Up in the air

We had lunch today at Chicken in a Barrel BBQ in Kapa’a. It was probably the least expensive meal we’ll have on Kauai, but it was tasty and popular, even with the chickens who are all over the island (there were “don’t feed the chickens” signs in the seating area).

After lunch, we took a short stroll along the beach path and admired other wild birds.

We were in Kapa’a on our way to Lihue to take a scenic helicopter ride with Blue Hawaiian Helicopters – it was great. I took a lot of photos, but many of them were ruined by reflections (I guess I should have worn long pants!). Here are a few of the ones which survived.

Exploring the neighborhood

We had nothing scheduled for today, so we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast in our room. It was wonderful.

After that, we took a walk through Princeville. We hadn’t even left the resort when I spotted this lovely Red Ginger (I was very pleased that the iPhone decided to open up the lens all the way so the background is nicely blurred).

Our walk took us along the Makai Golf Course, which offered some nice views.

We also walked through a neighborhood; I enjoyed the flowers and the variety of architecture.

We returned the same way we went – still walking along the golf course. The birds were out.

Finally, we got back to the road leading directly to the Westin.

We drove over to Princeville Center for lunch at Tiki Iniki; I had the ginger-beer-battered Ono fish and chips; Diane had the Ahi burger. Both were a little on the bland side, but edible; we chose not to indulge in the true house speciality, tiki drinks, so we didn’t get the full experience.

I made steak on the grill for dinner; I’ve done better (and had better beef to work with), but we survived. After dinner, we went out on our balcony to watch the sunset.

It was even more interesting from ground level.

We’re booked for activities every day for the rest of our time on Kauai, so I’m glad we had a chance to relax today!

A long day’s journey into rain

Greetings from the Westin Princeville Resort on the North Shore of Kauai, about 300 miles from Mauna Loa! We left the house at 5am Pacific, took off at 7, and landed in Maui at 10:30 Hawaiian (12:30pm Pacific).

As soon as we turned on our phones, we saw a text from Jeff: “Don’t let the volcano keep you down”. That was the first we knew about Mauna Loa’s eruption. It didn’t affect our travels today, but the rain did – our flight from Maui to Kauai was delayed an hour on top of a three-hour layover. We arrived at Lihue Airport at 3 and waited for our luggage until the carousel stopped. I walked over to the Hawaiian Airlines baggage office – it was there, and had been for a couple of hours; they’d put it on an earlier flight.

Traffic was very bad in Lihue and Kaapa; at least the rains waited until we were on clear roads. We reached the resort a little after 5pm and decided to eat at the restaurant here – they only have outdoor seating, so we got to enjoy seeing a nene.

Diane had tuna and I had mahi-mahi; it was good, but pricey. We went to the supermarket to stock up for the next few days – it was pricey, too (and the produce wasn’t terribly enticing).

We have almost nothing planned for our time here; the concierge had some suggestions, but we weren’t ready to make any decisions.

Packing up

We went to see The Thanksgiving Play at City Lights this afternoon. The premise is that four White people are producing a middle-school Thanksgiving play which is supposed to be inclusive and in support of Native American Heritage month – it’s funny and made us think. The talk-back after the show was great, too. If you’re in the area, it’s playing until mid-December – and it will be on Broadway next year.

We spent the rest of the day getting ready for our trip to Hawaii; Jeff will still be here for a few days before he returns to Boston. It feels weird leaving him behind.

I guess we’re all growing up. :-)

Walking and Hacking

I have very little to say about today. We took a few longish walks and had lunch at the new-to-us Los Gatos location of Oren’s Hummus House.

Beyond that, I spent most of the day continuing to rebuild the office computer. From time to time, I checked to see if the permissions problem had returned, and it hadn’t, so I got greedy and installed the rest of my applications without checking again.

That was a mistake. The problem returned, and I don’t know what triggered it. So far, it’s not as bad as it had been, but that’s not a guarantee that it’ll stay that way.

And in the process of restoring the machine, I somehow downloaded all of my photos from iCloud and created duplicates in my Photos library, which used up almost all of our monthly data allowance from Xfinity. Fortunately, they give you one month a year where you can exceed the allowance without being charged; I’m pretty sure I’ll hit the limit before we run out of November. And I was able to get rid of the duplicates before they got uploaded again.

Using a Mac is so simple…except when it isn’t.