139? Really?! (...on One Shelf?!)

Indian casinos

So we're just about done with cleaning up the downstairs level of our apartment, and it's time to hit the last pile of junk in our living room; namely, the clutter collection. Old bill stubs, the mishmash of pens and pencils, the overstock of CDs, and my collection of shot glasses.

Ah, the shot glasses... for years now, I've been collecting shot glasses from special events I've attended (the Gilroy Garlic Festival); trips we've taken (Monterey, Pismo Beach, San Diego); a myriad of Casinos (Vegas, Tahoe, Laughlin, and all of the Indian casinos we've hit throughout California); and shot glasses that were given to me as presents (which I appreciate and the memories of which I'll hold on to, but the storage of which is threatening to bury us every earthquake that comes along.)

Cities and Stuff

I take pictures of the glasses arranged by theme, and after a quick count am startled to find that I've managed to amass a total of 139 shot glasses.

This is not conducive toward a clutter-free domicile.

This is a sickness which needs to be stopped.

This is a collection that needs to be culled, and drastically.

...But first, a trip to IKEA!

Misc.

DRIIVE, SCHLEPP, BUKSHËLF, HÕM. ÜNBACHS, ÜSSEMBAL. PRÖÇËÊÐ.

(...Aaaaaand I've just killed that joke, beaten its corpse with a shovel, and mocked its descendants. Sorry.)

Lucie and I go through my collection, choosing only those shot glasses whose sentimentality outweighs the clutter factor; and then we narrow our control limits, and go through them again.

Destinations & Events

It's actually kind of painful. I mean, they're just things, and they're mostly just whimsical spur-of-the-moment tourist kitsch at that, but it's painful. I don't want to get rid of them, but I'm a grownup, and sometimes that means having to grow up, and sometimes that means getting rid of novelty glassware.

We end up keeping one glass from each trip to Hawaii, one from the Ponderosa (which might be long gone but shall be forever to be remembered in 2-ounce increments), a glass from the Philippines, and a few others; ten glasses in total.

Destinations, Part 2

I also end up having to get rid of 63 CDs and 12 Dreamcast games in order to get everything to fit into the shelves, drawers, and carousels to which they've been assigned; but for some reason it's the shot glasses that are the hardest to lose.

Let's just hope that we don't have to get rid of any of our coffee mugs any time soon; not sure I could handle that just yet...

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The finished product.

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46 Inches of HD, 56 Inches in Front of the Sofa

So our new tv arrived on Saturday. It's nice and shiny and expensive and thinner than expected, and HUGE. Just like my head, except THIS is in HD.

It's also quite high tech in that it has just one coaxial connection, just one component connection, and about a dozen HDMI connection ports, which also means that I no longer have the capability to plug in anything other than my cable box and our Blu-Ray Disc player. Hmm. So now I need to spring for a cable box with an HDMI connection so I can free up my single component port for my Wii... or maybe for the iPod connection player... or for the Sega Dreamcast that we uncovered when cleaning up the living room... or for the receiver that we're now going to have to buy so we can actually use all of our older technology (though I find it rather difficult to consider an iPod or any gaming console newer than a Sega Genesis "older tech." I do have a Sega Genesis somewhere in the bedroom, but we haven't expanded our cleaning frenzy upstairs yet so it's still buried and waiting for me to uncover it like I were Indiana Jones itching to play Star Control.)

So, as so often happens with this sort of thing, new tech purchases beget still more purchases. Good thing we'd already planned to forego our Hawaii vacation this year.

But, the TV.

If you've never watched high definition TV, people say, you've never really watched TV. I say this is untrue -- if you've never watched high def TV, you've still watched TV... but it sucked.

46 inches of HDTV, with a flat panel LED LCD screen, 1080p scan mode, 240Hz frame rate, 16:9 aspect ratio, OMG:IC vision reaction, DIY support tabling, and several other spiffy-sounding groups of letter and numbers I either don't remember or am too lazy to make up. I've never seen anything this realistic (unless, of course, you count reality, in which case my statement still stands, but reality's a very close second.)

Combine that with the Blu-Ray player and even our old DVDs look entirely different. For example, I now know that Nathan Fillion's nose has 1,873 pores. First seen on our new Blu-Ray copy of Serenity, verified on the DVD version of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog as well as a couple episodes of Firefly. For some reason, it turned out to be a very Whedony breaking in of the new hardware.

Man, I am SO gonna kick but if the subject of nasal pore quantities comes up the next time I play Trivial Pursuit.

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1 New Living Room... in the Same Old Crappy Apartment

So we've been thinking about upgrading the furniture in our living room -- our original collection of stuff I had when I was fresh out of high school, used furniture bought when Lucie and I first moved in here 10 years ago, and things that are even older and less sentimental has been used to death. The love seat is falling apart; the hidden bed in the sofabed has long since collapsed and is being supported by bricks and shelving boards; the entertainment center is sagging in the middle (which is okay, since it's being supported by our old TV which stopped working a couple of years ago and is still in its compartment); and the bookcases being used to hold our VHS tapes (yes, we still have some!) and our DVDs can barely be seen by the stacks of DVDs in front of them, since we ran out of storage space a long time ago. The sofa seats are about an inch and a half below the wooden front of the sofa (from the collapsed bed) so the circulation in our legs gets cut off if we dare sit down for more than five minutes.

It's not the best living room out there, to be certain. Sure, we've tried to hide all of these sore spots by being borderline hoarders and burying everything under magazines, assorted paperwork, VHS tapes, blankets, and dust bunnies so large they could be used by English knights to assault French castles; but somehow this doesn't strike us as an optimal solution. Our second plan is to skip our vacation this year and spend a boatload of money we probably shouldn't on getting rid of our old stuff and replacing it with better furniture, additional storage, and other items we've been meaning to buy.

Sure it's not as relaxing as another trip to Hawai'i, but it's also a lot less expensive. Or, at least a little less expensive. Or, maybe sort of comparable.

Pretty sure we didn't spend THAT much more on this than we would have on airline and hotel fees.

*sigh*

So we schlep some furniture stores and settle on a dual recliner sofa on a really good Memorial Day sale. On the way home from that, we stop by Best Buy "just to look" at new TV sets, and walk out the new owners of a large-screen TV and a Blu-ray Disc player. I remind myself that I am not now, nor ever have been, the poster boy for the word "willpower."

And then we head to IKEA.

If you've never been to IKEA, count yourself lucky it's a huge do-it-yourself Swedish mental acuity test in which you WILL be humbled. It disguises itself as a furniture store for people who own SUVs and hand tools. Everything is given a Swedish name in ALL CAPS and LOTS OF CONSONANTS, everything needs to be assembled (I'm pretty sure I saw a yardstick that came in four-inch lengths), and is boxed in identical brown boxes so you need to ignore the Swedish names and memorize eight-digit part numbers.

Anyway, we're looking for an entertainment center and a new computer desk. After several trips through the showroom, a perusal or two of the IKEA catalog, and approximately eight hundred and seventy miles of hiking through the East Palo Alto IKEA (during some point of which I swear I looked out a window and saw the Golden Gate Bridge beneath us), we finally decide what we want.

We pick up the HEIMLICH entertainment center in dark brown, add the BORKBORK bookcase and computer desk in the same dark brown, grab several GNORTHAUS storage bins that will fit into the BORKBORK's cubbyholes, arrange to have everything SHIPTTE to us because we don't own a U-Haul truck, eat some MITTBÅLs for lunch, have a fun LAUSTKAR incident because the parking lot is HUUJE and my brain stopped working, and we finally get home BROÅK and SOR.

The couch arrives the following Saturday, about the same time I finally manage to assemble all of the IKEA pieces; our TV is set to arrive next Saturday; we make new friends at 1-800-GOT-JUNK and have them make two separate visits to haul away our old furniture and appliances; We replace the trashed curtains in both the living room and kitchen with new ones; we donate about a dozen boxes of items to the Salvation Army; and I'm reminded once again just how old I am and how bad my back can get.

But at least now, when my back is hurting me, I can recline on our new sofa and watch some TV in comfort. Oh, and use the vibrating doohickey in the sofa to get a back massage at the same time, 'cuz in addition to having no willpower, I'm also a sucker for a gimmick.

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2 Festivals and a Road Trip in Less Than 48 Hours

The last few weeks have been more physically and emotionally draining than we'd prefer; cleanup week at my work, extra long days at Lucie's work, me spraining my wrist (while it's true that one doesn't forget how to ride a bike, I'm living proof that one can get pretty rusty on that whole stopping thing that goes with it), various amounts of stress from several sources, and a general lack of sleep that's been getting worse... so this weekend I really want to get the hell out of Dodge.  We don't want to spend a huge amount of money by going to a casino (though that *was* among the first ideas we tossed around) so we end up deciding on taking a day trip out of town and spending some other time doing something fun.

We've been looking forward to Nikkei Matsuri, an annual celebration in San Jose's Japantown that's scheduled for this weekend.  We'd originally thought it was for the full weekend, but it's slated for Sunday only; as luck would have it, however, Cupertino is having their Cherry Blossom Festival this weekend as well, right across the street from our alma mater De Anza College.  The Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual festival celebrating the gift of 200 cherry trees given to the city by its sister city of Toyokawa, Japan, in 1983.  The trees were planted in Cupertino's Memorial Park, and there's an arts and crafts festival held there every year celebrating the Japanese culture (and, apparently, kettle corn.)

This sounds like fun.  This also sounds suspiciously like a lot of walking around, which sounds suspiciously like exercise, but it also sounds better than hitting the treadmill at the YMCA, so we're in.  We cruise into Cupertino, home of Apple Computer and World Domination Headquarters, and manage to find a parking spot -- in the shade, no less -- pretty close to the park entrance, which we take as a good sign.  We wander in, poke through the stalls, and spend a little money.  We get Japanese themed bookmarks and have our names written in Japanese calligraphy; we stop by a pottery stand where Lucie buys me a coffee mug and I buy a present for someone in the family; Lucie gets a nifty jade bracelet; I buy some homemade jalapeño fudge and some mocha fudge that gives me the caffeine jitters just by smelling it; I buy a Barbie-sized kimono for my niece Elizabeth's dolls; and Lucie buys some new bling, a shiny new ring with peridot, onyx, and diamond for $30 (which makes me suspect that the stones might not be real, but it still looks nice.)

After a while of wandering through the park, we start thinking about dinner... and if you've driven all the way out to Cupertino, it's only a couple more miles to Monterey for dinner, right?

Yeah, well... I sucked at geography.

It's been years since we made a trip to Monterey, and we miss it.  It's still early enough to get in a nice walk along Fisherman's Wharf once we drive down there, so we head over the Santa Cruz mountains and cruise south along the Pacific Coast Highway.  We make a quick stop at the Thistle Hut in Castroville where we grab snacks and some fresh strawberries, and get into Monterey around 4 or so.  We take the time to drive down Cannery Row, seeing if anything's changed since our last visit, and nothing seems amiss; our favorite winery, the chocolate store, the chili pepper themed store, the Del Sol sunglasses store, and of course the Monterey Bay Aquarium have all managed to withstand these harsh economic times propped up on the mountains of money thrown at them by tourists such as ourselves.  We head back to Fisherman's Wharf and find good parking.

We spend an hour or so wandering aimlessly down the wharf, sampling various recipes of clam chowder (well, *I* sample the chowder; all that cream based soup isn't something that agrees with Lucie) and getting rid of what money we have left over from the Cherry Blossom Festival.  I find a cool silver ring with abalone inset that actually fits me, so I buy it -- I've developed a rule to live by that says if I like something and it actually fits me I don't try to talk myself out of it too hard.  You don't often find a size 16 ring that isn't a simple printed band or something festooned with skulls, so it's a rare find indeed.

We eat dinner at the Old Fisherma's Grotto, our favorite place to eat in Monterey -- their calamari is some of the best we've had, and I haven't tried something there I didn't like.  I'm temped to return to what I had last time, the parmesan and pesto salmon which was outstanding, but I go for something different and order the seared ahi plate and Lucie goes for the macadamia nut crusted halibut and coconut shrimp.  I also feel a little wild and order the Grotto Pineapple, an obscenely large drink consisting of rum, rum, orange juice, ice, and rum, served in a large hollowed-out pineapple and topped off with rum.  And maybe some rum.

It's strong.

We stop by the candy shop on the way back to Meg, where we get some caramel apples for us and a huge bag of salt water taffy for my co-workers; we make a quick detour into the coffee shop and I grab a double mocha for the road; and we head on back home.  Traffic is a little more unnerving coming back into town (for some reason the inland-bound direction along Highway 17 has always seemed much more winding and dangerous to me) but we make it back safe and sound, and call it a day.

Sunday arrives, and it's time for the Nikkei Matsuri in Japantown.  We manage to find parking that's not too incredibly far a walk and wander through the small setup, perusing the various arts and craft booths (we're fairly sure we recognize the same lady from whom I bought the Barbie kimono from yesterday's Cherry Blossom Festival), I'm both entertained and frustrated by a stall showing Japanese theme T-shirts (a Sumo wrestler shirt with the logo "no gut, no glory" that doesn't actually come in the sumo sizes I need, a shirt with the slogan "miso soup for the soul"), and we admire the origami crane earrings and Christmas ornaments that must have taken hours of work to make.  We hit the food booths and sample the wide variety offered -- tempura, teriyaki burgers, BBQ beef short ribs, teriyaki chicken, udon soup, gyoza, pork and shrimp yakisoba, lemonade, and sesame chicken salad.  Some of it's very good; and some of it's average, but nothing is worse than that, which is always a pleasant surprise for food stalls manned by youth groups and neighborhood charities.

We find some open seats in the shade (we've been amazingly lucky when it comes to finding places to park and/or sit this weekend), enjoy the live music followed by the San Jose Taiko demonstration, and finally head on back to Meg.  I make a quick detour into the Hawaiian shave ice place where I get bubble gum and grape shave ice that matches the tie dye I'm wearing, and we head on home.

As the weekend comes to a close, we end up with little to no work done around the apartment but a much better outlook on life.

Works for me.

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1.5 Bites Away From a Coronary... From Kentucky Fried Chicken

So this is a break from the usual "I did this" or "we went here" or "I remember this" post... but I'm still posting it because I would definitely put this in the "I really really want (and yet don't want) to do this" category, if I had one.

I'm talking here about the new KFC "Double Down" sandwich, with bacon and two kinds of cheese and a mayonnaise-based sauce, slapped between two pieces of fried chicken instead of a bun.

This is horribly unhealthy. This is proof that most Americans are overweight for a good reason. As one comment online I saw said, "food should not look like a hate crime." It's anywhere from 540 calories (according to KFC) to 1225 calories (according to the UK's Daily Mail -- but maybe that's a metric conversion or something), 10 grams of saturated fat, over 1300 milligrams of sodium, and carries with it a large amount of shame in addition to the wedge fries and large soda as part of a meal deal.

And yet, it's still healthier than a Wendy's triple Baconator or a personal pizza from Pizza Hut. Go figure.

But I digress... back to the sandwich at hand.

I know this is unhealthy. I know that thinking about actually taking a bite of one is foolhardy, and wrong, and frightening, and greasy, and fatty, and tasty, and intriguing, and it's just daring me to try it, and you need to understand that this is coming from ME, someone who once ironed a shirt while I was wearing it (although in my defense, the iron was on low and it was only to get rid of a few wrinkles I noticed after I had already struggled getting the cufflinks in, and I was wearing an undershirt which worked as a buffer, and it worked, thankyouVERYmuch) so maybe the urge to eat healthy and do things that are in my best interest just isn't a very strong one. But man, can I type some awesome run-on sentences.

So yes, I know it's wrong, but I so want to try one.

Or at least maybe a couple of bites of one, because I think everyone can agree it's pretty much a heart attack waiting to happen. But I am strong, and I have a cast iron stomach, and I've developed an amazing tolerance for all things deep fried, and I already managed to survive eating a "Texas Tommie" bacon-wrapped and deep fried hot dog from QN4U so my arteries have already shown their nonstick attributes, and I plan ordering the Double Down while riding an ER crash cart through the drive through like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove anyway with the defibrillator paddles already duct taped to my chest so all I have to is fall onto the power button with my convulsing body to get my heart working again, so really... what's the worst that could happen?

Well, for starters... I could actually like it.

Oh, man.  Let's hope not.

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9.5 Hours of "Willpower" in the Silicon Valley

So it's Saturday, April 3rd, and the iPad has been on sale since 9 this morning.

...And I haven't broken down and bought one yet. I just got a bonus at work so we could theoretically afford it, but I've resisted. I've held strong and refused to cave to the little inner geek in my head screaming at me to get it GET IT GETITGETITGETITNOWWWWW...

But no. NO.

Not me.

I've got WILLPOWER, dagnabbit.

I am STRONG.

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And, uh, they were sold out when we stopped by the Best Buy.

Oh, man; I'm so weak.

This is gonna hurt...

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2 Big Ol' Geeks on the Bridge of the Enterprise

So Lucie is able to leave work a little early today, and we've got a few hours of rare weekday daylight time together. And to celebrate that, we decide to go someplace we've been meaning to go for a while, the Star Trek Experience at San Jose's the Tech Museum. Lucie's sort of a closeted Star Trek fan (Kirk, not so much Picard) and I'm a sci-fi fan (general all-around geek), so it sounds like a good time for both of us. It's only in town until the new year and we figure most people are either at work or our shopping, so it should be fairly empty.

I'm actually looking forward to this; I haven't been to the Tech since last year, when I went to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit they had (which was way cool in a mechanical engineer wannabe sort of way) and I figure it's high time I paid it another visit.

Parking is a little sparse, as Christmas in the Park is going on right across the street and the normal business parking lot is closed, but there's a public parking structure a block away where we find an open spot, so we have a small hike through the carnival rides that are set up for Christmas in the Park, and we eventually arrive at the Tech.

There's no line to buy tickets, which makes us happy. After buying tickets we realize that our scheduled time slot for entry isn't for another hour, which makes us grumpy. We sit for a few minutes by the entrance; there's hardly anyone nearby to get in, which makes us wonder why they're rationing the crowds so heavily. I eventually go back through the line and ask why we need to wait for an hour before entering, and the guy apologizes for typing in the wrong time -- we can go ahead and enter any time we'd like, he says, which makes me a little murderous and not at all Christmassy in spirit, but I get over it, he survives the day, and Lucie and I enter the exhibit.

It's a Star Trek geek's paradise -- costumes and props (some of them replicas; some of them the real thing) from a myriad of characters from all of the shows and movies. Everything from the outfits from all of the original series' characters (McCoy's shirt didn't look nearly as fuzzy when I watched it on TV), to tidbits and trivia about the actors (I never noticed or realized that James Doohan lost the middle finger of his right hand during D-Day and just tried to hide it on set), to a replica of the original bridge complete with Captain's chair where we get our picture taken by an official The Star Trek Experience Wants More of Your Money worker. We also get our picture taken in the Transporter Room, for a "holographic" picture where we appear and disappear (maybe it's just me, but for some reason the official worker here seems relieved that he can make the image of me and my tie dye outfit go away.)

Walking through the rest of the exhibit, we say hi to a tribble, ooh and aah at the assorted weapons, mock a picture of Wesley Crusher, get a headache trying to follow the huge Star Trek timeline display that takes up an entire wall and covers everything from Star Trek: Enterprise (hi, Sam Beckett!) to Star Trek Nemesis (so long, Bob Wheeler!), and buy several cans of Romulan Ale, a Star Trek themed energy drink which gimmick I wholeheartedly support. We also buy a picture of Lucie in the captain's chair (looking very commanding and in charge), me in the captain's chair (looking decidedly less so), and our holographic transporter room picture (complete with rocking picture frame to best view the disappearing act.)

Geeked out, poorer, and happy we came, we leave the Tech and wander back through the Christmas in the Park carnival toward the parking garage. We stop long enough to win a pink-frog-in-a-Santa-hat stuffed animal; buy a caramel apple for Lucie, a bag of cotton candy for us to share, some caramel corn on a stick for me (because it's caramel corn,on a stick) and a funnel cake in case the other stuff doesn't have enough sugar in it; and continue on back to Meg.

We pay way too much for parking (not surprising) and drive home. If you're near San Jose and like the show or movies (and dislike your money and want to get rid of a bunch of it), I do recommend going to the exhibit. I wouldn't recommend wearing your Star Trek shirt or Spock ears or anything, though, 'cuz that might be going just a bit overboard. And, uh, we didn't think of it.

Merry Geeksmas.

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Hawai'i 2.0, Day 12: "Do You All Know What It Is You're Carrying?"

Dawn breaks on our last day in Hawai'i.

We don't notice it, on account of we're sleeping at the time. We saw one sunrise here; that's enough for one trip. However, we do eventually wake up, and busy ourselves with packing everything up (it even fits, though one of the suitcases feels a little heavy) for our trip back home. We pay our hotel bill (which, especially when combined with the bar tab, is not quite insubstantial) and load up our poor abused rental car, wave our last goodbye at the ocean (which waves back) and head on out to the airport.

I drop Lucie off, we pay someone from the Hawaii Porter Service not nearly enough to struggle with our suitcases and check them in for us (it's well worth the minimal cost to have someone else lug our bags for us), and I return our convertible to the rental agency. We spend part of our remaining time poking through the airport gift shop, where I buy two bags of One Ton Chips for snacks (first had some from the Volcano Village store when we bought gas -- they're mild in flavor and oddly addictive), some more goodies for friends and family (my carry-on bag's seams voice their concerns), and another ball cap. I don't usually buy ball caps -- I've grown accustomed to bandannas -- but on this trip I've bought four; not exactly sure how that happened.

Our flight to Honolulu is uneventful, but apparently they've entered us into a local iron man competition at the airport, since we have a half mile long outdoor hike to our connecting flight to Oakland. We get a little lost trying to find the right gate, but once we decide to follow the trail of fallen bodies of other passengers on the same hike we eventually find our way. We take a very welcome rest in a slightly cooler terminal for a while (no air conditioning apparently, as they're doing construction on a nearby section of the building) and board our flight to the Mainland.

A pretty impressive dinner for first class -- a crab tomato salad with wasabi vinaigrette, macadamia nut crusted ahi with lilikoi sauce and pineapple chutney, ginger chicken stir fry over garlic rice, and a Kona coffee flan -- and some cold drinks (guava juice, guava juice with champagne, and ginger ale), an in-flight movie of Julie & Julia for the foodies among us, and Lucie watches Mama Mia on her personal video player (free rental for first class) while I study Japanese on my iPhone for the rest of the flight, and another safe touchdown in Oakland. In just a few short hours, we've gone from a hot, humid, and sunny day to a cold, rainy night. It's one heck of a change, and it takes me a little while to adapt.

We have trouble finding our luggage -- which is surprising, as mine is a bright red Hawaiian print. Turns out they sent half of our plane's luggage to a different carousel, so there's a slight delay leaving; but eventually we gather all of our belongings and wait for our limo for the ride home. We don't recognize it at first, as our original Lincoln town car from the ride up has grown into a stretch limo... which is a nice surprise indeed. Our driver is once again Dean (the guy whom I contacted at On Time Limousine is named James, this guy's name is Dean, and there's driving involved... just sayin') and he welcomes us back and starts driving us home. Turns out he's from Fresno, so Lucie and he chat amiably most of the way home while I relax and stretch my legs. I can't hear the conversation, as I'm in the back of the limo and Lucie's near the front, but I've got some binoculars so I do my best to read lips from a distance.

We get home safely, give Dean a bag of Kona coffee as part of his tip, and lug our bags inside our apartment. We find two notices from the TSA saying they've inspected our luggage -- one in Lucie's bags and one in mine. I can only assume that we were carrying home so much coffee that the drug sniffing dogs assumed we were trying to smuggle cocaine (admit it -- we've all learned that from watching Beverly Hills Cop) and they had to check us out. I understand it's done for everyone's safety and all that, but when it happens that often it's just a little creepy.

Our trip to Hawai'i is over. It'll take us a while to recover financially (we spent an awful lot), but as soon as we can build up our vacation fund we're going back. Lucie suggests next March; I'm thinking it might be just a little longer than that, but hopefully not too much longer. Aloha, mahalo, and see you again soon.

Coffee consumption: 1 can of Royal Mills "island mocha" and some coffee flan.

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Hawai'i 2.0, Day 11: "Today We Were Kidnapped by Hill Folk, Never to be Seen Again. It Was the Best Day Ever."

Our last full day in Hawai'i begins with the sun bright and the sky cloud-free... and with no cruise ship. Yay for the sun, at least.

We don't have a plan for the day, so we're just going to relax and do what comes to mind. We opt for the breakfast buffet at Don's (the restaurant, not the mai tai bar.) It's purely average fare, with powdered eggs and country potatoes; not even bacon or Spam as a protein, although they do offer miso soup for the Asian crowd... but at least they overcharge us. Even the coffee tastes a little off, which is a terrible thing to do to 100% Kona. Ah, well... that's why we don't eat  here on a regular basis; Don's mai tai bar menu is actually cheaper, tastier, and not as pretentious as Don's sit-down restaurant menu (though they do make more profits in tropical drinks when we go there.) However, as we sit there eating our food near the water, Lucie looks over and sees our very first green turtle in the water below us, poking its head out of the water occasionally as it eats its own breakfast. We say hi to the honu, briefly regret the fact that we don't have our cameras (OR either of our iPhones) with us, and enjoy the rest of our meal with a better appreciation for the outdoor dining experience.


After breakfast, we do a little bit of packing for the trip home... and by that, I mean we figure out what we won't be able to fit in our suitcases without them being overweight (which is a considerable amount) and pack it into boxes to ship home from the UPS Store in town. Goodies for Lucie's family to Fresno, goodies for my co-workers to me at work, more goodies to the Nacordas in Georgia, coffee to my Watsu therapist, and our swim fins and other snorkel gear to our apartment. We're still not sure everything will fit, but at least we've got a better chance now.

From the UPS Store, we head back down the Mamalahoa highway for the last time this trip. Packing actually took a bit longer than we'd thought, and it's almost time for lunch; Lucie and I have seen this Mexican place called Adriana's every time we pass through the town of Captain Cook, and it's gotten decent reviews on Yelp. What better place to try a new Mexican eatery than the Big Island of Hawai'i?

The quesadilla is a simple and uninspired cheddar and tortilla number, what I used to make when I was a teenager before I discovered garlic powder. The free chips they give us are clearly out of a bag, and I strongly suspect that the accompanying refried beans have recently been spanked out of a tin can. However, the chile verde burritos are good -- really good. Spicy, fresh, tender, very slightly bitter, very very meaty, and HUGE. Couldn't fit it in our trunk huge. Would have to ship leftovers back through the UPS Store huge. Couldn't get it to bite if we were on the Camelot burritofishing using sliced jalapeños as bait huge. We do what we can to pick apart our burritos and just eat the tender chunks of pork, and agree that had we known how big they were we would have split one.

We sit for a while, drinking the huge bottles of cold water we ordered with lunch, and make plans for the rest of the day. I mention that there are a couple more coffee places I've been wanting to visit just for the names, but that we haven't for various reason -- Sacred Grounds has been closed every time we drive by, and Kona Lisa is way off the beaten path; at the intersection of two different roads we've never heard of and aren't on the main Coffee Tour map. Lucie agrees, so we drive further down the Mamalahoa to Sacred Grounds... and they're closed AGAIN. By my count, that's five or six different times we've come by this place and they've been closed every time. Okay, their loss. I look up Kona Lisa Coffee's location on their website using my iPhone, and I ask Lucie to use her iPhone's GPS app and guide us there by way of Google Maps.

This is a very acceptable and helpful use of technology, and anywhere other than the Big Island it would have worked. The directions it gives us even look right -- take Middle Ke'ei Road off the Mamalahoa highway and drive down the winding road until you get to Painted Church Road. Simple enough... until you take into account the fact that road intersections off the Mamalahoa are few and far between and not always clearly marked, and that our actual location is approximately a quarter mile off and 30 seconds behind where the GPS coordinates show us to be. Hey, that's no problem; we should be able to find our way even with those tiny little challenges. It's the Big Island; how lost could we get?

The answer is: a lot. The directions take us to an unmarked driveway near the Royal Kona coffee plantation we visited a few days ago; it sure looks like a private drive, but a hundred feet or so in, it starts to widen out, and looks like a real road. We relax a little, and continue following the green line on Lucie's phone.

The road turns a sharp right, and turns into... an empty and unkempt parking lot behind Royal Kona. We stop, and I have Lucie swap out her iPhone with my iPhone's compass app combined with the Google Maps directions; they indicate we should go the far right end of the parking lot, where we do in fact see a previously hidden driveway, and to turn left. Lo and behold, there's a road going to the left... sort of. It's actually more of a dirt road consisting of two worn strips for car tires, and weeds and grass growing everywhere else. Heck, the ATV paths along Waipio Valley are more clearly defined, but it's where the iPhone is telling us to go. We try to relax a little, and continue following the green line on my iPhone.

The "road" goes straight for a few hundred feet, then turns right again, down a steep and narrow path, large rocks jutting out of the dirt and overgrown trees and bushes encroaching on the roadway. I stop the car (there's no place to turn around) and take a closer look at the iPhone; sure enough, there's us, the blue dot, and we're right on the green path that says "Middle Ke'ei Road" and the compass is pointing the right way, and it says we should drive down the hill and we're on the right path. We pretend to relax a tiny bit, and cautiously continue to follow the green line on my iPhone.

At the bottom of the hill, the ever-narrowing "road" takes us past some coffee trees. I take this as a good sign, and continue to follow the green line.

After the coffee trees, just when I start realizing that we don't hear the traffic from the Mamalahoa highway any more, and I start thinking that maybe I put a little too much faith in technology this time, and Lucie and I are both looking around waiting to be kidnapped and taken hostage by Hawaiian hillbillies, and just as I start to imagine hearing dueling ukeleles playing, the road straightens out and turns into... someone's personal "driveway", with an old and worn down and probably haunted house sitting along in a small clearing, and with no sign at all of life or anywhere else to go. I make a hair-raising nineteen point turn in the narrow confines as my inner soundtrack speeds up the dueling ukeleles, and I get us the hell out of there. I'm concerned that the poor rental car won't make it back up the hill, but I think it's actually as scared as we are, and it gets us to safety. Lucie and I nervously look at each other, unsure of just how close we were to becoming the protagonists in a horror movie, and try to figure out where to go from here.

Sadly, as scared as I am from our small mishap, I still want to find this place... it's more a matter of principle than anything else at this point. We agree to drive just a little bit down the highway and see if there's anything; otherwise, we'll head back to Kailua-Kona and figure out something else to do. It's a reasonable compromise, so off we go.

About a quarter mile down the highway, we see a prominently displayed sign for Middle Ke'ei Road, followed by a well-paved road complete with double yellow striping. Lucie loves me so much she doesn't even say anything as I take the exit, make a sharp right, then drive a little way before following the road as it turns sharply to the left, goes straight for a few hundred feet, then turns right again... basically, exactly the same route the iPhone told me to take, only starting from the correct location. Apparently, this is important when you're driving somewhere... so today I learned something new. And Learning is half the battle. The More You Know.

Anyway, we eventually find ourselves at a small driveway  leading to the Kona Lisa Coffee Farm, a small mom and pop place run by an older married couple (and actual mom and pop, coincidentally enough.) Mary, the mom in the arrangement, comes out of the house and greets us as we find a parking place in the driveway area. It's not a large coffee plantation like Mountain Thunder; it's not even a small plantation with a gift shop like Hula Daddy; it's a residence sitting in a six-acre property where Mary and her husband Ron grow coffee, bananas, papayas, Hawaiian sweet limes, macadamia nuts, passionfruit, and mangoes. And apparently tuxedo tabby cats, as there are a couple of them lying around; one of them, Mona, follows us around as Mary takes us on a short tour of the place. We see the small drying floor they have for the cleaned beans; we see the flowering coffee trees and the pile of macadamia nuts stored for selling at the local farmer's market; we have a seat on the house's shaded front porch and have a great conversation with Mary as we talk about our mutual appreciation for good coffee, their history of falling in love with this farm (actually named Cornerstone Farms) several years ago and deciding to buy  the place and retire here, her passionate fight to keep Kona coffee a viable crop for independent farmers, about a dozen different things that I can't even remember any more but which were fascinating at the time. She's a genuinely good person, open and friendly and honest, and we like her a lot. Mona hops up on the bench we're sitting on and makes herself comfortable. I find us talking like we're old friends over coffee, instead of vendor and customer talking about buying coffee, but I'm not even sure how blurred the line is; I think we're both customer and friends even though we just met and she doesn't even know our names.

It's a great conversation, and I gladly buy several bags of Kona Lisa coffee as we somewhat reluctantly get up to leave. I mention that we also wanted to stop by Sacred Grounds but they've been closed, and she tells us they had one of their machines catch fire earlier this year and burn down half the processing house, and have shut down until they can recover financially (if they can recover.) Another mystery solved.

We make one more stop on our way back home at Kona Coast macadamia farm, where we buy (surprise!) goodies for us and for folks back home -- the dry roasted macadamia nuts with cayenne pepper are quite good -- and we head back to our hotel. We spend the last hour before sunset alternately swimming in the hotel pool and relaxing in nearby lounge chairs, being waited on by Halley's Waitress (we see her once when we order piña coladas, and then she doesn't come back for decades.) We watch the sunset, order burgers from the mai tai bar to have for dinner in our room, and head back upstairs for the night.

It's our last full day in Hawai'i... we had some mediocre food and some great food, we had one of my favorite coffee plantation visits ever, we got lost and drove through heavy underbrush in a rental car, and we relaxed and watched another beautiful Hawaiian sunset. It's a good day, with all four of the main ingredients: food, caffeine, thrill, and lazy.

Coffee consumption: coffee with breakfast, and a cup of coffee at Kona Lisa.

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Hawai'i 2.0, Day 10: Putting the A'a In Ha'awai'i

It's a day of firsts -- we sleep in for the first time today to make up for yesterday's early morning, and when I open the doors to our balcony I see my first real nene!  I quickly have Lucie take a picture of it for posterity before realizing it's actually just another cruise ship.  Maybe there are nenes on board... or maybe it's as I've always believed: the nene's just a myth.  It's like someone saying they went shopping at a Whole Foods and DIDN'T see a Prius in the parking lot; just doesn't happen.

Anyway, we're feeling a little volcanic today, so we decide to drive on down to Volcanoes National Park -- we made a quick visit last trip, but wanted to make a day of it this time.  We cruise down the Mamalahoa Highway; past Kona Joe, past Kealakekua, through Honaunau-Napo'opo'o, through the Kipahoehoe Natural Reserve, past acres and acres of pastureland where we wave to all of the mukau, and a couple of hours later we pull into Na'alehu for sustenance.

We walk into the Punalu'u Bakery, buy some goodies for co-workers and family, and some of the malasadas for us for lunch; Lucie goes for the lilikoi-glazed version, and I grab a chocolate-filled as well as a guava variant.  The guava dough is sweet and subtle, the chocolate filled is dense and filling, and the lilikoi glazed is ten pounds of sugar in a two-ounce pastry.  This place is not for those watching carbs or with weak tooth enamel, but we sure like it.  I wash down my malasadas with an iced mocha, in case the sugar needs reinforcements.

We noticed a small craft fair next door at the Na'alehu Assembly of God church, so once we regain our senses from the sugar rush we cross the street and poke through the stalls, seeing what they have.  Lucie picks up a bracelet with hua weleweka seeds, hard gray berries covered in a soft fuzz that's hard not to play with; I also get a pair of sterling silver and coconut shell earrings that I think she'll like (and does.)  I also toy with the idea of picking up a hand-carved fishhook pendant on a woven cord, but when the price goes up from $25 to $40 when they say they need to lengthen the braided cord, I politely walk away; I'm happy enough with my honu pendant from last trip.

Done with shopping for now, we get back into our car and continue down the highway and make another small side trip to stop at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach.  The wind is fairly strong today, so the waves crashing against the black rocks are impressively big and white and frothy, and very picturesque.  We wander around the smooth lava rocks for a while, take a bunch of pictures, and dip our feet in the water.  This turns out to be a bad idea on my part, as over the years I've apparently turned into a major tenderfoot, and I hop and limp my way back to solid ground where I can put my Keens back on.  I learn two new things -- black sand is a lot more coarse and poke-y than white sand, and I'm kind a wuss.  As it turns out, though, a tour bus is pulling into the parking lot as we leave, so we actually beat the rush and end up leaving at a good time.

Not much further down the road, we arrive at Volcanoes National Park.  We're near the southeast side of the island where it rains more, so we put up the top as we go into the visitor's center.  I get my picture taken with a fake nene (the ONLY kind of nene there is!) and we get a few souvenirs.  Kilauea has a new vent that opened up at Halema'uma'u Crater, so Crater Rim Drive, the road that circles Kilauea's caldera, is closed.  We actually took that road last time and passed on Chain of Craters road, the road that winds past multiple craters from older lava eruptions and leads down the ocean where the lava from the current eruption is flowing into the sea, so we decide to take that road this time around.  It continues drizzling off and on -- not dry enough for us to put the roof down on the convertible, but dry enough so we can stop and take pictures at most of the vista points.

The Chain of Craters Road is a very interesting thing... it's a landscape of stark black rock, with occasional beautiful blue ocean visible on one side, and with gorgeous green and lush foliage sometimes visible on the other side.  There's no food, water, or gas available anywhere along the road -- it's all lava and trees, and of course "nene crossing" signs... as with Crater Rim Drive, those signs are everywhere.

Side note -- it's also almost impossible for me to say "chain of craters" out loud on the first try.  The entire time we're here I find myself saying "crane of chaiters" instead, despite numerous attempts and deliberately speaking slowly.  Maybe it's volcano goddess Pele messing with me for mocking her imaginary nene.

Anyway, we drive to the end of the road, where it's blocked off (flowed over after the current eruption started in 1983) and stop for a look at the distant spot visible, where we can see the huge clouds of steam rising from the ocean as the lava flows into it.  We don't have the supplies and we're not dressed for the long hike it would take to get a closer look, but the view from here is still awe-inspiring.  It's the birth of new land; it's Hawaii's youngest and largest island in a geological growth spurt.

We stay for a bit and take a bunch of pictures, then head back up to the park entrance.  I'm a little nervous, as we're nearly out of gas and driving uphill almost all the way, but we should be fine.  We stop along the way and Lucie snaps a great shot of a rainbow stretching out over the black desolate landscape; we stop again at the Thurston Lava Tube but opt not to hike through it -- my knees let me know they aren't up for the trek.  Once out of the park, we make a quick stop at the nearby Volcano Village for gas (I expect it to be grossly overpriced, but it's actually cheaper here than in Kona... which makes you think) and make the long drive back to Kona.

We stop at Jackie Rey's Ohana Grill for dinner -- as with the other places we've been, the reviews on this place are great, and we have to agree -- the appetizer platter of coconut shrimp, short ribs, poke, and tempura veggies is impressive, and our entrees are equally so; Lucie gets the seafood special of grilled ono over purple sweet potatoes with a pineapple mango salsa, and I opt for the steak special, a New York grilled to a perfect medium rare over garlic mashed potatoes with a bordeaux reduction sauce.  It's one of the best steaks I've had since Alexander's, and definitely in the top 5 I can remember eating.

Sated and happy, and tired from the drive, we head back to our hotel and fall blissfully asleep for the night.  We never even make it down to the mai tai bar.

Coffee consumption: 1 can of Royal Mills iced coffee, one iced mocha.

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