Molly's Holi 2010

[Molly Mockford]

Back in 2007, I wrote a journal of my holiday in the Highlands and Islands, which Howard posted here on a daily basis.

I am now about to go on holiday again - the first real one since the last one.  I am going to Hawai'i, to spend a couple of weeks with friends I haven't yet met!  I shall try to produce a similar sort of journal for your delectation.

I leave tomorrow morning - the taxi is due at 7:30 to take me to Heathrow, and I fly out at 11:10 to Los Angeles, where I change for my flight to Honolulu, arriving just under 24 hours after I leave home.  It will be at least the following day before I post, maybe the day after that.  The time difference is ten hours - when it's 10am here, it's midnight there - so I may be pretty jet-lagged!

[Howard]

I'm very much hoping that the current tsunami alert in Hawai'i (following the dreadful earthquake in Chile) will remain that -- just an alert.  And I imagine the danger will have passed by the time Molly gets to L.A.

Talking of alerts, we're on Flood Watch here in Lewes.  There's due to be a huge storm tonight and tomorrow with lashings of rain.  But don't worry, Molly: if it comes to it (and we don't think it will, to be quite honest) we'll get your important stuff up into your upstairs.

[Windsong]

This will be interesting!  Always wanted to go to Hawaii!

[Molly Mockford]

I'm very much hoping that the current tsunami alert in Hawai'i (following the dreadful earthquake in Chile) will remain that -- just an alert.  And I imagine the danger will have passed by the time Molly gets to L.A.

The tsunami didn't affect Hawai'i (or, as far as I know, anywhere else) badly at all.  I gather there was a separate, simultaneous, earthquake in Japan.  But I didn't hear anything about it until I arrived at Baggage Reclaim in Honolulu - although when I logged in, there were SEVENTEEN tsunami alert updates to my Hawaii.edu e-mail address!

Talking of alerts, we're on Flood Watch here in Lewes.  There's due to be a huge storm tonight and tomorrow with lashings of rain.  But don't worry, Molly: if it comes to it (and we don't think it will, to be quite honest) we'll get your important stuff up into your upstairs.

Many thanks, How!

[Molly Mockford]

Saturday 27th February 2010

This is the journal of my holiday to Hawai'i, to visit my friends Mickey and Connie.  Eight thousand miles each way, and over 24 hours door-to-door travel;  but it's going to be worth every yard and every second!

The taxi arrived at 6:30 am to take me to Heathrow.  It was a good clear run  up the M23 and M25, and we got to the airport in plenty of time – which was just as well, because I mis-read my notes and told the driver it was Terminal 4 – when it should have been Terminal 3!   I realised my mistake as soon as I looked at the departures board and my flight wasn't there.  So it was a matter of catching a (free) train to Terminal 3, after which all went smoothly.

I had been told on the phone the day before that I had to check in three hours before the 11:10 flight rather than two hours, but once I'd checked my large bag there was a lot of time to fill.  I'd bought two ³/₄-litre bottles of water which of course I couldn't take through Security, so I sat and drank them and watched the people who always mill purposelessly around the airports of the world.  This was England, so of course I didn't talk to anybody.  After an hour or so, reasonably hydrated, I tackled security.  Had the expected fuss over my medication, solved by producing not only a specific medical certificate but also a prescription;  however, it was all conducted in a very friendly manner, and one of the two security officials on my case was from Kenya so we had a grand chat about East Africa generally and my visit to Tanzania – how long ago was that?  Before the flood of 2000, for sure.

Having had to remove my trainers for security, I took the opportunity to change into my flight socks (which don't compress quite as much as they did before I lost weight, but I reckon still do their job) and waited in the departure lounge, again watching people mill around.

We took off on schedule at 11:10 and flew straight up the British Isles (ooh, matron!).  One hour later we were crossing the Western Isles – right across Skye, then Lewis & Harris.  My last real holiday, in 2007, was there – and many of you reading this journal will have read the journal of that one.

Planes are horribly dehydrating, and they only served water in silly little quarter-pint cups.  (Before I trained them that I didn't want the cup packed with ice, it could only hold an eighth of a pint!)  So I started on the first of many Diet Cokes.  Lord knows what kind of chemicals I was pouring into my body, but at least there were no calories.  Lunch wasn't too bad:  rather than chicken (which would undoubtedly have been battery-farmed) I chose mushroom ravioli, which came with a salad which looked as though its dog had just died, a pumpkin-seed roll and butter, crackers and cheese spread and – as if all that wasn't enough – chocolate cake with a thick mousse-type icing.  (And I was drinking *Diet* Coke??!)

By 2pm we were passing south of Iceland – didn't get to see it, even in the distance – and by 2:30 we reached Greenland.  (These times are GMT;  by now we'd already skipped three time zones.)  Mickey had told me to watch out for Greenland, and he was so right – it was stunningly beautiful.  What I at first thought was snow-covered land was in fact pack-ice;  as we got closer I could see the land rising up from the ice, uniformly white;  wonderful sharp serrated peaks, all covered in snow and ice.

I didn't get much sleep last night – no more than three hours.  It was partly excitement, and partly terror of sleeping through the alarm and missing the taxi.  I was up and doing by 3:30am, because there was no way I was going to get any more sleep!  I can't sleep on planes;  but I caught the odd half-hour's doze.  I dozed over most of Greenland (which was mainly covered in cloud), re-surfacing as we left its south-western corner over Godthab (?) - again, no cloud at the coastline, masses of snow-covered hills and peaks, but no sea-ice – although there was more ice in the Davis Strait.  We clocked through timezone after timezone, and there seemed to be an awful lot of land north of where I had always thought of Canada to stop.  I guess it was a mixture of sea and strips of land;  all of it frozen now.

Another doze, and I switched my watch to Los Angeles time – eight hours behind GMT.  So it was 9:30 LAX, 17:30 GMT, and time for breakfast – which was uniformly carbohydrate.  So much for my usual piece-of-fruit breakfast!  We crossed Canada in a south-westerly direction, crossing over Regina and by 12:10 approaching the Rockies.  I wasn't in a window seat, but from where I was I could get reasonable views.  Canada gave way from vast expanses of geometrically-laid-out fields (presumably dedicated to wheat when not snow-covered) to rising white peaks of the foothills of the Rockies.  I was lucky to see those, though – because from then on the Rockies were completely covered in cloud so thick and flat you felt you could go langlauf-skiing across it.

By now my body-clock was well into the evening, so of course they gave us lunch (well, it was lunchtime in Los Angeles, after all).  Miracle of miracles, there was FRUIT!!  Eight grapes, carefully packaged in two rows of four in a sealed plastic container.  And what looked like a cheese pie but was actually a very soggy, very deep cheese-and-tomato-sauce pizza.  And, of all things, shortbread.  I have eaten more carbohydrate today than in the whole of the last month!

The cloud cover continued all the way to Los Angeles.  As we descended below it, I peered out in hopes of seeing the Hollywood Sign (with Dory Previn's song "Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign" running through my head – but no sighting of it.  It's probably miles away.

Went through Immigration (a delightful young man from Ukraine;  he was on the residents channels, but they'd finished all the residents so he called me over from the visitors' queue.  "Does this mean that I'm now a United States citizen?" I asked.  "No," he said, "because you can speak English.  Most of our new citizens take 20 years to learn it."  And this with a strong Ukrainian accent, bless him!  I was finger-and-thumb-printed (electronically) both hands – the first time in my life that I can remember.  By then, the bags were there to be reclaimed.  I got mine, and headed out;  a helpful chap told me to pass the check-in bag to someone else to check straight in for the flight to Honolulu.  Then I was out of that area – and wondering where on earth the rest of the airport was!  It turned out that I had to go out into the street, down a pavement, and then catch a lift up to the third floor, which is where Departures are.

Now things began to get confusing.  I had bought a bottle of a fairly decent champagne in the duty-free shop in Heathrow.  Security at Heathrow were fine with it, but warned me that at Los Angeles I would have to put it in my checked-in bag, because it wouldn't be allowed in the cabin on the second leg of the flight.  I forgot all about this ... so when I got to Security, they said I couldn't take it with me.  I allowed my lower lip to wobble judiciously, and the lass who was dealing with me brightened up and said that if I put it in one of my two carry-on bags (a regular flight bag with my laptop, camera, camcorder etc., and my backpack with books and paperwork and wanted-on-voyage things) I could check that in, and then we'd be OK.  Well, there was no way I was going to entrust the bag full of electronics (let alone some irreplaceable and fragile presents) to the baggage handlers, so the backpack had to be the one checked in.  I hastily shifted stuff between the two bags, the lass whisked me off to a check-in desk, I checked in the backpack, back to security, through security, and into the departure lounge.  By now I was desperately thirsty again; I went up to one of the concessions and bought a bottle of water.  Well, I would have bought it...

... because it was at that point that I remembered that all my dollars were still in my backpack.  And not even in the main compartment, which I had padlocked;  in a very easily accessible flap pocket on the outside!  Well, too late to do anything about it now.  I'd just have to keep my fingers crossed that it was still there when I was reunited with the bag – but if it wasn't, I could hardly blame the airline.  Leaving $500 in an unlocked pocket in a backpack is not one of the most sensible things I've done in my life!

So I sat in the departure lounge, getting thirstier and thirstier.  The flight was delayed 20 minutes because a flight attendant hadn't turned up.  I chatted to a nice Hawaiian man sitting next to me;  he and his wife had been to Denver to visit their daughter and son-in-law, and he was looking forward to getting back to Honolulu and warmer temperatures!   Eventually we all boarded the plane.  This time I had a window seat, of a set of three;  there was a young man in the aisle seat.  He slept through most of the flight, which effectively trapped me there;  towards the end of the six hours, I had to wake him up so that I could get out to go to the loo.  On the first leg of the flight I had been up out of my seat every hour or two, either processing all the liquid I was consuming or just moving my legs about.  On this one, they told me they didn't have much water to offer me ("only these few bottles for 160 people") – so it was back on the diet Coke again.  I lost count;  but I think I had around seven during the whole trip.

We took off, and I had my first sight of the Pacific Ocean.  And almost my last;  it was uniformly cloudy, so I dozed, and read (on the trip I got  about a fifth of the way through James Michener's enormous tome "Hawaii", which is well over 1000 pages long), and watched an extraordinarily extended sunset;  because we were flying due west, the sunset lasted for about two hours, and by the end was the most amazing deep blood-red I have ever seen.

And suddenly, after six hours, the cloud began to clear;  and down below me was an astonishing tracery of gold and silver lights, looking like a spider's web dipped in gold dust, or millions of strings of fairy lights. (I was inevitably reminded of poor old Lt.Cmdr. Tommy Woodroffe's drunken "The Fleet's Lit Up" BBC broadcast – "It's fairyland!  It's just like fairyland!")  The plane circled around the island, and came in to land.  This was a domestic flight, so there was no officialdom to go through;  just baggage reclaim, where I waited, and waited...  I couldn't even phone Mickey to say I'd arrived, because of having left all my US money in the backpack.  Eventually my regular case arrived on the carousel;  and more and more people collected theirs;  and I started to worry vaguely;  but suddenly there the backpack was.  I grabbed it, unzipped the pocket – and there was my money, intact, inviolate.  Phew!

Off to the payphones to let Mickey know where I was;  and then outside to meet him and Connie – for the first time, because up until now this friendship has been all e-mail and telephone, and this is our first meeting face-to-face.  A moment's panic, as I walk the length of the pavement without seeing them, but as I turn back and re-trace my steps, suddenly there's Mickey's back, walking away from me, hunting for me, so I call out – and we meet at last!!   Mickey puts a beautiful scented white-and-yellow lei around my neck, and Connie appears seemingly from nowhere (she was behind the wheel of the car), and suddenly, after the longest journey of my life, everything is real!

Once we got back to the house,  it took me at least an hour to come down from hyper levels and feel ready for bed.  To me, it was 8am on Sunday morning, not 10pm on Saturday night!  But I've arrived, I'm here, and everything is just as marvellous as I hoped it would be.

[Howard]

The tsunami didn't affect Hawai'i

Yes, certainly didn't seem to.  We were channel-hopping between Fox and BBC News between 9 and 10pm GMT, when the tsunami was supposed to hit Hawai'i, and there were real-time shots of people sitting on the cliff tops overlooking a bay.  It was a bit difficult to tell when the tsunami swell arrived -- perhaps a slight difference in the wave pattern?  Well, I say 'waves', but ripples would be a better description -- so slight that I doubt if even a beginner surfer would be bothered to spit into them!

Our own alert also turned out to be a non-event too, thank God, at least on this side of the Channel.  The storm must have veered away; all we got here in the SE was light rain and freshish breezes*.   Not so on the French coast, alas -- see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8542361.stm .


* My barometer did register a very low pressure, however: 978 mbars.

[Howard]

Wot!  No Updates? 

[steveg]

Wot!  No Updates? 

Just what I was thinking Howard.... 

[Molly Mockford]

Sunday 28th February 2010

My body clock hasn't adjusted yet;  I slept from midnight to 3am, then dozed on and off until 5am at which point I decided to get up.  I unpacked (I only did the bare minimum last night) and put everything away, set up the laptop on the tiny desk/drawers in the corner of the room, found that the wireless has no password, and went on-line.  At 6:45 I showered and dressed, and went upstairs (the guest room is downstairs;  the house is built on a hill, so the back is one floor lower than the front).  It was raining, and windy.  There was no sign of Connie and Mickey yet, so I ate a banana, then raided the fridge and assembled a bagel with loads of cream cheese and some extraordinarily delicious pickles.  Connie and Mickey surfaced around 8:30, before which I wandered around taking photos of all the memorabilia displayed around the place (Mickey collects masks from around the world) and photographing a rainbow which had appeared above Waikiki.

Connie had things to do around the house, so Mickey drove me to the University campus and showed me some of the more interesting bits – a lovely little Japanese garden where he and Connie were married, and a square building with a wide overhang where various groups were sheltering from the rain while carrying out exercises.  There was a Tai Chi group, and a group doing Ken-Jitsu (like Kendo but more physical and less stylised), one of whom came up and declared himself to be the ex-husband of the cousin of Mickey's eldest daughter's husband.  Hawai'i is like that!  (Wait until you read the Radio Shack account tomorrow.)  There were also two hula dancers, one male and one female, both students being trained by their instructor;  we watched them for a while.  We both took a fair number of photos. Then we went on to Mickey's office (equipped with Macs with enormous wide-screen monitors;  I was glad to see that the web site I wrote for Mickey still looked fine at such a high resolution).

Photo of Mickey

We drove back to pick up Connie, then went out to get lunch at a Chinese place which specialises in dumplings (I've forgotten the Chinese name) with different fillings.  One buys them to take away, and it was a problem finding somewhere to sit and eat them, because the wind was strong.  While the weather didn't feel cold to me, it was cold for Hawai'i, and in the end we parked the car in a sunny spot and ate in the car.  We'd bought rather a lot, and only got through about a third of it!  Then it was a coastal drive round the bottom right-hand corner of Oahu island (they don't tend to use compass descriptions like south-east here, the descriptions refer to landmarks – in the direction of Diamondhead mountain, in the direction of the sea, in the inland direction etc.).  I always want to take lots of photos on trips like that, but often feel guilty that I'm holding things up;  however, Mickey was also keen to take plenty of photos, so there was no problem.  We started at Kalauloa Cove, where there are horizontal rocks against which the waves break impressively.  Every year, people who go there to fish are drowned as they are swept off the rocks by the waves.  (The island, like all the Hawaiian islands, is built of volcanic rock, so parallel layers of rock are formed from layer after layer of lava, rather than the sedimentary rock which one gets in so many other places.)

Photo of blowhole

From there we moved on the Halona Point Blowhole (see above), where waves surge into a cave and are forced out through a hole in the roof, either as fine smoke-like spray or as a violent white jet of water.  This meant a great many more photographs!  Next stop was Makapuu Beach Park, where it was windy, but I got shots of Rabbit Island (which looks exactly like a whale, even unto the eye on the side of its head).  On via Mount Olo Mano to a place called Pali, which seems to be a natural wind-tunnel. You can lean on the wind at an extraordinary angle, although I was nervous lest the wind suddenly dropped, which would send me crashing to the ground!  A couple of young men were grabbing an upright pole and flinging themselves in the air, their bodies being held out horizontally by the force of the wind.  Very impressive!  But I wasn't tempted to emulate them.

Back to the house, where the self-introduced peahens put an in appearance.  They turned up all on their own some time ago, and have become quite tame;  one will eat from the hand, although the other won't.  Connie loves birds, and has a couple of dozen budgies in an aviary and a parakeet in its own cage, and another, larger, aviary is in the course of construction.  So she happily feeds the peafowl in the car port.  If they don't get fed there, they will simply walk into the kitchen and steal the cat's food!  (The cat, Skittles, is very pretty but rather shy.)

Photo of Connie with peahens

My elderly laptop is playing up.  I wasn't sure where the weak point lay at first, but I couldn't download today's photos to the laptop;  it wouldn't recognise the camera.  Eventually I borrowed Mickey's memory card reader and copied the photos over that way, but didn't have time to winnow or process them.  At first I suspected the USB cable as the culprit (when in doubt, check the cable first – it's the cheapest part of the equation!) and since I'm going to Radio Shack for a cellphone tomorrow I thought I could pick one up there.

Dinner included some of the dumplings from lunch re-heated, which were quite delicious.  We then settled down to watch a DVD of "Rumpole of the Bailey", and after all the fresh air and jet-lag I fell asleep, waking up just at the end.  And so to bed.

[Molly Mockford]

Monday 1st March 2010

I slept a lot better last night – right through until 5:30.  I reckon my body clock has fully adjusted now.  I got up early and decided to try and sort out the laptop/camera nonsense.  I took a few photos to use as tests (after downloading yesterday's batch I had only two on there, taken at dinner) and tried via the camera;  no joy.  So I tried via Mickey's card-reader.  The laptop took exception to it this time, and deleted all the photos on the card.  This was not promising.  And it all took so long that I didn't have time to write up my journal, although I had made some hand-written notes.

I didn't make any notes today, though, so it must all be from memory.  By the time I gave up on the laptop, showered and dressed and went upstairs, Mickey and Connie were also up and doing.  For breakfast I had another bagel with cream cheese and pickles, but this time also with some cured salmon which Connie produced (delicious!) and nice sharp capers.  Then Mickey and I went to his office, where – without any difficulty apart from learning a new computer – I connected the camera to a spare Mac and downloaded all the photos, which I then copied to my memory stick.  So the problem is not the cable, nor is it the camera;  it is the laptop.  I guess I'll have to get a new one, but I can't bear the thought of Vista, let alone Windows 7.

A volunteer assistant called Cass arrived, and we all had a chat;  she is a keen hiker, and was glad to recommend routes to me.  If there's nothing arranged for Sunday, we'll go on a hike together.  The amount I'm eating, I really need to get some walking done.  For most of the morning, Mickey was working on one of his papers for publication, but he reached a pause-point, so we had an early lunch (Connie had given us the last of the dumplings to take with us, as well as some boiled peanuts) and then we got in the car and he drove me to Radio Shack, drawing me a little sketch map of how to get back to his office on foot.  (He would have parked and waited and driven me back again, but I really wanted the walk.)  So I went into Radio Shack to buy a dead-cheap cellphone.  (I only need it for when I get lost;  it would be downright stupid to go hiking alone without one.)

There were two assistants;  the one who approached me was a white-haired chap whose name badge declared his name to be Bear (apparently a pun on his surname).  He was extremely helpful in finding me the cheapest package – a phone with 300 included minutes for $35.   Not only was he helpful, but also entertaining.  And when he had to take my details for the records, and asked for a Honolulu phone number, he stared at the number I gave him, and said – "You're staying with Connie!"  Turns out he and she have known each other for twenty years!  Unsurprisingly, he shares much the same sense of humour as Mickey and Connie – deliciously dry and full of irony.  (And I always thought that Americans didn't understand irony!)  By now we were in fits of laughter;  I've rarely spent my money so enjoyably!  And, by one of those extraordinary coincidences which I suspect is going to materialise again and again while I'm here, the phone number which I was allocated is my birthdate – 6548!  Since I'd had to provide my date of birth as part of the credit card evaluation, I thought he must have selected the number specially – but no, it was randomly generated, and he was as astonished as I was.  So I had my new number memorised in seconds;  the dial code (808) is standard, so I only had to remember the middle three digits.  I enjoyed the whole thing so much that I took a photo of Bear before I left!

Then it was a matter of walking back to Mickey's office – except that I wanted to explore a bit, and get some photos.  So I strolled slowly along the right road, calling into a 7-11 to buy a bottle of water (and a packet of smoked squid, a snack which was new to me, but very tasty indeed, albeit a bit tough), taking pictures of shops and buildings and mountains in the background and flowers and a yellow fire hydrant which looked like a little lady in a yellow dress, and chatting to people (it seems that everyone in Hawai'i loves to laugh) and generally having a good time.  I took the turning into University Avenue, knowing that after about a mile I should turn right;  but I totally forgot about watching out for my turn!

I popped into a wee cafe called YogurtLand, which sold soft-frozen yoghurt in a range of flavours, most of it low-fat or zero-fat.  You take a cardboard cup and you use self-service dispensers along the wall to help yourself to as much as you want, then you add from a range of sprinkle toppings, and then you pay for it by weight.  Naturally, I started with a chocolate one – and as it curled into my cardboard cup it looked so like a dog-turd that I couldn't help laughing.  I rendered it more respectable by adding some pistachio, and some chocolate sprinkles.  I ate it in the sun outside.  I saw a school bus go by, and was surprised that the children were at school in August;  and then I remembered that it wasn't August, it was only March, and that yesterday it was still February!  The sun was so strong that I was catching a bit of colour as I walked along.

Eventually I reached the far end of University Avenue, and realised that I'd got myself lost.  Fortunately, I had a cell-phone!  So I phoned Mickey, who talked me out of trying to loop around to find my way back, and told me to retrace my steps instead.  He said I'd come about ten blocks too far;  I had no idea how far ten blocks might be, but I was only about half a mile away.  I located the turn which I had missed (and knew why;  I had been attracted by a sports field which had been beautifully mown in curved stripes, which I absolutely had to photograph).

As I was walking down the next street, I saw a little cat sitting on a tiny wall beside the grassy strip I was walking along.  It was clearly feral, and hungry, but it held still for me to approach it, talking, and take a couple of photos.  It was only when it raised its head to me that I saw that the poor thing had lost its right eye and had a serious infection, with pus dripping from its right nostril.  It wouldn't let me get any closer than four feet, although even if I had managed to pick it up I wouldn't have known what to do then, not knowing what charity would help it, or how to get it there.  I gather that there are a lot of people who keep an eye on the feral cats, and feed them, and I hope that one of them might be able to take action and get the wee creature the antibiotics it so desperately needs.  It was an upsetting moment, though, and sobered me for the rest of the walk.

Connie produced the most superb dinner;  I don't know why she decided to do four courses, but we had an excellent soup, then salad, then a truly delicious fish whose name escapes me for the moment (it's a sailfish, which in life has glorious colours), and finally a fruit tart!  And a bottle of Pinot Grigio.  Not bat for a Monday dinner!  And it was all early, because one of her favourite programmes was doing a two-hour special ... except that the paper had got the time wrong, and it actually started an hour later!  Never mind – we did justice to the food, which was really excellent.  I still can't imagine ever feeling hungry again!

While Connie watched her programme I sorted through and edited the photos I had transferred onto the laptop from the memory stick, and got them all up to date.  Then we watched a bit of Jay Leno on The Tonight Show (I hadn't heard him before, although I knew the name, but I thought he was good – it helped that I had been filled in on the background of his disappearance from that slot, and his return to it) and then it was bedtime;  and I have sat up until 1am writing yesterday's journal and today's!

Because of trying to get two days' worth done before I forget anything important, they're rather baldly factual.  But surrounding it all is that I am having the most marvellous time;  Mickey and Connie are a total delight, and everybody I meet seems to be happy and warm and welcoming.  Although the weather is cold for the locals, I'm finding it summer-hot (my forehead is definitely a lot browner than it was this morning!) and there is so much that is new to me – all the trees and the flowers, and much of the food – that it is a total joy of discovery after discovery.  I might just put down banyan-like roots (there are masses of wonderful, huge, banyan trees!) into this volcanic soil, and form a permanent bond with the island as well as with my friends.

[Molly Mockford]

Tuesday 2nd March 2010

It's the end of the next day before I got around to writing this up, and I made no notes at the time!  After breakfast, Mickey and I set out to his office, but fitting in a brief photographic tour first.  But I forgot my camera!  So he took the photos I wanted to take, plus some that he wanted to take.   I explored wonderful ancient banyan trees (including one which is now a huge circle, the centre having disappeared), and we visited the Senate - which was in session;  one could just wander in, the only restriction being to put cellphones on silent.  And investigated a number of statues (Honolulu is rich in statuary).

At the office I battled with a particular computer problem I wanted to solve, and was ultimately successful;  meanwhile, Mickey was deep in his own work.  Once I'd completed what I wanted to do, I went out for a walk - and this time I didn't get lost!  Found a wonderful rainbow-coloured tree (its bark peels, revealing multi-coloured fresh bark beneath) and wished I had my camera.  Visited YogurtLand again for more frozen yogurt;  they were pleased to see me.  Looked for the injured feral cat, but couldn't find it.

We headed back home in good time to change, because we were all going out to the opera.  There was a production of La Boheme, and Mickey's son-in-law was in the chorus.  The three of us met Mickey's daughter Hinda and had a superb Chinese meal;  the restaurant was no more than a tiny five-table diner, but the food was phenomenal. As with all such meals, we took away half of what we ordered!

We arrived at the theatre in good time.  I am no opera buff;  other than amateur productions of things like Carmen, the only real opera I've seen was the dress rehearsal for Verdi's Falstaff at Glyndebourne - and it was halfway through before I realised that it was "The Merry Wives of Windsor" set to music!  This time I did a bit of homework;  for instance, I discovered that, despite the title, it is in Italian, not French.  I got a decent grasp of the story beforehand, but the opera house had supertitles (English translations displayed above the stage) which helped tremendously, especially in the comic bits.  The sets were phenomenal, the staging excellent and the singing superb.  I'm going to have to investigate more opera, I think.  And the nice thing was that it wasn't all evening dress like in the UK;  people wore what they wanted, and some were dressed up to the nines while others were in jeans.  (I wore a Little Black Dress.)

When we got back, we sat and talked for hours about anything and everything, eventually going to bed at 1am!

[Molly Mockford]

Wednesday 3rd March 2010

Mickey announced his intention of driving me over to Waikiki Beach and leaving me to find my own way back.  Whether this was an attempt to get rid of me entirely, or an initiative test, or simply placing foolish trust in my ability to navigate myself, I'm not sure (although, to be fair, I suspect the latter).  The options were there to disport myself in the waves or to lie on the sand getting skin cancer;  the former is more fun in company, and the latter has never really attracted me.  What I wanted to do was to walk.

We started off about 10:45 by the statue of Olympic gold medallist, and "father of surfing", Duke Kahanamoku, where photos were taken.  Then Mickey headed for his office, and I turned left and walked to the farthest point of the beaches in that part of the island, along the road so that I could find myself a street map of Honolulu, just in case.  When I reached the far end, I took off my shoes and carried them, and walked along the beach.  It wasn't a day of strong surf, although some people were out on their boards;  the sea was gentle.  There were massed ranks of surfboards still available for hire.

The Pacific is very blue, as compared with the Atlantic which is very green.  I have no idea why the difference!  I paddled in it, and then walked along the beach, either in ankle-deep soft sand or in the water itself.  This was heavy going, but I'd done enough walking in the past few days for my leg muscles to be up to it.  Most of the beach was absolutely packed (despite it being a weekday in early March) but I got the odd photo of less populated bits.

Having arrived about as far as I could easily get to, I found I was at the Hilton Village - packed with ludicrously expensive shops, interspersed with some cheaper ones.  I bought two pairs of silver earrings for $20 and was let off paying the state tax, which is always charged on top of the advertised price, unlike VAT.  I also succumbed to the temptation of dark chocolate covered macadamia nuts.  But hey, I'd been walking for miles, through rather than over the beach, and must have used up plenty of calories!

I'd been walking for about three hours, and it was time to head inland and start to navigate my way to the University.  The map I had picked up wasn't very useful, and I supplemented it with asking people on a couple of occasions.  Away from the breezy beach, the day became sweaty and humid, and there were several showers of rain.  Nobody here uses umbrellas (except in the sunshine!) because the rain is warm, not cold, and you dry off very quickly afterwards in the warmth of the sun.  I found my way safely past the canal which is a considerable obstacle, having only two crossings, and soon found myself in territory that I knew, having walked it after my visit to Radio Shack the other day.  I smiled.  I knew exactly how far it was to YogurtLand...  and, on the self-promise of that, I had completely ignored any ice-cream parlours I passed (I need a halo smiley).

At YogurtLand I was greeted with enthusiasm;  I suspect that I am by now their most regular customer.  I had Belgian Chocolate, Red Velvet, Double Cookes and Cream and Pistachio, with Belgian chocolate sprinkles - and all of that was only just over $3!  I could live in YogurtLand, I really could.  And it's all low-fat or no-fat and most of them are no added sugar - so it's actually GOOD for me!!

After which it was back to Mickey's office for about 3:30.  I wrote my postcards and checked my on-line e-mail while he reached a convenient stopping-place in his work, and then we drove home.  There was a dog in the house - it belonged to a neighbour, and had escaped, and Connie had taken it in until the neighbour could leave work and collect it.  It had somehow caught a dove and stripped it of most of its feathers, which were scattered all over the carpet (the dove survived the experience).  It was a cheerful and enthusiastic little dog, but rather inclined to jump up, and to play with teeth;  given that I had caught a certain amount of sun (despite my Factor 12) I was reluctant to have my skin scratched, so I went downstairs to wash off the salt, sand and sweat and change into something cooler.

Tonight was the birthday party of Mickey's eight-year-old grandson;  I was skipping out on that occasion, so Connie and Mickey set off for a family gathering at an eating-place, and I had the house to myself (the dog was put out in the balcony, where it slept the sleep of happy exhaustion).  I caught up with my photos and all my diary apart from this one;  the neighbour called to retrieve the dog;  I retrieved the Chinese doggy-bags from the fridge and heated up a huge helping in the microwave, enhancing the meal with the rest of the bottle of wine we opened on Monday, and then searching the fridge until I found a bit of very tasty Jarlsberg cheese to go with the wine.  I then made the mistake of putting my feet up on the sofa - and the next thing I knew I woke to find that Mickey and Connie had returned.

We watched Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.  I definitely enjoy Jay Leno;  I shall have to keep an eye out for him on YouTube or wherever he shows up.  Connie headed for bed before the show was over, and I came down ten minutes later, leaving Mickey deep in work he'd brought home from the office.  (This man is almost 76 and supposed to be retired, and he works harder than most people half his age.)  So here I am finishing writing this up, and then I'm going to hop into bed and sleep the sleep of the virtuous, on account of all those miles of beach-walk.  A great day;  but then, they're *all* great days!

[Howard]

 

dumplings (I've forgotten the Chinese name)

Dim sung?

[Windsong]

I've heard of Dim Sung, but I can't remember exactly what it is.

[Howard]

At YogurtLand I was greeted with enthusiasm;  I suspect that I am by now their most regular customer.

You've become a bit more reconciled to yoghurt then, Molly? 

[steveg]

I've heard of Dim Sung, but I can't remember exactly what it is.

Dim Sum  is the name given to various small dishes served in chinese restaurants (usually at lunchtimes) and can almost be likened to Spasnish Tapas insofar as they are served in small porttions and may include a variety of different contents, meat, fish, vegetables etc  Ususally served in small steamer baskets and often with Chinese tea.

[Molly Mockford]

Thursday 4th March 2010

The plan for today was to drive up to the forested hillside above Mickey and Connie's house in St Louis Heights, and hike the trail there.  Mickey has, from when I first mentioned my wish to go hiking, been worried about safety, as the rocks are soft and crumbly and the going can be slippery, and there's hardly a month without some kind of catastrophic accident to one hiker or another.  But they are, after all, official trails, and I promised not to go off exploring near cliff edges (I couldn't anyway, with my vertigo) and to take every care.

Before setting out, though, it was a matter of booking my couple of days away on Big Island (officially Hawai'i itself, and also known as Hilo after one of its towns) to see the volcano.  The three of us sat down and listed all the commitments for the rest of my stay, and identified the only remaining slot where I could do the trip.  It involves a flight, a car hire, a hotel in Hilo for the first night and a hotel in Kona for the second night.  First of all, I needed to check that the car hire would be OK despite the fact that I forgot to bring any evidence of UKcar insurance (Mickey's daughter Hinda used to be a tour organiser, and expressed concern about this), so Connie and I identified the best value firm, which was Hertz, and I rang them up.  Sure, they said, no problem;  third-party insurance is included in the hire, and I can buy a damage waiver for the two days for $55 to cover any damage which might get done to the car itself.  (In the neighbourhood of a volcano, this seemed a pretty sensible idea.)  So then to book the flights - Connie checked for the best value and I identified from those the best timings, and started to book online.

They wouldn't take any bookings other than from the US, Canada or the Philippines.

So I rang them up, and in the course of a half-hour phone call where I was heavily patronised by a Latino gentleman who told me what a lovely name I had (yeucchh) I established that they wouldn't take my credit card over the phone either!  He said he would hold the flight booking for 48 hours and I should go to Honolulu Airport and pay there.

Nonsense, said Connie, and proceeded to take over and make the bookings on her credit card.  She shooed me and Mickey off (it was by now around 10:30, much later than he normally goes to the office, but he had had some work he had brought home) and also booked the hotels we had agreed upon.  Just like having my own personal travel agent!

So Mickey drove me up to the entrance to the forest trails, extracted yet another promise that I would be careful and wouldn't go diving off the edge of a cliff, and I set off, full of confidence, along the path.  It had rained for most of last night, and it took only a few minutes to realise that the path was indeed very slippery;  the reddish soil is, I suppose, some kind of clay despite the basic geology being volcanic;  and the tree roots, which normally provide a natural staircase, had been walked over so much that they had lost their bark, and were also very slippery.  I forged my way upwards about 200 feet according to the elevation readings on my GPS, vaguely wondering what it would be like coming back down.  Then the path suddenly dived downwards again.  I started along it, but after about a quarter of a mile it became pretty hairy;  much of the earth had been washed away, and there were bits where one had to jump, despite the slipperiness.  Mindful of the fact that I had promised sixteen times to be careful, I turned round and retraced my steps.

Back up at the point where the path had started downhill, there were a number of non-official trails, which were not so eroded and were much safer to walk, so I explored these.  Eventually I found a long trail which paralleled the way back to the car park, on the left;  a very pleasant walk.  Took a number of photos of the ironwood trees, large and small, and their strange seedpods which go through all the colours of the rainbow after falling to the ground.  Also saw some birds;  an all-red one had to be a cardinal, but another which initially looked like a magpie but was much more colourful defeated my limited knowledge of US avian life.  This path eventually joined up with the road at the car park, but I hadn't had enough yet;  so I sought out a path on the other side, and explored it.  It was great (and I met some feral chickens with baby chicks!) and gave me some wonderful views.  I kept an eye on my GPS, and when I realised that I was no longer on a path, but rather on a cleared strip where the telephone poles marched, I decided it was time to bear left and rejoin the road.

Easier said than done.  Promising paths veered off in other directions, or died out entirely.  Eventually I found myself, according to the GPS, only 50 feet from where I ought to be.  There was an uphill slope, and I headed up it - but, half-way up, it proved far too slippery, and despite my hiking pole my feet shot from under me, and I landed on my side, grabbing a two-inch tree as I did so.  The tree stopped me from descending the entire slope in one rush, and enabled me to pause and meditate on the situation.  Like the Grand Old Duke of York, I was neither up nor down.  Nor could I envisage any possibility of getting to my feet (I tried, while hanging on to the tree).  Eventually I let myself slide down, my passage slowed by handing over from tree to tree.  I was covered in red mud - ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hands, arms - and the seat of my shorts, which probably took most of it.

OK, I'm back at the bottom. But I need to be at the top.  How??  I had been towards the right-hand side of the path;  to the left there was some deadfall paralleling the path, and I decided to try that - with one foot either side of it, and plenty of trees to hold on to.  It was hairy, but I made it without further accident.

At the top, I saw ... a steep downward slope, followed by another steep upward slope!  Deep sigh.  But there was no alternative - so I headed up the slope very, very carefully, always making sure I had hold of a tree, if not two trees.  Finally, and very slowly, I reached the top of the second slope, and there, right on the other side, was the car park, with people picnicking and making merry.  I appeared over the ridge like something out of a horror movie - The Curse of the Red Mud Woman - and strolled nonchalantly past them to a rest-room which I knew was there, and which had a cold tap.

It took a long time to wash the mud off my skin, and it was of course impossible to get it off my shorts.  Ah well, what can't be cured must be endured.  I walked out of the exit road and started down the hill (300' elevation), deciding against returning to the house but instead to stick to original arrangements and meet Mickey at his office.  It was no more than two miles, and it seemed so childishly easy walking through the streets!  Instead of taking the quickest route to the University, I took a longer swing around, because that would take me past ... you guessed it ... YogurtLand!!  I was greeted like a very old friend, and I thoroughly relished my cardboard cup of deliciousness.  Thence to the University, to prove to Mickey I was alive, but to admit freely that he had been absolutely right in his warnings, and that although I had proved up to the task, nevertheless there hadn't been much leeway between the challenge and my ability to surmount it.

Back home, very hungry, for dinner - which was re-heated Chinese which was totally delicious, followed by a fruit tart, plus a glass or two of wine.  I sorted today's photos, read up on Big Island, and then we watched Jay Leno (at least the first half;  it gets boring when he introduces other people).  Just before going to bed, though, Mickey led me up to the top floor, tiptoeing because it is given over to lodgers, and opened the door to the roof for me to admire the gold and silver lights of Waikiki, which look even more impressive from an extra 15 feet up than they do from the livingroom balcony.  Every time I look at those lights I get freaked out by the beauty of them!

To bed now - it's nearly midnight, and tomorrow has to be a much earlier start than today was.

[Howard]

Chinese dumplings:  wonton?  Or possibly jiaozi?

[Howard]

Don't forget, Molly, to take greetings to the nēnēs from their relatives here in Sussex! 

[Molly Mockford]

Chinese dumplings:  wonton?  Or possibly jiaozi?

I've checked with Connie, and they were mana pua.  That's pidgin: Chinese/Hawaiian.  So it's hardly surprising nobody got it!

I haven't seen any nene yet, but I live in hope.

[Molly Mockford]

Friday 5th March 2010

We were all up in good time for breakfast, after which Mickey and I drove off - first to the hospital for one of his regular blood tests, then he dropped me at the Foster Botanical Gardens and went back to his office.  There are five botanical gardens in Honolulu;  Foster is the oldest, largest and the only one which charges an entrance fee - well worth every cent.  It has a superb collection of specimen trees from around the world, and while it was strange to happen across something as familiar as a juniper, I don't know where else I would have been able to encounter a skunk tree (and my goodness, it stank!) or a kapok tree.  At the entrance was a huge Bo tree, a descendant of the one under which Buddha sat and achieved enlightenment.  There was also a collection of epyphitic orchids, although none were in flower at this time of year (it is winter even in Hawai'i, even though it is like a really good summer in the UK).  In addition, there was a conservatory with more epiphytes and various other orchids.  It was a wonderful collection, and I spent a long time exploring the whole of the gardens.

From there, I progressed to Lili'uokalani Botanical Garden (named after the last Queen of Hawai'i - which is, of course, the only US state which was once a monarchy and still has a royal palace) which contains only native Hawaiian plants.  (Although it's a bit hard to decide what is really native, given than the islands are geologically so very recent, and that quite a range of plants would have been introduced by the very first Polynesian settlers!)  This garden was very peaceful, the sort of place where one could meditate happily if one chose.  Through the middle of it runs the Nuuanu Stream, which must sometimes have much more water in it, since there were tempting expanses of exposed rocks to either side of the watercourse.  However, there had been a notice at the entrance warning of leptospirosis in the water, so I didn't succumb to the temptation of scrambling over the rocks, not even to get closer to its lovely waterfall.  Instead, I sat in the shade and reflected.

A bit of shade is really essential, even though I was wearing my sun-hat.  I am astonished at how much colour I have picked up already, just walking around - and I normally take great care not to tan much.  And my hair is several shades lighter than when I arrived.  But the weather is so lovely!  Even though it rains most days, it isn't *wet* rain;  either it's fine, and evaporates almost as soon as it touches, or it is a heavier, but brief, shower.  Nobody uses umbrellas or raincoats;  no sooner have you got wet than you are dry again.  There are times when I am almost begging for a rain-shower to cool me down!

After the Lili'uokalani garden I had originally planned to walk a bit of some of the Pu'u Ohia trails around Round Top/Mount Tantalus, but I spent too long in the gardens;  so I took an exploratory walk back to the university campus, taking in some tiny little parks en route - parks which might contain just one single massive tree and a wee bit of lawn.  Oh, and I got a photo of the R.L.Stevenson Middle School!  Stevenson is a bit of a hero:  he was a strong supporter of a local Catholic priest, Father Damien, who spent his life working with lepers - and was canonised for it in 2009 - but he was somewhat scorned and sneered at by the Presbyterians until Stevenson leapt in and used his skill with words to show what a good man Damien had been.

On the way back, I encountered a dog in bootees.  I asked his owner if I could photograph him, and said I hoped that the reason for the bootees wasn't that the dog had sore feet.  The chap said no, but he lived in an apartment, and he didn't want the dog trekking dirt into the house;  so he wore the boots out of doors.  It is standard procedure in Hawai'i that one removes one's footwear when entering a private house (it doesn't apply to public places), and so the dog was only following the normal code of conduct!

Those who have been paying attention will not be surprised to discover that my route back to Mickey's office took me past YogurtLand.  Since it had been a hot, sticky, sweaty day I indulged in the most enormous helping - which was still well under $4!  I don't know anywhere else where one could get such good value.  After that, I once again encountered the injured feral cat;  this was our third meeting, and it let me get almost within arm's reach - maybe two feet away.  It's just a matter of moving very slowly, and talking steadily and quietly.  I was encouraged to see that he had not after all lost his right eye;  it was very swollen, but it was now open a crack, and I have hopes that the wee beast might recover.  However, he is very thin and scrawny indeed, and there's something wrong with his tail.  I suspect he may have been hit by a car.

And so to the office, where I caught up with webmail until Mickey was ready to leave.  Friday night, so we had candles and a brief ritual and sweet red wine;  and another of Connie's amazing four-course meals.  The broth that we started with would have been sufficient dinner for me in the normal way of things, it was so delicious and filling;  but then there was salad, and then fish with a stunning sauce, and a huge bowl of rice of which we probably ate only three spoonfuls between us!  And finally, a chocolate macadamia nut pie (I am totally hooked on the combination of macadamias and dark chocolate, and Connie is pandering to my appetite quite outrageously).

Later we sat down to watch a DVD of Rumpole, and once again I fell asleep (it's because the lights get switched out, I think) but I woke in time for Jay Leno, and then to bed.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/molly.mockford/HawaiiDay6?authkey=Gv1sRgCMLH8YbW8KvnsQE&feat=directlink.

[Windsong]

Interesting seed pods!  I bet they would make a wonderful dried arrangement.  I would definitely go to Hawaii for the flora and wildlife!

[Molly Mockford]

The flora are well worth seeing, but there is in fact very little in the way of fauna.  The only native mammal is a type of bat;  all others have been introduced, and few are wild rather than feral (although there are mongooses, which I would very much like to see - there are no snakes, so they have to eat rats and such, I believe).  Birds are few and far between;  there are Little Egrets, and Turtle Doves which are considered pests, and Cardinals, and Brazilian Cardinals, and maybe half-a-dozen species which I have seen.  The tropical rainforest parts could really do with some parrots!

Saturday 6th March 2010

Today was Mickey's birthday.  At his request, Connie prepared a cooked breakfast - sausages, eggs and hash browns.  I've often heard of hash browns but never eaten them;  I discovered that, bar a bit of onion, they are very much like rösti  In the morning Mickey's eldest daughter Hinda (the only one who lives in Hawai'i) came over with her two children, Kelvin and Jennie, who presented Mickey with some magic tricks and some home-made chocolate chip cookies.  The children are young and full of energy, wrestling on the floor and having to be reminded not to run around, but are very good-natured, and were clearly delighted to be celebrating their much-loved grandpa's birthday.

Apart from that it was a quiet day;  Connie was out shopping and doing errands (including secretly organising a birthday cake and lei for Mickey this evening), and Mickey and I sat and talked quietly, with was very pleasant indeed.  The forecast had been for rain, but it was mostly bright sunshine.  The occasional rain shower was, as they mostly are, almost surreal;  it can be raining here but not on the next block, the sunlight will be bright on the sea and on the high-rise (yuck) buildings of Waikiki - and of course there are rainbows.  Every day, rainbows.  Sometimes doubles, although I haven't yet seen a triple;  nor have I seen a moonbow, which apparently circles the moon in the right conditions.  I've stopped even trying to photograph every rainbow I see!  At home, I might be lucky to see three or four a year;  here, sometimes it's that many in a day.  It's no wonder that Hawaiian car registration plates carry a rainbow as the state symbol.

Mickey and I fixed lunch for ourselves, and after Connie came back a while later I downloaded my photos and wrote up yesterday's journal.  Then we went out at around 5pm to meet Mickey's best friend Ron Kent and his wife Myra for an early dinner before a musical concert.  (Ron and Myra are lovely people;  he is a very talented - and highly-regarded - artist in wood;  see www.ronkent.com.  Tomorrow, he's going to show me his studio, which I'm looking forward to tremendously.)

Before we went out, Connie and I hung leis on Mickey (I hadn't had any opportunity to organise the purchase of one without his knowledge, so I re-used the one they gave me on my arrival, which had been stored in the fridge ever since and was still perfectly fresh and full of scent), and when we met up with the Kents in the restaurant car park many photos were taken.  The meal was Italian, and very good indeed.  We had taken along the bottle of duty-free Bollinger which I had brought (and which caused such trouble at security when I changed flights) and it went down very well, being to everyone's taste (although Myra and I had the lion's share).  I had squid-ink and lobster ravioli which was delicious;  it was only ten minutes ago that I looked in the mirror and discovered a remnant of black squid-ink pasta in my teeth!  The birthday cake which Connie had organised, and handed to the restaurant staff to be produced at the appropriate time, was then brought to the table;  it was "grasshopper pie", a chocolate layer on top of a mint layer, and Connie had also bought two candles, a 7 and a 6.  Before the cake was brought out, one of the waiters came up to me and, whispering, asked whether the numbers should read 76 or 67 - which I later recounted to all assembled, as being a nice compliment to Mickey.

As with all our meals out, we ended up with large doggy-bags, from which we will feed for the next day or two!  Although I polished off all of my ravioli, I'm certainly looking forward to a share of the other dishes (although we did swap the food around a bit at the table).  Then we drove to the theatre, which was in fact a studio used by Hawaiian Public Radio.  The concert was an informal one by five or six musicians and had been billed as Balkan music;  in fact it was modern jazz based on Turkish or Armenian themes, and most of it left me cold.  It didn't help that none of us could see a thing, since there was no stage, and we were in the back row.  I don't know why seeing should make a difference to listening, but it certainly does.

Then back home for an hour's quiet talk before bedtime.  A very relaxing day;  both my leg muscles and my brain were glad of a day's rest, and I'll be raring to go again tomorrow - when we're off for, first, a visit to Ron's studio, and then a round-the-island drive which will take most of the day.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/molly.mockford/HawaiiDay7?authkey=Gv1sRgCKmH7LaK68_BXg&feat=directlink.

[Molly Mockford]

Sunday 7th March 2010

Despite the forecast, the day dawned clear and sunny for our drive around the island – this was a treat for me, and for the second day of Mickey's birthday weekend (so that we could both leap out and take photos whenever an unmissable shot present itself), so Connie drove, and was immensely patient with the multiple stops.

We started off at Ron Kent's studio, where he is working on a piece he calls Moby Richard (because it's big).  It is built up from plies of Norfolk Pine, finely sanded and varnished over and over.  He has an assistant to do the more tedious bits!  Whenever I see wood – whether living as a tree, or worked into a piece of art - I have to touch it, and Ron was in full agreement with the necessity for this – so I was able to handle all the lovely pieces sitting around his studio.  The earlier pieces are lathe-turned, and some of the bowls are so thin that they are translucent.  Myra then invited us into the house, where there are uncountable examples of Ron's work: quite mind-blowing.  He is a major artist, and his pieces are all over the world – e.g. in the Vatican.

We then drove off up the north-east cost of the island.  The clouds were low, squatting indelicately on the tops of the mountains (and making water here and there).  Unfortunately I can never take a photo which is anywhere near as impressive as seeing this effect for real!  But I got lots of other shots, including some very pretty Brazilian Cardinals which were tame enough that I could get quite close.  We paused at an old sugar-cane mill (large parts of the island used to grow sugar-cane and pineapples, but economics have reduced the demand and much of the land lies empty).

We stopped for lunch at a little roadside diner with charming staff (but everyone here is charming – it's very unlike England!) and, just as we had ordered and sat down at an outside table, the heavens opened and we had the heaviest rain I've yet seen here (although it does rain very heavily at night).  Such a dramatic downpour couldn't last long, of course, and when it stopped everything dried off very quickly.  Rainstorms like that are very localised, and two miles down the road there had hardly been a sprinkling of rain.

After lunch we continued on our circuit, stopping to photograph some irresistible signs, and beautiful figures at the entrance to the Polynesian Cultural Center;   we'll be visiting that later this week;  I gather it's a fully-day experience, and I'm looking forward to it.  One of Mickey's volunteer assistants works there part-time and will be organising us tickets.  Near to it was a very expensive-looking Mormon temple (I contemplated whether the words Mormon and Mammon were conceivably cognate), but I chose to photograph the approach, lined with regimented palm trees.

And then we reached the famous north shore, where all the surfing competitions are held.  There was plenty of surf, and plenty of surfers bobbing about in the sea waiting for the ultimate wave.  By contrast we also spent some photography time at a quiet little cove, where nobody could surf except in one corner, but people hired paddle-surf equipment (you stand on the surfboard and use a long paddle to canoe it along).  Interesting chat with the man who runs the board hire.

In Hawai'i people eat early.  We arrived at our planned dinner restaurant (Jameson's) at around 5pm, and were by no means the first diners – but we were in time to get one of the coveted outside tables, facing the sunset.  It was a delicious meal – everything I have eaten here has been wonderful! - but of course far too large, so once again we accumulated a collection of leftovers.  But Connie has such a superb way with leftovers that I look forward to them as much as to a from-scratch meal!  Since it was still Mickey's birthday weekend, they brought out a complimentary hunk of birthday cake at the end of the meal, and despite the fact that we all claimed to be full, we managed to demolish it between us.

The sun set, and we drove back cross-country in the dark – except that all the roads have street lights, whether or not they are in built-up areas.  There isn't really that much in the way of mileage of roads, so they just light them all, it seems.  A couple at the next table, on learning that I was from the UK, declared their addiction to Hyacinth Bucket of "Keeping Up Appearances", and told us that on PBS tonight there was a special on British comic actresses;  we were home in good time for it, and it was followed by an excellent documentary on Roy Orbison.  I downloaded my photos, and then it was bedtime.

Picasa Web Album at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/molly.mockford/HawaiiDay8?authkey=Gv1sRgCIHZhrLZwLWFDA&feat=directlink.

[Molly Mockford]

Monday 8th March 2010

Today was not, I suppose, the way in which most people would choose to spend part of their holiday, especially in a paradise island like this.  However, it suited me just fine.  I accompanied Mickey to his office where I spent most of the morning going through his filing system and helping myself to copies of many of the papers he has published and which are not yet included on his web site at http://hawaii.edu/PCSS.  The resulting stack is over three inches high, and it will probably take me the best part of a year to get them all scanned, OCRed and coded up into HTML – but it will be very well worth it.  I am very proud of that web site, and how it enables researchers and lay-people from around the world to access Mickey's work;  and the compliments about the site flow in regularly from all over the place, though I sez it as shouldn't!

I shall have to make sure, however, that I weigh my luggage carefully before leaving – what with those papers, and a wonderful but hard-back Hawaiian cookbook which Connie has presented me with, I may be approaching the weight limit!  But I can always put the heaviest pieces in my hand luggage.

From late morning onwards, I was working on creating an off-site backup for Mickey's e-mail, which lives on the University's mail servers and which regularly butts up against the maximum size limit.  By late afternoon it was all archived on Gmail, with appropriate labels set to parallel the folder names in the original, and huge quantities of old mail deleted from the University's servers, such that all should run smoothly for quite a while.  I had spent quite some time researching the best way to set up this backup, particularly how to extract the mail from the University's idiosyncratic mail system without losing any of its attached classifications, and I feel pleased with the results.  I can appreciate that most people wouldn't see this as a typical holiday day - but it made me feel good!!

However, common-or-garden holiday mode switched on after I finished, because Mickey took me out for "Shave Ice" at the best outlet in Honolulu.  Shave Ice is a Hawaiian delicacy (and, I think, probably throughout Polynesia).  You start with a large cup of not crushed but shaved ice, and then you add flavoured and coloured syrup to it – typically two flavours at a time, though you could have more, or just one.  I had chocolate and banana, and Mickey had chocolate and vanilla;  the vanilla was a very startling blue!  It doesn't sound a very exciting snack, but in fact it was tasty and refreshing.  When I got to the bottom, the small quantity of ice which the syrup hadn't reached was exactly like eating snow.  I want more!  For what other people think of this tiny but wonderful place, see http://www.yelp.com/biz/waiola-shave-ice-honolulu.

Back to the office for Mickey to do some more work on his current paper, and me to add some bells and whistles in the way of automatic filters to his Gmail account (to send automatically-forwarded e-mails to the right places), and we headed for home at about 5:45.  Dinner was a wonderful assortment of leftovers, and I had two helpings (and a large glass of wine which I reckoned I had earned).  While we were in the middle of eating, someone arrived at the door;  it was Mickey's foster son, whom he had not seen for about 25 years but who has arrived back in Hawai'i.  He joined us at the table (there was plenty of food!) and later settled down on the covered balcony to sleep (since I'm in the only guest room).

After being shown some of the collection of erotic paintings and carvings which I hadn't yet seen (particularly some wonderful Chinese, Japanese and Indian prints – these things are presented to Mickey by people from all over the world) and an hour or so's quiet chat, I came to my room to write up this journal.  There aren't many photos today – the office doesn't really lend itself to that! - but I took a couple at the shave ice cafe, and so did Mickey, so I can download those and add them tomorrow.

[Windsong]

Shaved ice sounds delightful!  Just the thing on a warm afternoon!  Sounds like you are having a grand time!

[Molly Mockford]

I'd gone to bed, because I have to be up at 5am tomorrow to fly to Big Island where the volcanoes are - and then I remembered I hadn't posted this!

Tuesday 9th March 2010

Another typical Honolulu day of sunshine and showers, but a bit windy.  It started sadly because we had to take Mickey's adult foster-son to the hospital emergency room;  this gave me a refresher course in driving in the US, because while the two of them went into the hospital I had to take the car and park it.  I drove three times round that blasted multi-storey car park;  there were many empty spaces which were for Valet Parking, and others Reserved For Physician, but eventually I found one.  And in all that manouvering up and down ramps, and into the space, in a car twice as long as my own and nearly twice as wide (it's not that Mickey's car is big, it's just that mine is tiny) I never hit anything.  So I should be just fine with the car I am hiring when I get to Big Island.

After that we headed to the office, where Linda, one of Mickey's volunteer assistants, was already there.  She has visual problems, so I typed up some material at her dictation.  At lunchtime, Mickey drove me to a hill called Round Top;  there is a wonderful lookout point (overlook) from which one can see almost all of Honolulu.  He dropped me at the start of one of the many trails, and I set out on a hike.  It was very enjoyable, through mixed woodland;  I started at an elevation of over 1000 feet, and gradually descended to a valley with a stream running through it.  There were many informational signs along the way, and I got plenty of photos.  Of course, it was then a matter of climbing up those 1000 feet again – but there was a wonderful staircase of tree roots, which made the ascent very much easier than if I had been scrambling over rocks – or even walking over bare earth, because there were three separate rain showers.

My intention was originally to do the hike, and then to walk back to the house;  however, what with the steepness of the trail, and my frequent stops to take photos, a four-mile hike took me over three hours.  Plan B was to meet Mickey at his office before he set off for an academic function;  no way was I going to get there in time.  Plan C was to meet him after the function, so I phoned both him and Connie to let them know what I would be doing.  However, the function finished much earlier than expected, so Mickey came to fetch me in the car:  by now I had completed my circuit, and was walking down the corkscrewing road back down to sea level – in one afternoon, down 1000 feet, up 1000 feet and down 1000 feet again!

Every month Connie (who is a counsellor) holds a party for her clients,who are mainly male-to-female trans people.  There are also some F2M but none of them turned up last night.  Mickey and I got home just as the first guests were arriving (having picked up one on the way), and I dashed downstairs to wash off the mud and sweat and render myself semi-respectable.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable party,and I learned a lot – both about the social structure inhabit by transwomen in Hawai'i (who call themselves “queens”, despite the different usage of the term in both mainland US and the UK), and about all kinds of other stuff such as a Republican view of Obama's healthcare proposals.  Yes, folks, I spent quite a long time in conversation with a real live Republican – which was a first for me!

These parties are on a pot luck basis, which doesn't mean what it does in the UK;  it means that everybody brings along something to eat.  However, Connie being Connie, she cooks up enough for everybody even if nobody brought a thing!  The table was groaning with food and I over-indulged happily.  I also consumed more than my fair share of wine.

After the guests had gone, Connie insisted on clearing up alone, declaring it was easier to do it that way.  So Mickey got out his guitar, which he hasn't played for a long time, and we worked our way through all the American folk songs of the Sixties which neither of us could remember, nor sing in tune if we could!  The day ended at around midnight, although I sat up until 1am working on journal entries.

No photos at the moment, I haven't uploaded them yet.  I'll catch up soon!

[Howard]

adult foster-son to the hospital emergency room

What an awful thing.  How is he?  What happened?

[Molly Mockford]

Wednesday 10th March 2010

The day once again started in Mickey's office -  helping myself to more copies of his papers, this time the earlier ones (which originally he had said not to bother with, and then received an e-mail from somebody asking about one!).  I also sorted out the various Bibliography entries for items in the various editions of the Corsini Encyclopedia, which were in a fearful muddle.  Meanwhile, Mickey was preparing slides for the talk he had been invited to give at lunchtime to a group of psychiatrists.

When we arrived at the venue (in Queen's Hospital) the previous lot were late in vacating the room, so we didn't have much time to set up;  and the Keynote slideshow which he had copied onto his Mac laptop refused to run, although all the PowerPoint slideshows on it worked fine.  It was probably an iWorks problem, but there wasn't time to sort it out.  So he started out using a few slides from one of the other slideshows, and eventually resorted to writing on the whiteboard in the good old-fashioned way.

The psychiatrists (a dozen or so of them) learned not only about the requested subject of the talk, but also about more of the spectrum, ranging from cross-dressing to transgender to intersex – basically, anything that is not a plain vanilla male-and-female heterosexual set-up.  I filmed the whole presentation, but missed some informal questions at the end, because I thought that everyone had finished – but they started asking more questions as I was putting my equipment away!

The we had a long, long trek to the Emergency Room of the hospital, only to find that the foster son had been discharged that morning.  And another long, long trek back to the car park, including going round in circles.  But everybody whom we asked was very helpful indeed, and one man walked with us for ten minutes because he said it was easier to show us than to describe the route.  Everyone seemed to agree that "I wouldn't start from here if I were you".

The original plan had been to go snorkelling in the afternoon, after the talk;  but it wasn't the sort of day for it.  It was cloudy and overcast, and would have been far too cold for Mickey.  So I thought we would go straight back to the office, but instead he drove me on a mini-tour of Punchbowl Military Cemetery.  This is in the caldera of an extinct volcano, and is a very calm and dignified place.  At the top is the nearest overlook to town – very impressive.

Then we went to Waiola for shave ice again (in the rain! But there was still a queue).  I had chocolate and coffee, and Mickey encouraged me to try Azuri (?Azuki? not sure) beans with it – they were unlike anything I've tasted before, sweet and starchy and rather good.  The coffee syrup was particularly good.

Back at the office, an Israeli aquaculturalist called Benny appeared and talked at high speed about his web site (run by a Scottish volunteer!) which even links to an iPhone app;  and (very usefully) showed me how to access the university's on-line libraries, which will save me a certain amount of scanning and OCRing of Mickey's papers.

We were late back for dinner ("late" here being gone 6pm), which was, of course, a superb array of leftovers.  Then I downloaded my photos (I had thought that I had lost the memory stick to which I download them – I was sure I must have dropped it on my hike – but I found it on the back seat of Mickey's car, where I'd flung my backpack rather carelessly), packed my bag for Big Island, and got to bed at 10pm.  I had got pretty badly bitten on my Round Top hike, and Connie lent me some antihistamine cream, which I had to apply in the night because my ankles were itching unbearably, but I eventually got to sleep – knowing I had to be awake at 5am the next day.

There are photos, but I haven't uploaded them yet!

[Molly Mockford]

Thursday 11th March 2010

There are times when I think I probably shouldn't be let out alone.  Especially 8000 miles from home.  However, like Blanche Dubois in "A Streetcar Named Desire", I generally find that I can rely upon the kindness of strangers.  Read on...

The alarm went off at 5am (and Connie and Mickey also awoke at that time).  Into the bathroom for a quick shower – during which the alarm went off again!  I had to dash back into my bedroom, soaking wet, to switch it off because it clearly wasn't going to stop on its own.  I chucked the last bits and pieces into my bag, ate a hasty breakfast (the others had more time for breakfast because they didn't have to shower until later!) and we all piled into the car and drove off to the airport for my flight to Big Island (whose proper name is Hawai'i, but it gets confusing between the island and the state, so most people seem to call it Big Island).  All went smoothly;  on landing at Hilo (pronounced HeeLo) Airport, I located the Hertz office and picked up my rental car (a medium-size Toyota, which is was they consider a "compact" car over here, even though one could fit two Smart cars into it!), drove to my hotel and checked in, and then set off for the Volcano National Park.

There was a very useful presentation by a tour guide when I arrived;  amongst other things, she mentioned that a particular feature needed a torch (flashlight) because it was unlit.  I promptly bought a cheap torch in the Visitor Centre, along with some trail mix and dried mango.  I considered whether to buy a bottle of water, but reckoned that the bottle I already had would be sufficient.  I set off down the volcano trail, starting with some steam vents;  it was chucking it down with rain, which appeared set in for the day, but miraculously it cleared up suddenly!  I returned to the steam vents to get another shot without the raindrops on the lens.

It was a slow drive around the Park because over and over again I had to stop and get out and marvel at the lava fields – so many different styles of flow, from bubbles like an Aero bar to crinkly wrinkly surfaces to underground tubes which one could just peep into, to huge accumulations of basalt debris.

The torch was needed for a huge lava tunnel which one can walk through.  The first half is lit, but the second isn't.  I was incredibly lucky;  as I went in, a couple coming out said there were two more people behind them, but nobody else.  After the other two passed me, I had the place to myself.  Totally alone, totally quiet, in total darkness apart from the weak (but sufficient) light of my little torch.  The going underfoot was good, not at all treacherous, although there were puddles here and there;  water dripped constantly from the roof, and in places yard-long tree roots hung from the ceiling.  At the end there was a sudden drop-off;  it would have been nasty if one hadn't seen it in advance, but of course nobody could possibly have got that far without a torch.  From there, I retraced my steps – and just as I reached the end, a cheerfully-chattering party of Japanese arrived.  I thought again how fortunate I was to have experienced the tunnel in solitude and silence.

Onwards, through more and more lava fields left by eruptions in the 1970s.  Checked out each one for its different types of lava, and eventually found a couple of pieces of pumice which appear suitable for use on the hard skin on my heels!  One of the most impressive lava fields had swallowed up a previous road;  only two short stretches were visible, surrounded by black rock.  I spent quite some time on them, photographing and filming.

And on my return to my car, I had a flat tyre.

About 20 minutes before, in a narrow part of the road, my wheels had dropped a few inches off the tarmac;  I guess that beneath the tarmac is lava hardcore, and it must have ripped at the inside of the tyre.  I guess that while the car was moving along, the puncture didn't bulge open too much, but once the car was sitting idle, the air escaped with a will.

Rang Hertz.  They said they would send someone to change the tyre within an hour.  The insurance I'd bought covered the cost of the tyre, but not the man's time;  fair enough.  Then I had a phone call from the AAA – who said they would be there in two and a half hours!  I was horrified.  The AAA call was an automated message;  it said to press zero for a human, so I did – and hung on, and on, until my phone's battery suddenly ran out...  I settled down to wait, with the only reading matter I had with me – a couple of tourist brochures and the rental car's handbook.  Even the radio couldn't pick up any stations from where I was.  It was a hot day, I was parked in full sun, the lava fields were radiating heat like billy-o, I had only about 200ml of water left to last me for two and a half hours, and I had no phone.  I wondered what Mickey, always so solicitous of my safety, would say about my getting myself into a scrape like this!

Suddenly, one of the passing cars stopped, and asked if I needed help!  I accepted very gratefully;  thanks to my reading of the handbook, I knew where the spare was, where the jack ought to be placed, etc. - I just didn't have the capability of doing it myself.  The couple were Canadian, Bunny and Michael, and Michael (a kidney doctor) set to and wrestled the recalcitrant jack to defeat.  Just as he was finishing, somebody else stopped and offered help – and was also Canadian!

So the emergency tyre was now on the car.  However, I had to cancel the AAA man, or I would have ended up paying nearly $100 for his call-out.  My phone battery was flat;  Michael's phone was Canadian and wouldn't work;  the other Canadians had all left their phones back at the hotel;  but up drew another car, and although the father's phone couldn't get a signal, the young son's phone could.  So I rang Hertz, told them to cancel the AA, and – after handing out effusive thanks and giving my e-mail address to Bunny to enable us to discuss a donation to charity, I drove briefly to the end of the road (where it is blocked by the most recent lava flow) and then retraced my journey back to Hilo.  I noticed that, despite the change of tyre, the tyre inflation warning light was on;  so I returned to the airport and asked the Hertz office there to put a bit of air in it.  They were prepared to do more than that;  while I filled out an incident report form, they organised me a replacement car!  (The only downside being that I had only just located and tuned into a decent radio station on the original car.)  The new car is even larger than the first one, and very much snazzier;  before I drove off, I had to spent some time consulting the handbook to figure out how to move my seat into position, and even how to find the handbrake!  Turns out it isn't a handbrake;  it's called a Parking Brake, but it's a foot-pedal way over on the left.  I've never come across one of those before!  I wonder what other surprises will await me on tomorrow's drive?

From the airport, back to the hotel, where I had a quick wash and change.  I've become accustomed to the early hours of Hawai'i, and it was already gone 6:30 and most certainly time for dinner.  I had established when I checked in that I didn't need to reserve a table in the restaurant, I could just walk in;  however, when I tried to do so, I discovered it was closed for a private function!  Annoyed, I complained to reception about the misleading information, and asked where I could get a meal.  They directed me to another hotel about half a mile away, so I set off for it, rather sulkily.  Then I thought to myself that it really didn't matter where I ate, that it wasn't raining, and that I could eat all the more since I was going to be walking back afterwards!

The restaurant in the other hotel had a Seafood Special – what could be more agreeable?  Some mahimahi (whose name, I gather, translates more or less as "very very tasty"), some grilled shrimps and a couple of long spidery crab claws, with appropriate sauces and a couple of scoops of rice.  And "mixed vegetables" – which amused me, because they consisted of carrots, broccoli and courgettes (zucchini)!  Exactly what would have been served up as mixed vegetables at home!  Anyway, I polished off the lot, with a glass of a very interesting wine – a Riesling made in Germany by a Hawaiian winemaker, and designed to go with Anglo/Asian food.  It was sweeter than the modern German fashion for wine (in fact, it reminded me of some of the glorious German Rieslings of the 1970s, before the fashion for Trocken set in), and light, and very drinkable.  I had a second glass with my dessert.

I ought not to mention the dessert, because it is a matter of shame.  A tall cylinder of a chocolate brownie fondant, with three scoops of macadamia nut icecream, various splodges of whipped cream, strawberry coulis and loads of chocolate fudge sauce.  And I have to confess that I could not finish it!

So I was glad of the walk back.  I had left my phone charging in my room, and when it was finished I plugged in my laptop and wrote up yesterday's and today's journals, and processed all the photos I downloaded yesterday.  There is no WiFi in the rooms, but there is in the lobby (at a cost), so I'll take the laptop down there and do the necessary.

And then I think I'll go to bed.  It's been a long day!

[Molly Mockford]

Picasa Web Albums:

Day 9
Day 10
Day 11

[steveg]

Picasa Web Albums:

Day 9
Day 10
Day 11

I recognise the inscription on the memorial in the Day 11 pictures as one taken from a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to a mother who lost 5 sons in the American civil war.......(also made famous in the film "Saving Private Ryan")

"Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln"

Though it turned out later that Mrs Bixby (the mother) had in fact lost only 2 sons in the war and of the other 3 one had been dishonourably discharged and worse, Mrs Bixby herself was a Confederate sympathiser and destroyed the letter, which was later believed to have actually been penned by Lincoln's secretary. Nonetheless, the words themselves bear repeating and still hold true for any wartime loss.

[Molly Mockford]

Friday 12th March 2010

My hotel room was very comfortable, and I slept well, waking at 6:30.  I packed, took my bag out to the car, checked e-mail on the lobby WiFi, put the laptop in the car too and went in to breakfast.  Breakfast was strangely meagre:  a plate of rather old-looking papaya slices, a tray of small Danish pastries, a tray of thick-sliced factory bread and another of what looked like muffins (British ones, not the US cake-style ones).  There was a strange and menacing machine which I took to be a toaster.  I carefully inserted two slices of bread deep into its red-hot maw, and waited.  A minute or two later, it spat them out from another orifice, not even beige-coloured.  I figured out that it worked on some kind of conveyor-belt system, and I had pushed them too far in;  so I tried again.  This time they came out rather darker than I like (I prefer my toast golden), and – strangely – stone cold!  Nevertheless, I buttered and ate them, together with a couple of slices of papaya.  Everything – plates, cutlery etc. - was disposable;  the plates were weirdly divided into three sections, which made it pretty hard to butter the toast, which didn't fit into any of them.  My recycling soul rebelled at throwing away perfectly good plastic cutlery, so I wiped it clean and popped it into my bag.

As I was about to leave the lobby, I saw a basket of hibiscus flowers, with a notice saying to help oneself.  A very old Japanese lady, whom I had seen earlier slowly pushing a cleaning cart, and smiled at, came up to me and encouraged me to take one.  She said most of them were from her garden, but the best of all – a huge yellow one with a red centre, just like the ones I put on Mickey's web site – she said she had "stolen" from the garden.  I took that one, and she explained that it would last one full day without water, and then would close at night and not open again.

At that moment, she glanced at a car drawing up outside, and exclaimed, "It's Uncle Billy!"  I should explain that the hotel is called Uncle Billy's! Hotel, and the shop next to it is Uncle Billy's General Store, and the restaurant ... well, you get the general idea.  Knowing that there is also an Uncle Billy's Hotel in Kona, I had assumed it was a chain, with a schmaltzy name to pretend fake-intimacy.  But in fact here was the man himself;  the Japanese lady told me that he had started this hotel all by himself, and had built up the business.  As he emerged from the car and walked, very slowly and rather bent, into the hotel, he reminded me a bit of Young Mr Grace in "Are You Being Served?" - he must have been in his nineties, but with very bright eyes.  The Japanese lady introduced us, telling him that I hadn't believed he was real;  he smiled, and held out his hand for me to shake.  I took it gently:  it looked very arthritic. 

I have no evidence whatsoever to go on, but I rather wonder whether the Japanese lady was one of Uncle Billy's original employees when he set up the hotel, and so she now has a very light job-for-life there.  Who knows – there could even have been a romance between them!

Then I left, and started on my tourist visits.  I began with the Macadamia Nut Factory, which was rather a disappointment.  There was nothing about the trees, or their cultivation, or the nuts being the hardest known to man, or anything like that.  There were three or four notices as I drove the three miles through their orchards, saying things like "Macadamia Nuts are Lo-Carb" – which doesn't interest me in the least.  At the Visitor Centre, there were signs for a "self-guided tour";  one walked along looking through windows at the employees sorting and grading the nuts and then dipping them in chocolate.  At each window there was a choice of languages, and a TV which would presumably have given us an account of what was happening;  but none of them worked.  However, the shop was well-stocked, and I bought a few items.

A bus driver with whom I fell into conversation strongly recommended that I visit the Big Island Cookie Company, opposite the airport, so I did.  Their Visitor Centre was superb:  masses of free tasting samples, and large clear windows showing the employees sorting and dipping their cookies in chocolate, or mixing up by hand a huge bowl of chocolate and chopped macadamia nuts.  I took photos, and they didn't mind.  Again, I bought items on offer.

That's enough nosh for one day.  I headed for the Rainbow Falls, the first of a number of waterfalls around this part of the island.  There were no rainbows, because there was no sun (but it only rained lightly).  I have a feeling that there was a better viewpoint than the one I found, but I couldn't locate it.  On along the same road, I found the Boiling Pits – turns in the river where the water can swirl violently.  It wasn't particularly violent today, but it was impressive.  The view from the official viewing platform was rather obscured by greenery, so I attempted the non-official path down to the rocks.  This was rather dodgy, since my hiking shoes and my hiking pole were both in the car.  Eventually I made it to the bottom, took a couple of photos, and then tackled the climb back up – which was much easier than the descent, since I could use hands as well as feet.

From there I retraced my path and took the coastal road, stopping at various viewpoints.  At one, which overlooked a bay, there was a large shrine of artificial flowers and fresh fruit attached to a wire fence;  there was nothing to say why, but it was beautifully done.  Continuing along the scenic drive, I saw a mongoose!  At first glance I thought "squirrel", but of course there aren't any (despite all these nuts!);  neither are there any snakes, but the mongooses were introduced in order to eat rats in the sugar-cane plantations.  And, as so often with introduced species, having no natural predators, they thrived.  However, I later saw another one as road-kill, so I guess they do have one predator:  the motor-car.

The next waterfall, Akaka Falls, was – sadly – another disappointment.  I trekked down a great many concrete steps, to find that the path – declared at the top to be a circuit past two separate waterfalls – had been closed.  Even on full zoom, my only glimpse of the falls was far too far away to be impressive.  I slogged back up the steps, warning those descending of what awaited them.  I reckoned I would take the other end of the circuit, and see how far I could get that way.  But three workmen were closing it off!  They said I should return to where the first bit was closed and climb over it;  I had no intention of doing all those steps again (there must have been a hundred).  However, in the village nearby, there were some absolutely wonderful store-fronts!  I took loads of photos.  And, suddenly, a car pulled up behind where I had parked mine ... and it was my car from yesterday!  I wondered whether to tell the people who had hired it, but decided against it.

I realised that I had spent hours not all that far from Hilo, and I had a lot of mileage to cover to get to Kona, where tonight's hotel is.  So I avoided the temptation of some of the lookouts, and even of stalls offering shave ice, and undertook the long drive across grassy uplands.  To start with these were grazed by cows, sheep and a few horses, but as the road rose and the grass became more tussocky the land was unused.  It also got colder;  by 2500 feet the temperature was down 15 degrees to 64F.  Then, as the road started to descend, the land on either side was piled high with black clinker and cinder – very different from the solid sheets of lava I saw yesterday.  The ciders stretched for miles to either side – right down to the sea.  I guess they must have been spewed from Mauna Kea, even though it was quite a long way away.  And fairly recently;  only some clumps of grass, and some very young trees, had got a hold in this new "soil".  All the trees must have been less than 20 years old, maybe even less than that.

Eventually I arrived at the west side of the island.  I headed for the airport, to check out where I have to take the car tomorrow, and also identified the nearest gas station where I could fill up the tank before returning it.  Then I drove back into Kona, and located my hotel – the Royal Kona Hotel.  It is rather flash!  My room is a suite:  a bedroom, a lounge and a bathroom, and two separate balconies, one overlooking the sea.

I'm not sure it was entirely a good idea to opt for Kona on a two-day trip.  Once I got here, there really wasn't time to see anything on this side of the island;  most of the day was taken up by getting here.  And since most of the sight-seeing I did was in the vicinity of Hilo, I could have stayed there for two nights, and returned from the airport there.  However, this hotel is quite an experience!  The restaurant is fairly expensive but will not doubt fit its quality to the price;  there is a beach-type bar which appears to claim to have invented the Mai Tai cocktail (it also seems to do cocktails only, I doubt if I could have got a glass of white wine there, though I didn't try).  It also does food, but I think the restaurant will be better.

At least I have WiFi in my room.  At $10 for 24 hours, it's a bit more expensive than last night, but it's very much more convenient.  Now that I've type up this far (fuelled by a glass or two of water with ice from the dispenser only a step or two away from my door) I shall shower and change, and investigate the bar before heading for the restaurant.  I booked a table for 7pm, which is late in Hawaiian terms, but I have eaten so much in the way of nibbles while driving that I need the time to build up an appetite!

After a shower, and a change of clothes, I headed down to the Beachcomber Bar where, despite the very strong emphasis on cocktails, I was able to get a glass of a rather decent New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, with which I conducted – very quietly – my Friday ritual.  The bar was filled with noisy, happy people, shrieking in delight when the waves crashed onto the rocks below;  but I felt nevertheless very much at peace.  I drank my ritual toasts, and relaxed happily.  The barman increased my happiness by telling me that, although I had already been given one coupon for 20% off food and drink, I could get more from the front desk – so that I could use another in the restaurant, having already used the first one on the bar bill.

People are lovely in Hawai'i.  It is a wonderful place.  The people are universally warm and welcoming,  and I reckon I have absolutely no option but to come back – even if Mickey and Connie were to refuse point-blank to invite me!!  (Which I hope they won't...)

Anyway, I had two glasses of the NZ Sauvignon, and then headed for the restaurant.  I certainly felt the need of food, because the glasses had been free-hand, generous ones.  My table in the restaurant was maybe 20 yards from the pounding surf which was smashing itself against the rocks below, splashing high in the air, deep blue post-sunset waves shattering themselves into whiteness.  I wished I'd brought my camcorder down!  I guess that Big Island doesn't have the sort of coral reef that Oahu does – or, at least, not on the western shore.  Those waves arrived full force;  there is no lagoon whatsoever.

I studied the menu with pleasure and appetite.  I was on the verge of ordering when my phone rang – Mickey and Connie, wishing me Shabbat Shalom.  There's something funny about this phone:  I seem to end up with more missed calls than times I've been away from it.  Checking the missed calls list showed two from Mickey this evening;  and yet the only time I was out of hearing was ten minutes in the shower.  Hell, it's only a $35 phone, after all!

So, after a delightful chat with the two of them, (via loudspeaker phone), it was time to order dinner.  It began with a big complimentary slice of pineapple, and fresh rosemary bread (with a garlicky spread which I didn't touch).  My main course was "Catch of the Day", which was Hebi, a spearfish, and quite delicious.  Because I told the waiter about my problems with digesting garlic fibre, he ensured that the kitchen sent out both the sauces in bowls on the side, to minimise the risk of my ingesting the stuff (he had previously checked with the kitchen, and *all* the entrees had pounded garlic in them in one way or another).

As I ate, the tide kept pounding in (although not rising more than a foot – it doesn't, around here).  It is only on Big Island that I have had the old familiar joy of salt spray on my lips;  in Oahu the coral reef means that the waves rarely hammer on the beach, whereas I guess that Big Island – being very young – has no serious coral reef to speak of.

OK, I know you all want to know about dessert.  Well, there was really only one choice I could possibly make:  Lava Torte, a chocolate fondant which takes 15 minutes preparation time (which gave me time for another glass of wine).  I asked for it with a scoop of chocolate ice-cream;  they gave me two.  There were two ports on the wine list, one of them rather good;  but there was no cheese at all on offer, so there was no point in port.  Instead, I tried a liqueur I haven't had before:  Godiva (which is a Belgian brand of chocolate).  My instructions as to total absence of ice didn't quite materialise – by the third mouthful the liqueur was thin and watery – so I tried again.  I gave full and detailed instructions on how to chill the glass, throw away the ice, dry the glass, and pour in the neat liqueur.  We conducted this scientific experiment on Kahlua, a liqueur I could identify while in a coma.  And, to do them justice, they got it very nearly right.  (The glass wasn't cold enough, but the liqueur was unsullied.)

Oh yes, wildlife.  There was a magnificent fat shiny beetle went scuttling along the top of the tiled wall between me and the sea.  I asked my waiter.  A cockroach, he said.  I couldn't believe it.  But yes, what they have here is apparently Madagascan cockroaches, not the small skinny ones I saw in New York apartments and - in huge numbers – in the Bronx Zoo.  This one was *pretty*!

Took lots of photos today, but because of my recalcitrant laptop I can't download them until tomorrow when I can do it via Mickey's Mac.

[Molly Mockford]

Saturday 13th March 2010

Well, I paid the penalty last night for the garlic I ingested at dinner.  The waiter particularly warned me about the polenta which accompanied the fish, but it was so very good that I ate every scrap regardless.  So at 1:30 I woke suddenly with a mouthful of stomach acid, and there followed an unpleasant 20 minutes during which I feared that I would lose the entire dinner.  Eventually, drinking and gargling masses of water settled my stomach's bitter complaints enough for me to get back to sleep.

The alarm went off at 5am;  I washed, packed, checked out (no breakfast, that didn't start until 6:30) and left for the airport.  But I wasn't allowed to turn left onto the major road to the airport!  So I thought to myself:  "What would Mickey do?" and the answer which presented itself to me as "an illegal U-turn".  I didn't do it right there on the main road, I took a left turn and U-turned in that road, which enabled me to turn right and drive towards the airport.  There was a tiny fingernail-clipping crescent of a new moon, and it was a beautiful drive.  I filled up the tank at the nearest gas station to the airport, and returned the car to Hertz, who refunded me for the tankful of fuel I was charged for when I picked up the previous one - nobody bothered about the quarter-tank I used on the first day.  I have to say that I found Hertz really good to deal with, and would certainly use them again.

Kona Airport is small and rather sweetly amateur.  It reminded me a bit of Guernsey Airport.  After checking in my bag, I then had to carry it to Security and had it over, before doing the regular security bit nearby.  Once through Security, I filled up my empty water bottle from a nice cold drinking fountain, and settled down with my book to wait for the flight to be boarded.

Everything was on time.  I collected my bag, and phoned Mickey, who came and collected me.  Then we went for a walk through Chinatown;  Mickey says it isn't what it was, but I found it colourful and exciting, and the food markets were phenomenal.  From there to Waiola Shave Ice again – where we had not one but two cups of shave ice each!  I got hooked on Li Hing Mui seeds – not actually seeds, but a dried plum, with the stone still in, with a quite phenomenally complex combination of flavours.  So off we went to a Crack Seed shop – yes, I know it sounds like a drug establishment!  But it was packed with large glass jars full of all kinds of dried fruit.  I bought li hing mui, same as I had had in the shave ice, and wet lemon;  Mickey has crystallised ginger and sour plums which I liked almost better than the li hing mui!!

Then it was a matter of back to the house, where I quickly unpacked and roughly sorted my stuff, and ate some cheese and pickles (as though I hadn't had enough to eat already!).  We then drove off to collect Connie from in town, and we all went to a matinee of "Hair".  Early in my stay we had passed the theatre which was advertising it, and I mentioned I had never seen it;  so Connie promptly booked tickets!  The company was an amateur one but it was a very high-quality production, and I certainly got the feeling that the young cast had learned a lot about what it was like to be young in 1968, the downsides as well as the hippie peace-and-love side.

Next, we picked up Benny (the acquaculturalist I encountered in Mickey's office the other day) and we all went off for a Thai meal, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I know nothing about Thai food, and I never know what to order, so I left it entirely up to Connie.  We had plenty of time to relish the meal, because after that we were going to the cinema, and had a lot of time in hand.  The film was part of the Jewish Film Festival and was called "The Little Traitor", starring Alfred Molina as a British sergeant in the occupying force in Palestine just before the Balfour Declaration, who befriended a small Jewish boy who was fiercely anti-British.  It was a very enjoyable film, both moving and funny, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to see it.

After which we dropped Benny off, and returned home, where we wound down with an hour or so's quiet talk, not going to bed until after midnight.  A very full day, and a thoroughly enjoyable one!  I really did enjoy my trip to Big Island, but I also missed Mickey and Connie, and it is good to be back with them again, even though time is rapidly running down.

[Molly Mockford]

Sunday 14th March 2010

Today was a day of highs and lows, ups and downs, swings and roundabouts.  It started well, with my first dip in the outdoor hot tub - I don't know why this didn't happen before, but it was great when it did.  You wouldn't think that in Hawai'i one would need to soak in hot water, but early in the morning, and after sunset, it does get cold;  my tub introduction was in the morning.  It's actually the first wetting that my swimsuit has had!  (OK, some people don't bother with swimsuits in a hot tub, but that's up to them.)  The tub is big enough for eight, but this was just Mickey and me and so there was plenty of room;  and the water was deep enough that I couldn't keep from floating!  A wonderfully relaxing experience, and my joints and muscles felt really loose afterwards.  Mickey swears by it for his arthritis.  The idea is not to wash in the tub, but to shower first;  and I showered afterwards too, a quick cold shower to wash off the sweat from the heat!

After breakfast Mickey and I went to the office, where I downloaded 126 photos from my camera onto my memory stick.  (The process didn't go smoothly;  it started by claiming there were only 31, but I found the missing ones eventually.)  Mickey was interviewed by a local reporter about his latest paper which has rather hit the headlines since the CBS web site picked up on it http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/10/tech/main6286110.shtml.  The reporter did not appear to have done any prior research at all, and arrived full of preconceptions, so heaven knows what the article will be like.  The paper is a daily one, so we'll see the article tomorrow.

What with that, and a visit from one of his students, Mickey didn't get as much work done as he had wanted to.  We left the office a bit earlier than intended, because there was a TV programme which both he and Connie very much wanted to record, and Connie rang to say that the video recorder was not co-operating.  When we got home, indeed it wasn't.  The programme was broadcast at 2pm, 5pm and 8pm;  and we spent most of its 2pm slot trying to get it to record on either videotape or DVD, in any of a variety of machines, from either of two televisions.  Not one set-up would work, and it was difficult to see what on earth the common factor might be.  At one point paranoia led me to wonder whether the channel was broadcasting some kind of deliberate signal which prevented the programme from being recorded!  Mickey and Connie rang up various people to see whether they could record it, but the people were either out or not in a position to record.

During all of this, I tried to copy my photos from my memory stick onto my laptop.  The laptop refused to read  it:  "Insert disk into drive E:".  And Mickey's Mac wouldn't recognise it at all;  it should automatically see it, and create a desktop icon called Untitled or something like that, but it simply ignored it.  It looks as though the stick may be damaged, and I fear that all my Big Island photos may be lost forever.  My only hope is the Mac in Mickey's office via which I downloaded the photos and copied them to the memory stick;  it was the last machine to read the stick, so it might just be prepared to do it again;  and, even if not, the photos should all still be in the Trash folder, if I can get at it before it gets emptied.  But there was nothing I could do about it today.

The plan for the afternoon was to attend a huge parade in Waikiki, with cultural groups from many countries from Inuits to Samoans to Australian Aborigines, and a great many Chinese, Japanese and Koreans.  One group *not* featured was Hawaiians!  I think there's more of a backstory to that than I know.  They wanted me to see the parade, and Mickey always loves to photograph that kind of thing;  so Connie drove us there and dropped us, and returned to the house to try and sort out recording for the 5pm transmission.

The parade was superb, very enjoyable indeed, and the vast majority of the people in the crowd were cheerful and happy and friendly, although one or two were inclined to step forward to take photos without even checking behind them to see whose photos they were blocking.  I mostly used my camcorder, which has a very powerful zoom and I could often get past intrusive figures at the end of the shot;  but Mickey's camera, despite being a very good one, was sat on its tripod and when people stood in front of it, it could not see through them.  Nevertheless, he got some very good shots, and I hope my film was OK (I won't be able to download it until I get home, as my laptop won't run the relevant software).

The parade lasted for nearly four hours;  we were there from 4pm to 8pm, and after the sun set it actually started to get quite cold.  Connie fetched us in the car, and we went to a local diner called Zippy, whose food was excellent.  I had a mushroom burger (I expected a meat-substitute made from mushrooms, but it was a regular burger, undoubtedly home-made, piled high with fried mushrooms, and was delicious).  The place also offers a wonderful range of cakes and pastries, and Connie bought some lemon meringue pie and some wonderful light and tasty chocolate cake, which we brought back to eat at home.

Connie had arranged with one of their lodgers to record the programme;  he appeared with a videotape in his hand, recounted immense difficulties he had had in recording it (it had started, then paused itself, and I think changed channel) but he hoped that some at least of the programme was there.  This is all very mysterious indeed!  Another of the lodgers had lent Connie a DVD of a British comedy film I'd never heard of ("Death at a Funeral") which took a while to get going but was quite amusing once it built up speed, and lifted our spirits.

After which it was bedtime.  Except that Mickey has decided to return to his office;  he really wants to get more work done on his current paper, to get it sent off for his co-authors to respond to his comments, and I think he won't be comfortable until it is complete.  And tomorrow we have a very full day...  But that will be another episode!

[Howard]

I fear that all my Big Island photos may be lost forever

Don't despair just yet:  I might just have some photo recovery software which *might* work.

[Molly Mockford]

Monday 15th March 2010

Woke in good time, and just as I was about to shower I heard Mickey calling me – so it was a very hasty shower, and than I joined him in the outdoor hot tub, which is a gloriously sybaritic experience.  The mornings can be a little bit chilly, and I am always reminded of Japanese Macaque monkeys sitting in their hot pools while the snow accumulates on their shoulders and heads!

After breakfast we went to the office where – whew! – I was able to retrieve my "lost" photos from the Trash folder on the machine I'd used to download them from the camera.  Mickey's morning was not so good;  he spent it all on trying to get an answer from Hewlett-Packard support (about his new printer which isn't working right);  they seem just as ghastly and unhelpful in the US as they are here, and I was amazed he didn't end up shouting after having been cut off for the umpteenth time;  I would have done, even though I know it's not the fault of the individual I'm speaking to.

Mid-morning, we headed home again, and then the three of us headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center, about an hour's drive away.  It is an all-day event, and the tickets are actually valid for three days, because it's impossible to see everything in one!  There are various "villages", consisting of typical traditional huts for each culture, which offer cultural presentations from half-a-dozen countries:  Tonga, Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Tahiti and Hawai'i itself, plus villages without presentations for other islands such as the Marquesas and Rapa Nui (Easter Island).  We saw all or part of the presentations from Tonga, Samoa (a very comic one!), the Maoris and Fiji.

First, though, the visit started with a massive buffet lunch (which was very good) and drinks.  Because the whole thing is organized and run by Mormons (who are very strong in Hawai'i) there is no tea, coffee or booze;  but somehow they manage to allow chocolate, even though it contains caffeine.  The staff at the Center are all Mormons, mostly students at the Brigham Young University, who work in exchange for free fees (which is a really good deal for them).

As well as the villages, there are some huge canoes on display (which we didn't have time to study properly), which include the Iosepi http://www.polynesia.com/iosepa/iosepa-voyaging-canoe.html which is a regularly sea-going canoe, built and navigated entirely on traditional lines.  Associated with it was a presentation on Polynesian navigation, and whether Hawai'i was settled from Tahita or from Central America (other theories include South America and Bora Bora).

Then there was a canoe pageant on an artificial lake;  each of the six main villages produced a flat-topped canoe, punted in the shallow lake, with half-a-dozen or so traditional dancers, each group in different bright colours.  The rain started to pour down with incredible determination;  but Hawaiian rain is very different from British rain, and it wasn't cold or dreich at all, and once it stopped everybody was dry again inside 15 minutes.  The area is known to be a rainy one, so everyone had raincoats;  but nobody uses umbrellas except to keep the sun off!

At 5:30 or so was the luau, another huge buffet, but this time including traditionally cooked pig (done in a hole in the ground, although we didn't see it taken out) and a diet staple called poi, which is a sort of paste made from the taro root.  It is the subject of a lot of jokes for being unpleasant to eat, but I really liked it.  It is purple-gray in colour (the bread rolls were the same colour, having poi in them;  and the buffet included purple sweet potatoes, so purple was well represented!) and is referred to as two-finger poi or three-finger poi, depending on how glutinous it is (and therefore how much can be lifted by hand).  I think it gets thicker – and possibly stronger in flavour – with age.  This must have been a fresh batch, because as far as I could tell it was only one-finger poi!

After the buffet came the show.  I must confess I wasn't that bothered about seeing it;  but I was wrong!  It was called "Ha – the Breath of Life" and it followed the life of one man from birth to fatherhood, each section of his life being presented by one of the six islands who had done cultural presentations.  Much chanting, singing, drumming and dancing including mock-battles and hula;  the hula varies from island to island (Hawaiian hula is slow, languorous and gently erotic, whereas Tahitian hula is fast, hip-wiggling and frankly seductive).  I enjoyed it immensely;  in fact, I enjoyed the whole day immensely!

We then drove back home, and Mickey took me out onto the roof-deck again to see the ethereally beautiful lights of Honolulu one last time (and the stars, so bright in the unpolluted night sky).  We then watched Jay Leno on the Tonight show.  I've become addicted to Jay Leno (sample:  "Have you heard Toyota's new slogan?  There's no stopping us now!") and I think I'm going to have to listen to each night's monologue on his web site on a daily basis.  After that I finished my packing (apart from the majority of Mickey's papers, which will be shipped separately because there are so many of them and they weigh a lot);  helped Mickey with a very unclear e-mail giving instructions for his participation in an Australian on-line forum after a relevant news video;  and went to bed … where I hardly slept at all.

[Molly Mockford]

Tuesday 16th March 2010

I had set my alarm for 4:30, but I didn't sleep much at all (I kept raising my head from the pillow to see, once again, the lights of Waikiki through the sliding door to the garden, which is at the foot of my bed) and when I heard Connie moving about at 4:15 I got up.  It was too early for me to eat more than pineapple for breakfast, but Connie persuaded me to assemble a final salmon-and-Philadelphia bagel to take with me, and at 5:15 we set off for the airport.

Some holidays simply fly by, especially when one is really enjoying them.  This one didn't do that, because there was so much that was new to discover, so much to do.  Every day was different and every day was gloriously enjoyable.  I can no longer remember exactly what I expected or hoped for before my arrival, before meeting Mickey and Connie in the flesh for the first time – because what I was given was so very much more!  For some days the fact of my next visit has been taken as a given;  only the dates will remain to be arranged.  What wonderful, kind, generous, lunatic people they are!  I am going to miss them dreadfully.  I travelled 8,000 miles to spend half-a-month with a man whom I knew only from e-mail and phone calls, over a period of no more than six months, and his wife whom I didn't know at all but who took me totally on trust – and it was a resounding success.  The love and warmth and acceptance which they showed me was beyond anything I could possibly have hoped for.  As Mickey has said so often, we have known each other for years:  we just didn't know each other's names.

And Connie was absolutely right about the bagel;  I ate half of it while waiting to board the plane, and the other half once on board (the flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles does not offer food, although one can buy very expensive "snacks" on board.  Fortunately, it does provide free soft drinks.  We took off on time at 7:25, and by craning my neck I could see Diamondhead, that ever-reliable landmark, and the high-rise buildings of Waikiki;  from there, I could trace the streets which constitute St Louis Heights, and felt a bit tearful to be leaving.    (In fact, I was regularly attacked by edge-of-tears, and even slipping over the edge, throughout that flight as I thought about what a wonderful, happy time it had been.)  I was in the window seat of a set of three, with nobody else in the other two;  the plane was far from full.  The flight was much faster than the equivalent flight out, because of a strong tailwind, and landed a full hour before it was due to do so!

I had been told my checked bag would make its own way onto the connecting flight, and I wouldn't see it again until Heathrow (where, to my surprise, it was indeed reunited with me).  I found that I was still inside the Security area, and didn't have to go through again.  This meant I could buy duty-frees (including liquid) without causing the sort of ructions there were on the trip out.  The downside was that there wasn't much to do in that small area of the airport;  I mooched around various fast-food outlets and low-brow bookshops, bought my duty-frees, filled up my water-bottle at a drinking fountain, and settled down near the flight gate with my book and a box of nine chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.  At least, I am sure there were nine in it.  But, ten minutes later, there were none at all.  It's most mysterious.  Diet?  What diet??  Mind you, if I continue to consume as little booze as I have in the last couple of weeks, I should be able to eat all kinds of goodies.

As I sat there waiting, I heard them call final boarding for the flight to Honolulu which I caught 17 days before.  I want to catch it again!

My own flight took off a little late, just as the line of evening crossed Los Angeles.  It was a very short evening, since the darkness was travelling west and I was travelling east;  and I thought about the extraordinarily extended blood-red sunset which I saw in the other direction, and realised that this was how it had to be paid for.  7pm Los Angeles time equalled 4pm Hawai'i time and 2am GMT.  About the last feature I could see in natural light was snow-capped mountains which we crossed before flying over the Mojave Desert.  By 7:30 I could identify Las Vegas – but by its lights alone;  it was very brightly lit.  (But not a patch on Honolulu!)  We are racing to meet the night.

At 8pm, food arrived.  Chicken or lasagne:  chose the latter.  Salad (fairly fresh), roll and butter, crackers and cheese spread, and a chocolate chip "blondie" – like a brownie but not brown.  Not bad, considering.  Beside, I was hungry – despite the bagel and the chocolate-covered macadamias I'd had.  At 8:25, the Honolulu GPS beacon dropped off the edge of the flight-path display   The islands themselves are still just visible on the map – but not for long.

I tried to sleep, but could only doze briefly.  It is around 36 hours since I last actually slept.  9:15 on the plane is 6:15 in Honolulu, and night will be drawing in;  the lights of Waikiki will be bright and beautiful.  I changed my watch to GMT, in an effort to look forward rather than back.  I think we're over Canada by now.

The flight path was considerably to the south of the one going out.  Then, I was able to marvel at the beauty of Greenland;  today, it wasn't even in sight (although it was starting to get light by then).  Although it was gone 8am local time, the stewardess insisted that I keep the window shutter closed.  An hour later, though, we were served breakfast (croissant, yoghurt and orange juice) and allowed to open the shutters.  We arrived in the UK via Ireland and Liverpool (rather than the Western Isles, as on the flight out) and landed at 12:15 GMT (although we then sat on the runway for quite a while until they were ready for us).  The display says that the temperature outside is 12C, 53F – quite a change from Hawai'i!  But it wasn't the warmth of the weather that matters – it was the warmth of the welcome that I was given, the warmth of the friendship that is now shared not only with Mickey but also with Connie.  The whole experience was a huge gamble – and one which paid off far more handsomely than I could ever have hoped!

I have several day's worth of photos still to upload;  I'll post links once they are ready.

[Windsong]

You had a delightful holiday that I am sure you will always remember!  What memories you have made!  May they be ever joyful to you!  And welcome home!  

[Molly Mockford]

You had a delightful holiday that I am sure you will always remember!  What memories you have made!  May they be ever joyful to you!  And welcome home!  

Thank you, Paula - what a very kind thing to say!

[Howard]

A truly wonderful account of your holiday/vacation, Molly!  Thank you so much for your trouble in posting for us and for sharing! 

[Molly Mockford]

It was a magical holiday.  It could have gone terribly, horribly wrong;  but it didn't, it went gloriously right!  Now, if I could only find out how to sleep through the night on UK time...

Today I've brought all the photos up to date, creating albums for the last few days, and adding some of Mickey's photos to my own (there will be a lot more of his to come, but only when he gets a round tuit).  I have made all the albums public rather than unlisted, so you can see the lot at http://picasaweb.google.com/molly.mockford.