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Mauna Loa and the Limo Driver on Big Island
Flying over a deserted island on the way to Big Island
The trouble with making airline reservations months in advance is you do all of this research for the best direct flights or minimum layovers and the airlines manage to change it on you at the last minute. I try to eliminate any kind of discomfort when traveling or at least minimize it, so it’s kinda disturbing when they mess with your schedule. Still, when I think how my 40-minute layover in Honolulu turned into 3 hours because of flight time changes, I have to admit that things could be worse; I could have gone to Moscow or the North Pole instead of Big Island. Stuff could always be worse. Mauna Loa could erupt.
My limo driver was on time. He gave the Shaka to a guy on the other side of the baggage carousel. He told me that the Hawaiian hand signal, the folded-up 3 fingers with extended thumb and pinky came from a native Hawaiian who lost his 3 fingers. I always thought it was some sort of surfer dude thing or “party party” deal but what do I know? I’m not sure that is a true story. But I looked it up and Mental Floss credits it to a Hawaiian in the 1950s or 1960s who lost his 3 fingers, Hamana Kalili. So, could be true.
I’ll tell you what is not true, and that’s the limo driver’s belief that the volcano will never erupt. I’m not talking about Kilauea, obviously, as that routinely seems to pour down near Puna. I’m talking about Mauna Loa. It has erupted 33 times since 1843, and the last 2 big eruptions were in 1950 and 1984. Isn’t it overdue? I asked the driver.
He shook his head and laughed. Said it is unlikely to erupt because of all the building and new construction happening on Big Island. They wouldn’t build new homes in the path of a lava flow, he exclaimed. I stared at the back of his head from my seat, tried to catch his eyes in the rear view mirror. My mouth fell open. Was he joking? Hell, yes, they’d build in the path of a volcano eruption, they are developers, and once they’ve got your money, they don’t CARE!
He was shocked to hear this. Well, the good news is lava doesn’t flow very fast, I assured him. I mean, it wouldn’t be like Pompeii. You’d have plenty of time to evacuate.
He thought about that for a moment and then replied, “Yeah, if Hawaiians saw Mauna Loa was erupting and they were in the middle of a football game, you can bet they would finish the football game.”
Brrr . . . Time to Work from Hawaii
Elizabeth Weintraub in Oakland holding mandarins to her ears for no good reason.
It was chilly in the Bay area over Thanksgiving, as evidenced by the photo of me with the mandarins in Oakland. Yet, as the cold snap heads into Sacramento and Christmas lights are springing up, it can mean only one thing for this Sacramento Realtor: it is time to work from Hawaii. Yup, due to state-of-the-art technology, I can list Sacramento real estate just as easily from my home office in Land Park as I can from a cabana on the ocean at Big Island, so I am off to Hawaii this morning.
After trying to stuff my snorkel gear into my smaller luggage, it dawned on me that not only would it fit oh-so-much better into my larger luggage, but because I’m not traipsing about the South Pacific this year and won’t have to maneuver my own luggage by myself at all, I can pack a much LARGER suitcase. Eureka. Packing is done. No rolling of clothes and sitting on my luggage, tugging on the zipper, ripping the skin off my fingers in doing so. Plop, plop, plop, all packed. Yup, time to work from Hawaii.
Then I realized I had not yet received an email from Hawaiian Airlines announcing the time to check in. That was odd. I went to the Hawaiian Airlines website to print my boarding pass, and it wouldn’t let me sign in. A banner noted the airline had unilaterally decided to change customer passwords. I chose a new password and tried again. Nope, they required more digits, more letters and a weird combination. I hate being told what to do. But if I wanted to sign in to Hawaiian and get my boarding pass, well, must conform. I’m pretty irritated with them by now, when the horrifying thought occurred to me what if the reason I didn’t get an email was because I booked a flight for 2016 and not 2015?
My ergonomic keyboard sometimes causes me to mistype because the 5 and 6 are within the same reach on the left, and no matter how long I’ve had this keyboard, I can’t adjust. I want to type a 6 with my right finger. It’s embedded in my brain. What if I royally screwed up? But my luck is pretty good, and no, I did not make a mistake. I found my reservation. What I did not realize was the airline had changed the departure time. I had chosen a leisurely time to depart, a time that would let me sleep in, but no, Hawaiian changed it, and now I have to be at the airport at 6 AM.
If that’s the worst thing, it’s OK. Because it’s time to work from Hawaii.
Back Home in Sacramento is a Return to a Normal Pace
Tourists at Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel
One way to really appreciate your home in Sacramento is to leave it for a while and go stay in a musty hotel room on the beach in Hawaii where the highlight of the entire week was a group of tourists showing up out of nowhere, carting serious camera equipment. Wow, big excitement on the beach. The upside was a much needed rest and I got to finish reading a couple of books. Plus, there is no denying that 3 trips to the spa are almost enough to work out all the kinks and creaks.
Donna, my server, at the Coast Grille made my vacation a delight. The Hapuna Beach Prince should give Donna a big fat raise. She was always in a good mood, smiling, and she would listen to me describe the type of experience I expected to encounter, and she made sure it happened. I could ask about items on the menu, and by the end of 8 days, she knew me well enough to say with an air of certainty that I would not like XYZ but I would probably love ABC.
That will probably all go away soon, though.
Because the newest thing now in restaurants is the food delivery system being introduced at Eatsa in San Francisco. You walk into a barren restaurant, choose the meals and accouterments you desire, pay for it on an iPad screen and then wait while it is delivered by unseen hands to a window where you retrieve your tray or box. Robot food. Not really fast food. Robot food. It doesn’t matter that human hands prepare it if there is no discussion, no interaction, all because now human contact is too expensive.
The other thing I really liked about my resort in Hawaii was the spa at Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel. Especially the coconut scrub / Swedish / lomilomi massage special. It will take me a while to build up more knots in my neck and back now that I’m back home.
But last night I got to sleep in my own bed, hug my own husband, pet my own cats, and return to a normal life. After all of my numerous trips, I’m having second thoughts about ever wanting to spend time in Hawaii for any length of time without my home in Sacramento being there. I miss home when I’m away. And I’m very glad to be back in Sacramento.
Phone booths in Hawaii that actually work
The Best Way to Serve Maine Lobster in Hawaii
Hapuna Beach on Labor Day Weekend 2015
The beach was fairly quiet for the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend in Hawaii, no sand castles, only one surfboard, piercing squeals of children almost nonexistent, in fact the birds shrieked more than anybody except maybe that overweight woman from Iowa waddling about. I strolled a long stretch on the shore, allowing the waves to roll over my perfectly manicured toenails and deposit grains of sand between my toes. On a firm spot that is still wet from the last wave but not hit so many times that your feet sink into its dampness. You don’t have to work quite so hard to put one foot in front of the other when walking there.
It was at this point I realized that it was entirely possible a spot on my back has had too much exposure to the sun. When you’re traveling solo, that’s a drawback, having nobody around to rub sunblock on those hard-to-reach spots. I suppose I could have asked the overweight woman from Iowa to help me out but I didn’t really want her pudgy hands on my back. And if she missed a spot, then I would blame her. Be hanging dead lizards on her door knob.
Not wanting to rollover in bed in pain in the middle of the night, I cut the walk shorter than I had planned and trekked to the gift shop to pick up what my friend Myrl suggested I do in the beginning, a can of spray sunblock. At that point I also realized I had given away my mango sunscreen lip balm to my friend Lisa from Texas when she was visiting me in Sacramento last week. I guess you can’t call it chapstick because that name is probably trademarked or registered or maybe that’s just another one of those things that change names over the years.
It’s how a suitcase turned into luggage. A purse into a handbag or the shorter term, bag. Your kitchen cupboards have morphed into cabinets. Blame it on marketing, trying to polish the sheen, pull that last scent from the bloom.
After buying spray-on sunblock and new lip balm, I headed to the bellman desk to check on the departure time for Mauna Kea. My room literature showed a 5:50 departure time and, since my dinner reservations for the clambake / lobster fest was at 7 PM, I figured I could spend time checking out the shops and wandering the hotel but it turns out the departure time was 6:50. Trust but verify. I’ve been anticipating Maine lobster in Hawaii, although I believe the Maine lobster in Hawaii originates in Kona.
This is a very different experience than my Maui vacation last year with Barbara Dow at the Fairmont Kea Lani in Wailea. Much more low key. The only shopping I could find here was in the lobby yesterday afternoon. I spotted a green turtle, a giant honu, on an aluminum print. There were dozens of other photographs of lava flows, dripping over A’a but I could not imagine such a thing hanging in our home. No, a honu was just fine and the right size. It will make me smile every time I walk by. Unlike red hot lava which strikes fear. My husband undoubtedly will prefer the honu as well.
Maine lobster in Hawaii comes from Kailua / Kona, served shelled at Mauna Kea
I have also discovered that when one dines alone, it doesn’t take nearly as long as you might think to devour 3 Maine lobsters drizzled with drawn butter. I was in the Mauna Kea and out in less than an hour. While I was standing in line with my plate, I wished I had my wristlet with my iPhone dangling so I could have shot photos of the workers cleaning up the lobster and shelling them before placing the succulent flesh on your plate. Randy Selland should take note. Much better way to eat lobster than having to mess with the shell yourself, cutting up your hands, and whatnot.
A Visit to Hood River, Oregon, Involves Pubs and Wineries
View of Mt. Hood and vineyards from Mt. Hood Winery in Oregon
While strolling along the dock on the Columbia River in Stevenson, Washington, I met a young couple from Atlanta. The wife mentioned they chose this area of the country for vacation because they are doing a “pub crawl.” I thought about their quest for a moment and then offered my own personal reflections, which are all based on the assumption that if I tried to do it, I probably wouldn’t get very far.
Craft beer is trendy-hot in Sacramento right now, and craft beer joints are popping up all over, especially in Midtown. Everybody is an artisan. I think I should call myself an artisan real estate agent. If you create something with your own two hands, become obsessed by tiny details and use only the finest ingredients, that makes one an artisan; especially when you’re never satisfied with the finished product and continue to tweak and improve. In the old days, you’d probably go into a straight jacket but today you’re an artisan.
In Washington and Oregon, you’ll find craft beer joints all over, doesn’t matter where you are, small town, large town, they are there. They don’t call them beer joints, though or even what they truly are, which is a bar, because that sounds so crass, so pounding-the-table-like-a-leering-caveman at Hooters. They call them pubs. Because it sounds so British and upper-crusty-like. Just what the Northwest needs.
The train runs along the Columbia River near Mitchell Point in Washington
You’ll also find pot houses in Washington, run by the government, where you can buy pre-rolled joints with filters on the tips that come individually packaged in a plastic tube so if you’re planning to leave it outside somewhere for somebody else to find because you can’t possibly smoke the entire thing and walk at the same time, it won’t get wet. Not that I would know anything about that.
Hood River, Oregon, from the steps of Big Horse Brew Pub
We began bouncing on the sidewalks of Hood River searching for a lunch spot. Initially, I had my heart set on a Sunday brunch at the Columbia Gorge Hotel, which was built in 1921, a beautiful old hotel with many of its original architectural details intact situated on a cliff over the Columbia River. There is also a waterfall right there on the property, and you can stand on top of it and look down, watching the water roar over the rocks and drop below. But we missed brunch by 15 minutes. So, we went downtown Hood River.
Bonneville dam from the Washington side of the Columbia River
It was hot. More than 100 degrees. Little shade regardless of which side of the street you walked on. Lots of little shops, many businesses were closed, and a bunch of cafes featuring sandwiches. After circling a 6-block area, we decided to try up the hill, a restaurant perched at the top, The Big Horse Brew Pub. By this time, we had scorched ourselves in the sun, my iPad was almost too hot to touch to play Ingress, and we pulled our tired selves up the hill and then up another 3 sets of stairs to the restaurant.
It will be a 30-minute wait, the guy at the seating sign predicted. Well, I was too tired and sticky hot to go anywhere else. I imagine my husband was ready to sit down, too. We grabbed at spot at the bar and ordered a couple of drafts while we enjoyed the tremendous view of the town of Hood River below and made fun of the signs warning guys who had too much to drink what not to do. Like, don’t climb the ladder to the loft, which seems decorative anyway.
Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub visits the Mt Hood Winery in Oregon
We considered renting paddleboards at the beach, but just the thought of the hot sun beating down on us, even though we could feel the cold water rolling over our bare feet, well, it just didn’t seem like a lot of fun. It was also a bit windy for paddelboarding. Nope, visiting the Mt. Hood Winery, on the other hand, seemed like it offered more air conditioning and peace and quiet. Of course, we didn’t leave there without ordering a future shipment. I highly recommend the 2013 Estate Dry Reisling or the 2012 Grenache for a nice summer wine.
Which is why we never made it to a hiking spot. We were on our way to at least visit the trailhead when we got sidetracked by the Mt. Hood Winery. Hiking or wine tasting? Over 100 degrees outside. Easy choice.
