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.