Life is a State of Mind

How freaking cool is it to discover that your father-in-law and his wife are already huge Firefly/Serenity fans?

If you have not seen any Firefly, I guarantee you’ll love it after you’ve watched 2-4 episodes. The DVD boxed set of the series is running about $14 at Target and other big box discounters. Grab yourself a copy. It is the best television show ever made.

Watch Firefly first, and in the order of the DVD discs.

Then, if you can, watch Session 416 (aka: R. Tam Sessions) at http://www.session416.com/

There is a short comic series that takes place between the series and the movie called Serenity: Those Left Behind that is interesting to read and available through Dark Horse comics.

Then watch the feature film Serenity last. It is also available on DVD in several formats.

Trust me - you’ll love this material for the themes, the dialogue, the stories. Joss Whedon at his very best. Erci and I watch the shows over and over again.

We are tired, we have loads of laundry to do, and a Bailey-cat who is very happy to see us… and we are home.

Love to all - more later.

Erci’s father picked us up in San Mateo Friday morning and took us down the coast for scenery and catching up, we followed coastal highway 1 from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz stopping briefly at San Gregorio, at Pigeon Point and in Davenport for lunch. We took longer at both Bonnie Doon Vineyard and at Storr’s Winery tasting and ordering wine at both. We checked out the new giant Whole Foods in Cupertino, which is immense, and they had a SmartCar display and test drive in the parking lot (too long a line, but they are cute cars). We headed back to San Mateo to eat at Viognier compliments of Erci’s dad (thanks a bundle), and it was yummy.

Flying home today. Looking forward to seeing friends and Bailey.

Ilima tours sent the van to the wrong hotel. United flight 74 was delayed by three hours. Security was nervous about our Tiki carving. My PDA died at the airport. I think I’ll stop touching anything today so nothing else can go wrong… at least Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is an awesome book.

This morning we took TheBus to Foster Gardens, which was a lovely respite from the hustle and bustle of the city of Honolulu. The big trees at the garden are spectacular, and there are lots of orchids there too. We walked from the gardens to Chinatown and got some lunch and ball tea, then caught the bus out to Sea Life Park, which is a shadow of it’s former self and would have been much more fun if we’d been prepared to get wet and interact with the dolphins and rays. TheBus ride to Sea Life Park was interesting and very long. A lot of school kids use TheBus to get home from school, and they were a rowdy, spoiled pack of half-feral miscreants. At one point the bus driver had to yell at them all to stop them pushing and shoving each other outside the bus itself (which they were doing as we pulled into one stop, very dangerous).

The ride back to Waikiki’s International Marketplace was a lot less interesting, thank goodness. We are hitting Sansei Sushi again tonight and getting ready to fly tomorrow to San Francisco. ’s cough is getting worse. Damn.

I was stationed at Hickam AFB through all of 1985 and most of 1986. It was a rought first duty on lowly E3 pay, but it was a lot of fun as well. It has been strange seeing how much my old stomping grounds have changed. The Shore Bird is still in place, and still a fun, beach front bar in the Outrigger Reef hotel just off Lewers street. Lewers is totally changed though, instead of a narrow street lined with seedy and comfortable bars and nightclubs (Red Lion, Jazz Cellar, etc) it is wide, well lit, and completely over-hauled as a shopping street like any designer/fashion mall on the mainland. Red Lion has moved over to Kalakaua. Shore Bird is still there and largely unchanged, though I could find no evidence of the dance floor we used to use in the 80s. Erci and I enjoyed a drink each from the Shore Bird and then a fantastic dinner at the Ocean House restaurant next door, and also right on the beach where we watched moonlight play on the water and beach strollers walk by.

Earlier today we visited the Arizona Memorial and then caught TheBus back to Ala Moana Center for lunch in the food court, visited the Apple store, watched some koi in the mall’s ponds and streams, and then caught the Waikiki bus back to a grocer then the hotel for some pool time. Tomorrow I think we’ll try to find botanical gardens somewhere…

The trend to combine pagers and mobile phones has one major drawback: I continue to get pages from work because I want and need my mobile phone, but would love to have left my pager behind. It appears that Erci may be fighting off a cold.

As Erci already wrote, the last full day on Maui was spent driving the beautiful road to Hana and back. We swam briefly at Koku beach at the extreme Eastern end of Maui and checked out the Hasegawa general store in Hana. Erci was wishing she had the Porsche on the road back; I am kind of glad we did not have a sportier car. We have a lot of photos. Once back in Ka’anapali we jumped into the ocean again to cool off, and it occurred to me that in one afternoon we’d swum both ends of Maui, thanks to modern transportation. Less than a century ago that would have been two or three days travel at least.

More after the fold…
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Today we slept in, then headed to Lahaina to pick up some clothing Erci was having altered, have more Mai-Tais at Cheeseburger in Paradise (Ernie is a great bartender, and the breeze is better in the upstairs bar than downstairs in the main dining room). Erci had to have some prints with koi in them (they really are lovely) and we cruised town for a few photos.

Then we drove up to legendary Honolu’a Bay and saw decent surfing waves one could ride for minutes (and yes, it is Summer now!), then we stopped briefly at D.T. Fleming Beach Park just to get a feel for some of the parks.

We stopped for coffee in Napili and then decided to drive around to Iao Valley. Iao gets a lot of rain, and the tropical plants in the steep volcanic valley setting are amazing. Very beautiful place and a world away from the heat of Lahaina and the West Maui beaches. We headed in to town for a brief stop at Queen Ka’ahumanu Center (a large, open-air mall) for supplies and shopping. Erci hit yet another Serendipity clothing store and we loved some of Seredipity furniture store’s pieces too.

We snagged dinner at Da Sushi Bar and WowWee Maui Kava Bar because that has been the best poke on the island so far. Erci is searching for a bumper sticker that says “got poke?” now… we saw one on someone’s car. Picked up real estate guides, and ouch; this place is very expensive.

Evening swim in the pool before it closes and another night sleeping with the doors open to tbe night breezes.

Last night the Feast at Lele was amazing. Four courses of food, each consisting of three to four dishes, each course in turn representing Hawaii, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Samoa. The shows were fun too, and the setting was absolutely gorgeous.

This morning we got up very early (4:40am local) and got on board the Trilogy IV with Trilogy Excursions for a sail to Lanai’s Hulopoe Bay Marine Sanctuary. On the way to Lanai we slowed down and observed a large pod of spinner dolphins. Once at Lanai we transferred to a small raft (think Zodiac on steroids with a frame and fabric roof) and went along the cliffs of Southern Lanaii and saw the same pod of spinner dolphins again, and a second pod, and two (though some on board said three) green sea turtles, and birds. Then we went to Hulopoe Bay Marine Sanctuary itself, and snorkeled along a beautiful sandy beach and swam for hours. While snorkeling I was thrilled to see Hawaiian cleaner wrasses in the wild, doing their funky cleaning thing. We saw a humuhumunukunukuapa’a fish, and many tangs, groupers, butterfly fish, parrot fish, squirrel fish, and lots and lots of small polyp stony corals in many different pastel colors. The Trilogy crew and staff were amazing, and they cooked us up a BBQ chicken lunch, peas, yakisoba, and juices, iced tea, and water. The sail back was a bit choppy, but once in the shelter of Maui, Captain Mike let us swim off the catamaran itself in the open ocean (though sheltered by Maui) and then we sailed back into Lahaina in time to siesta before dinner.

Dinner Wednesday night at Pineapple Grill was the highlight of the trip until the Feast at Lele, and now that’s been bumped for the day’s sail with Trilogy. Astounding. We got a bit too much sun, but so much fun.

Wednesday morning we decided to head into Lahaina town for some breakfast and shopping. Stumbled into a store called Serendipity on Front Street and spent most of the day there as they had lovely, fashionable, affordable, sensible clothing in Erci’s sizes, and the staff were entertaining and a joy to spend time with. Highly recommended for women’s fashion, more diverse than Sig Zane’s Aloha wear (which is also very good, and we’d already hit the Sig Zane store in Wailuku on Tuesday).

We had lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise, and several Mai-Tais (though Erci was disappointed they came with no umbrellas). Ernie, the bartender, was a one man comedy show, and the burgers were huge and delicious. I went looking for closed-heal snorkel/scuba fins; and found nothing worth getting, but enjoyed browsing the scuba shops all the same. We hit a grocer and picked up pineapple to replace the one that came with our condo and we already demolished.

Dinner was at Pineapple Grill, which is far-and-away the best meal we’ve had here so far. We lucked into half-price on bottles of wine Wednesday (which brings the wine into normal mainland markup range) and enjoyed lobster bisque, seared ono, duck spring rolls, Gazpacho, and Lemon Porcini Dusted Opakapaka.

Thursday we woke up and hit the beach for the first time, and the pool. Then we went to the Maui Ocean Center for lunch and a tour of marine aquariums and natural ocean history. We are looking forward to a luau at The Feast at Lele tonight.

Sorry we’ve posted no pictures yet, Erci’s new laptop does not have iPhoto loaded yet and we have not been able to dump the camera to the laptop yet. Searching for a CF card reader to make it easy.

We’ve started working on a comparison of things we like about Hawaii versus things we like about Caribbean islands…