Hawaii Part 2: Wherein we battle sand, bugs, ski slopes, and the Phoenix airport.

This is the view from our hosts' abode. I mean, I guess it's ok. From my own home you can see a bar, a mill that emits a putrid dog-food smell as it is currently being torn down, and the orange abomination that is our neighbor's house. There is also a lovely view into our back yard where we have a classy chicken-wire fence around our mostly bare/dead garden.


Naturally, with the splendors of tropical heaven all around us, we spent some time indoors playing with the Pattersons' new Wii Fit. I can happily report that my Wii Fit age is 31, only two years older than I actually am. I can also report that anything having to do with coordination is bound to be a fiasco, while I am awesome at anything having to do with luck or with standing mostly still. So...nothing has changed since grade-school. For example, trying to head-butt soccer balls was IMPOSSIBLE, but I ruled the ski jump:

None of the following people are any of us. The only surfer in the group had a broken leg. I'd like to say that I would try surfing, but I'm not that good of a swimmer, plus I had enough trouble just staying upright in the breaking waves on shore. Followed by a whole lot of trouble with sand in places sand should not be.


The sand in Minnesota is totally different - tiny little balls that roll right off the skin. In Hawaii the sand is made of bits of shell that suction themselves to you. Everywhere. So that's one drawback to paradise. The other is that there are cockroaches and poisonous centipedes. But Raid smells surprisingly good.

And this is a mountain by some name that rests in an area I don't know that was once described by a very famous author whose name I forget as "the best view in the world." I don't go on vacation to learn.


PS - Did you know that the Delta gates at the Phoenix airport are not in the main terminal? We didn't either, until we had toured the whole thing in our hour-long layover before being told to exit the airport, take a bus to another area, and re-enter through security. We were those people running through the airport with unwieldy rolling luggage, swearing and sweating profusely because we layered for the frigid airplanes but it was 90 degrees in Arizona. I was the last person to board after running to the gate in my socks. I WIN, PHX!