Honolulu

Day 2 Retirement (or not) World-Tour > Honolulu

Day 2 Saturday-again 27/11/2016 Honolulu

Perhaps because we have not travelled much for the past two years except for the caravan jaunts between Adelaide and Melbourne and a trip earlier in the year to Cambodia and Thailand, but it all seems like such a thing to do the same but different day twice in a row. When we lived overseas between 2002 – 2014 we did it every year and even twice in some years. Saturday is good. It means not going to work; wait we are retired, every day is a Saturday. Of course, we may go back to work someday. If we got another great offer at an international school where we wanted to live (which are many places; Narda often says, “we could live here”) and we felt like it or we could do a few days of relief teaching in Adelaide for extra cash for another extended trip – this one is only four months before returning.

So, another Saturday. Stumbling through Honolulu Airport dropping stuff as I go. It is that stupid bag of food we dragged with us, we look like the Beverly Hillbillies. It is my diet. I don’t trust airplane food to nourish me in my elite-low-carb-organic-vegetarian-I-need-light-and-love-in-my-food way. We had made enough seeds and almond flour etc. bread for our week in Hawaii and three days in New York City. We will start all over in DC; maybe Michelle Obama would like some, with the baking. I had my large container of cookies too lovingly-handmade filled with low-carb gluten free organic stuff. The bag had fallen open when a strap broke on my way onto the plane back in Adelaide but Narda had completed an emergency-rescue on it so we could continue. Unfortunately, in my sleepy forward motion getting out of the plane in Hawaii, pulling it out from the overhead locker it opened, dropping on a couple of passengers behind me. Embarrassingly (not for me I am used to my ways but for the other) I quickly scooped up, I thought, all the items. It was not until we unpacked in Waikiki that we discovered the bread container was gone. I also had left behind my sleep mask eye patch on the plane. That is replaceable though. Narda hasn’t or won’t, forget which, replace my sleep mask that she made years ago with the Spiderman material. I lost that on a flight years ago. So, on the first day of our first of 14 more flights for this trip I managed to lose my bread, face mask, computer mouse and a one-day pack of pills that I had taken out of a larger pack to keep me alive. Well not that drastic but pills that old people take when they have diabetes and heart stuff. The last trip back in March when we went to Cambodia and Thailand we took one of those super blenders and I made smoothies everyday but we had no room this time.

And sleep. Holy cow. We got to our flat, a cosy studio air b&b a block from Waikiki Beach and moved in at 1:30 pm. It wasn’t ready before that and we dragged our sorry assess to the beach and felt miserable from little sleep on the plane. Our last long flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Adelaide was business class because of the upgrade by our insurance company after Narda fell off her motorbike in Cambodia and got serious burns. On that flight, we slept well but not in economy. The beach was not a good place so we went to a large fancy hotel and sat in one of the rocking chairs facing the beach. As we often do, we ignored the sign that rambled on about hotel guests only. Narda fell asleep for a few minutes but I stared at the rolling waves and felt happy as they hypnotised me. Having lived in Hawaii in the past I know the magic of this place that takes over when one relaxes. We slept for an hour in our flat, then wandered around in a daze until past nine pm.

If you read e-books my storefront at http://neuage.papertrell.com/ sells mine along with others I have favoured. Or go to http://neuage.org/e-books/ for my scribbles and photographic-texts of the past few years including ‘Leaving Australia Part One and Part two. If you want a preview of my photo-texts; I post on my picture-poem collection page on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/E_6JaB occasionally one I favour at the moment.

A flashing light on the phone showed a text from Chris at 6am. Luckily I had already been awake for 3 hours, and I love him to bits, otherwise I might have had to give him the stink eye. He welcomed us to Trumpland. Oh my. The first greeting we received in this country was some wry advice from the immigration officer, upon examining my passport; “you’re better off staying there you know”. Terrell said we should survey everyone we meet and gave the job to me. So the first interview was our shuttle bus guys who said “he did not care”. Actually I think he said “I do not give a s&%$#”, but in American I try not to not swear, lest I get accused of having a “potty mouth”.