You’ll all be glad to know, I’m sure, that I have successfully managed not to kill, maim, or otherwise cause injury to myself, Rohan or anyone else (or their property) since taking possession of a car. An American car. You know, the kind that drive on the opposite side of the road to the kind I’m used to. We did fail our first test, though: working out how to move the seat forward and back. It turns out there’s a button, and it does it all automagically; I’m not used to that. I’m not used to a lot of things that this car has: headlights that go on automatically, remote locking that requires two pushes to unlock the passenger doors, and the list goes on. This car is full of fancy, and I’m not really sure I like it that much. But on the plus side, I am getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road, and gauging speed in miles. That’s good, right?

A Fern!

We’re currently in Hilo, which is one of the wettest places I’ve ever been, although it’s mostly drizzled rather than actually rained. The humidity is astounding. So is the sound of the frogs, outside the window. Hilo is not really a tourist centre the way, for example, Waikiki is; the accommodation choices are limited. We’re in a tidy little motel which has one definite advantage: cooking facilities. Specifically, it has a gas stove, and I am in love. After a number of disappointing breakfasts, Rohan made us eggs this morning, and they were wonderful.

Actually, we’ve had impressively good food here all ’round. After two nights, we’ve had two excellent dinners (one Italian-esque, the other Mexican), both of which were definitely superior to what we had in Waikiki. I’m pleased and relieved by that, because I simply wasn’t sure what to expect. Hilo is small, and rather more focused on locals than tourists, it seems, though there’s still plenty to do and see.

Lava Tube

After shopping and cooking this morning, we headed up towards Volcano National Park to see (guess what!) the volcano. Kilauea has been erupting continuously since 1983, and since that’s longer than I’ve been alive, I find it pretty impressive. I have actually visited the park before, back in 2001, but I admit I found it significantly more interesting this time around. It’s a little depressing in retrospect, remembering all the things I saw and did as a child or teenager, and realising how little I appreciated them. On the plus side, coming back here with Rohan was well worth it, and I clearly had enough positive recollections to make that happen – go me. These days, the actual lava flaws are mostly on private land which means it’s not possible to get too close, but we’re going on a helicopter trip tomorrow that should satisfy our desires to see it molten and hot. In the meantime, we saw an impressive amount of igneous rock, and that remained pretty awesome. Particular highlights were definitely the lava tube and desolation trail– two completely different examples of what volcanic activity can do.

Desolation Trail

On our way back to Hilo (it’s about a thirty minute trip), we stopped in at an Orchid showroom, which I mention mostly so that I can show off one of my photos. I have a thing about photographing flowers, ferns and other plants, especially with the aperture set so that I can make the flower itself in focus while the background is out of focus. It’s a cheap trick to making something look interesting, but I can’t help it: I just think it looks cool.

Orchids

Tomorrow, we say goodbye to Hilo and head towards Kona, where we have three nights in a condo right on the ocean. First, though, we have plans for waterfall viewing, and, oh yes, a trip in a helicopter. Life is so hard.

We’ve been in Honolulu for just of 48 hours, now, and we’re off to the airport shortly to move on to our next stop. I’m glad we ended up having this particular leg: Honolulu has been fascinating.

We had originally intended to be up early on our first morning, working on the basis that we went to bed super early the night before. That… did not end up happening. Instead, we slept for nearly thirteen hours and didn’t wake up until 9:30. That, plus our attempt to find somewhere decent for breakfast, meant we didn’t get on our way to Pearl Harbor until about midday. Moreover, we caught a city bus rather than a shuttle, and that took well over an hour. End result: we had a lot less time than we’d intended. No matter. I have to say the city bus was actually worthwhile in that we saw quite a bit more of Honolulu than we would have otherwise.

The USS Bowfin

Once we got there, for Rohan, the biggest thing was the Bowfin – a submarine. An look, even I found that reasonably cool. We debated after that over whether to do the memorial, or to look at some of the other museum type stuff. As it turned out, we were just in time to hop in to the 20 minute Pearl Harbor film and from that into the boat road to the memorial, despite not having picked up tickets before they ran out. I was last there 11 years ago, and remembered it as being worthwhile; my recollections were pretty much spot on. It’s a really classy, well done memorial – striking, and not overdone. Even the film they show is (mostly) understated.

USS Arizona Memorial

It’s eerie, though, watching the oil rise from to the surface and glisten in the sun. Seventy years on and it is still leaking out at a rate of 1-2 gallons a day. There are thousands and thousands of gallons left, but there’s no way to now whether all of it will leak out – it could stop tomorrow. Or in years and years. I also really like that survivors are having their ashes placed inside the wreck, allowing them to rejoin their former shipmates all these years later. There are 13 still left; the youngest is 86.

I went for a swim when we got back to the hotel (it was lovely), before we headed out for dinner. On the first night, we went to The Cheesecake Factory, which was a weird experience for me. We don’t really have family chain restaurants like that in Australia, so I haven’t really been to any in 15 odd years. They haven’t changed much, which made it feel even more familiar, even if I don’t think we ever went to that particular chain. As expected, the food was ok but nothing special, and the portions were enormous. Big enough, in the end, that we could not fit in any cheesecake. After Pearl Harbor, we found a little Italian place, which was lovely.

In both cases, the service was far above what we’d get in an Australian restaurant. We don’t have the tipping culture, which means there is no particular reason for servers to go above and beyond; As a result, water glasses don’t get refilled and no one tends to check up on you. I still find it horrifying that people don’t just get paid a proper wage to begin with, but I can see benefits with the system too. At the Italian restaurant, a woman at the table across from us basically threw a tantrum after her meal was accidentally missed in a group order. The staff did their very best to get it out as soon as possible, but even once she had it she bitched about it and refused to eat. I do understand being annoyed, but that just felt excessive, particularly when the staff promised it would be free. Meanwhile, when my cheesecake took a long time to come out, Rohan’s scotch was also removed from our bill; we were pretty pleased with that. In short: we’re getting used to tipping. I think.

Diamond Head Beach

This morning, we made sure to wake up earlier – in time for me to have a swim again. Our big plan was to try and climb Diamond Head, but that proved a little over ambitious. We satisfied ourselves with walking around the head towards the beach, which proved to be more than enough. It was stunningly beautiful, though, and a lovely change from how built up and commercial Waikiki itself is. By the time we made it back, though, we were exhausted… and more drinks were required. I haven’t actually had a glass of wine yet – just cocktails. Lots of cocktails. I approve.

We’re now sitting in the bar at Honolulu airport, about to head across to the Big Island. TSA proved to be much more helpful than the actual airline staff; so far so good.

Next up: Louise tries not to kill us both by driving on the wrong side of the road. And tomorrow? Volcano!

(PS: Louise did not drive on the wrong side of the road. Only the wrong side given what she’s used to. No one died. More later.)

I am le sleepy.

In fact, I am completely and utterly exhausted, and I have no idea how I am going to manage to stay awake for another five hours in order to try and get my body clock synced up with my present location.

On the plus side, my present location is totally on the ocean side of the thirty-third floor in the Hilton Waikiki Beach, which means I have a spectacular view out over the ocean from my position on the bed. So in the end? I may be tired, but I am going to do my best not to complain too much. Things could certainly be a lot worse.

Our flight left at 7:40pm yesterday. Sadly, it was pretty full, and even more sadly it seemed as though a good number of people on the flight were on their way to a wedding, or some other group holiday. In short, there were some very loud and enthusiastic people who didn’t exactly make me feel all that relaxed. We were on an older aircraft, the kind that doesn’t even have individual screens in business class let alone in economy; I hadn’t really intended to watch movies the whole way, but it would have been nice to watch something while I tried to drift off. In the end, I think I did get a few hours of sleep, but not all that many. Not enough, certainly.

We arrived in Honolulu soon after 9am local time, though it took us a good long while to actually get through customs and immigration, unsurprisingly. It was fascinating, really: we were asked all kinds of in-depth questions (where are you visting, how long in each place, are you meeting up with any friends, have you ever been to the US before, when was your last visit, etc, etc), but it didn’t seem as though anyone’s bags were getting checked for quarantine items. This means I have successfully brought Milo into the country (I didn’t think this would be a problem, but since I had to declare I had chocolate…).

Waikiki Beach

Needless to say, we arrived many hours before we could actually check in to our hotel. I booked our first two nights using Hotwire (and, ok, Hotwire Revealed), and scored a pretty good deal – not that that particularly helped us at the time! We dumped our bags and went for a walk, working on the basis that moving around would help us stay awake. Honolulu is fascinating, in a way. You go from these polished, super clean resort hotels to really grungy ones, just around the corner. There’s an ABC store (and not the kind we’re used to in Australia) on almost every corner. The water is blue and green and stunningly beautiful, but Waikiki Beach doesn’t seem especially amazing to my eye.

‘Jellies’, at the Honolulu Aquarium

Still, it was lovely and warm (for me; Rohan was a little less impressed), and after all those hours on a plane, it’d be hard not to enjoy the ability to just walk. We wandered down the beach for a ways, and then went to the aquarium. Probably the most interesting part of that was listening to a pair of British tourists bitching about the over-enthusiastic loudness of two children there with their parents. The kids certainly were noisy (“Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, come look, come look, come look!”), but there’s rolling your eyes at it and then there’s… well, this. On the whole, it seemed as though most of the marine life they had at the aquarium was stuff we have in the Sydney Aquarium (which is, admittedly, both enormous and excellent)… actually, there are an enormous amount of similarities between plants and animals, it seems. I guess that’s not all that surprising, but it was a pity not to see all that much that was truly unusual.

But it was still too early to go and get our room; what to do now? We ended up getting frozen yoghurt and eating it out on the beach, which was lovely. I really like the idea of selling yoghurt by weight: we filled the cup with what we wanted, to share, and didn’t have to worry about it being less than a full cup. And yoghurt is awesome. Just, you know, FYI.

Yoghurt (yum)

So we’ve wandered the streets, we’ve scoped out places we want to eat out, and now, finally, we’re safely in our room. Showers are amazing things. So are clean clothes.

And so are stunning views out over the ocean – unexpected stunning views (honestly, I thought we’d get a city view room, the cheapest kind possible). We do have two double beds instead of a king sized one, but since I generally find that king sized beds are two doubles pushed together ANYWAY most of the time, I’m not fussed. Oh no, we’ll have to get snuggly. How will we possibly cope?

Besides, after ten hours on a plane, it’ll feel luxurious.

In five hours. When we can finally, reasonably, sleep.

I am vastly amused: I am stealing wireless from the Qantas lounge, while at the airport, and they won’t let me sync with my blog. I’m pretty sure that means they’ve blocked anything to do with ‘hookers’, and I suppose that is, in the end, fair enough. Nonetheless? It makes me laugh. Poor unloved blog.

In other news we are, of course, now at the airport and not so very far off boarding our flight to Honolulu. I’m FINALLY making use of the iPad I inherited from Rohan… the one that has been sitting unused and unloved on my desk for the past few months. I am currently playing the ultimate tech lover: I have, in my carry on luggage, an iPad, iPhone, MacBook Air, and a kindle. And that, aside from the usual money and passport type paraphernalia, is it. What more could I possibly need?

From the looks of it, we’re more or less intending to drink our way to sleep on this flight. We needed to escape our upstairs neighbors’ renovations earlier this afternoon, so we went to the pub (I would post the photo of the drink I had if only I had it on me – it was pretty epic). Then we both had a drink with our dinners (I had no idea there was a Crust Pizza at the airport, but I approve wholeheartedly; it was a vast improvement over what I’d anticipated we’d be eating), and now we’re having another while we wait. No doubt there’ll be another with whatever slop they offer us for ‘dinner’ after we board, too. That’s when I intend to take half a sleeping pill and hopefully sleep most of the way to Honolulu.

Ten hours from now, we’ll be very nearly in the USA. That’s pretty awesome.

In the meantime, I suppose I should tether my phone or something so I can actually post this.

See you in in Hawaii!

I’m at that point in holiday preparedness where I feel completely and utterly disorganised, and hopelessly in over my head. Logically, I know everything is going to be fine: as long as I have money and my passport, I’ll be fine, even if I forget everything else. Unfortunately, sometimes I’m not quite that good at being logical, and then I start to panic. Panic, for the record, does no one any good, whatsoever.

I’ve just now gone through and printed off all the confirmation emails from various accommodation and transit bookings. I checked us in for the flight tomorrow, too, and discovered that somehow we’d been allocated seats in completely different rows – and that enough people have been allocated seats now that the only way I could get us sitting next to each other was to put us in the middle. It’s a two-three-two seat configuration, and getting one of the twos would have been ideal, but no. If we’re really lucky, it won’t be a full flight, but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.

I hate sitting in the middle of the plane.

On the plus side, at least I’ve started some packing now. As soon as the dryer finishes I have another load to do, and then tomorrow I’ll do sheets and towels. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the second load that actually needs to be packed, so hopefully I can finish up with clothes before bed tonight, and simply put everything else away before we leave tomorrow. Luckily, we have an evening flight, so I do have time to get things finished during the day.

I also need to go to the supermarket: visiting friends in the US requires purchasing of Tim Tams and other Australian goodies.

Things I have managed to do: load Kindle up with dozens (well, ok, more like a single dozen) of books, paint fingernails and toenails, print of reams of confirmations, find US sim card, pick which nail polish colours to take with me.

Priorities, man.

I also had a several hour long lunch with my mother today – something we don’t often get to do! I’m really, really glad I took the whole of this week off, and not just from Wednesday on. If I hadn’t had some time to decompress from work and try and get my head into the right space, I’d be completely lost at this point.

Or maybe I’d be running on adrenaline and actually doing better. Who can say?

(PS: I have also totally remembered to pack the cable for my camera for the first time ever. I may actually be able to post photos while I’m away! Gasp!)

This week is my last week of work before I get a whole four weeks off: I’m going on holidays.

It’s actually a little hard to believe that it’s nearly here. It was first talked about over a year ago, and at the time the whole point of the exercise was to have a meet up of a bunch of people I knew (to varying degrees) over the internet. Unsurprisingly, most of the people who initially joined in on the discussion forgot about it and moved on; realistically, the whole thing was originally discussed was never really going to happen.

But a core group of us – a group of actual friends rather than just acquaintances – kept talking about it. And once I signalled my actual intent to fly across the world for it, it became a reality. Suddenly, we were actually talking dates.

Of course, I was always going to take Rohan, and we were always going to do more than just meet up and hang out with my internet friends. Hawaii was suggested as a way to break up the flights, and since Rohan and I both enjoy things like submarines, stargazing, helicopters, and volcanoes, it seemed like an ideal choice. And then I stumbled upon the Coast Starlight, and since we almost certainly had to fly out of Los Angeles…

And so, an itinerary was formed.

A year ago, it seemed like a very distant possibility. Eight months ago it was a definite but still in the planning stages – and still a very long way away. And now, suddenly, it’s my last week of work and it’s only a little over a week until we leave.

No doubt the trip itself will go just as quickly.

We fly first to Honolulu, where we have two nights. From there, we fly to Hilo on the Big Island, where we’ll be in an ideal location to see Mount Kilauea. We have two nights on that side of the island, during which time I will need to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road (please let it be an easy adjustment), before we drive across to the other side, for a further three nights in a beautiful condo.

After the third night, we pack up to leave paradise, and fly on to Seattle, where we’ll meet up with a number of people I’ve known (to varying degrees) for well over a decade but never met. Since we’ll be there at the appropriate time, we’ll be attending PAX, amongst many other things. Rohan is also going to attend PAX Dev, and hopefully show off his in-process iOS game, thus making part of the trip a tax write-off. Win, win. We have about ten days there.

And then, yes, the train from Seattle all the way down to LA – a thirty-hour trip. We’ve booked a roomette, which means we get fold-down beds, but not a private bathroom (is a private bathroom and a little extra room worth several hundred dollars? Not to my mind, though we’ll see if I feel the same way after thirty hours). Rohan’s a train enthusiast and I’m a fan of anything that doesn’t mean flying, so I think we’re both pleased with that prospect.

We then have two nights in Los Angeles, which we largely tacked on because it seemed silly not to visit for a day or two if we have to travel through there anyway. We’ll hopefully catch up with a few more internet friends (because that’s the kind of people we are), and enjoy a real bed, before it’s time to fly all the way back to Australia, arriving home on Saturday the 8th of September.

My intention is the blog relatively regularly while we’re away, and to post photos as I go (this necessitates my remembering the cable for my camera this time, something I’m not holding my breath for since I’ve never, ever remembered it in the past); we’ll see how I go.

In the meantime, I have four more days of work to get through. Four days in which to train my coworkers in my job. Four days to clean up all the loose ends.

Yikes.