6,421 miles for the best noodles ever!

I'm not senior enough to hold a full schedule, so I mostly fly what is called vacation replacement, where I get a portion of the trips a co-worker will not fly due to vacation and then days where I am obligated to fly. This month's vacation line gave me Maui trips, but I traded one with my friend Leatha for her Tokyo trip. It worked out for her, so she could get the weekend off, and it worked out for me as I netted an additional 10 hours of flying.

We arrive into Tokyo in the late afternoon, and we are pretty much exhausted from the 14 hour flight over, so most folks go down to the little crew cafeteria in the hotel basement. The highlight is Magic Salmon, which for some people isn't so magical (some people claim they get sick). This time though I strayed and did the Tofu Garlic, which was served over cabbage and veggies. A few Kirins from the self-filling draft machine is always a must as well.

The best thing for me about Tokyo though is the Ramen Bayashi Noodle Shop in the town of Narita, where we layover. It's very popular with the crews of many airlines that layover there, so much so that the place is decorated with pictures, model airplanes, stickers... basically all sorts of airline paraphernalia.

I was able to talk two of my co-workers, Gay and Cheryl, into going to town with me the next morning to enjoy the noodles and stroll around for a while. The weather was brisk, but it was sunny, so it really made it pleasant to be outside.

After a hearty helping of Chili Pepper Noodles, a suggestion from my friend Bobby, we had to walk off the food so we went to the hardware store so I could get my automatic bottle opener. I am not really sure HOW is works, but basically you place it over your bottles, push down, and it opens them automatically. We continued to stroll around town, including the area down by the Narita-san temple and then meandered on back to the train station where the hotel bus comes to fetch us.

We had some time to kill so we went to the grocery store nearby. The one thing about the noodles that gets me is the sodium factor, so I needed some juice or water to rehydrate. The Japanese sell this sports drink called Pocari Sweat (I know, who wants to drink something with the word sweat in it?) http://www.pocarisweat.com.ph/ and I wanted to stock up on rice crackers and some other sundries for the flight home.

I was taken with a product in the pet aisle.... little baggies to collect dog droppings. Nothing really out of the ordinary about it, but the packaging was rather strange, as it was a picture of a dogs butt.



After heading back to the hotel, I tried to take a nap before our afternoon pick up, but could not sleep so I watched a Woody Allen movie I had rented from Netflix.... Vicky Christina Barcelona, which was pretty good as far as Woody's movies go.

The flight home was only 11 hours and though we were pretty full, it went by fast.

Maui

I am just back from a layover in Maui. If I had to pick between Honolulu or Maui, I would pick Maui hands down. There is not as much to do, but it is more relaxed, laid back, more natural. Honolulu reminds me of growing up in Florida, except there are volcanoes.

Our flight over was fine. Due to some misunderstandings about life raft capacity, the planes we utilize on this 8 hour flight apparently have more people onboard when full than our rafts can handle, so they cap the total number of passengers, lap children, and crew to a specific total. As a result, we have several open seats, so it isn't packed to the gills, which makes everyone a little less tense.

We landed at Kahului airport around 4:30pm and made our way to the hotel, which is over in the Kihei area of Maui. The hotel is undergoing renovations, so I got one of the new rooms, which was nice, and on a side note, I was kind of high the whole layover because everything still smelled of carpet glue.

I changed clothes and went across the street to the beach to watch the sunset over the water. There were a lot of people there, so it must be a ritual that happens every evening. The weather was actually a bit nippy. I then proceeded down to Maui Thai (http://www.mauithai.com/) to grab some Pad Thai to go and went back to the hotel to watch a little TV and then turn in. I think I was asleep by 8pm (remember that Hawaii Standard Time is four hours behind Central Standard Time), because for me it was more like midnight.

I woke up at 6:30am and met my co-worker Tim down in the lobby. We planned to go to a little dive he likes called the Kihei Cafe (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g60632-d615203-Reviews-Kihei_Cafe-Kihei_Maui_Hawaii.html) for breakfast. It was an enjoyable walk down to the restaurant. The air was still nice and crisp and it was kind of neat to watch the island come alive in the morning (I think that is the tackiest thing I have written on this blog). I ordered a big honkin' stack of buttermilk pancakes. I could have gotten macadamia nut and banana on then, but with my crazy texture issues with food, I just stuck with plain old pancakes. They had coconut syrup for the cakes, but I opted for boring old maple.

After our nice meal, we walked off the breakfast and then made our way back to the hotel. I went on to the ABC Store. There is just one on this part of the island, versus Honolulu, which has an ABC on every fifth store front in Waikiki. My friend Debbie wanted coffee and I wanted to send some postcards. My friend Bruce sent me a postcard from a brewery in Milwaukee so now I feel obligated to send him one wherever I go.

I went down to the beach and read War and Peace for a little while (my New Year's Resolution) and do a little whale watching. This area is full of Humpback whales this time of year, so you can see them surfacing on the water and the spray coming out of their blow holes. I didn't want to bake, so after a while I went back to the hotel to take a nap before our pick up, since our flight home is an allnighter. Just as I was about to drift into sleep, the fire alarm went off, so that was the end of my nap. I walked down to the Local Motion shop and got my mother a decal for her new BMW (the local motion sticker is a tradition going back to a Honda Accord in 1987) and then came back and got showered, dressed, and packed and went down for pick up.

We had nutty passengers on the way home. One man, obviously starved for attention, put on his eyeshades and pretended to sleep walk to the back galley, where he needed some water to "take a pill". He then proceeded to tell us that he used to work for TWA and was even a flight attendant at one point when the TWA flight attendants went out on strike. The three of us sitting in the back replied that we would never cross a picket line, and then he got testy and stormed off saying he didn't have a choice, but then he would come back to the galley every hour or so and act like he was begging for water. Nuts!

The highlight of the trip was when we landed and I was notified upon the opening of the door that I had been selected for a random drug test. Of course, I had just gone to the bathroom, so I started chugging water so I could fill the cup.

Never Underestimate the Power of Facebook

Today I enjoyed lunch with what is one of my oldest friends, Kate. Nothing out of the ordinary about having lunch with a friend, with the rare exception being that the last time we hung out was 23 years ago. Our paths first crossed when our moms had us in the same playgroup when we were toddlers growing up in Sarasota, FL. In 1986, I moved to Tampa, and of course lost touch. Ironically, Kate's family moved to the Dallas area a few years before my parents relocation to the Big D in the 90's. Thru the social networking power of Facebook and our mutual friend Andy, we have gotten back in touch. We met for lunch today since Kate is in town from Brazil visiting her family.

The point of this story: The power of Facebook should never be underestimated.

1986

2009