MONDAY

Wasn'tgoing to post about yesterday, but thought I'd just get this down so I could remember it. If you're a senior, Hawaii has the best transit deal in the world. First of all, you can ride the bus anywhere (and the bus goes everywhere) for a dollar. But it gets even better than that. If you go to the bus transit center, you can get an ID card that's good for four years for $10. Then you can add $5 for a monthly pass, which means you can get on the bus as much as you want -- ride two blocks, get on and off, etc., etc. for the whole month. Unfortunately, the month is, say, January, not 30 days from the time you bought the sticker. It's still a really good deal, because the bus goes all the way around the island. We knew we were supposed to go to Middle Street Kahili transit center, and take the B express, but while we were waiting, the #2 came along, and it also goes to Middle Street Kahili transit center, so we got on. Not the smartest thing we did all day. We took the scenic tour and the not-so-scenic tour of Honolulu. At one point about 30 people got on the bus, all of them asians under five feet tall and all of them toothless. I wondered if we were near a bargain dentist. We also went past some low-income housing that looked a lot like the dorms I stayed in when I went to UH one summer. The thing about Hawaii is, that it's a tropical climate and things like public housing that don't get a lot of outside maintenance start to look pretty bad pretty fast. They may not be all that bad inside. At one point I thought we were going to be somewhere near the university, but didn't ever seem like we were. Finally we got to the transit station, where a dozen altecockers like us were lining up and asking each other what forms they were to fill out to get the transit passes, and all generously sharing whatever misinformation they had -- me most of all, because of course, I know everything. That's why I came out on the #2 local and spent an hour getting there. We took the B back home and took a half hour. But now we can ride the bus til our butts fall off, and never have to rummage for exact change. The only other thing we did was go to the beach, aaaaaawwwwwwwwwww, what a crappy day, right? Oh yes, I always have to have a quest on a trip, so this time, it's to sample all the specifically Hawaiian frozen specialties that I read about in a magazine. The first one was a place called Hu-la-la, which is conveniently located in the International Marketplace near our hotel. It's supposed to have the famous Roselani ice cream from Maui. I had a cone of it last night, and I had the pineapple coconut (this is the person whose idea of branching out in ice cream flavors is to have chocolate with nuts instead of straight chocolate) and it was really, really good. Intense flavor, very creamy. We also had Opakapaka (I think) -- a nice white fish with a macadamia nut crust and mango salsa for dinner. It was delicious, and John and I shared one plate of it which was plenty of food. John's cold is in the miserable day right now. It's warm, about 10 a.m., and he's sitting in the sun on the balcony with his fleece jacket and shorts on. We're currently searching for where a good food truck is so we can use our "free" bus passes to go have lunch. Sorry I have no pictures.