Back to the Maui reminiscing. Friday morning once again we were up bright and early to get to Malaea Harbor by 7 am to catch the Four Winds II out to Molokini for a morning of beer and snorkeling. The weather was perfect, even a potentially bad omen when my hat blew off in the parking lot and was immediately run over didn't amount to anything. It took a good hour for the boat to make it out there, bouncing along, and by the time we got there I was ready to get in the water if only to alleviate a certain amount of wooziness. Bob had been up all night working, somehow having missed the idea of a vacation as a time when you don't work, but he did okay. He, Scott and I were the only ones snorkeling. Shelley didn't come for some reason, and Alexa was all suited up and ready to try it out until she got into the water. Instead they had a little raft you could float around on with a see through bottom, sort of a miniature glass-bottom boat, so she let Bob tow her around on that for ages and got a pretty good look at the fish that way. The fish were so used to having all these people around that they were all over the place. Even saw a small shark floating around the bottom, which surprised me for a second, but I looked around and no one else seemed worried, so I figured it must be ok. Jill stayed on the boat with Ashley, Mom and Shirley. You pay the same amount whether you snorkel or not, so for them it was just a rather expensive boat ride, and even hopped up on dramamine Mom couldn't dare move from her seat facing the shoreline the whole time we were anchored at Molokini, and of course couldn't eat anything either. She says in retrospect that's the one thing she wished she hadn't done. There was supposedly a glass bottom in the boat, but it wasn't very big, and if you're too sick to look down, it doesn't do much good anyway. Bob said he saw several people on the lower deck in worse shape then she was, though.



There were probably 12 to 15 boats of all sizes anchored on the near side of Molokini, ours was one of the larger ones, with a few hundred snorkelers and probably a decent amount of scuba divers, too, so yes it's a little on the crowded side, but there's enough reef to go around, and you can't spend hours just looking into the water, so it was fine. They had all the equipment you'd ever need (a number of people could barely swim but wanted to do it anyway), I made use of a floatation belt so I could just bob along the surface without having to worry about drowning, unlike at Black Rock two days before. Spent about 45 minutes in the water, came back and dried off for a while, then went back out for another half hour or so. In the meantime they were cooking up all manner of burgers and hot dogs, with cheap American beer to wash it down with. I was leery of my delicate landlubber stomach, but after the second trip into the water I figured there wasn't that much time left on the boat, so how bad could it get, and went ahead and had some of each. The trip back was pretty bouncy in parts (saw five sea turtles near the boat, too), but inexplicably the stomach was fine. We were back into port by noon or so.



We drove Scott down to the Nona Lani cottages where he and Shelley were staying so we could check out their place, more of a cabin, with no cable and no phone, right on the road overlooking the ocean. We met up with the Davises, and Mom and Jill gave the near-newlyweds some little trinkets as gifts. Seems like there must've been a couple of hours to kill in there somewhere, but I can't remember exactly what we did, until we had early dinner reservations (sort of a rehearsal dinner, sans rehearsal) at a restaurant just down the road. Once again we dining on the beach, the waiter apologized for the "hideous sunset" (in order for a sunset to be hideous I would think the sun would have to go nova or something), we consumed a huge meal with five bottles of wine, plus dessert, taking about three hours total. The girls went from cranky to hungry to droopy as the evening progressed, by the end we were all stuffed and glad to stand up for awhile. We got back to our hotel and crashed early in anticipation of the big day on Saturday.



The wedding was at 8:30 am, down past Kihei in Wailea at a little beach that was isolated enough from the main part of the beach that it was a popular "clothing optional" spot. I wore Dad's Hawaiian shirt, since I figured if he couldn't be there at least his shirt could. We were the first to arrive, and the Lemke's showed up shortly thereafter. You had to hike over some rocks and walk down the beach to get the designated spot, which is used quite often for weddings, apparently. The minister, photographer and video guy all showed up on time, even the bride and groom were there with time to spare. The ceremony was a little hard to hear, since the crashing waves tended to drown out the soft-spoken minister, Scott kept having to mop his forehead as the sun beat down on them, Ashley and Alexa played in the sand during the whole thing, and it was all over in a matter of minutes. We hung around for quite a while afterwards taking pictures and generally pissing off the people waiting to use that part of the beach. Saw one topless woman in the water from a distance, but that was about it. We all hiked back to the cars and drove back to Scott & Shelley's place, where we cracked open some wine and champagne and toasted the new couple. The Lemke's, Mom and Shirley and I went out for a late lunch at a Thai place down the road, then made the trek back to Kaanapali.



We had an hour or two of downtime before leaving for the Luau, which was just down the road in Lahaina. The Old Lahaina Luau served as the wedding reception, not just for us but for quite a few people. The buffet was a pretty good spread, once again we could see the sunset, the Mai Tai's just kept on coming. Mom finally got to try a Chi Chi, which she remembered Dad ordering in Hawaii, but wasn't that impressed with it. There was some entertainment before dinner, and the big show started just after dinner, featuring different styles of Hawaiin dance through the ages, but no juggling torches or anything. Actually ate less there than I did the night before, but it was a good chance to sample poi, kalua pork, and the ahi sushi, among a number of other things.



Sunday we were up early again so Mom and I could take a guided tour of the Road to Hana. The Lemkes met up with Scott and Shelley and went to the Aquarium. Shirley just hung out by the pool. We rode in the front of the bus (really just a van for 15 or so) so Mom didn't have any motion problems. The driver was a native 50-ish guy named Wes who started off claiming it was his first day on the job, but soon proved to have done this trip a million times and knew tons of stuff. Scott had taken the Davises through the whole trip in the jeep before we'd arrived, and he was underwhelmed by the whole thing, the first person I'd heard say that. But as the driver you wouldn't get to do much sightseeing while in the car, and without the guided tour, or at least the audio tour, then you'd be hardpressed to find half of the interesting things along the way. By the time you get past Hana and there's a long bumpy stretch through the desert, you'd just as soon someone else were driving and take a nap anyway, so the guided tour worked out the best for us I think. This way if you happen to drive by some people by the side of the road with a truck and a ladder up in a tree, you could ask "what are those people doing?", and there was Wes would respond "picking avacados". He told us more than you'd ever want to know about Hawaiian culture, history, safety issues, surfing, native plants and animals, I felt like I should be taking notes. The rest of the group consisted of one honeymoon-type couple and a bunch of old folks, but everyone was very satisfied with the tour by the time it was over, even if a couple weren't sure about his driving style at the beginning. It was an all day trip, though, we weren't back at the hotel until close to 6 pm. Although we didn't want to go too far afield for dinner, we went back to Whaler's Village, where everything was still open til 11 even though it was Sunday, and had dinner at a different place with the whole Kaanapali crowd, as by this time the newlyweds were off to Kawai for the last few days for a real honeymoon (i.e. one with no relatives).



Monday was my day off, since Mom and Shirley were out the door at 4:15 am to be whisked to the airport to spend the day in Oahu as part of another guided tour. Went for a run with Bob on the early side, then met up with them for breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Had a big breakfast so I could just skip lunch, and walked down the road and across the street to some different shops and finished up my souvenir shopping. Came back to the room and hung out for a while, did some laundry, read my book, after happy hour started I went down to the pool and read some more with Mai Tai in hand. The Lemke's did some touring of their own, found a nature museum in the area of the airport, and went a little ways down the road to Hana themselves. They made it back to the hotel by dinner time, so we went back to the hotel restaurant again for dinner. Mom and Shirley didn't get back until close to 9 pm, and had a great time, but needless to say were a little droopy.



Tuesday it was time to go home, and although my flight wasn't until almost 1pm were at the airport by 11am, since there wasn't time to do much of anything else at the hotel before checkout. We scouted out the location of a couple of malls in Wailuku that were near the airport, since Mom and Shirley had a couple more hours to kill after dropping me off. Since I arrived early at the airport, it only took about five minutes to check the bag. I ended up sitting at the gate in the plane for two hours while they tried to fix some warning light that wouldn't go out. By the time it was all set, my connection in LA was doomed, but they said they'd figure it out, and they did, routing me through Chicago with very little time to spare and arriving in Providence only a half hour or so later than I was supposed to be originally. Miraculously, even my bag made the connection, so I was home by 12pm, fully 19 hours after leaving the hotel, and with half a day to recover before rejoining the real world again.