Email Elizabethwinter vacation 2015
Snorkeling in Honokohau Bay with James Arness
Elizabeth Weintraub on Sea Smoke, a 60-foot catamaran custom built for James Arness.
OK, technically, when you get right down to it, James Arness was not actually on the boat in person where I went snorkeling in Honokahau Bay, but the 60-foot catamaran I was on, Sea Smoke, was custom built for James Arness, and his spirit was there, which means I went to Honokohau Bay with James Arness. I had a huge crush on Matt Dillon as a kid, and I always wished he would just marry Miss Kitty and get it over with, but that was never gonna happen, according to my mom. She claimed Miss Kitty ran a whorehouse, and I could have slapped for saying that.
As I sat at the front, just behind the window, probably blocking everybody’s view, I tried to imagine where James Arness would have sex on this catamaran. There wasn’t really any good spots. The floor was too hard, the seats were not padded, and what’s the point of having a boat like this as a celebrity if there is no place for extracurricular activity?
James Arness, as my mother would have told you, was born in 1923 in Minneapolis, the sister city to my birthplace. He began his broadcasting career at a radio station in Minneapolis in 1945. But his big break came from his starring role in 1951 in The Thing From Another World, an iconic science fiction movie that became one of my favorite movies as a kid. I felt a strong connection to James Arness, but I just could not picture him on this boat. Probably because there was no place to have sex.
The guys from Ocean Sports gave us a quick presentation, complete with color photographs of fish and background stories. I found that very helpful when I slid down the stairs in my fins to snorkel. It’s nice to be able to identify fish. I spotted the red coral that Hawaiians used to use a few generations back as lipstick. The black spiny thing that sticks into your skin with backward arrows that you can’t get out unless you urinate on that spot. Or use white vinegar. We had no vinegar on the boat.
Of particular interest to me was a parrotfish I first saw a few years back in Rangiroa. I had forgotten the story until reminded. Parrotfish are mostly female, very few males are born, and the ones that are born male are sterile. They reproduce because a female will turn into a male and then fertilize a bunch of the other females. She changes through a series of colors (polychromatism) to become a male, as they are brightly colored, almost like a rainbow, with strong hues of aqua.
It makes you wonder what the world would be like if women could have babies without men. Would we see world peace? Would hunger cease? Would Donald Trump be forced to work in the mail room?
While I did not go on a hunt to find Nemo like in Vanuatu, I did spot a juvenile version of the yellowtail coris, a very small orange fish with white stripes. Another highlight was the Hawaiian fish with the longest name, and it’s NOT the humuhumunukunukuapuaa , it is instead the Lauwiliwilinukunuku’oi’oi. This fish is mostly yellow, sort of boxy shaped, with a long snout, a masked face and white stripes.
I am heading home today, after 3 weeks on Big Island, back to rainy Sacramento. Now I find I will have to buy the autobiography of James Arness in hard copy, which is not in iBooks, and probably a chart of Hawaiian fish so I can begin a book to document all the fish. This is what snorkeling does to you in Honokokau Bay with James Arness.
Honokohau Bay as viewed from Sea Smoke, a catamaran built for James Arness.
The Cats of Waikoloa Canoe Club at Anaeho’omalu Bay
Cat haven for cats at Waikoloa Canoe Club
One of the good things that can come from wandering about with my iPad to search for Ingress portals at foreign places in the world is the discovery of new things I might not otherwise find like the cats of Waikoloa Canoe Club at Anaeho’omalu Bay. If you ask Jenny, my housekeeper at the Marriott, she doesn’t much care for the cats of Waikoloa Canoe Club because they jump on her car in the parking lot and leave little kitty footprints all over her windshield.
The cats of Waikoloa Canoe Club are not to be fed, according to the sign: Do Not Feed Cats, yet there is a raised wooden platform with tin plates and bowls filled with water. Some kind people are caring for these cats. They are nestled down the hill and in the trees, difficult to see from the road. A meandering sprinkler hose waters the vegetation around the clearing. The cats are aloof and keep their distance, although a few don’t seem to care that I’m there hovering and shoving an iPad in their faces at all.
Jenny drives to the Marriott from a town about 25 miles south of Hilo. Taking the saddleback road, it’s an hour and 45 minutes each way. There is a bus that transports workers, but it used to be free, back when Jenny started at the Marriott some 8 years ago. Then the fare imposed later was $1.00 each way and now it’s been raised to $2.00 each way. Jenny saves money, she says, by driving with her boyfriend, who is in construction.
It’s cheaper to live on the Hilo side than the Kona side. Still, that’s a long way to drive for work, bus or no bus. I think about that when I leave her a $2.00 tip every day. Perhaps I should be more generous, but I’ve already established a pattern. Yet, her birthday is this week, so that gives me an excuse to help. There is decorum. Below are more photos of the cats of Waikoloa Canoe Club.
Cat haven nestled in the tree clearing at Waikoloa Canoe Club
Green eyed cat with a clipped ear (shows alteration) at Waikoloa Canoe Club Cat Haven
Cat at Waikoloa Canoe Club resting in a sunny spot.
Cat in the shade at Waikoloa Canoe Club
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.
