I don’t like sitting on a plane for thirteen hours very much.
* * *
The Hawaiian/Polynesian/whatever-it-is accent baffles me. When the announcer at the airport told us the name of the carousel at which our baggage could be retrieved, I couldn’t tell whether she had said ‘G’ or ‘J’. Even when she said it several more times. Fortunately, other people did not have this problem. I followed them.
* * *
They comb the beaches here in the morning. They would probably say they were raking them, but the rakes are quite fine.
* * *
On my way to breakfast, noticed a statue of a cherub playing in a fountain with what appeared to be a kookaburra perched on its head. It was dark, so I couldn’t see the details, and in any case, I didn’t give the statue much thought until I returned that way after eating and the kookaburra was gone.
* * *
Hawaiian beaches don’t have much in the way of pebbles or shells. They have fragments of light, pumic-like volcanic rock that don’t wear smooth, and coral, which doesn’t age well at all. It is pointless to try to skip these stones (it took me five minutes to find a stone that I could get even three hops from). I guess that’s why people surf here–there’s nothing else to do at the beach.
* * *
Diamond Head looks better in real life than in photos.
* * *
The pigeons here are pure white. But they still behave exactly like pigeons everywhere else.
* * *
A young couple walking the beach at dawn asked me to take their picture. I answered that I would be happy to, but only if they would let me borrow their camera, because I did not have one on my person. The woman thought that this was hysterical.
I took a picture for them that could hang in the Louvre–yeah, I’m good–but I’ll be lucky if it ends up on facebook.
* * *
The allegedly best Indian restaurant in Honolulu is very disappointing. Might as well go with the flow and not try to fight it… I’ll be eating sushi and grilled fish for the rest of the week. The whole island is set up to cater to hordes of Japanese tourists, and it’s best to follow the crowds.
* * *
I wonder how long a man has to live here (or in a place like this) before he is not immediately distracted by a woman walking down the street wearing a bikini whose total cloth would not be adequate to serve as a spinnaker on a boat crewed by a single mouse. Definitely more than one day. Maybe forever.
* * *
I have a lot in common with surfers, but explaining why I think that would be complicated. It’s the relaxed obsession. You’ll either understand this, or you won’t. I will not be offended.
* * *
Many of the plants and birds and quite a few of the people here would be right at home in a Dr. Seuss book. I wonder if he ever visited Hawaii or any other part of Polynesia, or whether he did a lot of drugs.
* * *
The mountains are impossibly steep. They’re not really mountains; they’re a bunch of cliffs that decided to make something of themselves. Even if it snowed here, you couldn’t ski these slopes. You could BASE-jump many of them, however.
