Okay, so where were we…. Oh yeah, flying to Kona.

Left for Kona at some really dark hour on the 23rd. The original plan was for someone to drive Joan’s van (seven passengers and luggage) and Vinnie, who wasn’t going to Kona with us, to drive Tony’s Scion (four passengers comfortably, five if you squish) to the airport. The van would be left at the airport and Vinnie would drive back with the Scion when we got back on the 26th. There were ten of us so it would have worked, but…
Well, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the term “a herd of cats”, but that’s pretty darn accurate under the circumstances.
We arranged for an airport shuttle to come by with a 12 passenger van which worked ever so much better. The only major problem with that was that the driver wasn’t familiar with the windward side of the island and trying to quell the helpful suggestions from four (five?) separate navigators so the poor man was only getting directions from one source was -um- challenging.
Everybody got on the plane, everybody got OFF the plane and, weirdly, so did all of our baggage. It was a little spooky.
Sara and Danny met us at the airport and with a brief detour to visit the charter school where Sara teaches so we could pick tomatoes and basil for the pizza that afternoon (also so we could see the school’s shark tank — it’s a pretty cool school) we headed up into the mountains.

It’s a lovely house WAY up in the cloud forest above Kona. It’s cool, it’s spacious. It’s a great place to relax and, I suppose if you have to have ten family members descend upon you suddenly, it’s about an ideal place to do it.

On the schedule for the morning of the 24th was a 4-6 hour fishing charter. I respectfully (and enthusiastically) declined to voluntarily subject myself to half a morning worth of throwing up so I didn’t get up when the crew (Andrew, Meg, David & Dawn, and Caitlin and Lucy) were shoveled out the door at somewhat before 7 a.m. I don’t think I ever really got onto Hawaiian time while we were there because I woke up just before 8 thoroughly convinced that it was mid-morning.
Breakfast and puttering around the farm. I’m consistently amazed by Hawaiian flora. You’ve seen what Andrew was doing at 10 a.m. Friday (at least you have if you looked at the photos in the last post), here’s what I was doing at 10 a.m. Friday.





Sara and Tony and I went down to the harbor to pick up the fishers who all, due to considerable consumption of Dramamine, came home, ate (mmmMMMMM kahlua pig!) and immediately collapsed and went to sleep.
Sara, Libby, Joan and I went to Costco. I know, I know, y’all are saying “you went to COSTCO on CHRISTMAS EVE?”. I thought it was nuts too, but weirdly it wasn’t anywhere near as crazy as I was expecting.
We got back in time to scoop all of the sleepers out of bed for dinner then we had just enough time to get out of the way before they collapsed again. I guess Dramamine makes you really groggy.

This is getting long, especially considering the bulk of photos that I have yet to post. I’ll get to the rest of it later.