11 March 2006 - Hawaii Trip

(Click on the pictures to see full-size images)

Day One, Friday, 03 March 2006

Aloha!

We flew directly from Dallas to Maui on Friday, 03 March. Zack managed to dislocate my left shoulder just before we got on the plane. I popped it back in and carried my bags using the other arm.

I was surprised to discover that American Airlines no longer serves food in the coach cabin on any domestic flights. I’d known that most airlines stopped serving food on short hops, but the last several long flights I’ve taken have either been international or first class—and in either of those cases, they serve food. On domestic flights, however, the coach passengers are out of luck. It seems odd to me that this policy would hold for a nine-hour flight.

Fortunately, we had tons of snacks with us. I can’t imagine Nicky or Zack going nine waking hours without food. Nicky’s latest phrase is “eating like a horse,” and he sets out to prove it every time he eats. I suspect he’s preparing to grow another couple of inches.

We rented a Sebring convertible for tooling around on Maui, and the boys loved having a top that could go down. They weren’t so keen on actually having the top down, though, because they still confuse “windy” with “cold,” and complain of freezing at 86 degrees Fahrenheit if there’s even a hint of wind. Similarly, if the direct sun is warm, they’ll complain of being hot when it’s only 60 degrees.

When I finally twigged that being “hot” meant “feeling the sunshine,” and being “cold” meant “feeling the wind,” our communications improved tremendously, but all my efforts to make the boys speak more precisely were wasted. I did, however, manage to teach them “aloha” and “mahalo” during this time.

The wind for most of our trip was what the Hawaiians call “kona,” or from the south—the direction from which bad weather comes. And indeed, except for a few hours of brilliant sunshine each day, it was overcast and unseasonably brisk—in the high 70’s or low 80’s—most of the time.

We stayed in the Grand Wailea Hotel, about halfway down the leeward coast of South Maui. The four-hour time zone change made it very late for the boys, even though the sun was still up by the time we checked in, found our room, and got everything unpacked.

I should have made them stay up anyway, to force an accommodation with the time change, but they were tired, so I let them go to sleep—with the predictable result that they awoke at 3:00 in the morning, local time, and simply could not get back to sleep.

 
Day Two, Saturday, 04 March 2006

The morning was overcast, so we decided to attempt the Hana Highway instead of waiting around hoping the skies would clear enough for swimming.

We ate breakfast at the hotel buffet for the first and only time. The total bill for two adults and two kids was $100. For that amount of money, I encouraged the boys to eat as much as they could hold of whatever struck their fancy. They had pancakes, yogurt, tons of fruit, several glasses of fresh juice, cereal, and more fruit.

We stopped at a local supermarket to pick up road trip supplies—bread and sandwich makings, cookies, water, and so forth—and set out along the twisty road to Hana. Along the way, we paused to watch surfers, look at waterfalls, examine odd plants, and snack at a little fruit stand.

The boys had their first taste of sugar cane and really fresh bananas. I explained how sugar was made from sugar cane, and they gnawed at the sticks. They were surprised at how small the bananas were, but impressed with how good they tasted.

About a half-hour later, as we were navigating the fiftieth or sixtieth hairpin turn along the Hana Highway, I offered the boys cookies. Nicky happily accepted, but Zack declined. Something about his voice when he said “No, thank you” prompted me to ask if he was okay.

“Yes,” he said, and then five minutes later he threw up.

It covered the seat, got inside the seatbelt clasp, spilled on the floor, got inside his shirt and pants, and even into his shoes. All of his breakfast, all the bananas, and, by apparent volume, three quarters of his body weight, came up in a bright orange and yellow splash.

Since he didn’t have a fever, and didn’t act sick (other than having just thrown up), I decided the proximate cause was too much fresh fruit. It couldn’t be dehydration yet, because we’d only been on the island for about twelve hours, all but a few of which were spent in air conditioning. It might be a genuine illness, but he didn’t have a fever, and seemed to feel better after vomiting.

We were not quite halfway to Hana. I decided to press on. Zack obligingly hurled again about fifteen minutes later. This time his forehead felt hot to me, and he seemed pretty miserable. I turned around and headed back toward the hotel. Unfortunately, it takes just as long to twist back along the Hana Highway as it does going out, so, sick or not, Zack had to wait a good three hours before we arrived back at the hotel. Along the way, he emptied the rest of his stomach (where could he possibly have been keeping more? And how could his output exceed his entire bodily volume?), but he finally fell asleep. At various times, his forehead felt either clammy or hot, so I was starting to worry he had come down with something nasty.

Of course, by the time we got to the hotel, he was perky and feeling hungry, with no sign of fever or other problems. I concluded it had been too much fruit after all, and, other than making him play quietly and drink lots of water, left his stomach to its own devices.

 
Day Three, Sunday, 05 March 2006

It was overcast again, so we decided to trek around the coast of West Maui (also called North Maui) and see the sights. On the way, we stopped and bought Hawaiian outfits. A long time ago, I’d started a rather pointless ritual of always buying the boys new shirts before a major trip. This time, I’d promised them brightly-colored Hawaiian shirts. Unfortunately, no store in Dallas had Hawaiian shirts in stock in small sizes, so the boys had to wait until we reached Hawaii to get their shirts. Even on Maui, we had to go to several different stores to find anything decent in their sizes.

Finally, attired in new clothes and feeling quite sporty, we attacked the twisty mountain roads along the northwest coast of Maui. Zack had no problems with his tummy this time, proving that it wasn’t the car sickness from the hairpin turns on the way to Hana.

On the way down the far side, the boys were playing in the backseat with a towel. At one point, Nicky was holding the towel with his teeth while Zack tried to pull it away from him. Suddenly, Nicky howled in pain. One of his lower teeth had already been a bit loose, but now wobbled and bled freely. It was still connected at the root, and not ready to come out, but I feared Zack had dealt it a mortal blow.

We stopped and built the obligatory stack of rocks at the rock-stacking place, then, because the weather was clearing, we went back to the hotel to swim.

The boys finally got to stick their toes into the Pacific Ocean, and were delighted by the gentle waves, blinding white sand, and warm water temperatures. Beaches are right up near the top in their list of favorite places, and the Maui beach suited them just right.

They were also enthralled with the miniature water park on the hotel grounds. There’s a series of pools with slides leading downhill from pool to pool, an ever-faster set of swirling rides, terminating eventually in an artificial river that leads to a grotto with a hot tub.

Beside the grotto is the world’s only water elevator. The elevator works by flooding or draining a chamber to raise or lower a float on which passengers ride. One can slam down the series of slides, glide through the river, then take the elevator back up to do it all again, all without leaving the pool.

Needless to say, the boys were exhausted by the end of the day, and slept deeply.

 
Day Four, Monday 06, March 2006

The boys woke up early again, but not as early as on other days. I took them for a walk in the predawn, and taught them to chant “Hollay-AH-kala! Hollay-AH-kala! Hollay-AH-kala!” in preparation for our trip up Haleakela, Maui’s big dormant volcano. I was going for a spear-shaking grass-skirt kind of primeval chant with a haunting, evocative dance, but ended up with something more reminiscent of the Sponge Bob theme sung on a trampoline. Ah, well.

We made it up the mountain with no mishaps, and learned about volcanoes, islands, eruptions, lava, and rare plants on the way. The boys enjoyed riding with the top down while at lower elevations, and sticking their hands into the clouds as we wound our way up the mountainside through layer after layer of mist. When we emerged above the clouds with half the mountain yet to go, the boys were stunned into a rare silence.

At every snack and meal, Nicky cried and wiggled his tooth. It was hard for him to remember to chew on the other side, and he really wanted the tooth to come out. Unfortunately, even though he could push it almost horizontal, it was still not ready to come out, so he had to live with the discomfort.

Back at the hotel, we went swimming again, then watched the sunset from our room’s balcony.

 
Day Five, Tuesday, 07 March 2006

Long before the sun came back up, we were on the road again, heading for the airport and a day trip to the Big Island.

We took an eighteen-seat prop for a forty-minute ride from the Island of Maui to the Island of Hawaii. This gave me an opportunity to remind the boys about the different islands and how they were formed. Because the prop didn’t fly very high, we got nice graphical illustrations right outside the window.

We rented a car on the Big Island and headed straight for Volcano National Park. It rained on and off all day, but was clear and bright during most of the time at the volcano, so the boys had an excellent opportunity to explore the lava flows, study the landscape, and get a sense of how powerful and disruptive a big volcano can be.

We didn’t get to see actual lava flowing into the sea, but we saw the huge plume of steam from miles away, and the boys watched videos of hot lava.

One of our favorite road games is I Spy. It’s a good vocabulary builder for Nicky, fosters phoneme awareness in Zack, and keeps us all involved in doing something together during long trips. We do the usual things—trees, road signs, clouds, mountains, and so forth—but occasionally like to throw in zingers. I started it by saying, “I spy with my little eye, something that starts with T.W.B.”

Either it wasn’t much of a zinger or I’m too predictable, because Nicky came up with “Two Wonderful Boys” after only a few guesses. But then he said, “I spy with my little eye, something that starts with L.D.”

He’s predictable too, so I immediately said, “Lovely Daddy?”

“Yes!” he said, then proceeded to pick “L.D.” again and again, perhaps two dozen times in a row. When Zack asked him why he kept saying the same thing, Nicky explained that he loved me so much he couldn’t think of anything else.

If he’d asked me to buy him the volcano at that moment, I’d have tried. For the rest of the trip, no matter how I Spy started, it always ended up with “L.D.” from one boy or the other. I’m a self-sacrificing kind of guy, so I held my disappointment and didn’t complain.

We went to see a black sand beach, then stopped for lunch. Nicky was getting pretty good at chewing on the side away from his sore tooth, and, from the way it was wiggling now, I figured it would pop out within a few days.

A long time ago, as a way of dealing with the incessant demands to stop at a McDonald’s restaurant every time they spotted one, I taught the boys to say “Hello, McDonald’s!” as we approached a store, and then “Good-bye, McDonald’s!” as we drove past. This worked so well that I extended it to other things with obsessive-compulsive potential, and also as a way of giving closure on trips. We routinely say good-bye to hotels, rental cars, restaurants, and other objects; this helps the boys understand that neat things come and go, and that we move on.

We discovered that Zack hadn’t been saying “aloha” at all. Instead, he’d been saying “hello-ha.” Not too big a deal, and subtle enough that I hadn’t even noticed—until it was time to say good-bye to the Big Island, and he said, “Bye-ha.”

Poor Zack couldn’t understand why I almost fell over from laughing so hard. I had to reassure him that I was laughing because he was so adorable and I liked the way he thought. It was, after all, a very natural sort of mistake to make: If we added “ha” to “hello,” we should add it to “good-bye,” too.

After catching my breath, I tried to explain to Zack that it was “aloha,” not “hello-ha,” but he couldn’t hear the aspiration and remained convinced we were all crazy.

The trip back to Maui only took twenty minutes, because the pilot cut across the center of the islands instead of going around to the northeast. We got back to the hotel with enough time for a leisurely supper and then bed. I couldn’t resist saying “Good night-ha” to Zack as I tucked him in. He still didn’t get it, and said, “Night-ha” right back.

A few minutes later, while I was in the bathroom, Nicky’s tooth popped out. One moment he was wiggling it with his tongue, and the next it was on the carpet, no fuss, no pain, no blood.

Nicky was worried that Hawaii didn’t have a Tooth Fairy, and wanted to put the tooth on the nightstand instead of under his pillow. In his mind, she was more likely to spot it there if she happened to be visiting from the mainland.

I reassured him that every state had its own Tooth Fairy, and that under his pillow was the best place. He remained unconvinced, but worried about it enough that he woke up a couple of hours later and moved the tooth from the nightstand to the traditional spot.

 
Day Six, Wednesday, 08 March 2006

Nicky was pleased to discover in the morning that the Hawaiian Tooth Fairy was on the job after all. He was disappointed, though, that he only got half as much as the last time. I had to walk him through the math several times before he was willing to accept that losing two teeth at once last time meant he got double that time, and that losing only one tooth this time meant getting the regular amount. He quite earnestly told me that since he was older now, he should get more.

I told him to take it up with the Tooth Fairy if he got a chance to speak to her, said, “Morning-ha” to Zack, and we were off for another day.

We spent the morning at the Maui Ocean Center, a large aquarium and natural history museum. The boys wandered from exhibit to exhibit, fascinated by the huge variety of underwater life. It was nice to see them both display both the patience and the interest necessary for learning something about what they were seeing. In the past when we’ve gone to such places, they’ve only cared about playing around and rushing through. At the Maui Ocean Center, though, they lingered, asked questions, talked, and examined everything keenly.

I invented a new car game for the ride back—Name Body Parts. The goal is to go around the car, each taking a turn naming a body part that hasn’t been named yet. If you can’t think of one, you’re out. The last person still in wins. This game is aimed mostly at Zack, who still calls his toes “fingers” most of the time, and quite literally doesn’t know his knee from his elbow. It’s all vocabulary, of course, but the boys love it.

Predictably, Zack ran out of names before anyone else, so we all helped him when it was his turn. At one point, though, he was stuck so badly he was ready to quit. Uncle Dan prompted him with, “Zack, every single day you kick or smack Daddy somewhere on his body. You always say ‘Sorry!’ but then you do it again the next day. Where do you always hit Daddy?”

I started laughing before Dan finished the first part of the question, because it’s so true. No matter how careful Zack is, sooner or later an elbow, knee, fist, or foot whacks me in one specific place.

“In the nuts!” Zack said instantly.

He never means to do it, I’m sure. But when he runs at me full tilt and leaps into my arms for a hug, his dangling foot always manages to swing—with an amazing amount of force—directly into my groin. And when he snuggles then decides to stand up, he always walks on me as he gets off the bed.

If I flinch when Zack is feeling affectionate, you can’t blame me. But it’s pretty easy to locate us by ear. Just listen for my howl of pain followed by a tiny voice saying, “Sorry, Daddy.”

That afternoon we swam at the hotel again, and went to Mama’s Fish House for a fancy dinner. The boys (especially Nicky) are starting to grasp a little bit about how different things cost different amounts, and recognize the difference between an expensive restaurant and McDonald’s. They surprised me by saying “Mahalo, Daddy, for the nice dinner!”

It was very late by the time we got back to the hotel, so I put the boys straight to bed.

 
Day Seven, Thursday, 09 March 2006

We got up early to drive Uncle Dan to his snorkeling trip. Poor Dan had really wanted to take the boys snorkeling, and we’d rented gear and practiced in the pool. Nicky did great, but Zack couldn’t keep from taking the mask off to breathe, and couldn’t keep his head down in the water.

Dan gave up on Zack, but held out hopes for Nicky until they moved from practicing in the pool to practicing in the ocean. Nicky wanted to please Dan, and went as far as knee deep in the surf before hightailing it back to shore. The pool was predictable and confined, but the ocean was big, moving, uncontrollable, and filled with things that might nibble him. Nicky flat-out refused to snorkel in the ocean.

I told Dan he should try again in a couple of years. In the meantime, he decided to go snorkeling anyway. He booked a trip to the crescent isle of Molokini just off the Maui coast, and we said, “Bye-ha!” to him that morning. He would be gone for about five hours.

As we were driving away from the dock, not yet three minutes after dropping Dan off, Zack said, “Daddy, I sad.”

“Why, Zackerdoodles?”

“I miss Uncle Dan.”

“That’s sweet, honey. But we’ll see him again right after lunch. You don’t need to be sad.”

I took the boys out to McDonald’s for breakfast, then back to the hotel. The past couple of days had been pretty long and full of activity, so we had a “down” morning, just lounging around the hotel room. The boys took a long bath, then watched cartoons while I dozed. After a while, we went for a walk, then out for ice cream. Finally, it was time to pick up Uncle Dan.

Zack was oddly uptight all the way down the coast, asking if Uncle Dan would be waiting for us, if he had eaten anything, if we should take him food, if his boat was back yet, if I knew where to go, and so on. I understood the source of his anxiety, so I reassured him that Dan was fine, and we’d see him again very soon.

Shortly after we picked Dan up, he volunteered that he was happy because Dan was back.

We stopped along the coast to try our luck at whale spotting. The closest we’d come to seeing any whales this trip was several days before, when I’d seen something vaguely black at the base of a wave. But this time, we were fortunate enough to have no doubts: We saw at least six different whales, including babies, blowing, slapping the water, and swimming briefly on the surface.

The boys borrowed binoculars and got brochures about whales, dolphins, and sharks from some nice ladies at the whale-watching spot, and we spent over an hour standing on the shore scanning the water. As with the aquarium on Wednesday, the boys seemed interested in learning about what they were seeing rather than concerned only with rushing on to the next thing. It was really neat to see Nicky reading the brochures and exclaiming with delight over the pictures and facts he was able to read for himself.

That afternoon and evening, it was overcast but very warm, with marvelous offshore breezes. The wind was finally turning from being kona to normal, and the breeze coming from the north was starting to blow the clouds out of the sky.

The boys swam in the pools, then played on the beach all afternoon. We were tired that night, but it was a delicious kind of fatigue, where one falls asleep easily, quickly, and peacefully. It was the perfect way to spend our last afternoon, evening, and night in Hawaii.

 
Day Eight, Friday, 10 March 2006

Early in the morning, we saw whales cavorting offshore directly in front of the hotel. I saw two full breaches, where the whale comes all the way out of the water only to smash down again in a fountain of spray. A bit later, we saw another pod blowing and jumping farther toward Molokini.

I took the boys swimming while Uncle Dan packed everyone’s belongings. He was discovering that his slight snorkel sunburn was more severe than he’d thought, and decided it would be better if he stayed out of the sun. It’s normally my job to look on indulgently while Dan does the physical activities with the boys, but this time I braved the hot sun myself, and I’m glad I did.

The boys and I had a glorious time running the water slides, swinging on the rope, and sitting in the grotto hot tub. We had so much fun that I lost track of time, and we almost missed our check-out deadline. Fortunately, Uncle Dan got everything out of the hotel room in time, and we didn’t have any problems.

We ate lunch, then killed our remaining few hours by having tropical drinks at the Marriott hotel and then driving down the coast to Makena to look at lava flows and the beaches.

We stopped at a grocery store to get supplies for the plane ride home, said good-bye to the rental car, waded through check-in and security at the airport, and finally settled into our seats on the plane.

The boys fell asleep about a half-hour after takeoff, and slept most of the way home. We had to carry Zack off the plane. Although it was about 5:00 in the morning Dallas time, it was only 1:00 in the morning by their biological clocks, and the poor kids had trouble waking up enough to walk.

 
Day Nine, Saturday, 11 March 2006

The boys went to sleep again shortly after we arrived home, and slept until noon. I’m fairly sure this is the longest period of quiet I’ve experienced in the last year and a half.

When they finally woke up, they got into the home routine quickly and easily (save for not wanting to go to sleep four hours before their bodies said it was bedtime), and we passed a pleasant day unpacking, watching videos, going through vacation photos, and talking about the trip.

Although I’m exhausted and ready to swear “Never again!” as usual after a trip, I’m glad we went. At dinner tonight, we talked about our favorite parts of the trip, and I was amazed and pleased at how much the boys had retained.

The boys want to wear their Hawaiian clothes to school on Monday, and take some of their souvenirs to show their friends. I think that’s a fine idea.

And so our life together continues, with each day richer and more splendid than the ones before. A special trip like this is just part of the bedrock of experiences we share, and far from the most important. I’m glad we’re fortunate enough to be able to do these things together, but nowhere near as glad as I am that we have each other in the first place.

And now it’s time for me to stop writing and go to bed myself. Tomorrow will be another day, full of familiar things and new things, all of them wonderful.

Hello-ha and bye-ha, as always.