Hawaii 4-0

This past Thanksgiving week, Diane and I bugged out of rainy Seattle and barreled over to Hawaii to celebrate my 40^th birthday. My own “Hawaii 4-0” if you will. For safe measure, a pack of our great friends came along to share the cheer.

For those of you who’ve never been to Hawaii, well, you’re missing out. Lets see…tropical island beach paradise, slowed down relaxing culture, great local and Asian food, easy to get around, surfing, snorkeling, laying the beach, topical breeze. What’s there not to love? Well, maybe a six hour flight from Seattle, but that’s worth it once you’re there.

At least it did for us, and the destination of Maui seem a fitting place for us to ring in the fourth decade of my time on the planet – a place to relax, enjoy, run around and play like a kid while still taking in the finer points of the islands’ culture.

With seven full days and parts of two more at our disposal, I think we made the most of our time. For those interested, I’m going to lay out a few highlights of our trip over several posts going over a variety of things including our eating, outdoor activities and the big b-day celebration.

Before diving in, I’ll simply say thanks to my wife, Diane, for planning such a wonderful trip and celebration, and a thanks to all our friends who came along for the ride. We really are so glad you were there.

OK, to start things off, I’ll go with this…

Part I – "It’s Out of My Hands"

After a long flight over from Seattle, Diane and I were giddy to be on the island of Maui. Even the first few moments out in the warm sun and breeze made us feel better. You knew this was going to be a good week.

After picking up our car, donning our sunglasses and relaxing even more, we struck out immediately for Kaanapali – the area of the island where our condo we were staying in is. On our way, we stopped to have lunch at the “feet in the sand” restaurant on the shore called Hulas. Some icy Longboard lagers, fish tacos and sandwiches later we were really feeling the Aloha. But, the condo awaited and there also was the little matter (at least to me) of getting checked in and in front of at TV to catch the big Oregon Duck football game vs. Arizona. Win and Duckies likely go to the Rose Bowl. Lose and not likely. Big game.

So on our way we went. Pulling in to the lot at the Papakea Resort, all was good. Until we tried to check in. (Below: view from our balcony at the Papakea Resort.)

To our horror, we learned that the room we had booked directly from the condo unit owner had been given out to someone else. Further, there were apparently no rooms they would or could move us to. To make matters worse, we didn’t have any verification info in our possession since we had made these arrangements with the condo owner herself.

And the condo staff could not have been less helpful. The big comeback from the guy behind the desk was, “I can’t do anything, it’s out of my hands.” My stress level went up pretty high as I feared we be stuck without a room – crashing on some of our friends’ hotel room floors – AND given that the ball game was starting. What were we going to do? Both Diane and I were pretty distressed. Only she didn’t show it and I did. While I was stressing out and starting to call hotels to see about availability, Diane calmly remembered three phone numbers for our condo owner friend out of thin air and called her in a desperate attempt to try and circumvent this tragedy.

To make a long story short…the condo management canceled our reservation because they mistakenly believed that the OTHER reservation in our name (the one we made for family and friends coming) was ours. As in, how could they possibly have two reservations? And, the guy at the desk was either unwilling or unable to make any decisions to resolve the problem…and he was the only one there. Our friend did eventually call and things were straightened out after some heated discussion and the intervention of the condo manager at long last.

I caught the second half of the football game at the Maui Brewing Company Pub (Ducks won in double overtime) and we spent our first night of the trip in a different unit than we’d arranged for. Drama over, we met up with our good friends Matt and Kristine (who had already been on Maui for a week!) for a drink and then we headed out for dinner…but more on our eating exploits in a future post.

The next day we moved into the unit we were supposed to be staying. I can only imagine the condo people had to give the other people who mistakenly were in our unit another to stay in.

On to the rest of our vacation!