As I'm running, I notice a lot of tents on on of the parks that is adjacent to the beach. I guess people like setting up their tents, and having a low key hangout day in the park with their tents. I can dig it. I get back from the run, and Maggie's finishing up work. We head over to Pearl Harbor to grab tickets for the Arizona. "Go early", the concierge told us. So we did.
Even though we got there fairly early, tickets had been sold out until the 1pm tour. No need to sit around for 4+ hours, let's look at some of the monuments and then check out downtown Honolulu.
What can I say. It's another city. It's got big buildings, banks, Starbucks, Subways (the sandwich shop, not the mode of transportation). They have their own homeless, people and McDonald'ses. It's a city.
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We check out Hawaii Pacific University, which is right in downtown, and stop into a little breakfast shop for a bite to eat. I ordered the "Plantation Scramble", which is eggs with a bunch of interesting ingredients. Some kind of ham, fish of some sort, and veggies.
Not too bad. City-dwelling hawaiians eat the same stuff we do. They even listen to Journey on the radio as they eat ("just a small town girl...").
And they have their own crazy bag ladies...
We wander around a little more, then decide to see what else is around. University of Hawaii was close, so we checked it out. Interestingly, not the most impressive campus. Then again, when you're surrounded by beautiful shores and mountains, who really gives a shit about the campus?
We made it up to one of the biggest cemeteries on the island (if not the biggest). I tell you what. They do honor the dead. The view was really great.
If you're going to rest in peace, might as well have a nice view to go with it. Well done, Hawaii.
So we killed enough time. Let's head back to Pearl Harbor. Strolled around, reading the sobering tales of all of the ships and submarines that were lost in battle.
Odd, each story was very similar (decorated soldiers, fighting bravely, going down with the ship), but each story had it's own life to it. You could feel the presence of each ship when reading about them. Did I say sobering? Yea. Then time for the tour. A quick video talking about the incidents, and then off to the Memorial. Oh wait, did I mention that there were survivors from Pearl Harbor sitting in the waiting/museum area? Yea, sobering.
We hopped on the boat, and they took us over to the memorial (which, by the way, sits on top of the sunken hull of the USS Arizona...oil still leaks from the ship below). Funny, one of the things I remember is how they docked the boat. As we were riding, they pulled up to the dock, and then the captain kicked it in reverse to spin the ass of the boat all the way around to dock facing the opposite direction. And all with machine-like precision. Impressive. We hopped off, and checked out the memorial. Some of the pieces of the ship stick above water. And of course, they have the names of all the men that died with the ship on the far wall of the memorial. Yea, sobering.
And there's still oil leaking from the ship below...
We came back (another stuntman-like docking), and checked out the museum section, which had stories, artifacts, notes to parents, all sorts of stuff. Turns out the bugle player that day saw the planes flying in and told his commanding officer "Those are Jap planes". His commanding officers response? "You're paid to blow that bugle, not to think." Then there was Lt. Kermit Tyler (Kermit? really? come on now), who was the guy who dismissed the radar blip of the Japanese planes. To be fair, a fleet of planes were due in from San Francisco within 20 minutes, and he figured that's what the blip was from. I'm not gonna judge the guy. Shit would've still gone down. It would've been ugly no matter what. (and they say that the movie Pearl Harbor totally made the guy seem like an idiot...poor guy).
Let's get some sun. It's been 3 days, and we still haven't really sat on the beach. We head down to the beach, and lay out. I get antsy, so I walk and take some picture, and walk out along a jetty, made of lava rocks (is there an official name for them? or is lava rocks okay?).
Met a couple surfers who came from San Diego to surf Waikiki. They walk to the end of the jetty, throw their boards in the water, hop in, and paddle to a surf break far off shore to do some surfing. Good stuff.
I get back to our spot on the beach, and notice that a local catamaran team is practicing. The drill for today? Flip the catamaran, then race to flip it back over, bail the water out, and then paddle around some obstacles to a finish line. Even catamaran practices suck sometimes.
Also on the beach was an old couple (50s?) decked out in hawaiian garb (pattern-flower everything), getting their pictures taken with the beach in the background. The woman was holding a flower, and they both had leis on. But the dudes was this massive lei, mostly green with few flowers. It was huge! Must've been compensating for something.
Well, enough moving around for today. bed time.
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