Hawaii 2.0

This is a continuation of my previous post about our recent trip to Hawaii. Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this thing. I was hoping that I would maintain this blog better than I have my journals, but so far I have had no such luck.

That Saturday evening (now day+4 from the date of arrival--the same day as Dr. Kawasaki and Iron Man), we had our annual Mayo faculty and alumni dinner. The Department of Pediatrics holds one each year at the PAS Meeting and invites all current and former faculty and trainees who are attending the meeting. This was the first one I've ever been to, but have been told, and my own experience corroborated, that Mayo does it up well. We went to a restaurant called Ciao Mein in the Waikiki Hyatt. It was Italian-Chinese fusion cuisine consisting of about 6 different entrees and a smattering of side dishes. A lot of it was quite good. Unfortunately the only dessert they offered was tiramisu. For some reason, I keep hoping that the brown powder on top is cocoa, but it always turns out to be coffee. So instead Nikole and I grabbed ice cream on the way back to the hotel.

This is a picture of the current residents with their significant others who made it to the dinner:The couple in the front, Christine and Jeremy got engaged during the trip. Jeremy flew in from Canada to surprise Christine, who was also involved with our workshops. The irony of the whole thing is that not two weeks earlier Christine was telling Jay Homme and me how marriage was not that important to her since she new that she and Jeremy would be together forever. We gave her a nice ribbing about that when the news broke.

The next day, being Sunday, Nikole and I planned to attend the local ward with Mike and Molly Johnson. Mike is a 1st year pediatric resident at Mayo who was presenting a project on obesity and thyroid disease in children (if I remember correctly). The ward website stated that church started at 9 am, but when we arrived, we found out that it was Stake Conference that week, which didn't start until 11 am. Mike had a presentation at that time, so we weren't able to make it back. Instead we spend a little time on the church building grounds, which were beautiful. The building itself was built open-air, in the sense that the classrooms and chapel all opened directly to the outside. There were some beautiful blossoming trees as well on the grounds. My favorite, though is this enormous "Swiss Family Robinson" tree. I want one in my own yard, but I question how well it would do in the Minnesota winter.

As we had an hour or so to kill, Mike, Molly, Nikole and I took off in the Johnsons' rental Ford Mustang GS convertible for a quick tour of the surrounding area. The word "beautiful" gets a bit redundant, but it accurately describes the landscape of Oahu. I took several pictures along the way. In particular I enjoyed the view as we went farther inland, toward the mountains.

Monday was spent primarily at the conference as we had the second of our public speaking workshops. A group of us walked down the beach to a restaurant for dinner. I snapped this nice sunset as the battery to my camera was running low:

Tuesday was our last full day in Hawaii and was the one day that we had more or less planned out well ahead of time. In the morning we left for the north shore to the Polynesian Cultural Center via the Dole Plantation. Even though I had heard about the pineapple maze, I was expecting little more than a souvenir shop. The reality was that it was quite a nice joint. Sadly, we didn't schedule a great deal of time there, so we rushed a little bit. Still we were able to get some nice pictures of the many different types of pineapple. We also grabbed a tasty bowl of Dole pineapple soft-serve, which at about $4, seemed like a steal.

Our drive along the north shore to the PCC was brilliant. The north shore is nowhere near as busy and populated as Waikiki, so the drive itself was quite relaxing. The highway we took followed right along the shoreline, providing a beautiful (there I go again) view en route to our destination. The view did prove to be a bit distracting for the driver, so Nikole found herself reminding me to keep my eyes (mostly) on the road. We did pull over at one point to take some pictures by the rocky shore. I took this one of a very compliant crab. At least that's what I thought until I nudged it with a stick. Turns out is was just an empty exoskeleton. The crab, they say, was only a shell of his former self.

The Polynesian Cultural Center, located in Laie was great experience. We spent the afternoon/evening with a tour guide and a group of about 8 people visiting the various "islands" at the center--Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and Aotearoa (New Zealand). The purpose of the islands is to give visitors an interactive look at the culture of the indigenous populations of the different lands. Given the size of the different lands, we were only able to visit four of the six islands, all of them except Fiji and Samoa. While all of them were great, I particularly enjoyed Hawaii and Tonga.

Hawaii featured Cousin Benny who explained the history of and demonstrated the various musical instruments heard in Hawaiian music. He also shared the story of his daughter, Natasha, who will be representing the US in the Summer Olympics as the first Hawaiian member of the US women's soccer team. Uncle Benny claimed that it was his liberal use of the pu'ili as a disciplinary tool that taught her how to run fast.

In Tonga, we had the opportunity to practice spear throwing, which looks much easier that it truly is. The highlight, however was the percussion exhibition, where three members of the audience were chosen to come up and wail on drums. Three guys from (one each from Poland, Japan and Philadelphia, I think) were chosen to follow the leader, pounding out rhythms while shouting purportedly authentic Tongan chants. While the poor volunteers were game, the beats and song became more and more complex, resulting in a pretty funny outcome. Fortunately I was able to catch most of it on video.

Outside of our visit to the individual islands, we had the chance to watch "Rainbows of Paradise" a canoe pageant featuring performers representing each of the islands. We also took in the Ali'i Luau which was nice for the entertainment, but the food was surprisingly bland. I ran off to catch the last IMAX showing of The Coral Reef Adventure, while Nikole finished eating and went shopping.

After the movie, Nikole and I scurried over to the Laie Hawai'i Temple, which was just as amazing in real life as it is in all the pictures I've seen. In fact, it's not difficult to take a nice picture of the temple, as is proven by the photos below that I took with my own point and shoot.

We finished the day with Horizons, the PCC's nightly pageant. It was spectacular. The music, dancing and pyrotechnics were all well done. And the dessert during intermission was tasty and refreshing! After the show Nikole took my picture with one of the performers: Wednesday morning we left early in the morning for Hanauma Bay to do some snorkeling. Hanauma Bay is a state preserve about 30 minutes from Waikiki with an incredible reef that through which visitors can snorkel. This was something I had read about ahead of time and thought it would be worthwhile. But as we realized the limitations of our time in Hawaii, we put it on the back burner. Boy am I glad that we ultimately decided to do it! Of everything we did, I think it far and away had the highest fun-to-cost ratio. We got there at 7:30, paid a buck for parking and about $12 each for snorkel equipment and fins. It was a little chilly at the start of the day, but you get used to the water and the weather warmed up fairly quickly. It was incredibly relaxing (once you get used to breathing through a tube under water) just floating around the reef looking at the varied marine life. We even saw a couple sea turtles, one coming within arms reach of me. I didn't touch it though, as the rule of Hanauma Bay is "You can look, but you can't touch!". Seeing the sea turtles inevitably led to my reenacting for Nikole the "sea turtle" dialogue from Pirates of the Caribbean about 7 times during the drive back to the hotel. One thing I love about Nikole is that she laughs at my jokes, even the lame jokes and the jokes I tell over and over. And the lame jokes I tell over and over.

My conclusion from our Hanauma Bay excursion is that I could have spent an entire day there. I think Nikole agreed.

After the Bay, we scurried back to the hotel, requested late check-out and frantically packed. We drove to Pearl Harbor for a couple hours and went to the remains of the USS Arizona. It was a somber experience and our short two hours did not do it justice.

That afternoon we took a bittersweet flight back to the mainland. We were sad to leave Hawaii and the incredible experiences we had. At the same time we were excited to be back with our kids, whom we missed. Turns out that they didn't miss us too much with Grandma around. She kept them busy and happy with fun activities and almost daily excursions to McDonald's. Still, they at least acted excited to see us when we got home. That lasted for the better part of the day, before they returned to their sibling spats and temper tantrums. And I returned to Travelocity to check the price of two more tickets to Honolulu....

Kickin' It in Waikiki

Aloha! This is our first post to the world wide web blogosphere. The question is always when to start from. Rather that reminisce about the past 10 years of marital bliss, it's probably best to start with the recent past and go from there.

Nikole and I took a nice trip to Hawaii April 29-May 8. We went there under the auspices of my attending a couple pediatric conferences, but we still had plenty of time for the sights. Mayo paid for my part of everything (airfare, hotel room, ground transportation, and per diem), so we really only had to cover Nikole's airline ticket, food and souvenirs. My mom, bless her heart, flew into Rochester to stay with the kids while we were gone. We missed them while we were gone. But, knowing they were in good hands, we didn't miss them too much.

The plane ride into Honolulu was much better than anticipated, primarily thanks to Northwest's Airbus A330s, which have individual television screens at each seat in coach. You can choose and watch a movie from about 30 choices, some of which are edited. I watched The Great Debaters and X-Files, as well as an episode of The Office ("Phyllis' Wedding"--very funny).

After an 8 hour flight, we touched down around 3 pm in Honolulu. To get to our hotel, we grabbed a cab, which turned out to be a circa 1986 limousine, complete with VCR player and mirrors on the ceiling.

Despite being quite tired that first evening, we just had to go to beach. There was a Hawaiian band playing at the hotel's beachfront restaurant, which created a very nice ambiance. A native Hawaiian came up to us and gave us lei's, saying "Take one for your wife and for you!" Just as I was thinking that Hawaiians have got to be the nicest people in the world, she said, "For only small donation...". Anyway, we got our flower lei's and felt good about giving $10 to the Boys and Girls Club of Honolulu. [By the way, I am fairly certain that, if not the nicest in the world, Hawaiians are well near the top of the list].

We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Ali'i Tower. Mayo's policy is to cover hotel rooms up to $325/night. Our room was $324/night. It's all about toeing the line, right? Here's a view from our balcony:

We actually never went swimming in the pool pictured, because our tower had it's own pool on the second floor. Even then, when you're 50 yards from the ocean, why settle for a pool?

I spent a chunk of my time at the conferences, at least for the first several days. I was part of a couple workshops about public speaking. The first conference was primarily a residency and fellowship leadership meeting (Association of Pediatric Program Directors--APPD). Our workshop at that conference focused on teaching public speaking skills to pediatric trainees (i.e. residents and fellows). It went really well and we received very positive feedback. The second conference we presented at was the Pediatric Academic Societies' (PAS) Annual Meeting. Our workshop this time focused more on the attendees themselves becoming better public speakers. Specifically, we wanted to teach people how to help their audience not fall asleep during their lectures. We planned for as many as 45 people attending, but we ended up with about 56, more even than the room was set up for. It went very well, we think. We are hopeful that we can continue to conduct these workshops at future conferences. The APPD and PAS meetings next year are in Baltimore, so it won't be quite as exciting as Honolulu. Unless, of course, we get mugged. That would be very exciting.

I also attended a few scientific sessions, some of which I was peripherally involved with. Those are always hit-and-miss, usually miss. The titles of some of the presentations can be quite misleading. I went to one session about the recent advances in Kawasaki disease. I was interested because of the cardiac implications of Kawasaki's. Mostly, though, I wanted to catch a glimpse of Dr. Kawasaki, who would be presenting the closing remarks. They introduced him at the beginning to a round of applause. The first talk was actually very good. It went through recent breakthroughs in finding the cause of Kawasaki's (it looks like it'll turn out to be an RNA virus). After that, though, it went down hill. Way too many small details and very boring PowerPoint slides. I couldn't last until Dr. Kawasaki's remarks. So I left and went to the mall. I called Nikole up, she met me, we had lunch, went shopping, then went to see Iron Man. It was sweet. Sorry, Dr. Kawasaki.

I was able to meet Dr. Noonan of Noonan Syndrome fame. She works at the University of Kentucky at Lexington. She was incredibly nice and chatty, was interested in us and our aspirations. It's nice to see you can stay down to earth even when you have a syndrome named in your honor.

Outside of the work part of our trip, Nikole and I had a good time exploring Oahu. Our first full day there, we hiked up Diamond Head State Monument. It is an extinct volcano, from the top of which you can get a nice view of the island and of Waikiki, in particular:

It was, as we had been warned, not a casual stroll, but a legitimate climb. Still, well worth the time. We recuperated with a mango smoothie and passion fruit shave ice (not "shaved" ice) once we got back to the bottom.

There is plenty more to tell about, which I will do another day. It's 10 o'clock and basketball is at 6 am. Aloha and mahalo!