Like this photo I took at Honolulu Zoo last month.
Showing posts with label Hawaii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hawaii. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Friday, July 17, 2009
Hawaii in the Summer
Our balcony at the Waikiki Sheraton -- Mary was able to get the room for $100 a night on Priceline, which has to be the deal of the year
We had only previously been to Hawaii in the winter. When I was growing up, Hawaii is where Edmontonians who could afford it went to escape Winter over Christmas. I never got to go as a kid, but I had always therefore assumed that Hawaii would be more crowded over Christmas holidays than at other times of year, and that Hawaii would be nearly deserted in the summer, because why would you pay all that money to leave Alberta for the two months Canada has decent weather? But of course, that understanding of Hawaii tourism turned out to be completely wrong-headed. Hawaii is way MORE crowded in the summer, filled to capacity with Americans from Texas and Arizona etc escaping the heat. So the experience of Hawaii is a little different in the summer, because the place is filled with American tourists (and a few Australians escaping their winter) rather than Canadians.
Having done Honolulu previously, we were focused primarily on the beach and fine dining this time through. One of Lethbridge's deficits is that there are no really fine restaurants, just chains (though that is slowly improving). So Mary and I in particular were really looking forward to Roy's, one of our favorite restaurants anywhere. We ate there twice, Hulla Grill twice, Duke's once, Keo's (a Thai restaurant -- order the 'Evil Jungle Prince'!), and Eggs and Things once (all highly recommended). We made up the rest of our meals at Planet Hollywood, the Cheeseburger Waikiki and Maui Taccos (which spoils you for any Canadian tacco chain ever again) because sometimes you just have to, you know, eat. Planet Hollywood is only okay chain restaurant food, but really good value for the money if you order the half price appetizers during happy hour or the breakfast. (We didn't get to eat at Le Mar, but we would have needed babysitting and a bigger budget to go there.) Roy's is especially wonderful, and to our amazement, a favorite of the kids' too. They have a great kid's menu, and give the kids the same three course dinning experience as adults, just with more kid-friendly food and prices. Almost worth the trip to Hawaii for Roy's alone.
Mary took the kids to the beach twice without me, giving me two mornings to write. That was great! Sitting on a balcony in Hawaii overlooking the beach and the ocean, is the way to write! An unexpected bonus was that, since I was essentially sitting still for hours keyboarding, a wonderful variety of birds came and sat on the edge of the balcony with me. I've never seen so many different types in a single day. And I made quite a bit of progress on my book. Other days I went with them to the beach, but since I can't swim, and burn at the mere sight of sunlight, Mary was still mostly stuck with supervising kids while I just found some shade and read. (Stephen King's On Writing, about which more in another post.)
The four day trips we planned were the trip to Sea Life Park, where we had the dolphin encounters (see earlier blog entry); the Hawaii Fire Surf Lessons for Tigana and Kasia; a trip to the Dole Plantation: a pleasant afternoon touring the historic plantation and doing the maze; and an afternoon in the Honolulu Zoo.
Tigana surfing well
Tigana surfing well -- but right into Kasia and her instructor! (The instructor had to pull Kasia under the water to keep Tigana's board from hitting her)
both kids going out to the waves
close up of Kasia with her instructor going out
We would highly recommend Hawaii Fire over other surfing lessons, especially when as in our case, kids are involved. Much cheaper lessons are available all along the beach at Waikiki, but the Hawaii Fire folk have two key advantages: one, they take you to a more sheltered, shallower beach which is ideal for learning on (lots of waves but manageable waves); and all the instructors are firemen --so, if you're going to have problems, these are the guys you want to respond.
The Zoo is considered a small one, but we found it highly enjoyable. As Mary pointed out, the entrance fee would have been worth it just to walk through the trees, bushes and flowers between the animal exhibits -- a great botanical garden. And the Zoo is cleverly laid out so that although its footprint in Waikiki is small, it seems quite big and takes a full afternoon to walk through. I was fascinated that even though we were only a few yards from apartment blocks on one side, the beach on the other, we felt completely isolated from the rest of the city; one really did feel as if one were out on the African savannah.
One of my favorites were the hippos, who were not only hugely huge magnificent beasties, but were enjoying themselves hugely playing ball -- no question about it, they were tossing that enormous green sphere around between them.
Kasia's favorites were the Zebras. Kasia is hypnotized by all things pony, and Zebras are apparently close enough to count. Here a zebra rolls in the dust to cool off. (I was tempted to point my hand like a gun and shout bang as it started to go over for a roll, but that probably would have meant years of therapy for Kasia, so I let it go.)
I'd recommend the zoo for anyone looking for a couple of hours away from the beach.
So, overall, a nice quiet vacation -- quiet days at the beach alternated with low key day trips. A great chance to detox from email and the stresses of our day jobs.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Dolphins Again
Strictly speaking, that's a Walphin that Tigana is dancing with: a dolphin -killer whale cross. But Kasia had so much fun kissing a dolphin on our first trip to Hawaii, we decided that the rest of us should try it.
Back to Hawaii
Following my teaching in Summer Session this June, we took off for vacation in Hawaii. Well, I went to Edmonton to check on my Mom for a couple of days first, and I took the dog with me to confuse the kids. Because we hadn't told the kids they were going to Hawaii, only that they would 'be joining Dad', whom they knew had gone to Edmonton. They understand the need to be in Edmonton to visit family and to attend to all the Estate matters I am still plowing through (even after all this time). Not fun for them, but borne with stoic understanding that the family needed to do this. So Mary picked them up from school on their last day, drove them to the airport in Lethbridge, where they boarded a plane for Calgary, the usual transfer point to Edmonton. Mary had set them up perfectly by telling Tigana that they would drive up, but then giving in to Tigana's asking to fly up instead. (Tigana had used the argument that since I had already driven up earlier in the week, we already had a car in Edmonton, so there was no need for them to endure the six hour car trip. Mary had graciously acceeded to this request, never letting on that it was all a con.) So I flew down to Calgary from Edmonton, and was sitting in the airport Tim Horton's as they got off the plane. Kasia sees me, runs over and hugs me, as Tigana goes, "I thought we would be meeting you in Edmonton?"
Robert: "Ready to start the Grand Adventure of Summer in Edmonton."
Tigana: "Yeah, right."
Robert:" What, you don't want to spend summer in Edmonton?"
Mary: "Kasia, where do you want to go?"
Kasia: "Hawaii!" (This was a safe bet: Kasia always answers 'Hawaii' to questions like 'where would you like to have dinner tonight?' Besides a standing joke, Kasia asks us at least once a week why don't we live in Hawaii. We're having an increasingly difficult time thinking up an answer.)
Mary and I look at each other and shrug. "Okay, why didn't you say so. Let's go to Hawaii."
Tigana: "Whaatt? Youmeanaghghghghghghghghghgyeaahhhwhoooo!"
And so on. So an hour later, three hours after school ends, we're enroute to Hawaii via Vancouver.
Of course, we will be paying for this for the rest of our lives because now every time we take them to Edmonton they're going to be spending the entire trip saying, "Yeah, where are we going really?"
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Back to Lethbridge, and Winter in Alberta
We left Lethbridge in a week when it was -40, so we really appreciated Hawaii. Unfortunately, the return home was correspondingly traumatic. We went from this:
Sunset at our condo on Maui
to this:
Our patio furniture in Lethbridge
But we quickly discovered that there is no sympathy available for "jet lag climate syndrome".
"You had two weeks in Hawaii?! We were stuck here in 40 below and 3 feet of snow the whole time! I had to shovel for three hours to clear my driveway, and I still couldn't go anywhere because the streets weren't plowed." And so on. One of the worst winters in Lethbridge in a long time...so a good time for us to have been gone.
But we've discovered that our kids don't really understand cold. In my generation (I'm old, so think two generations ago), kids walked to school. (Okay, okay, I lived across the street from my school, but other kids walked up to 15 blocks to school). Today, we drive our kids to school, even though Tigana's school is only two blocks away. And since Mary and I pretty much hate cold and winter sports, we haven't exactly encouraged tobogganing or etc. So my kids don't really get that -40 is not just a number, it's a death sentence if you're out there too long. We found Tigana and Kasia out in the backyard one evening in their pjs. "What the H___ are you doing?!" Mary shouted out at them (having no intention of going out there herself). "What?" Tigana asked innocently enough. "We put on our socks!" There followed a round of hot chocolate and a two hour discussion of what would have happened if Mom hadn't discovered them within 30 seconds of their setting out. "Flesh freezes in 2 minutes at that temperature. People die at that temperature. It's different than 20 below."
It reminded me of my life growing up in Edmonton. At least once each winter, somebody would be found frozen to death because they'd just worn a 'car coat' from their heated house to their heated garage, and the car had broken down on some deserted road before they got to their heated destination. People forget how cold -40 really is, and that you can't take chances in this climate. I know my brother twice saved people's lives because he stopped and picked them up when they got themselves in trouble. One was a native man whose car had broken down on Connor's Hill, and no one would stop for him -- perhaps 'cause they thought he looked menacing, though how menacing is a guy shivering to death? I doubt he would have made it to the top of the hill if Doug hadn't picked him up when he had. Another time we were half way across the High Level Bridge when we saw a guy stumble on the sidewalk. Doug stopped and we pulled him in. He was a grad student I knew vaguely from UofA. He had crossed the bridge dozens of time on the 'short' walk from his apartment to campus during the fall, and hadn't fully appreciated what -40 meant. He'd worn a light fall coat, but being from Nigeria, he thought that was a winter coat. Walking that distance in Nigeria, piece of cake. Walking across the High Level Bridge in the middle of a blizzard -- exposed to the wind blowing full force down the North Saskatchewan -- pretty much suicide.
And my own story: My first Christmas in Lethbridge I was still working on my dissertation, so going into work on campus over Christmas. Winter, I had been told, was much milder in Lethbridge, but it turned out to be a particularly bad one -- worst I can remember until this year. I had been working late, and came out to find that my car had frozen solid. I'd forgotten they'd turned the plug ins off over Christmas holiday, since no one was supposed to be working that day. I tried to go back into my office to phone for a cab or tow truck (this was before cell phones), but the building's outside door was now locked, it being after hours on a day campus was officially closed. So I started the long walk up the hill towards home. About a quarter-way to the main road I knew there was no way I could make it all the way home in this cold. So I changed course for the gas station or the Dairy Queen on the corner -- slightly out of my way, but a lot closer than home. Even getting there was going to be touch and go, but I made a determined, tough Northerner heroic effort. When I finally got close enough to see the buildings through the blizzard, I realized that they were closed -- because of the blizzard. So I turned around and set for home again. There are no houses on that road until I would be almost home, but I'd already decided I would knock on the first door I got to, if I made it that far. I was sure I had lost my feet for good when a car finally drove by -- and fortunately for me -- pulled up and offered me a lift. The guy earned my undying gratitude (I still shop at the store whose logo was on the car) and the moment I got home I immediately put myself in the bath, so in the end, only had mild frostbite. I was very lucky. But another man died that same evening trying to walk across the bridge leading to the road I had been on.
I'd been in full winter regalia at that. So finding the kids had ventured out in night gowns, pretty much blew our minds. "Don't you know how cold this is?!" But how could they? Aside from recess, they're never outside, and they don't go out for recess any more once it hits -20 C. If you've never experienced -20, how can you possibly imagine -40?
We'd tell people in Hawaii that it had been -40 when we left Alberta, and they'd look at you as if you were insane. "What's that in Fahrenheit?" is the inevitable question.
"It's the same -- the scales cross at -40."
"Then why would you -- why would anyone -- live there?"
A question my five year old keeps asking us, and one we're having a hard time answering. I'd move to Hawaii tomorrow if it weren't that (a) we're Canadian and Hawaii is American (why we didn't think to buy it from the British when we had the chance, I'll never know) and (b) the salaries at UofHawaii are about 1/3 what I currently make. (Supply and demand, I guess, and there is pretty much a steady supply of profs wanting to work in Hawaii.)
We like Hawaii so much we thought we might see about going in the off season when it would be cheaper -- only there is no off season. We had assumed that summer would be cheaper, since who wants to leave Canada in the summer? But of course, our summer is exactly when people from Texas and Arizona go to Hawaii to escape the heat....
I hear +40 is hot enough it can kill you if you're not prepared.
Sunset at our condo on Mauito this:
Our patio furniture in Lethbridge
But we quickly discovered that there is no sympathy available for "jet lag climate syndrome".
"You had two weeks in Hawaii?! We were stuck here in 40 below and 3 feet of snow the whole time! I had to shovel for three hours to clear my driveway, and I still couldn't go anywhere because the streets weren't plowed." And so on. One of the worst winters in Lethbridge in a long time...so a good time for us to have been gone.
But we've discovered that our kids don't really understand cold. In my generation (I'm old, so think two generations ago), kids walked to school. (Okay, okay, I lived across the street from my school, but other kids walked up to 15 blocks to school). Today, we drive our kids to school, even though Tigana's school is only two blocks away. And since Mary and I pretty much hate cold and winter sports, we haven't exactly encouraged tobogganing or etc. So my kids don't really get that -40 is not just a number, it's a death sentence if you're out there too long. We found Tigana and Kasia out in the backyard one evening in their pjs. "What the H___ are you doing?!" Mary shouted out at them (having no intention of going out there herself). "What?" Tigana asked innocently enough. "We put on our socks!" There followed a round of hot chocolate and a two hour discussion of what would have happened if Mom hadn't discovered them within 30 seconds of their setting out. "Flesh freezes in 2 minutes at that temperature. People die at that temperature. It's different than 20 below."
It reminded me of my life growing up in Edmonton. At least once each winter, somebody would be found frozen to death because they'd just worn a 'car coat' from their heated house to their heated garage, and the car had broken down on some deserted road before they got to their heated destination. People forget how cold -40 really is, and that you can't take chances in this climate. I know my brother twice saved people's lives because he stopped and picked them up when they got themselves in trouble. One was a native man whose car had broken down on Connor's Hill, and no one would stop for him -- perhaps 'cause they thought he looked menacing, though how menacing is a guy shivering to death? I doubt he would have made it to the top of the hill if Doug hadn't picked him up when he had. Another time we were half way across the High Level Bridge when we saw a guy stumble on the sidewalk. Doug stopped and we pulled him in. He was a grad student I knew vaguely from UofA. He had crossed the bridge dozens of time on the 'short' walk from his apartment to campus during the fall, and hadn't fully appreciated what -40 meant. He'd worn a light fall coat, but being from Nigeria, he thought that was a winter coat. Walking that distance in Nigeria, piece of cake. Walking across the High Level Bridge in the middle of a blizzard -- exposed to the wind blowing full force down the North Saskatchewan -- pretty much suicide.
And my own story: My first Christmas in Lethbridge I was still working on my dissertation, so going into work on campus over Christmas. Winter, I had been told, was much milder in Lethbridge, but it turned out to be a particularly bad one -- worst I can remember until this year. I had been working late, and came out to find that my car had frozen solid. I'd forgotten they'd turned the plug ins off over Christmas holiday, since no one was supposed to be working that day. I tried to go back into my office to phone for a cab or tow truck (this was before cell phones), but the building's outside door was now locked, it being after hours on a day campus was officially closed. So I started the long walk up the hill towards home. About a quarter-way to the main road I knew there was no way I could make it all the way home in this cold. So I changed course for the gas station or the Dairy Queen on the corner -- slightly out of my way, but a lot closer than home. Even getting there was going to be touch and go, but I made a determined, tough Northerner heroic effort. When I finally got close enough to see the buildings through the blizzard, I realized that they were closed -- because of the blizzard. So I turned around and set for home again. There are no houses on that road until I would be almost home, but I'd already decided I would knock on the first door I got to, if I made it that far. I was sure I had lost my feet for good when a car finally drove by -- and fortunately for me -- pulled up and offered me a lift. The guy earned my undying gratitude (I still shop at the store whose logo was on the car) and the moment I got home I immediately put myself in the bath, so in the end, only had mild frostbite. I was very lucky. But another man died that same evening trying to walk across the bridge leading to the road I had been on.
I'd been in full winter regalia at that. So finding the kids had ventured out in night gowns, pretty much blew our minds. "Don't you know how cold this is?!" But how could they? Aside from recess, they're never outside, and they don't go out for recess any more once it hits -20 C. If you've never experienced -20, how can you possibly imagine -40?
We'd tell people in Hawaii that it had been -40 when we left Alberta, and they'd look at you as if you were insane. "What's that in Fahrenheit?" is the inevitable question.
"It's the same -- the scales cross at -40."
"Then why would you -- why would anyone -- live there?"
A question my five year old keeps asking us, and one we're having a hard time answering. I'd move to Hawaii tomorrow if it weren't that (a) we're Canadian and Hawaii is American (why we didn't think to buy it from the British when we had the chance, I'll never know) and (b) the salaries at UofHawaii are about 1/3 what I currently make. (Supply and demand, I guess, and there is pretty much a steady supply of profs wanting to work in Hawaii.)
We like Hawaii so much we thought we might see about going in the off season when it would be cheaper -- only there is no off season. We had assumed that summer would be cheaper, since who wants to leave Canada in the summer? But of course, our summer is exactly when people from Texas and Arizona go to Hawaii to escape the heat....
I hear +40 is hot enough it can kill you if you're not prepared.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Dolphins, Whales and Shrimp
Went out Dolphin Watching this morning, and immediately saw several humpback Whales. Previous whale watching experiences were pretty much limited to the occasional spout and glimpse of a back, but today we got the full show -- blow, back, swimming around, tail up dive, all within maybe 100 yards. Very nice. Then Spinner Dolphins, a whole bay full, doing synchronized swimming for us, and leaping, and, yes, spinning. The naturalist on board (Pacific Whale Foundation tour)described spinner dolphin spins, but I didn't really believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. And I got to see a baby dolphin leap up just feet away from me -- very very cute, though I won't know if I caught it on film until I can download to the computer. Some of the dolphins swam close enough to almost touch. Astounding sight! Then, complete surprise to everyone, came into a crowd of spotted dolphins on the way back to shore, and several more humpbacks. A totally awesome morning!
Lunch turned out to also be quite exciting, since the waiter mistakenly brought us the shrimp quessedia rather than the pork; Mary took one bite, realized that that weren't pork, spit it out, and ran for the washroom to throw up. The manager responded appropriately, first checking that Mary hadn't gone into shock, then running down the street to a pharmacy to buy her Benadryl. Fortunately, Mary hadn't actually swallowed any of it, so she survived. The Benadryl kicked in fast enough to minimize the swelling and hives, but Mary was still too sick to do anything for the rest of the day. A close call.
The waiter came out as Mary was leaving, visably upset and crying. He had, he told us, a peanut allergy, and had been extremely angry when served peanuts three weeks before, and now found himself in the position of having posioned someone in turn. Mary was more gracious in forgiving him than I might have been under the circumstances.
Lunch turned out to also be quite exciting, since the waiter mistakenly brought us the shrimp quessedia rather than the pork; Mary took one bite, realized that that weren't pork, spit it out, and ran for the washroom to throw up. The manager responded appropriately, first checking that Mary hadn't gone into shock, then running down the street to a pharmacy to buy her Benadryl. Fortunately, Mary hadn't actually swallowed any of it, so she survived. The Benadryl kicked in fast enough to minimize the swelling and hives, but Mary was still too sick to do anything for the rest of the day. A close call.
The waiter came out as Mary was leaving, visably upset and crying. He had, he told us, a peanut allergy, and had been extremely angry when served peanuts three weeks before, and now found himself in the position of having posioned someone in turn. Mary was more gracious in forgiving him than I might have been under the circumstances.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
A Quiet Christmas Morning at Home....
Last year, we spent the two weeks leading up to Christmas in Hawaii (partly at a conference, but still!) and have had a number of extra-ordinary trips this year, so we spent much of the last three months telling the girls that this year, we were going to have a nice quiet Christmas morning at home. The tradition in our house is that Christmas eve everyone opens new pajama's, Christmas morning the girls get up and open their Christmas stockings, followed by a special breakfast, and then open presents. It makes for a pleasant morning. Tigana especially was psyched up for this agreeing -- indeed insisting -- that she too wanted nothing more than a quiet Christmas at home this year. (Kasia was less convinced. Ever since we went to Hawaii last year, she has constantly asked at least once a week when we are going back; named her new webkin's pony she got for her Birthday in Nov "Hawaii", and made it clear that if she had a choice she would choose Hawaii over any day at home.) So.
Christmas eve, Mary distributes new pjs; Christmas morning the kids get up early and we open our Christmas stockings; have a big breakfast; then open presents. Mary carefully hands out the gifts in order, so that the last gifts opened are gift certificate from Grandma for surfing lessons for Tigana and Kasia. "For next time we're somewhere where there's surfing."
Tigana says, on cue, "I wish we were in Hawaii right now."
Robert: "Really? But you said you just wanted a quiet Christmas at home this year."
Tigana: "Well yeah. But, you know. Hawaii would be great."
Mary: "Oh good. Because that's your last present. We're going to Hawaii."
Tigana: "We are? When?"
Robert: "Get your coat. The plane leaves in 90 minutes."
Tigana: "AaaaaahhhhhaahahahahahahahahahahahhhhhaaaaaaaWooHoo! Really? Hahahahah! Wow! Really? Aahahahaaaaa!" (And so on for another 10 straight minutes, bounching off walls, jumping up and down and so forth.)
Kasia received the news somewhat more calmly but just as happily. Scheduling has never been one of her strong points, never being entirely clear on whether a particular day is a school day or holiday or whatever, so just allows her parents to shuffle her around more or less at random, secure in the knowledge that if she asks often enough, Hawaii will appear in the rotation there somewhere.
Needless to say, given the chaos in the airline industry over the previous week, Mary (who handles all our planning and logistics) was a nervous wreck Christmas eve waiting to see if all her careful planning was for naught. Booking our flights for Christmas day (when relatively few people are flying compared to the rest of the season) had seemed like a stroke of genious 3 months earlier, but as the airlines were cancelling 90% of flights out of Vancouver the day before, it suddenly didn't seem quite so clever.
However, our flight out of Lethbridge was on time and uneventual. Our trip out of Calgary was delayed about four hours while the airline tried to round up flight crew. (Since the pilot and copilot were already on board the plane, I got about a dozen passengers to agree to take turns serving drinks if we could take off, but the desk clerk didn't seem to take our offer seriously. Union shop, I suppose.) Fortunately, the flight to Maui out of Vancouver was similarly delayed, so we had no trouble making our connection, though we didn't find that out until off the plane in Vancouver, so Mary had been tearing out her hair on the assumption we'd missed our connection. When the flight to Maui finally got in, we had missed our car reservation. Budget rental car was closed, so we had to take a cab (roughly $100.00 US) to our hotel instead. But since we had arrived in the middle of the night, I'm not sure how crazy I would have been driving an unfamiliar route in the dark. But all in all, not TOO bad a way to spend Christmas afternoon and evening, after a nice quiet Christmas morning at home.
Christmas eve, Mary distributes new pjs; Christmas morning the kids get up early and we open our Christmas stockings; have a big breakfast; then open presents. Mary carefully hands out the gifts in order, so that the last gifts opened are gift certificate from Grandma for surfing lessons for Tigana and Kasia. "For next time we're somewhere where there's surfing."
Tigana says, on cue, "I wish we were in Hawaii right now."
Robert: "Really? But you said you just wanted a quiet Christmas at home this year."
Tigana: "Well yeah. But, you know. Hawaii would be great."
Mary: "Oh good. Because that's your last present. We're going to Hawaii."
Tigana: "We are? When?"
Robert: "Get your coat. The plane leaves in 90 minutes."
Tigana: "AaaaaahhhhhaahahahahahahahahahahahhhhhaaaaaaaWooHoo! Really? Hahahahah! Wow! Really? Aahahahaaaaa!" (And so on for another 10 straight minutes, bounching off walls, jumping up and down and so forth.)
Kasia received the news somewhat more calmly but just as happily. Scheduling has never been one of her strong points, never being entirely clear on whether a particular day is a school day or holiday or whatever, so just allows her parents to shuffle her around more or less at random, secure in the knowledge that if she asks often enough, Hawaii will appear in the rotation there somewhere.
Needless to say, given the chaos in the airline industry over the previous week, Mary (who handles all our planning and logistics) was a nervous wreck Christmas eve waiting to see if all her careful planning was for naught. Booking our flights for Christmas day (when relatively few people are flying compared to the rest of the season) had seemed like a stroke of genious 3 months earlier, but as the airlines were cancelling 90% of flights out of Vancouver the day before, it suddenly didn't seem quite so clever.
However, our flight out of Lethbridge was on time and uneventual. Our trip out of Calgary was delayed about four hours while the airline tried to round up flight crew. (Since the pilot and copilot were already on board the plane, I got about a dozen passengers to agree to take turns serving drinks if we could take off, but the desk clerk didn't seem to take our offer seriously. Union shop, I suppose.) Fortunately, the flight to Maui out of Vancouver was similarly delayed, so we had no trouble making our connection, though we didn't find that out until off the plane in Vancouver, so Mary had been tearing out her hair on the assumption we'd missed our connection. When the flight to Maui finally got in, we had missed our car reservation. Budget rental car was closed, so we had to take a cab (roughly $100.00 US) to our hotel instead. But since we had arrived in the middle of the night, I'm not sure how crazy I would have been driving an unfamiliar route in the dark. But all in all, not TOO bad a way to spend Christmas afternoon and evening, after a nice quiet Christmas morning at home.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Hawaiian Shirts, wasps, and the wet chair
Our trip to Hawaii being one of the few bright spots in an otherwise downbeat year, I have taken to wearing Hawaiian shirts as my summer default. They're comfortable, longer than most other shirts, and distinctly non-academic.
But yesterday when I went out to supervise the kids in the backyard, I found myself surrounded by wasps the moment I plunked myself down in the patio chair. After several minutes of coping with hysterical kids screaming "wasps! wasps!" I got them to calm down by pointing out that the wasps were not following them, but sticking pretty close to me. "It's your shirt," Tigana suggested. "They think those are real flowers!"
At about the same time I realized the chair I was sitting in had just been through one of the several freakish hail storms that have been plaguing our region, and the seat cushion was soaked through. Dripping from my now soaked pants, I retreated with the kinds back into the house to change clothes, leaving the wasps behind.
The next evening, the kids dragged me outside again, so I waved them off into the yard while I plunked my tired old man self down on the same chair, having briefly checked this time that it was dry.
Again, cloud of wasps. "I really have to change shirts before coming outside," I think to myself. But the wasps are landing on my legs even more than the shirt. And they don't follow me around the yard, just when I am sitting.
In that one chair.
So to make a long story short, it eventually occurs to me to look under the chair where I find this fully developed wasp nest:
Well, duh! Not the best place to sit then....
But yesterday when I went out to supervise the kids in the backyard, I found myself surrounded by wasps the moment I plunked myself down in the patio chair. After several minutes of coping with hysterical kids screaming "wasps! wasps!" I got them to calm down by pointing out that the wasps were not following them, but sticking pretty close to me. "It's your shirt," Tigana suggested. "They think those are real flowers!"
At about the same time I realized the chair I was sitting in had just been through one of the several freakish hail storms that have been plaguing our region, and the seat cushion was soaked through. Dripping from my now soaked pants, I retreated with the kinds back into the house to change clothes, leaving the wasps behind.
The next evening, the kids dragged me outside again, so I waved them off into the yard while I plunked my tired old man self down on the same chair, having briefly checked this time that it was dry.
Again, cloud of wasps. "I really have to change shirts before coming outside," I think to myself. But the wasps are landing on my legs even more than the shirt. And they don't follow me around the yard, just when I am sitting.
In that one chair.
So to make a long story short, it eventually occurs to me to look under the chair where I find this fully developed wasp nest:
Well, duh! Not the best place to sit then....
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Hawaii Aftermath
The wind was over 100K Friday, the temperature cold enough to freeze even the hardiest Canadian, so the combination was not pleasant. Indeed, Kasia flatly refused to go out into the already dark afternoon following Ballet class, even though we had no alternative to walking across the windswept parking lot to the car if we were to get home. But in the end, cries of "I'm not going out there" could only be overcome by my physically picking her up and carrying her to the car. Which turned out to be damned difficult in the face of gusts up to 120K, which, with her added weight and a thick layer of ice on the ground, stopped me cold in my tracks. But we eventually made it across the cold dark vast expanse of the otherwise empty university parking lot (her ballet class is Friday afternoon, so all the university students and faculty were long gone) and I got her buckled into her car seat. As I started the freezing cold car and drove out of the lot, I once again heard a little voice from the back seat saying, "Dad, I want to go back to Hawaii!"
She's not the only one.
The weather in Lethbridge was, thankfully, relatively mild over Christmas, so our return from Hawaii was not as traumatic as it might have been...but I still found myself in a state of denial. For example, I continued wearing my aloha shirts until mid-January, when the weather turned too brutal to ignore. And I have been watching for academic positions available in Hawaii.
Mary and I have seriously discussed the possibilities of moving permanently to Hawaii, calculating how much of a pay cut we were prepared to accept to move there. It would mean giving up the house for an apartment-sized condo, but then, who stays indoors in Hawaii?
And I'm going round the house, figuring out what we would keep, and what wouldn't be worth the airfreight to move if we moved. Even now, as I stroll through Winners or other stores, before buying this or that unnecessary possession, I think, "would this be something we'd take with us to Hawaii," and if the answer is no, I find it easy to resist the impulse to buy. I'm even starting to buy paperbacks rather than hardcovers.
And there isn't a day that goes by without Tigana or Kasia asking why we don't go back -- in Kasia's case, why we can't go now. "Why do live somewhere where it isn't summer all the time?" is a very hard question to answer. Why do live here, other than inertia? (Well, that and the fact that we're not Americans.)
And Mary has caught the cruise bug pretty bad, already booking us on two new cruises.
We decided to do the Alaska cruise to see the glaciers this coming August because it's pretty obvious that if we wait a couple of more years until the kids are older, there won't be any glaciers left to see. Environment Canada noted that the impact of global warming on the North this summer was equal to what they had initially projected for the next thirty years. Another study reported on Quirks and Quarks mentioned that an island in the far north whose usual summer averages hovered around 5c above, this year hit over 20c above for over a week -- melting the permafrost down 1 and a half meters, rather than the usual 15 cms…Without the permafrost to stabilize the soil, any landform with the least slop allowed the ground to flow down into the central valley, blocking the river, and creating a new central lake. In one summer, the island completely reshaped itself and its local ecology. Knowing something about cliff effects, I reasoned that this process was only going to accelerate, and it was now or never for the full-impact Alaskan cruise.
Coincidently, Mary was teaching an extra grad course this term, earning the exact amount extra to cover the cost of the cruise. (She paid for the Hawaii cruise by writing a test bank for a new textbook in her field -- again the amounts matched almost exactly.) This helped to cut down on her guilt for booking two cruises within a year of each other; though I pointed out that when she moved to Lethbridge to marry me, I had promised her a holiday somewhere warm once a year to compensate, and she has never been able to collect on that promise until now, so is owed 9 more cruises just to catch up with the backlog.
So, poking around the cruise sites, she found a Disney cruise through the Caribbean next November that coincides with Mary's study leave and more importantly, Kasia's 5th birthday. (Tigana got Disneyland for her 5th, and so the Disney cruise for Kasia's only seems fair.) So now Mary is casting around for some project to pay for it…though I still argue it is not necessary, given that she went almost 10 years without a break.
So, Mary spends almost all her spare time these days on the Internet reading reviews and blogs and advice columns on the cruises we've signed up for. The level of detail you can obtain on-line is mind-boggling. For example, she found out the suite we had booked on the Disney cruise was right under the dance floor and the last few couples to take that suite found it noisy… so Mary was able to switch to a suite at the other end of the ship -- which the people who stayed in that cabin had said that they could hear the hum of the engines, but that it hadn't bothered them at all, and that they had noticed the motion of the sea much less. It is almost too much detail… in some cases, the reviews mention specific names of waiters or stewards, tell you what menu items to steer away from, and debate which deck chairs are the best.
But we do love cruises…We like that your hotel moves, so you don't have to change hotels to change locales, and we love the kids' club. Most hotels don't have built-in day care, and even when they do, it's well, not exactly Disneyland. In contrast, the reviews of the Disney Cruise often talk about how the kids' club is so good (staff of 60, dedicated facilities) that kids refuse to go back to be with their boring parents. After four years of never being able to leave Kasia alone with a sitter (because of her RAS), we could really use some time to ourselves. Good food, reading, maybe some writing, life is good on board! And Mary has planned so much princess stuff (including all of us getting dressed up in the appropriate Disney themes) that Kasia is going to have the best birthday ever.
And, we have more "Tigana learns about…" projects in mind for Alaska and Florida (see http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/tigana/potential.htm), so it all should be good. Except for the having to come back to Lethbridge part.
As I'm writing this, Environment Canada has issued a blizzard warning for Lethbridge, with high winds, blowing snow, and temperatures of 40 below (F and C are the same at 40 below). Looking out the window I have trouble seeing all the way across the street through the snow and deepening gloom, even though it is only 3:30 in the afternoon. It's not just my four year old who wants to go back to Hawaii, it's my aging inner child too.
She's not the only one.
The weather in Lethbridge was, thankfully, relatively mild over Christmas, so our return from Hawaii was not as traumatic as it might have been...but I still found myself in a state of denial. For example, I continued wearing my aloha shirts until mid-January, when the weather turned too brutal to ignore. And I have been watching for academic positions available in Hawaii.
Mary and I have seriously discussed the possibilities of moving permanently to Hawaii, calculating how much of a pay cut we were prepared to accept to move there. It would mean giving up the house for an apartment-sized condo, but then, who stays indoors in Hawaii?
And I'm going round the house, figuring out what we would keep, and what wouldn't be worth the airfreight to move if we moved. Even now, as I stroll through Winners or other stores, before buying this or that unnecessary possession, I think, "would this be something we'd take with us to Hawaii," and if the answer is no, I find it easy to resist the impulse to buy. I'm even starting to buy paperbacks rather than hardcovers.
And there isn't a day that goes by without Tigana or Kasia asking why we don't go back -- in Kasia's case, why we can't go now. "Why do live somewhere where it isn't summer all the time?" is a very hard question to answer. Why do live here, other than inertia? (Well, that and the fact that we're not Americans.)
And Mary has caught the cruise bug pretty bad, already booking us on two new cruises.
We decided to do the Alaska cruise to see the glaciers this coming August because it's pretty obvious that if we wait a couple of more years until the kids are older, there won't be any glaciers left to see. Environment Canada noted that the impact of global warming on the North this summer was equal to what they had initially projected for the next thirty years. Another study reported on Quirks and Quarks mentioned that an island in the far north whose usual summer averages hovered around 5c above, this year hit over 20c above for over a week -- melting the permafrost down 1 and a half meters, rather than the usual 15 cms…Without the permafrost to stabilize the soil, any landform with the least slop allowed the ground to flow down into the central valley, blocking the river, and creating a new central lake. In one summer, the island completely reshaped itself and its local ecology. Knowing something about cliff effects, I reasoned that this process was only going to accelerate, and it was now or never for the full-impact Alaskan cruise.
Coincidently, Mary was teaching an extra grad course this term, earning the exact amount extra to cover the cost of the cruise. (She paid for the Hawaii cruise by writing a test bank for a new textbook in her field -- again the amounts matched almost exactly.) This helped to cut down on her guilt for booking two cruises within a year of each other; though I pointed out that when she moved to Lethbridge to marry me, I had promised her a holiday somewhere warm once a year to compensate, and she has never been able to collect on that promise until now, so is owed 9 more cruises just to catch up with the backlog.
So, poking around the cruise sites, she found a Disney cruise through the Caribbean next November that coincides with Mary's study leave and more importantly, Kasia's 5th birthday. (Tigana got Disneyland for her 5th, and so the Disney cruise for Kasia's only seems fair.) So now Mary is casting around for some project to pay for it…though I still argue it is not necessary, given that she went almost 10 years without a break.
So, Mary spends almost all her spare time these days on the Internet reading reviews and blogs and advice columns on the cruises we've signed up for. The level of detail you can obtain on-line is mind-boggling. For example, she found out the suite we had booked on the Disney cruise was right under the dance floor and the last few couples to take that suite found it noisy… so Mary was able to switch to a suite at the other end of the ship -- which the people who stayed in that cabin had said that they could hear the hum of the engines, but that it hadn't bothered them at all, and that they had noticed the motion of the sea much less. It is almost too much detail… in some cases, the reviews mention specific names of waiters or stewards, tell you what menu items to steer away from, and debate which deck chairs are the best.
But we do love cruises…We like that your hotel moves, so you don't have to change hotels to change locales, and we love the kids' club. Most hotels don't have built-in day care, and even when they do, it's well, not exactly Disneyland. In contrast, the reviews of the Disney Cruise often talk about how the kids' club is so good (staff of 60, dedicated facilities) that kids refuse to go back to be with their boring parents. After four years of never being able to leave Kasia alone with a sitter (because of her RAS), we could really use some time to ourselves. Good food, reading, maybe some writing, life is good on board! And Mary has planned so much princess stuff (including all of us getting dressed up in the appropriate Disney themes) that Kasia is going to have the best birthday ever.
And, we have more "Tigana learns about…" projects in mind for Alaska and Florida (see http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/tigana/potential.htm), so it all should be good. Except for the having to come back to Lethbridge part.
As I'm writing this, Environment Canada has issued a blizzard warning for Lethbridge, with high winds, blowing snow, and temperatures of 40 below (F and C are the same at 40 below). Looking out the window I have trouble seeing all the way across the street through the snow and deepening gloom, even though it is only 3:30 in the afternoon. It's not just my four year old who wants to go back to Hawaii, it's my aging inner child too.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Hawaii: Left over photo
As an aside on the trip, I find it fascinating how digital has changed how kids deal with photography, scenery, and trips. When I was a kid, I didn't get a camera until about 12 or 13, and then just enough film and flashbulbs to take maybe 12 pictures. And you waited a couple of months to find out how your pictures came out because you couldn't see the first ones until you took the last picture on the roll, and then another couple of weeks for processing. (Admittedly, I'm old, and things had improved a bit by the time digital was phasing out film.) But today, Kasia can have a cheap digital camera at age 4; her camera shows her what she took immediately, and she can take about 5000 photos with the memory chip I got her without any further investment in film or processing. Tigana, at age nine, has developed quite an interest in architecture because she has been photographing it since she was six. We first loaned Tigana a digital camera when touring Casa Loma years ago, on what was going to be a fairly hopeless attempt to interest her in family history (her great grandfather had worked there back in the day) and it was a revelation to us how having the ability to take pictures suddenly engaged her in the tour. Instead of being bored, she proved an excellent photographer and set out to document her journey. The ability to constantly experiment with the camera and to receive instant feedback must imply that these kids will have a fundamentally different experience of photography and (hopefully, though I recognize, not necessarily) get a lot better at it a lot faster than anyone in my generation could.
Hawaii: Sunsets and Rainbows
The licence plates say, "rainbow state" and it's no exaggeration. I don't think that there was a single day that went by that we didn't see one or more spectacular rainbows. But they could also have called it the sunset state (though I suppose some of the connotations there are not quite as good!) because every night had a spectacular sunset too.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Cruise: Other Passengers
One of the things I found intriguing about the cruise was studying the other passengers. There were any number of middle class businessmen and their families as one would expect, but I also noted some others who seemed, um... well, to have more colorful careers. I am sure the two Russian families and the Colombians were probably insurance agents or some such, but the two bikers wearing full colors were, well, bikers. And I couldn't help noticing that the bikers were exceedingly polite to the Russian and Colombian families. Made you wonder, you know?
And then there was the very muscular black guy who never smiled and had a tattoo of a seal on his arm -- navy seal maybe? He had the build and the security guy look, and we are talking Hawaii with its major naval bases, so not entirely implausible. But this guy kept looking this way and that like someone doing a threat assessment, but he's, you know, in a hot tub on a cruise ship, not guarding the president. And did I mention he never smiled, even though accompanied by his wife and child? I overhead his wife ask him in the hot tub, "Aren't you glad you came, now?" to which he replied, "Whatever. Just so long as you're happy." It was kind of sad. I mean, he was undoubtedly sincere in wanting to provide his wife with the vacation she wanted, but he was so obviously bored/doing it for her sake, that he was clearly bringing her down...would it have killed him to pretend that he was enjoying himself? Not only would it have made for a much better time for her and the child, but he might have enjoyed himself more.
And in the dinning room, there was the huge Japanese family, obviously sponsored by the patriarch who was enjoying himself immensely, and everybody was happy happy happy -- except the one daughter-in-law who was the picture of misery. Part of me is thinking, 'go with the flow -- you're in Hawaii, it's warm, the food is decent, how bad can granddad be?' but of course, I guess it can be very bad.... Judging by her unguarded expression, she'd pretty much rather be anywhere else in the world than at that table. Though she would make an effort to look engaged if anyone looked at her, which they mostly didn't.
Saddest of all was the one older lady who must once have been a beauty but whose current excesses of makeup, hair, and clothing suggested a combination of denial and desperation that was not becoming. I occasionally saw her seated with a large family grouping, so obviously along as someone's grandmother or aunt, but she spent most of her time alone, supposedly sunning on the deck, but like my navy seal, continually scanning the deck for someone or something: Potential prospects or wondering where the rest of the family was, I couldn't say. But I never saw her enjoying herself...even amongst the family, she seemed an obvious outsider.
And, I suppose it should have come as no surprise that several of the kids on the ship were little monsters. I know my girls are spoilt, but I like to believe that they are not yet spoilt rotten. But several of the youngsters on this trip had obvious social problems -- bullying being the most predictable and common. These kids had a sense of entitlement that went beyond expectation to the fundamental belief that they were better than anyone else, and that all other kids should pay them homage. At the other end of the scale was a girl slightly older than Tigana who wore a constant frown, and cringed from any motion in her vicinity, and had victim written in block letters on her forehead. Watching her enter the other kids' sphere of influence was like watching a bather enter a pool of piranha. Tigana was mostly oblivious to these interactions, gravitating naturally to the one or two other nice girls, or when they weren't around, complaining to me that the other kids available were ignoring her. Well, that worked for me: I was just as happy that she wasn't hanging out with these jerks. In particular I recall one stereotypical fat-boy bully holding court in the hot tub while half a dozen girls hung on his every word, and two lesser males took up station behind either arm. They're like 11 and 12 years old and already playing out their life scripts. Very, very sad.
Cruise:Trip Home
The ship docked early in the morning, but we didn't have to leave until about 9AM to get to the airport for our 11AM flight home. Another advantage of our penthouse status was not having to line up for departure at a designated time, like everybody else, but just go when we wanted, knowing that our bags would be waiting in the VIP section whenever we came down. Mary had arranged for a limo to pick us up, on the grounds that it only cost $10 more than the regular shuttle bus, and as long as we were living the life of the rich and famous, we really ought to go all out.
Arriving at the airport, we discovered that our flight was delayed three hours -- which meant that we could not possibly make our one-hour connection in Vancouver. The Air Canada desk hadn't even opened yet, and when it finally did, they weren't able to do anything for us anyway -- all they could tell us was to check with the desk in Vancouver...which of course meant we would have to leave the secure area with our luggage after leaving customs and start from scratch -- at midnight on December 22, so, basically, hopeless.
So Mary, having watched far too many episodes of Amazing Race, got on her cellphone to Air Canada in Canada, and managed to book a flight for us out of Vancouver at 10 the next morning, and booked a night at the Fairmount (airport hotel in Vancouver) before the rest of our flight had even cleared the initial lineup in Hawaii. We then went off for a leisurely lunch in the airport, browsed through a bookstore, set the kids up watching a movie on the computer, and generally found ways to kill three hours. We still were the first to arrive at the gate (once it opened for our flight --security conscious American airports don't let you sit down until the previous flight has departed). We approached the desk about getting seats together (they had randomly slotted us in, so we were separated from the kids) and the attendants efficiently issued us new boarding passes so we were all together. The trip was okay for me as I took care of Tigana; bit more challenging for Mary keeping Kasia entertained.
We arrived in Vancouver at midnight and were funneled into an enormous line-up for immigration/customs. There must have been a 1000 people ahead of us as the Christmas rush maxed out every flight, and there were only three windows open as immigration was down to the Christmas-week-midnight skeleton crew. It took about an hour to get to the head of the line, and about 30 seconds to be processed. But after hours on the plane, and hours more in the airport awaiting our delayed flight, we were all very tired.
And I knew I was in trouble when I heard a little voice from knee-level saying, "Daddy, I don't want to stand here any more." Pointing out that nobody was enjoying standing in line; that we had to stand in the line to get home; that it was probably against the law to leave the line; and the importance of not wandering off, joining another family, and never seeing us again, did not seem to help Kasia comprehend that she had to stand in line and that there was nothing really we could do about it. So after the 50th repetition of "I don't want to stand here any more", she apparently felt her message was not getting through, and so felt the need to punctuate the comment with a fist to my leg. "Daddy! I do NOT want to stand here any more." *Punch*
"Hey, stop that! That is not constructive. Look, I've explained that there is nothing -- ouch!"
So the last thirty minutes or so of the wait is punctuated by the rhythm of a tiny fist hitting my leg at regular intervals. The expression on Kasia's face is not angry or tantruming or anything of the sort, just this tired determination to be heard and her problem addressed.
(Tigana, it must be said, was dealing with the situation like the seasoned traveler she is, and was helpful and cheerful throughout the journey home -- aside from the entirely understandable chorus of "I don't want to go home, I want to stay in Hawaii!".)
So. It was probably a good thing that Mary had booked the Fairmount, so we could crash immediately, rather than trying to continue on that night, as did so many others from our delayed flight. Having so many people miss their connections, they put on extra flights at 3AM, which would have meant arriving in Calgary at 5AM. Followed by a two hour car ride home to Lethbridge -- well, actually it's a three hour drive from the Calgary airport, but I doubt that we would have made it all the way in the condition we were in.
Once through customs (25 seconds, thankfully, after clearing immigration) and a very long walk from the International Terminal to the Air Canada windows to confirm that we were still booked on the 10AM flight the next morning (we feared that they might have been cancelled, given the provision of the extra night flight) we went to our hotel room and slept for five hours. In keeping with the rest of the trip, the Fairmount room was extravagant (not that we actually paid more than what a normal room would have cost) and
Next morning, onto the plane and home. Off the plane, Mary takes the kids to the washroom and collects our baggage, while I zip out to the Park and Fly lot to retrieve the car. Which is stone dead. I discover the dome light has been left on. So, I call the CAA, and a truck eventually shows up to provide a boost. But it is definitely fortuitous that we didn't arrive at 5AM -- as Air Canada would have planned it for us -- to find our car dead.
Arriving at the airport, we discovered that our flight was delayed three hours -- which meant that we could not possibly make our one-hour connection in Vancouver. The Air Canada desk hadn't even opened yet, and when it finally did, they weren't able to do anything for us anyway -- all they could tell us was to check with the desk in Vancouver...which of course meant we would have to leave the secure area with our luggage after leaving customs and start from scratch -- at midnight on December 22, so, basically, hopeless.
So Mary, having watched far too many episodes of Amazing Race, got on her cellphone to Air Canada in Canada, and managed to book a flight for us out of Vancouver at 10 the next morning, and booked a night at the Fairmount (airport hotel in Vancouver) before the rest of our flight had even cleared the initial lineup in Hawaii. We then went off for a leisurely lunch in the airport, browsed through a bookstore, set the kids up watching a movie on the computer, and generally found ways to kill three hours. We still were the first to arrive at the gate (once it opened for our flight --security conscious American airports don't let you sit down until the previous flight has departed). We approached the desk about getting seats together (they had randomly slotted us in, so we were separated from the kids) and the attendants efficiently issued us new boarding passes so we were all together. The trip was okay for me as I took care of Tigana; bit more challenging for Mary keeping Kasia entertained.
We arrived in Vancouver at midnight and were funneled into an enormous line-up for immigration/customs. There must have been a 1000 people ahead of us as the Christmas rush maxed out every flight, and there were only three windows open as immigration was down to the Christmas-week-midnight skeleton crew. It took about an hour to get to the head of the line, and about 30 seconds to be processed. But after hours on the plane, and hours more in the airport awaiting our delayed flight, we were all very tired.
And I knew I was in trouble when I heard a little voice from knee-level saying, "Daddy, I don't want to stand here any more." Pointing out that nobody was enjoying standing in line; that we had to stand in the line to get home; that it was probably against the law to leave the line; and the importance of not wandering off, joining another family, and never seeing us again, did not seem to help Kasia comprehend that she had to stand in line and that there was nothing really we could do about it. So after the 50th repetition of "I don't want to stand here any more", she apparently felt her message was not getting through, and so felt the need to punctuate the comment with a fist to my leg. "Daddy! I do NOT want to stand here any more." *Punch*
"Hey, stop that! That is not constructive. Look, I've explained that there is nothing -- ouch!"
So the last thirty minutes or so of the wait is punctuated by the rhythm of a tiny fist hitting my leg at regular intervals. The expression on Kasia's face is not angry or tantruming or anything of the sort, just this tired determination to be heard and her problem addressed.
(Tigana, it must be said, was dealing with the situation like the seasoned traveler she is, and was helpful and cheerful throughout the journey home -- aside from the entirely understandable chorus of "I don't want to go home, I want to stay in Hawaii!".)
So. It was probably a good thing that Mary had booked the Fairmount, so we could crash immediately, rather than trying to continue on that night, as did so many others from our delayed flight. Having so many people miss their connections, they put on extra flights at 3AM, which would have meant arriving in Calgary at 5AM. Followed by a two hour car ride home to Lethbridge -- well, actually it's a three hour drive from the Calgary airport, but I doubt that we would have made it all the way in the condition we were in.
Once through customs (25 seconds, thankfully, after clearing immigration) and a very long walk from the International Terminal to the Air Canada windows to confirm that we were still booked on the 10AM flight the next morning (we feared that they might have been cancelled, given the provision of the extra night flight) we went to our hotel room and slept for five hours. In keeping with the rest of the trip, the Fairmount room was extravagant (not that we actually paid more than what a normal room would have cost) and
Next morning, onto the plane and home. Off the plane, Mary takes the kids to the washroom and collects our baggage, while I zip out to the Park and Fly lot to retrieve the car. Which is stone dead. I discover the dome light has been left on. So, I call the CAA, and a truck eventually shows up to provide a boost. But it is definitely fortuitous that we didn't arrive at 5AM -- as Air Canada would have planned it for us -- to find our car dead.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Cruise: Kauai
We spent the morning on the beach at Kauai. Tigana met another girl from the cruise her own age and they become fast friends, playing together happily. I was amazed both kids could be on the same ship for a week and only meet the last day, but I guess the girl and her mom had taken advantage of all the excursions and had spent relatively little time on board. Back on board in the late afternoon, we took the kids to a Pizza party organized by the Kids Crew, then watched the scenary as the ship pulled out.
Kauai has the best scenary of trip (not that my little pocket camera is up to taking it in), the ship making a point of going along the Northern coast while a Hawaiian cultural representative provided a commentary on history, etc., before turning back to its route home.
We then took the kids to the Kids Crew for PJ night; Mary and I had planned a romantic dinner on the balcony, but we had to cancel due to inclement weather (major winds), so ended up just eating in the buffet.
We got back to the room to find the cutest towel animal so far. The stewart had left a big towel animal (hare or antelope?) prominently displayed which drew our immediate attention, so the second one went almost unnoticed…thus adding to the sense of a mouse sneaking out of the bed!
Highlight of the day was when Mary took Tigana back to see W.T. Greer in the piano bar and he invited her up to sing with her. Getting to sing with a professional in front of an audience was a thrill for Tigana. Nice of Greer to pick up on her singing aspirations and to say she had talent.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Kauai
My birthday today, so feeling a bit old.
Mary gave me the morning off again as a birthday present, so I spent the morning writing while Mary took the kids to the beach. Writing on a balcony in Hawaii could quickly become addictive, and I started telling Mary she really should apply to the University of Hawaii -- and I'd just take early retirement and write.
We spent the afternoon aboard ship again at the pool, and I again had an afternoon of mixed terror and pride as Kasia taught herself how to swim.
Ate at Little Italy again with kids for my birthday dinner, and this time we had excellent service from Anthony the waiter (who was everything our previous waiter had not been). Then the kids wanted Kids Crew, leaving Mary and I to wander the deck, a nice birthday activity. We took in the singer, W. T. Greer, in the Pink Champaign Lounge, and he was so good Mary eventually fetched Tigana out of Kids Crew to hear him. Tigana was duly impressed when she requested a song (God Bless the child) and he was able to sing it without benefit of actually having the words or music to hand.
Mary gave me the morning off again as a birthday present, so I spent the morning writing while Mary took the kids to the beach. Writing on a balcony in Hawaii could quickly become addictive, and I started telling Mary she really should apply to the University of Hawaii -- and I'd just take early retirement and write.
We spent the afternoon aboard ship again at the pool, and I again had an afternoon of mixed terror and pride as Kasia taught herself how to swim.
Ate at Little Italy again with kids for my birthday dinner, and this time we had excellent service from Anthony the waiter (who was everything our previous waiter had not been). Then the kids wanted Kids Crew, leaving Mary and I to wander the deck, a nice birthday activity. We took in the singer, W. T. Greer, in the Pink Champaign Lounge, and he was so good Mary eventually fetched Tigana out of Kids Crew to hear him. Tigana was duly impressed when she requested a song (God Bless the child) and he was able to sing it without benefit of actually having the words or music to hand.
Cruise: towel animals
Like baloon animals, only made out of towels. The steward would leave these for us on the beds when he came to turn down the beds each evening. Unfortunately, the pictures of the early towel creatures were among those that I lost fooling with the camera settings. But here are a couple that I was able to retake.
Towel Elephant
Towel cool dog.
Towel Elephant
Towel cool dog.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Cruise: Kona
Kona is a tender port, which means there is no dock,and you have to go ashore aboard the cruise ship's tenders –actually three of the powered lifeboats, each of which holds 60 people or so. Once again, our elevated status as residents of a suite meant that we got to skip the line-ups and board the tenders whenever, rather than wait for an assigned section. Ah the joys of being rich -- or at any rate, living like we were rich.
rear view of a tender mounted on the cruise ship as a lifeboat
We spent the morning shopping in the local artisan market, buying various knick knacks, etc., and wandering around the town.
The highlight was eating snow cones (I use the Canadian expression somewhat loosely, since they are in no way equivalent) at Scandicanian Shaved Ice. The 'small' size was the size of Kasia's head; the medium that Mary and I shared was roughly the size of a basketball. Each ball of shaved ice comes with three flavourings (from a choice of about 30 exotic flavours) and Kasia asked for 'rainbow' so the lady layered red, yellow and blue flavorings to produce a five color rainbow (e.g., blue + yellow = green); we ordered ours with chocolate Macademia nut ice cream in the center. These are unlike anything we have ever had before, and an obvious must have in any warm climate. Mary and I told the owner that they ought to franchise their invention (the ice machine etc) and she told us that they had made arrangements to franchise but the franchise organizers had insisted on their being in business at least one whole year before they went public -- so that they could have a 'year plan' laid out for the franchisees and to demonstrate that the theory actually worked, etc. Time's up in March, so if anyone is looking for a failsafe summer franchise....
Unfortunately, I accidently erased all the photos of the shaved ice, the tenders (I had some great close ups of the interior, operating instructions etc that I intended to work into my novel) and the local sights when I had some free time to experiment with the camera settings. Tigana was a tiny bit exasperated with me. "Dad, even I know you down load all the pictures before fiddling with the settings on a new camera, and I'm nine! Duh!" well, what can I say? But it was a very relaxed and enjoyable day.
rear view of a tender mounted on the cruise ship as a lifeboat
We spent the morning shopping in the local artisan market, buying various knick knacks, etc., and wandering around the town.
The highlight was eating snow cones (I use the Canadian expression somewhat loosely, since they are in no way equivalent) at Scandicanian Shaved Ice. The 'small' size was the size of Kasia's head; the medium that Mary and I shared was roughly the size of a basketball. Each ball of shaved ice comes with three flavourings (from a choice of about 30 exotic flavours) and Kasia asked for 'rainbow' so the lady layered red, yellow and blue flavorings to produce a five color rainbow (e.g., blue + yellow = green); we ordered ours with chocolate Macademia nut ice cream in the center. These are unlike anything we have ever had before, and an obvious must have in any warm climate. Mary and I told the owner that they ought to franchise their invention (the ice machine etc) and she told us that they had made arrangements to franchise but the franchise organizers had insisted on their being in business at least one whole year before they went public -- so that they could have a 'year plan' laid out for the franchisees and to demonstrate that the theory actually worked, etc. Time's up in March, so if anyone is looking for a failsafe summer franchise....
Unfortunately, I accidently erased all the photos of the shaved ice, the tenders (I had some great close ups of the interior, operating instructions etc that I intended to work into my novel) and the local sights when I had some free time to experiment with the camera settings. Tigana was a tiny bit exasperated with me. "Dad, even I know you down load all the pictures before fiddling with the settings on a new camera, and I'm nine! Duh!" well, what can I say? But it was a very relaxed and enjoyable day.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Cruise: Maui: day two
breakfast on the balconyWe have breakfast in out on our balcony most mornings, brought by the butler. Well, we have to find something for the butler to do. And it cuts down the number of meals in restaurants we have to have with the kids. At age four, one restaurant meal a day is about the limit of Kasia's good behavior. So we have a good breakfast, some kind of snack around 1 or 2; then supper.
I have generally enjoyed the ship’s food, though I am lead to understand by more experienced cruisers that the food is not up to the usual standard, especially in the premium dinning rooms which require reservations and additional cover charges. I found they tended to fall down on some of the tiny details that distinguish five star restaurants. For example, I was twice handed menus where grease stains obscured portions of the page, which one wouldn’t expect in anything above a roadside diner; and the Italian restaurant provided quite poor service, screwing up the order (forgetting some items, bringing appetizers with the main course, bringing kids food after the adults; kids’ drinks appearing just in time for desert, etc.). Mary found the food in the premium dinning rooms a bit predictable, lacking complexity of five star dining.
the infamous espresso machineSimilarly, there are very minor problems with the suite. The chief annoyance for Mary is that her upgraded espresso machine doesn’t actually work – the first day it ground the beans and dispensed a fresh cup, but has refused to work ever since. A regular drip peculator that actually worked would have been better. I noticed that there was supposed to be a glass door between the toilet and the washbasin, though it’s absence is not a major issue since we just close the door to the bathroom.
Anyway, after breakfast, Kasia went to Kid's Crew, and Mary and Tigana went shopping in Maui, while I took the morning off staying on board to process pictures, blog, and so on.
Kid's Crew facilityHaving spent the previous week with just us, Kasia has missed Montessori school and interaction with her peers and so has begged more time in KidsClub on board the cruise ship. Mary, ever the stragetic planner, anticipated this reaction and planned our trip to end on the cruise precisely so the kids would let us get a few evenings to ourselves. The 2 to 5 year old club seems to do a lot of very simple stuff that really engages the kids, such as dressing up as clowns (“circus night”) or superheros (“superhero night”) and then parading through the ship in costume. (The same procedure seems to work well with the 21-30 crowd who are similarly marched through the ship by their wranglers wearing Hawaiian shirts and shouting “pub crawl”.) When I had to pull Kasia out of KidsClub “bluesclues mystery morning” yesterday for our Whale Watching Cruise, she was quite put out.
In the afternoon, Tigana entered one of the cruise director's contests and won a medal for "best splash", beating a 150lb kid. There followed several hours of swimming, and in the evening Mary and I fed the kids, dropped them off (at their insistence) at Kid's Crew again, and ate a satisfactory dinner at the Lazy J steakhouse, another of the ships upcharge restaurants. This time the service was excellent, the steaks so-so -- but then, we're from Alberta, so it is hard to meet our standards for steak.
Ship's poolThe kids love swimming in the pools, a mixed blessing from my non-swimmer’s viewpoint. Kasia has taken to throwing herself off the edge and swimming lengths, a process somewhat complicated by the fact that she can’t actually swim. But she has made impressive progress in the last two weeks towards actual swimming, diving fearlessly to touch the bottom of the pool, then surfacing on her own for air, then going under to splash forward a couple of feet, then up for air, etc. until she has traversed the pool. She just needs occasionally to grasp some handy fixture (usually my conveniently placed arm) to pull herself up when she has miscalculated and needs to come up for air immediately, and I’m just not certain that she has realized that she can’t always count on something being there if Mary or I are not in the pool with her. I have endeavored not to allow her to see my constant state of terror during these activities, however, as I have no wish for her to inherit my paralyzing fear of water. But maybe a little common sense anxiety would be better than her fearless overconfidence?
in one of the ship's 4 hot tubsPart of Kasia's problem, the Basils suggested, is that her earlier experiences with reflex anoxic seizures has taught her that if you stop breathing it is okay because you just start up again a couple of minutes later. That this does not actually apply under water may not have quite penetrated. I also worry when Kasia tries to throw herself off the side of the pool into the freezing water before I can get to the pool, since one of the triggers for RAS is sudden cold water on the face. (Though Kasia has been seizure-free for a couple of years now....but it's not the sort of thing you want to risk in a pool.)
Monday, December 17, 2007
Cruise: Maui: Whale Watching
Took Prince Kuhio Maui-Molokai whale watching tour. The tour shuttles arrived at the dock at the precise moment scheduled, and the rest of the trip was equally efficient. The crew appeared genuinely interested in both whales and our safety; the onboard concession was dirt cheap and so good Kasia ate two hotdog combos, an unheard of intake at a single sitting, and that after a good sized breakfast.
The tour started with an orientation by the company’s naturalist, Katie, who was superb! I learned more about humpbacks in that 15 minutes than from any PBS special, and somehow seeing the whale’s tail spread out before you in person has a lot more impact than seeing something on TV.
There were also two volunteers from the Whale Sanctuary on board to assist the naturalist, and they did a great job of floating around the boat answering questions as they occurred to us, as Katie provided intermittent commentary over the speaker system. Both of the volunteers were drawn to Tigana’s fanaticism regarding shark conservation, and consequently spent a disproportionate amount of the trip talking to my girls. (Most of the others on the boat seemed less interested in availing themselves of this resource, and entirely focused on getting pictures of the whales.)
We did see several whales, though I wasn’t able to get pictures. I saw the first whale’s tail climb out of the water, splash down, and then –sorry if this sounds a bit mystical – could feel the whale turn and swim by the boat, while everyone else looked off in the wrong direction. I kept wanting to watch where I “felt’ the whale’s presence, but the captain steered off in the opposite direction, until the whale was out of range – but I could feel here out there. It was very strange. That was followed by a couple of other really good sightings of whale pairs. A very successful outing, in my view.
The trip was slightly nerve wracking for me, though, as I was in charge of Kasia for the first half of the trip, and she kept insistinig on wandering around the ship leaning agains the much too short -- in my father’s-eye-view – railing. When the whales actually showed up, they caught her interest, and then she cuddled up to one of the sanctuary volunteers and fell asleep on her lap.
The tour started with an orientation by the company’s naturalist, Katie, who was superb! I learned more about humpbacks in that 15 minutes than from any PBS special, and somehow seeing the whale’s tail spread out before you in person has a lot more impact than seeing something on TV.
There were also two volunteers from the Whale Sanctuary on board to assist the naturalist, and they did a great job of floating around the boat answering questions as they occurred to us, as Katie provided intermittent commentary over the speaker system. Both of the volunteers were drawn to Tigana’s fanaticism regarding shark conservation, and consequently spent a disproportionate amount of the trip talking to my girls. (Most of the others on the boat seemed less interested in availing themselves of this resource, and entirely focused on getting pictures of the whales.)
We did see several whales, though I wasn’t able to get pictures. I saw the first whale’s tail climb out of the water, splash down, and then –sorry if this sounds a bit mystical – could feel the whale turn and swim by the boat, while everyone else looked off in the wrong direction. I kept wanting to watch where I “felt’ the whale’s presence, but the captain steered off in the opposite direction, until the whale was out of range – but I could feel here out there. It was very strange. That was followed by a couple of other really good sightings of whale pairs. A very successful outing, in my view.
The trip was slightly nerve wracking for me, though, as I was in charge of Kasia for the first half of the trip, and she kept insistinig on wandering around the ship leaning agains the much too short -- in my father’s-eye-view – railing. When the whales actually showed up, they caught her interest, and then she cuddled up to one of the sanctuary volunteers and fell asleep on her lap.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Cruise: Hilo: Anniversary
December 16th was our 10th Anniversary, so we dumped the kids in the "kid's Crew" babysitting for the evening, and had a quiet dinner for just the two of us. We chose La Bistro, one of the premier restaurants on the ship that require an upcharge, but although the food was decent --especially the French onion soup -- it could not compare with the meal at La Mer a few nights earlier. Or Roy's. Or the Thai restaurant. Okay, not really fair comparisons since we had chosen the Honolulu restaurants based on the Basil's recommendations and they were all top restaurants in their categories, but one expects cruise ships to be top too. I'd rate La Bistro as equivalent to what you'd find in a Westin Hotel, so good, but missing some of the finer details --e.g., crème brulee was not the correct temperature and therefore right consistency. But nevertheless, a nice romantic dinner, especially given that we were on a cruise in Hawaii.
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