Part III of my Hawaii trip. You can read Part I and Part II if you want. But you aren’t missing much context by starting at the midpoint.
Pools: We hung around the resort a lot more on Day Three. In-laws golfed in the morning, giving wife, baby, and me a chance to go out to breakfast. Wife and I enjoy eating out for breakfast. In-laws are mostly opposed to it. They think there isn’t much you can get out that you can’t make yourself. They’ve clearly never seen me try to poach an egg.
There are three pools at our timeshare/resort/codominium complex. I think I’ve referred to it by all three of those names thus far, and I don’t see myself settling on just one going forward. So assume I’m talking about the same place.
Because we have a three-year old, we’ve come to name the pools through an intricate nomenclature system. There’s the slide pool. It has a water slide. Did I mention that there isn’t a lot of deep context here? There’s the deep pool, because it’s the only one in the entire complex that is deeper than 4 1/2 feet. Ergo it is the one that requires child to be in floaties, cause if I can’t touch, I can’t grab her when her very-novice swimming skills fail her. Child calls the deep pool “the square pool,” because she just doesn’t have the wisdom and nuance to know “deep.”
Then there’s the warm pool, and holy crap, I’m being generous. How often, when it’s 80 degrees with 80 percent humidity, do you get OUT of the pool to cool off? It’s the pool closest to our condo, so on the first day, we tested it out for a bit before hitting the store. That day, the weather was a bit rainy and windy, so the fact that the pool was lukewarm was appreciated. The following day, the outside temperature was twenty degrees warmer and I figured the pool would be the same temperature it had been before, meaning ten degrees cooler than the outside.
Nope. Even the blue-hairs said the pool was “really warm.” My wife said it was “like a bathtub,” but that is a disservice to bathing. If bathtubs felt like that, I would have medieval body odor. This was more like a… I want to say sauna, but it’s a little more… I got it! A broth!
Maybe we’ll head back to the deep pool tomorrow. Put the wings on the toddler and throw four months of swimming lessons out the window.
Golf: It’s a resort in Hawaii, so obviously there’s a golf course. Two, in fact. But what I’m more impressed with is the golf course right in our back yard.
Not a full golf course, of course. Not even a driving range. But a putt-putt golf course. Not putt-putt as in miniature golf. There are no windmills or “Hole-in-One” tunnels. But putt-putt as in a place where you can putt. I think the locals call it a… um… green?
Actually, the locals here would probably call a putting green a ha’la’a’ua’ma’lai or something similarly unpronounceable, but more on that later.
What we have in our backyard are three legitimate putting greens.
Kinda cool. Yesterday, two random dudes were playing a skins match against each other. They each played two balls at a time. They tied on the first hole, but the second one has a pretty wicked slope on the right-hand side. One of the guys didn’t read it properly until his second ball and three-putted his first. After that hole, they called out the score, saying how many holes and strokes he was behind.
But the score they called out didn’t match the two holes I had just witnessed, meaning it was an ongoing competition. I assumed that meant there were other holes throughout the complex. Maybe there were a total of eighteen holes spread out between all of the backyards. I walked around a few other people’s backyards, but couldn’t find anything.On the map of the complex, there is a symbol of a golfer, denoting putting greens, behind our unit. As far as I can tell, that symbol isn’t anywhere else on the map.
Seems odd to put three putting greens tucked into a few backyards, and nowhere else in the entire complex. I know they need room for three pools, plus barbecues and tennis courts and a fitness center that looks like it was last used in the Carter Administration, but I think there’s room for at least one other putting green.
Which brings me back to the competition between these two golfers. If the competition wasn’t snaking through the compound, it must be an ongoing competition wherein they play the same three holes over and over, every day. And if that’s the case, how did dude not know about the wicked slope on the right-hand side? Shit, my toddler figured that out after just watching them once.
March Madness: Quick update: as predicted, I got my ass handed to me on Day Two. No, I didn’t bet on Virginia, but I did go from 6-0 on Thursday to 1-4 on Friday. Unfortunately, the one I got right was part of a parlay, so really it was an 0-fer day.
The good news was that I adjusted my betting based on what I knew was coming. I dropped each of my parlays down to $5. No way I would have had the fortitude to do that if I was in Reno. I would’ve been chasing the dragon all day long. If I double my bet each time, I only have to hit once to break even…
All-in-all, I sent my friend to Reno with $35, and he will be returning with $72. Not bad.
Allegedly.
Lunch. What’s the opposite of that whole “Fool me once” aphorism? When I am right the first time, then wrongly assume I’ll be right in the future?
On Day One, we had a wonderful lunch at the Kona Brewing Company. Day Two was a lackluster golf course clubhouse, to go. On Day Three, after the in-laws came off the golf course, we needed to grab lunch. I figured, for the second day in a row, that we would go to the food court we had grabbed dinner at on Day Zero (the night we arrived). For the second day in a row, I was overruled. Turns out I’m the only one that really wants to try that burrito place.
Instead, we all decided to go to a place called an Ale House on the map of the complex. Kona Brewery was so good, the Ale House must be solid, right?
Yeah, not so much.
This place was a glorified bar. I mean, props to them for having a kids menu complete with crayons. But to call it a “grill and bar,” one has to put air-quotes around the first two words.
Father-in-law thinks this used to be the golf clubhouse, but as the resort expanded, they moved the first hole to a more centralized location. Of course, nobody was thrilled with the current golf clubhouse the day before. Could a long-abandoned golf clubhouse-turned-dive-bar break the mold?
Should’ve been clued in by the fact that it was noon and we were the only patrons. Second strike was a full page of the menu taken up with many wonderful-sounding pizzas, marked with the caveat “only available after 2 PM.”
I asked if this was accurate, and the server said that, yes, their pizza guy doesn’t come in until two o’clock. Sound business decision, if you ask me. And I assume this newfangled “pizza” creation is something that only one person on the whole flippin’ island can figure out how to make.
I got the buffalo chicken sandwich, which listed as having buttermilk ranch and bleu cheese dressing. I assumed, as at most wing establishments, I’d get to choose between the two. Nope. They don’t have bona fide bleu cheese dressing, so the sprinkle bleu cheese crumbles on top of a ranch dressing that quite clearly just came out of a pouch.
Wife settled for tacos. She was equally unimpressed.
But hey, at least they were offering $5 Smithwicks & Guiness for St. Patrick’s Day. Wait, is $5 a good price for Smithwicks and Guinness?
Luau: For our evening meal and entertainment, we went to the luau we had been roped into by the timeshare concierge.
The last time I was in Hawaii, I was in fourth grade and Ronald Reagan was still president. So the amount of time that has passed, and the fact that nine-year-old me might not be the most accurate recorder of events, means my recollection of what happens at a luau might not be all that accurate. I mean, can you imagine, but I didn’t even THINK about blogging my experience back in 1984!
I seem to remember we had to drive or take a shuttle way out to a remote field. People came from hotels all over the region. We did the limbo. They lined everyone up for a kissing line (yeah, “come get groped” wouldn’t fly in 2018). I remember it being a very immersive experience.
This time, it was in a courtyard at the hotel attached to the timeshare complex. Rows and rows of tables were set up for food. There was no room for a limbo. It was clear early on that we were going to be sitting and watching, not participating in, a show.
But there were free mai tais! I don’t remember those when I was nine.
The food was excellent, though. I ate way too much. I assumed there’d just be pork at the end of the salad buffet, so I filled up on salad. Big mistake. There were four different meats plus rice and mashed potatoes and I had no room on my plate. Or my stomach, but that wouldn’t become apparent for another thirty minutes. Good thing they weren’t expecting me to do the limbo or anything, cause all my fat ass could do after that meal was sit and watch the dude with the six-pack abs doing his dance.
And maybe have another free mai tai.
Am I the only one who feels like kalua pork should have a Kahlua flavor?
The show after dinner was great, though. All of the kids were invited up to the front. I tried really hard to not be a helicopter parent, and my daughter tried really hard to not be an only child. I couldn’t actually see her curly hair at the end of our table, but I watched the spot in between to make sure she wasn’t wandering off in a different direction. When they were told to go back to their parents, everyone was relieved to find she hadn’t been abducted by the knife-wielding maniac that is always lingering around helicopter parents and only childs.
The show had the standard polynesian dances and costume changes. I particularly liked when they dressed up in jeans and checkered cowboy shirts to commemorate the 1908 national rodeo championship, which was won by Hawaiians. Very odd to see people looking like Chris Penn in “Footloose” performing typical Hawaiian dance moves.
The scantily-clad ladies with grass skirts and coconut bras were impressive, too, but let me go full homo by returning my attention to six-pack dude. I mean, there were other guys, too, but a few of them had somewhat pudgy dad bods. Polynesians aren’t known for the svelte look.
Three of the guys, with Sir Six Pack taking front and center, finished the show with a fire dance. Holy shit. They started with torches lit at one end, then used their mouth to transfer the fire to the other end of the stick. I hope it was a trick, a button hidden somewhere on the torch, but there definitely seemed to be fire in their mouths when it was done. Brought to you by Zantac.
When the fire batons were lit, they started spinning them in circles, twirling them in the air, throwing them back and forth to each other. The normal stuff you’d see with a baton gymnast, except these particular batons were flaming on both ends. Sir Six Pack ended the show by lighting two batons on fire and twirling and tossing them both. At times, it looked like he was carrying a fire bicycle across his body, a fire wheel hanging from each shoulder. Then he moved the wheels to front and back. Child was sitting on my lap by this point, and I almost had to push her out of the way to get a better view for her safety.
When it was finished, even I was sweating. Although that could’ve been the eighty percent humidity.
Or the three free mai tais.
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