Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
The state consists of hundreds of islands, most of them ignored. There are eight "main" islands--- Ni'ihau; Kaua'i; O'ahu; Moloka'i; Lana'i; Kaho'olawe; Maui; and Hawai'i--- that get most of the attention, either because of their size or their insane use of apostrophes. The biggest of these is Hawaii (if you think I'm going to wear out my pinkie typing the apostrophe every time, you're crazy). Hawaii (the island) is more commonly called The Big Island, to avoid confusing it with the entire state and probably for some other reasons that won't be discussed in mixed company.
The Big Island was our destination. Specifically, the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort, a huge complex on the northwest coast of the island:
As you can see, it's a pretty big place... sort of a Polynesian Ponderosa. There are three main towers of rooms; here's a similar aerial view with those towers labeled:
Our rooms were in the Lagoon Tower, which sounds vaguely like a medieval prison, but was actually very nice. As you can see, for folks like myself who think the term "leisurely stroll" is an oxymoron, accessing the entire resort would be a challenge . Fortunately, the Hilton people supply a couple of ways of getting around the resort: a monorail system, and a canal system populated with little shuttle boats:
I'm not sure of the reason for the redundant shuttle systems. I suppose the boats are meant to give off some sort of romantic gondola-type vibe, but the ambience is sort of spoiled when you and your significant other are sitting across from a dripping-wet pot-bellied guy in a Speedo on his way back to his room from the pool. I know this from personal experience... the couple told me so.
The Big Island, I'm told, is the only one of the Hawaiian islands that has active volcanoes, which, inexplicably, makes it a popular tourist destination rather than a roped-off hazmat zone. There's a big peak smack-dab in the middle of the island: Mauna Kea.
I'm told that Muana Kea would be the tallest mountain in the world if you measured it from its base, which is located somewhere below sea level. But that measuring practice was abandoned a long time ago... too many guys holding the "zero" end of the tape measure were lost.
On The Big Island, pretty much everything to the west of Mauna Kea is volcanic landscape; while everything to the east is the green stuff they put in the postcards. So on the drive from the airport to Waikoloa Village, both sides of the road looked like this:
Of course, the resort area itself is full of lush vegetation and manicured golf courses. I'm not sure what miracle of landscaping made this happen, but it's pretty impressive. It's like you're living in a dome city on the moon. I think they must be sucking water and topsoil out of the hundreds of other Hawaiian islands that no one pays attention to.
When we first checked into the hotel's main lobby on Wednesday night, it was pretty crowded. Turns out that the Pokemon World Championships were being held there through Sunday. Pokemon is on the list of things I don't know much about (that list is a 10 terabyte file currently stored in an array of Cray supercomputers buried deep within the Sierra Nevadas), but apparently part of the overall culture involves a game played with elaborate-looking character cards filled with statistics and descriptive text. The lobby was filled with young people in small huddles peering at cards on table tops. At first I thought that maybe fortune-telling was a popular part of the local culture (not unreasonable on an island where mountains unexpectedly explode), but then I noticed the displays promoting the tournament.
The yellow guy is Pikachu, which I believe has replaced Godzilla as King of the Monsters.
It was early evening when we checked in and then set out to find our rooms on foot. It was late evening (and the following day) before we actually found them. There hadn't been much in the way of snacks during the flight over (after I stepped onto the plane, a few boxes of cookies, chips, and crackers had to be jettisoned to make sure our fuel would get us to dry land), and we were a bit peckish. So Sue and I, at Ken's insistence and for the first time in our lives, ordered room service. It was a mistake. The food was fine, but the decadence of it still haunts us... we haven't been able to look each other in the eye since.