluffy sort of puffball with a very long pointy bill).  We thought of our nephews Mark and Brian and how many birds there are to still see out here on these islands. The top floor was lots of information and artifacts about all the wars that New Zealanders have participated in.  Too many. It is a high price to pay for wanting to be part of the world.  As always, we were glad to get that orientation before we started our random tour of this country. We like to get the background information wherever we go.

Oh, there was a whole section about volcanoes. Very detailed, very gruesome in some ways. Lots of science about how they work and why. They are really the reason we still have enough carbon dioxide to keep alive, so they are doing us all a lot of good. There was a whole display on the ten ways you could die from a volcano.  And there were some amazing stories of survival.  In 1982 there was a British Airways passenger jet that flew over a volcano (Mount Galungung) that had erupted, but the crew did not know that had happened, and all four of the engines died. The pilots had no idea what was going on, but they put out a reassuring message to their passengers and then they tried to figure out what to do.  As the plane fell to lower altitudes, eventually one and then all of the engines started again before they crashed. They landed, with some more complications, and no one died. The windows of the airplane were scraped so badly by volcanic ash that it was impossible to see out, and the instrument landing system was inoperable. One of the pilots sat on an armrest and peered out of a tiny place in the window that was not scratched. There was also this room that was set up like a living room and you sit on the couches and look out the front window at a view of the bay.  There is a newscast on the TV talking about the possibility of an imminent eruption, and then the volcano in the window erupts and the TV shuts off and then there is this terrible view of a huge black wave coming toward the window and then the room shakes like an earthquake. Whew. These people have a different reality to endure. Basically if they don't get enough warning and evacuate the region, everyone dies.

After that we went through the wharf area of downtown -- lots of construction and traffic -- and didn't stop there. It was touristy but also full of real businesses and work.  A huge crew ship was right there, and somewhere there was the yacht that won the America's Cup but we didn't identify it as we inched through the streets, focusing on all those left turns and roundabouts.

Maybe the America's Cup yacht, being towed so fast it is up on its foils.

We were aiming for the North Head, a point at the end of a peninsula that faces Auckland from across the bay.  First we stopped to pick up some fish and chips and then we stopped at a local beach called Northern Neck. There we had a picnic and watched children playing in the water -- there was a camp that was for learning to boogie board. Jon and I agreed that it looked like all camps: trying to find organized ways to use up time and keep the kids entertained. Lots of running into the water, diving in and swimming about ten feet, returning to the beach, and running back out, as a race.  Pointless but entertaining.  It was sunny and lovely.

The North Head was a familiar place, as we have visited many such spots with bunkers and places for big guns, as they watch out for enemies during war. Diamond Head is the most like it, but there are many others: Gibraltar, Dover, even north of Bethany in NJ.  We climbed to the top of the hill and looked at the view from all sides.  There was a beach below that was super shallow -- people walked out in ankle deep water for a very long way. On the hill, there were kids sliding down the steep grassy slope on cardboard, having no snow or any possibility of snow ever. (More like Seattle than Maine.)

Guns to the left with Auckland across the bay.

All that bay, inside the trees, is no deeper than your knees.

We had dinner at a food court that offered all sorts of Asian dishes -- we opted for Malaysian.  My laksa was soupier than I remembered from the last time (in Amsterdam) but the flavor was wonderful: coconut cream, mildly spicy.

Eight different stalls with all drinks sold at a single counter.

After dinner we looked at the map to see how easy it would be to get out of the city for a bit, since it wouldn't get dark until about 9:00. We happened to choose a route that got us into horse and cow and sheep country as soon as we got out of the suburbs. And the terrain was very much like the Shire in The Hobbit (which I just read,  to be ready for this landscape). It was steeply hilly, rounded and green, stunning in its contrasts of sheep-clipped grass and big hedges, as far as you could see.  We went through a little town that had signs saying it was an artist town, but it was all asleep by the time we passed through. I yelled at Jon constantly to say away from the ditch on the left, and stop turning on the windshield wipers all the time. He did everything just fine, and we were both very glad to have a navigation system in the car so I wouldn't have to look at his phone and try to direct without benefit of wifi. That is a disaster.

Crossed the International Dateline

I am sitting here in a lovely, sunny kitchen in Auckland -- the sun has been up since about 6:00 because we have switched seasons, switched days, switched islands, switched countries. All in one ten hour trip. I have my hot yucky next to me and Jon is studying up on how we will navigate today.  Last night was a bit of a trial, but we did get out of the airport and all the way to a real bed, eventually.

The day started on Saturday, rainy and blustery as usual.  After Auntie Annette came back from walking the dog (I am always a tiny bit nervous that she won't come back, but she always does. She says the dog knows the way. Oh good.), we got ourselves over to the Saturday farmers market.  Super crowded and busy because busloads of tourists get dropped off from nearby Waikiki.

There are a few stalls with real food from real farms but mostly it is a snack bar, with people standing in line for smoothies and fried green tomatoes and fancy hamburgers and various lunch items. 

This one is mostly Vietnamese.

People were eating grilled meat at 9:30 in the morning.  It was windy (I checked to see how all those pop-up tents were secured. Very familiar.) and humid.  Most of the real vegetables had been picked over, two hours into the market, but we got some nice greens and too many other things, since we were just leaving all that food in their fridge.

Then started the long trek out of Hawaii.  We think we have it all organized, but something always happens anyway.  This time we stood in line for security (the line started at the curb, and it was long) but by the time we got to the front we realized that "ticketed passengers" meant "passengers with tickets in their hands."  Most airports start out with a sort of lobby experience where you go to the kiosk and get your tickets. Not this one. It took us 45 minutes to right that situation. The place was mobbed.  The TSA people were run ragged. There was still an effort to be cheerful and aloha-friendly, but they were tired and scrambling. We got to the gate as they were starting to board, so really nothing bad happened except that we had to fret (Jon had to fret) and sweat (that was me, walking through those long hallways on my dumb knee and dragging stuff).  Absolutely the hardest part about traveling for me is getting from one comfortable place to the next -- it was three hours of transition between Puamamane St and our seat on a packed plane. Jon was doubly frustrated because we had to stand in line twice because they were bureaucratically chaotic and didn't log in that we really did have tickets to get back out of New Zealand.  I remained zen and sweaty. Thank goodness Alissa had alerted us a day earlier that there was now a visa requirement, so at least we had that handled correctly.

Ten hours of movies and snacks and napping and sitting way too still, but at last we were set free (after they fulfilled the quarantine requirements of this country and sprayed all the baggage in the overhead compartments with some sort of pesticide after we landed.  Can that really work?).

The directions for picking up the rental car were all directed to people who arrive before midnight, on a domestic flight, so we got a grand walking tour of the entire Auckland airport, plus the parking lots and sidewalks in between the two terminals. There were helpful signs about how many more meters we had to go. At that hour, the domestic terminal is closed, actually. But two very, very nice people helped us figure it out and eventually we were in our little car with the steering wheel on the right.  There was a full moon, it was warm and lovely, and at midnight there is very little traffic trying to run you down as you careen down the highway on the left side of the road.

We had missed all but about half an hour of Sunday, and we will never get Sunday, January 12 back again. It is already Monday morning, we woke up early because who really knows what time it is anyway, and we are about to go out for one day of looking around this new city in this new country.

More Cousin Visits, More Eating

Our first order of business was getting these old folks to their appointments, so we got organized and in the car in plenty of time. While Auntie Annette was getting her eyes checked, I went outside to be on a call with people in Tennessee and South Carolina, talking about strategic planning for Southern SAWG. It was funny to be sitting on a bench outside an office at Queens Hospital in the wind and occasional showers, trying to take notes and actually think about issues that are far, far away from here.  Finished the call by the time Annette was done at the doctor's, and in the meantime I had succeeded in tracking down my cousin Alan. So we made a plan to meet for lunch.

Everyone always looks the same.

We met at a very casual, very local Vietnamese place and filled our table with plate lunches.  We haven't seen Alan in many years but last year when Anna was here with the big family group, they got together for a family party. Like his mother Arlene, Alan has an amazing memory for people and details, and he asked questions about every single family member and stored the answers away. His oldest boy, Tyler, is getting his masters in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech so we talked a lot about what it was like to make the decision to go there, and what it is like to live in the South. He pointed out that when you are in school you are generally insulated from your surroundings, and that school fit all of Tyler's requirements. The younger one, Micah, is still at Punahou and starting to ponder which elite school on the mainland will deserve his parents' money. Alan is such a nice guy -- so much like his parents (Auntie Arlene says, "it's scary, isn't it?").  Like his parents, he has a clear-eyed view of the costs and benefits of living in Hawaii. His kids will need to earn plenty of money if they do want to come back here.

It was STILL super windy but Jon and I went back out to Waimanalo to look at the beach. Only one guy was in the water and there were just a few people like us, just standing and looking at the waves and the sky but not going in. We went to a well-reviewed ice cream store and got the most famous flavor: coconut macadamian nut.  Plus kahlua fudge.  Even if it is rainy, it is not cold here so the ice cream store was busy.

Flags being ripped apart in the wind.

Then back downtown for dinner at Babe and Arlene's condo on the 12th floor, overlooking Honolulu, Diamond Head -- a really great view. They say they can plan their driving without a navigation system by looking down to see the traffic.  Arlene made a delicious dinner that fit everyone's dietary restrictions -- watercress and tofu soup, ginger fish, kubocha squash with char siu and snap peas, Japanese sweet potatoes, kim chee cucumbers.  She can literally cook better than anyone, standing on one leg. All the food came out hot, as she had staged the cooking over two days.

I had been texting with another cousin Scott for three days, trying to figure out how to fit into his schedule. It turns out he has been ill for almost a year, with esophageal cancer. At the moment he is cancer-free after lots of aggressive chemo and radiation, but he has not been able to swallow for twelve months. A whole year of a feeding tube, with lots of struggles and learning. He and Tammy arrived at about 9:00, just when we were getting ready to head out.  When Anna was here in December, he was a robust 210 pounds. Today he is a very long and lean 150 pounds. He says that is almost his high school weight.  Looking around the room last night, I realized that 5 out of 8 people had lost really significant amounts of weight due to health struggles.  Only Tammy and Annette and I have held steady.  So the conversation was almost completely about the last year of hospitalization and treatments. Scott is younger than I am, so it's not just old people. Or I guess we are old people too, really. He was always the goofy, super relaxed and cheerful one -- the oldest of three boys.  They are all like that but he was always kind of the dopiest one. He is much more able to say what is true now, and still be very upbeat. He says he is at heart a pessimist, so he won't believe in his survival for a while. He was told the survival rate of this cancer is 33%. I said, I'll take it! You can do that. He said that 's what his brother Matt said too, but he is not going to count on anything.

This trip has been quick, with a focus on seeing people rather than seeing Hawaii. I feel lucky that we got in the water twice since it has been crazy windy and rainy.  I haven't worn shoes since we arrived. I even went into restaurants without shoes on even though that's really what kids do, not grown-ups. No rain coat. Not at all necessary since it stops raining by the time we get to the next place, every time. I feel bad leaving these people without a clear plan for transportation next week but I can't really solve those problems, I can only pass on my best ideas to the cousins in charge. Eventually they will figure it out. There will be plenty of complicated times. Getting old is full of complications, for sure.

In four days, we saw: Annette, Freddy, Berta, Donna, Babe, Arlene, Pat, Alan, Scott, Tammy. And we had real conversations with all of them, we didn't just see them for a minute.  Time well spent on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Too bad this is so far away from home.

Hanauma Bay!

This is the windiest January some can remember here -- all day and all night.  It blows and blows, then it rains some, stops raining the next minute, more wind.

This morning it wasn't raining, mostly, so we decided to try to go to Hanauma Bay. Haven't been there for years and years because of all the barriers to entry. First of all, the parking lot fills up really fast. If you happen to get in before it fills up, then you have to pay $7.50 for a ticket and then wait for the mandatory "safety" movie.  Everyone who goes to this beach has to watch a 9 minute movie on the importance of preserving the reef. It is an amazing beach, on the inside of a crater, filled with fish that live on the coral reef. The sand is nice, the water is lovely. It is the closest beach to Auntie Annette's house with nice sand. Some of the fish are unique to this bay -- the only place in the WORLD for these fish.  In the old days, the parking lot was just a cleared area at the top of the crater and you walked down a steep stairway and then down the rest of the road to the beach. Now they have paved a much bigger space and they charge for parking and entrance. The hill is still steep. We walked down and we walked back up, even though there is a tram that will give you a ride for less money than the Dulles Toll Road.

Classic view as you walk down to the beach. Not too many people in the choppy water.

It is all worth it.

The water was rough because of the wind, so there were big waves crashing on the reef, pretty close to shore.  The area for safe snorkeling was much smaller than usual. But still when you put your mask on and put your face in the water, there is so much to see right below you.  Just a few feet under your belly are all colors of fish, chewing on the coral, swimming in schools, swirling around. It was murky because the waves were stirring up the sand on the bottom and the sun was intermittent. And there were hairless beach apes all around. It was incredible anyway.  We stayed much longer than we meant to.

Hard to see in this picture but there were big breakers through the bay, some crashing on the rocks.

Then we came home and picked up Auntie Annette for an impromptu lunch at Aina Haina Chop Suey (her choice). I had saimin for old times sake but it wasn't nearly as delicious as I remember. Since the days of saimin there are so many new and interesting flavors. Pho is much more complex. Then we went to the Chinese deli that Babe says is the best on the island and got some char siu for dinner.

Home for naps and then we mobilized again. Went to see Auntie Pat and learned all about her boys and her life.  She is very easy to visit and very glad to be visited. Jon watched a golf tournament on her giant TV -- they were playing at Waialae, just miles from us. We had just driven past that golf course a few hours before, not knowing there was some national event going on right next to the road. Apparently the wind was a big factor today.

Quiet dinner with Annette and Fred, just leftovers. We made good progress on the inventory in the fridge. We talked about how lucky these two are to be able to eat what they want, compared to so many people we know with serious health issues. Auntie Annette pondered what her life would be like if Uncle Freddy didn't live here too -- she wouldn't be able to live by herself.  She thought about her friends who are living in senior housing. Somehow she wasn't horrified by the thought but she is glad to be here, living with her brother who does all the cooking, quiet and independent for now.

Dim Sum and Shave Ice

It was raining and windy this morning so we decided to stay home and do homework. Jon resumed his dreaded job of planning the next leg of this trip and I sat at the table and wrote stuff and answered email.  This winter I am starting the project of figuring out how to write a memoir.  It may take a while, but I am making some new piles of words. When I read other people's memoirs, they seem so effortless. It will be a while before my project looks effortless.

At 10:30 we rounded ourselves up to go to Chinatown to meet up with Uncle Babe and Auntie Arlene for dim sum.

We went to Fook Lam, a crowded restaurant with big round tables all jammed into one room.  I realized that there seemed to be no tourists at all.  Everyone knew how to order dim sum at a rapid pace, and fend off the hard sell when they didn't want any more. We always leave it all to Auntie Arlene.  The elders all ate chicken feet very happily but I have no interest, no matter how delicious they may be. I know what they've been walking in.

We came back to Niu Valley and dropped off Annette and Fred.  Jon talked to Alissa in Australia, trying to firm up our plans. She says there is no evidence of fire or smoke where she is, north of Sydney.  Phew.

Jon and I went back downtown to Ala Moana Beach. He is never excited about that beach but it has many fine qualities -- good sand, clear view of Diamond Head, many locals, easy parking, close showers and changing rooms, nice water with no icky things in it, a very long stretch of protected water inside the breakers where you can swim parallel to the beach.  I swam a long way out with the wind at my back and then I fought my way back with the current against me.

Then to the original Waiola Shave Ice -- Uncle Babe and Charles agree that this is the best on the island. So smooth and fine. We shared a pina colada bowl with lilikoi topping and ice cream inside.  Hard to get better than that.

Jon made a cucumber salad he has been trying to perfect for years (still trying) and Auntie Annette and I made fried rice. Berta came over for dinner and told us about the months of getting this house back in order, including trapping all the rats that had settled in. Donna came by to repeat to her mother and uncle that they need to make a plan, one that will work, for their transition from driving to being driven by others.  This has been a theme of this visit and we are talking about it a lot.

I know this is not what most people think of when they imagine going to Hawaii. We will be real tourists in a few days.

75 Degrees and Sunny/Rainy

We are back in the land of rainbows after a three year absence. In so many ways, it feels like nothing has changed since we were here.  Auntie Annette and Uncle Freddy seem so much the same, even though they are 87 and 83 years old by now.

Both are retired without a huge to-do list so they have time to let us interrupt their lives, and it doesn't seem like such an interruption. We help them eat the leftovers from the fridge. We sit with them and talk about anything and everything. Time is not that relevant.

But really the house is very different because they just went through a flood-by-rats who chewed the washing machine hose.  Possibly twice.  The story has become vague already but it seems there were two separate floods. In the process of replacing the flooring, asbestos was remembered/found, and now the entire house has new wood floors.  The two octogenarians were displaced for about three months while other people removed all the wet stuff and took the whole place apart.  Because she has attentive and forward-thinking daughters, Auntie Annette doesn't have quite as much in the house as she used to.  It is a blessing, and she even says that.

Because we have less time here than usual, we were motivated to get out of the house and do something on our first morning.  Of course I woke up way before daylight because of the five hour time difference, and then when Jon went outside the dog went berserk and barked so much that he woke up the rest of the sleeping people.  Whoops. They usually sleep at least until the sun comes up...

We left Fred here to finish his sleep and took Annette with us on a leisurely tour around the island.  It was a very windy day so the ocean was choppier than sometimes and there were fewer people in the water at Sandy Beach. 

With the big wind chop, there weren't many people at the beach.

We stopped at whatever beach parks we fancied, to watch the surfers and the kids. We went through the part of the island that they think of as "the country" -- where there are farms and horses and low buildings on the mountain side of the road (the road stays pretty close to the coast all the way around the leeward and north shore).  When we got to Kaneohe, we stopped at the Safeway for picnic provisions.

A stopped tour bus alerted us there was something to see, and a Monk seal was it.

We stopped to eat next to a bay with small waves and strong winds so we could watch the surfers on their newfangled boards -- they have foils that are below the surfboard (which is the size of a wide boogie board).  As they come in on these small waves with the wind pushing at their backs, they kind of jump and let the board come up out of the water so they are just sailing on the foil. It looks so weird, having the surfboard above the surface and then a post below, perpendicular to the water. The foil is invisible under the water. We packed up our lunch quickly when it started to rain, and continued around the island.

Picnics are a core of travelling.

Up near the Polynesian Cultural Center and well beyond it there are so many more places to shop and eat and shop some more. There are one story outdoor malls and clusters of food trucks and informal markets with coconuts and garlic shrimp and poke bowls.  Still the road is just two lanes, and it sure seems like the ocean is just about touching the road in some spots.  Big machines repairing road surfaces all around that side of the island.

Looking out to sea, to see.

We didn't stop at Matsumoto's for shave ice (which Charles says isn't very good anyway) but we did stop at the tourist-infested Dole Plantation for pineapple ice cream.

Got to have the pineapple soft serve at the koi pond.

Our next destination -- after going through the boring part of the island where I just tipped my seat back and took a nap -- was the Diamond Head Memorial Garden. I wanted to see Grandpa and Grandma Hiu's graves since I never remember seeing them before.  We wandered around for a while looking for them before Jon finally went and asked for directions. When we went to the correct section, it was super easy to find them since they were right next to the road, where Auntie Annette knew they would be.

While we were driving around we were sending and receiving texts from Charles in China, Lani in her cave in Purcellville, Anna and Mom and Michael L. in Vienna. Lani said she was just entertained to be looking at the "Find My Friends" app on her phone.  When I opened my eyes on the freeway, I saw a school bus going by that said "hanalani.org."  Why didn't I think of that name before?  Wasn't quick enough to take a picture but it wouldn't have been very interesting anyway.

After going back home to recuperate from such a strenuous day, we headed back out for dinner with Auntie Arlene and Uncle Babe.  We haven't seen them since their terrible first 9 months of 2019 when both were felled by a range of health crises. Now they each have lost about 20 - 25 pounds and they just look teeny.  Auntie Arlene says she doesn't get much sympathy as she tries to regain her weight. When we discussed how much her prosthetic foot might weigh (as in, you don't have to regain that weight because that shouldn't count), she took it off to see how much we estimated it weighed.  Uncle Freddy covered his face when we handed it across the table. We thought she was probably right, it doesn't weigh much more than five pounds. We did end up talking about health issues a lot at this meal, but that's because we are all getting old faster than before. All four of those elders are in very good shape, except for their body parts, real and replacement.

Jon and I were trying to reconstruct how many times we have been to Hawaii.  I think I may be on my 15th or 16th trip and this could be his 9th, maybe. For me it is like coming back to one of my childhood homes since my memories are so clear and it all looks so familiar. It feels familiar. The food is the same. Kaimuki looks like a movie set from the 1960s, with many of the same businesses along the main roads. There are still customers to patronize a store that sells crack seed? (Flavored plum pits etc.) The air is the same: soft and wet and breezy. The ocean is the same: a spectacular mix of turquoise and blues. The aunts and uncles are the same but now I am older than they were back then. They are all much mellower than they were 40 or 50 years ago, that's for sure. When we come back I like to see relatives (a whole generation has died) and eat things that we always ate and go to beaches we played at the most. It is different from being a tourist, although we are certainly not locals. Very lucky to have Hawaii as one of our home bases.  Always feels like we should get back here more often, but it sure is far.  But now time feels more precious as the youngest of my mother's siblings turns 80 next week.