Friday

Morning on the Pacific

Charlotte and I begin our final full day in Oahu by pulling on our swimming gear and wandering over to the beach behind the Hilton Village — stopping at Starbucks on the way to enjoy a morning coffee and some pastries. There are two cool things about this area: first is that there’s a marina near the ocean filled with boats and garbage (that’s not the cool part), and as we’re walking by it we see multiple jellyfish swimming around, which is really neat since most of the jellyfish I’ve seen in my life have been of the “dead on the beach” variety. The second cool thing is that they have a man-made lagoon (it used to be a swamp!) that’s about five and a half feet deep at its maximum, and is super warm. This becomes extremely appealing after Charlotte and I wade into the Pacific Ocean first, which is like wading into molten lava, only the exact opposite. It’s goddamn freezing! So we spend a bit of time there and then, shivering, head for the lagoon, which by comparison is like bath water. We paddle around there a bit and then, desire for a morning swim fulfilled, we head back to our hotel to shower and face the day.

Chinese Pastries Hurt My Brain

By the time we’re all finished up and back on the road, headed for Chinatown now that it’s not a Sunday and things will be open again, it’s past noon. We’re just not early risers, which is somewhat unfortunate for Hawaii, as the islands are very sun-oriented. Sure, there’s some nightlife, but the vast majority of stuff is on a 9 – 5 schedule. By the time we reach Chinatown, it’s basically time for lunch. Charlotte doesn’t believe me that I’ll actually find someplace there to eat … I like exotic food, but usually balk at sketchy-looking places, and basically all of Chinatown is fairly sketchy-looking. But we find a Vietnamese diner that looks nice, and have a tasty meal there. During lunch we have a discussion about Asian pastries, and how they pretty much all suck. No offense, Asians … your fish and vegetable dishes are routinely fantastic, but your pastries? Not so much. We stop at a Chinese bakery in order to try and disprove this theory. Charlotte gets a chewy walnut thing coated with sesame seeds. I get a “black sugar” cookie, and a tea cookie, the latter of which I thought was a cookie made with tea, but is in fact just a mildly fruity sugar cookie meant to go with tea. None of the pastries are actively offensive, unlike many a red bean paste-based dessert, but let’s just say that none of them are going to knock the French, Italians, and Pennsylvania Dutch off the map when it comes to baking.

Why Does the Meat Market Smell Like Fish?

We continue our walking tour of Chinatown, investigating jewelry shops, lei shops (there is an amazing variety on display), and traditional uh … cheap plastic crap shops. We eventually stop at a corner, and Charlotte asks “meat market, or fish market?” to which I respond “let’s do the meat market. I’m not sure I can handle the fish market so soon after lunch.” This turns out to be a mistake, because the meat market smells like low tide on a hot summer day … just fishy to a stomach-turning extreme, despite the fact that we can’t actually see any fish on display. We soon get tired of looking at butchered animals and figure hey, what the hell, might as well do the fish market. We enter the building to discover that it barely smells of fish at all, despite there being many types lying on ice, or still swimming around in aquariums. I am at a loss to explain this phenomenon, and can only report what I experienced! Eventually we complete our walking tour, and retrieve our car from the parking garage. It’s time to head for the Bishop Museum, a collection of buildings not far from downtown Honolulu that make up arguably Hawaii’s most complete museum of Hawaiian, Polynesian, and South Pacific cultures.

So wait, we can learn about every Pacific Island EXCEPT Hawaii?

The Bishop Museum is a confusing place because they make you walk through the gift shop to get to the entrance, which isn’t even clearly marked. Charlotte and I almost accidentally enter the planetarium, and two separate employee-only areas, before finally finding our way into the museum. The fee is modest, and we pay it happily and head out onto the grounds — the museum is comprised of multiple buildings, all of which used to serve as an educational campus. We enter the main section – which contains rooms devoted to modern Hawaiian art, a collection of Hawaiian feather staffs which have a real name that I’m currently forgetting, and a collection of older Hawaiian paintings and photographs. It also contains the Hawaiian History wing, and a history wing devoted to the Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian peoples of the south Pacific. Unfortunately, the Hawaiian exhibit is closed for reorganization, which means we’ve come to Hawaii to learn about every island in the south Pacific EXCEPT Hawaii … woo! Still, we spend a good two hours there, wandering through the exhibits, reading plaques, and marveling at the fact that 4000 years ago people could intricately carve crazy shit into whale bones, but hadn’t yet figured out that when you put something on round wheels, it’s easier to push. Eventually our brains reach that “museum saturation” point, and we head off. It’s time to go back to the hotel, and naturally we’ve chosen rush hour once again. We’re skilled like that.

Trying to Return the Car

We decide that we don’t really need the car for the rest of the trip, and figure we can maybe turn it in early and save a few bucks. In theory, this is an awesome idea. In practice this means we battle against Hawaii’s unrelenting war on left turns, get near the car place, realize we haven’t filled up the stupid gas tank, go hunting for a gas station for thirty minutes, and then finally make our way back to the car rental place … which is closed for the night and offers no key drop-off or overnight storage. Yay, cheapshit local car rental! So we drive back to the hotel and park for one more night, with the plan being that I’ll get up in the morning, go drop off the car, and walk back. Shouldn’t be a big deal. In the meantime, we’ve got a couple of hours to chill before we go have a swank dinner in celebration of it being one year since I proposed.

Chairman Ho’s

The actual name of the restaurant is Allen Wong’s, but I keep forgetting that and calling it Chairman Ho’s, which amuses Charlotte. We decided a few days ago that we should get dressed up for this event, even though we have seen ABSOLUTELY NO ONE in jacket-and-tie level dress the entire time we’ve been in Hawaii. We also decide to walk to Chairman Ho’s … I mean Allen Wong’s … which adds an extra level of bizarreness to the evening since the area between our hotel and the restaurant isn’t exactly swanky. As our walk nears an end, the occasional raindrops we’ve been feeling suddenly become a downpour, but fortunately we don’t have very far to go. We get into the restaurant and discover that, yes, we’re the best-dressed people in the place. Neither of us particularly gives a shit, though, so that’s good. We order cocktails and appetizers – we each get some kind of shooter featuring native Hawaiian veggies, tomato water, and some sort of mollusk, and we also share some chicken-and-kim-chee spring rolls that are out of this world. Our entrees eventually show up (our waiter was very pleasant but rarely seen), and they’re also fantastic. Charlotte got the twice-cooked duck, and I had seared fish on island greens with Parmesan mashed potatoes. Yum! We finish the evening the way any good honeymoon evening should be finished: by heading back to the hotel and watching a couple of Venture Brothers episodes. Tomorrow, we head for Maui.

Saturday

Flight to the Airport

After we get up on Saturday, I drive the car over to the drop-off point and walk back, picking up coffee on the way, while Charlotte gets started on the packing. Naturally, it’s raining during my entire walk back, but honestly it’s not that bad, especially since packing annoys me. She’s mostly done by the time I show up, so I still feel like I got the better part of the deal, even though I’m mildly drenched. We haul our shit downstairs, check out, call a cab, and head for the airport. As it turns out, you do NOT need to arrive at the Honolulu airport two hours ahead of time, if you’re taking a trans-island flight. In fact, you probably don’t need to arrive 30 minutes ahead of time. The entire airport is about the same size as a large Denny’s. Charlotte and I set up shop in the airport bar and wait for our plane to board.

Your Delayed Flight Has Been Delayed

And wait … and wait … and wait. Our takeoff time goes from 1:50 to 2:30 to 2:45 to 3:05 to 3:35 to “soon” even as other flights to Maui, scheduled much later than ours, are boarding from the same gate. Way to go, GO! Airlines. Jackasses. Once we finally get on the stupid plane, our flight is about seven and a half minutes long. There are eight of us on it, total. It’s kind of like taking a private jet only if you have to pay $2.50 for a can of coke. We opt to skip the coke, and instead just watch the islands go by, in between thick bands of clouds. Soon we’re landed. Charlotte waits for the luggage while I go off to get the rental car, which would normally have worked out great but naturally their computers have gone down and they have to do everything by hand. This, as you may guess, slows things down, so eventually Charlotte just takes the shuttle bus over herself, carrying both bags, and hangs out with me in the Budget offices. We eventually land a white Pontiac G6, or 60, or something. It’s got air conditioning, a CD player, and doesn’t shake like an elderly woman whenever you go above 30 MPH … quite a step up from the Geo Tracker.

Holy Shit, a Whale!

Now that we finally have a car, we head south on route 380 past some strip malls, which connects us to route 30, which runs along the island’s western side. Maui is not like Oahu, at all. It’s far less built up, and most of what we see on the journey is beach, scrub brush, and mountains. Kind of peaceful and nice, actually. We round a curve and see cars lined up on the side of the road, and people are standing near the shore, cameras and binoculars out. Turns out, as we’ll shortly see, there are whales hanging out just off shore. A big one surfaces and Charlotte gives a shout, but I miss it (having to pay attention to the road, and all that). I manage to glance over and catch a few glimpses of fins and tails. Never do see a full whale, but it’s still pretty cool. Eventually we pass whale country, pass the town of Lahaina, and enter the Kaanapali beach area, where we’ll be staying at the Westin Resort and Spa.

Saved the Best for Last

The Westin turns out to be the swankiest of the hotels we’re staying in this trip, which is nice. The grounds include several waterfalls, five swimming pools (one adults-only), a bar and two restaurants (with two more bars), a three-story waterslide, and a striking sunset view of the ocean. We’ve been upgraded to an ocean-view room for the second time on our trip, and we find that our balcony has a great view of the pools and the ocean. Score! We get unpacked and adjusted, and then set out to explore the hotel.

Enjoying the Evening

We decide to take a late-evening dip. The ocean’s too cold and rough at night, but the adult pool’s open until 10 and we have it all to ourselves. Charlotte and I swim around for a while until we’re thoroughly refreshed (and chilled), and then join another couple in the hot tub. We laze around there for a bit, watching surfing videos on the big screens above the bar not far away, then get out and go enjoy a tropical drink at the bar. While there, we read a menu for one of the hotel’s two restaurants, and decide to eat dinner there. It’s a short walk away, surrounded by flaming tiki torches, grass huts, and koi ponds. We each get a tomato and white-bean soup, and we split a goat cheese and veggie flatbread pizza thing. The food’s tasty, and we chow down. Eventually the meal’s done, and we’re beat from our long day of being enraged by travel. We head up to the room, and crash for the night.

Sunday

The Pacific Ocean: Not That Warm

Charlotte gets me up on Sunday morning and says “let’s go jump in the ocean before we get our coffee!” This seems like a reasonable idea, so we pull on our swimming gear and head out to the beach. It’s a grey and overcast day, but not too chilly, so we stash our stuff on an available chaise lounge and head for the waves. These turn out to be approximately the same temperature as liquid nitrogen, but Charlotte apparently has skin of steel, because she powers right into them and swims out past where the waves are breaking, and stays out there bobbing in the gentle swell and taunting me. I move in by inches, making girlish shrieking noises with each step and wondering why I let my crazy wife talk me into this, but I do eventually make it all the way in, and we swim around for a bit. Eventually we get out, dry off, grab coffee and breakfast, and head up to take showers. We’re nearly out of clean laundry, and we’re hoping to find a place where we can drop off the dirty stuff, and pick it up later cleaned and folded. You can find these places every twelve feet in New York, but this is Maui and they have exactly one … and it’s closed on Sundays. Crap.

“It’s Like a Bad Imitation of a Beach Town”

we resolve to come back to the wash-n-fold place on Monday, and head for Laihaina’s main drag, Front St. Lahaina is an old whaling town that became a tourist haven in the 60s. Various Maui laws have prevented it from being built up like Waikiki though; all of the hotels are in nearby Kaanapali, and Lahaina’s skyline is only a couple of stories high. It’s much more of a beach town, albeit one that’s completely dominated by the industry of selling cheap shit to rubes (even more so than a normal beach town). There are more Hawaiian shirt stores and crappy souvenir shops here than you can possibly imagine. Charlotte’s not terribly impressed, and after a few blocks I’m not that into it either. We’re starving though, so we decide to pick from among the seemingly endless line of beach-themed burger joints available to us.

“It’s All About the Raisins”

We pick a restaurant and get seated. I get very excited because they’ve got A1 sauce for the burgers, which most places don’t have. Charlotte, being raised in France, has no idea what the hell A1 sauce is. She picks it up and reads the ingredients, noting that it’s similar to catchup. I agree, but insist that the higher vinegar content, lower sugar content, and raisin paste make it infinitely superior in all ways to ketchup (which is disgusting). Charlotte says she’ll take my word for it. We enjoy our burgers -n- beer, and then wander the town a bit more, stopping for ice cream. Finally, tired of tourists and cheap crap, we head off back to the hotel, stopping at Barnes and Noble along the way to pick up some books for Charlotte. Inspired by the fact that I’m reading The Children of Men, she picks up a PD James mystery novel, and we spend most of the rest of the afternoon reading, until I’m done with my book and we’re ready for dinner.

Dinner at Laihana Cooler’s

Following the guide’s recommendation, we head back to the town of Lahaina for food, this time settling on a smalll, breezy restaurant that’s off the main drag. The beer is good, and the food’s even better. I get a gigantic salad, and Charlotte gets something called “Fisherman’s Stew” which is very tasty, with lots of veggies and a little bit of hot pepper. We hang out there until we’re done, then head back once more to the hotel, where we stop at one of the bars that has a late happy hour. I get a mai tai (they’re one of the cheap drinks), and Charlotte gets something using grapefruit soda and gin. It’s not bad, really, but it sounded better on paper than it actually tastes. In practice, it’s a bit too sweet, and a bit one-note. The bartender confides in us that the hotel forced them to carry that soda even though the manager didn’t want to, so said manager just made up a bunch of drinks to use up the stock, without actually tasting any of them. We find this amusing, and Charlotte gamely continues drinking hers. We watch sports highlights and I explain things to Charlotte … she humors me by pretending to give a shit, and all is well! Eventually we head off to sleep again. Tomorrow: THE SUBMARINE!

So after a bleary-eyed awakening and quick showers, Charlotte and I are on our way. We’d called a car the night before, and it meets us outside at four o’clock. A relatively quick and peaceful ride later (not a lot of cars on the roads at four, even in Brooklyn), and we’re at JFK, queued up in the security line and preparing to subject ourselves to the completely worthless screening process that’s supposed to save us from terrorists, but really just serves to lull us all into the proper sheep-like state by presenting the illusion of safety. Not that I’m bitter.

Security doesn’t go badly, and we’re through rather rapidly. We hit the only open cafe in JFK at 4:45 in the morning: a place called Europan. Charlotte gets a hot chocolate and biscotti. I get an iced coffee and an oatmeal cookie. Breakfast of champions.

Charlotte’s still a member of the American Airline’s Admiral’s Club for another couple of months, so we head up to their lounge, where we discover that we could’ve had free coffee and bagels. Also trail mix. That’s ok though. It’s still nice, with big comfy chairs and a serious lack of noise. We’re joined by only a few other people, nearly all of whom, as it turns out, are on the same flight that we are. We see them again on the plane — we were able to score business class tickets using Charlotte’s miles, so we’re rocking the big, comfy seats with individual footrests, duvets, and gigantic pillows.

It’s now 6am Eastern, and we’re about to get rolling. I almost never get the chance to fly anything but coach, and normally I’d be all about enjoying every aspect of business class, but all I care about right now is how far the seat can recline, and about getting some Ambien into me and Charlotte to knock us out, so we’re not walking zombies during the entire day we have to spend at LAX. Charlotte’s asleep in minutes. I’m not far behind. By the time we wake up, we’re over the Rockies and we’ve missed the breakfast service. Somehow I can’t bring myself to be too distraught. Until mankind invents teleportation, sleeping through most of a five-and-a-half hour flight may be the next best thing.

We hit LAX and debark, heading again for the Admiral’s Club. This one is arguably even swankier than the one at JFK, and we help ourselves to some coffee and juice. Also trail mix — hey, what the hell, it’s free right? Then we get in touch with our friends Dave and Crystal, who live about an hour away in Orange County. Dave’s not able to make it up, but Crystal is down for lunch and says she’ll call when she gets to the airport. Charlotte and I managed to get ourselves bumped from the 7:35 flight to the 5:30 flight. Sweet! Two less hours at the airport, and we’ll end up in Honolulu at ten, their time, instead of midnight. Now there’s nothing left to do but relax until Crystal shows up. We chill near the bar, watching golf and horse racing because that’s what’s on, until she calls us.

Catching up is great — We haven’t seen Crystal in a couple of years, and I definitely wish I could get out to California more often. We grab lunch at the crazy 60′s-era restaurant in the middle of LAX. The food is good, and we spend most of the time telling stories and laughing. It’s a nice break from being stuck inside the airport, which can get dull even when you have access to a nice club. Eventually lunch ends, and Crystal heads out. Charlotte and I go back through security, and into the terminal.

And so here we are, waiting for our connecting flight by hanging out on ye olde internet, back in the Admiral’s Club. Not too much else to report. I expect and hope that the flight to Honolulu will be uneventful. Once we’re there, we’ll probably head straight to the hotel and crash. It will, after all, be about five in the morning, back on the east coast.

The next time you hear from me, it’ll be from Waikiki beach!

Yes, I’m addicted to HGTV.

“MY GOD!” I scream at my wife. “Do you know how much that would COST in Brooklyn?”

“Yes,” She answers. “Yes I do.”

“Why don’t we live in Decatur?!?”

“Because Georgia isn’t Brooklyn?”

“Oh … yeah.”

And when it’s not “House Hunters” or “Property Virgins” or “That guy in the black turtleneck who isn’t actually a part of the show except he shows up at the beginning and looks smug,” then it’s the do-it-yourself shows, which are even more compelling. I mean, some of them are asinine, like the one where they paint stuff — hey, newsflash, if you paint your friggin house it looks better than leaving all the walls white!

But “Income Property,” for example? Holy crap. I’m now convinced that my wife and I should buy a 17-floor mansion … and live in a tiny room in the basement. Just think about how much money we’d be saving on our mortgage by renting out the rest!

It’s terrible. It’s terrifying. It’s … some “T” word that means “insane!”

I’d go on … but “House Hunters International” is on, and I need to see which house the Spanish lady with the annoying voice chose!

Alas, bad luck comes in waves, and one such wave crashed over us in the first few weeks of 2009. You see, Charlotte is here in the states on an L1 visa, which means that she can only work for the company that brought her here. It’s non-transferable. One of the nice benefits of marrying me, aside from the true love and the uh … incessant cackling … is that she will obtain permanent residency, and authorization to work wherever she chooses. Options are always a good thing.

To start this process, however, you have to have not your completed marriage license, but the marriage certificate that the city gives you once you return the completed marriage license. Ok, no problem, right? Our officiant and others were like “just mail it in, takes two weeks, all is well.”

We get married on a Friday night, mail the certificate on Monday, and get delivery confirmation on December 5. Sweet! So two weeks pass. And three. And five … now I know you’re wondering: why did they wait so long? Well, their website says 20 business days, and the dude at the bureau itself told us “more like six to eight weeks” … what we failed to understand is if you just walk the paper in and hand it to them, instead of mailing it, they give you the certificate RIGHT THEN. Oh, if only we’d understood.

Anyway, at seven weeks, Charlotte goes on a business trip to Texas and learns that her job will be ending at the end of February. Hooray, crappy economy. This is a bad thing, because we live in the most expensive city in the United States (and one of the five most expensive cities in the world, according to a recent report). This is a double-bad thing when she can’t even begin her job search, because we haven’t filed our application for work authorization, because the papers haven’t come. This is a TRIPLE bad thing when you factor in that the work authorization will take 12-14 weeks to come in, from the date of filing, and there’s only seven weeks until the end of February. Eep!

So we go to the marriage bureau, and explain our situation, and the lady’s like “oh, yeh, just go to window four and they’ll take care of you.”

Unfortunately, at window four we discover that the entirety of the marriage bureau has been packed into boxes, because they are moving offices that weekend. There is one depressingly small stack of unprocessed licenses, which they rapidly file through. Strangely, ours isn’t there, even though our information is not in the computer and therefore our license hasn’t been processed. “It must be packed away. Or lost,” they tell us, helpfully. “Sorry. Come to the new offices on Monday.”

A quick call to our immigration lawyer later, we’ve learned that no, we can’t just get married a second time right there at city hall. See, if we fill out new papers, with the new date, and start the visa process, and then the old papers turn up, they completely invalidate the new papers, and the whole process starts over again, with the extra-fun possibility that Charlotte gets booted out of the country in the interim. Yet at the same time, the state and federal government do not consider us married until a license of some sort is processed. Awesome!

After hyperventilating for a while, we decide that on Monday, I shall venture forth into the twenty-four-degree weather and make a trip to the new marriage bureau. In the interim, we will … try not to think to much about how all of this sucks!

Monday was today. I went forth into the cold, cold wind and hiked my ass over to Centre St. in Manhattan. I will say this for the new marriage bureau: it’s approximately seven hundred thousand times less depressing than the old one. It’s sort of like modern DMVS — tons of information desks, and everyone gets numbers and can wait patiently in comfortable seating. Except if the DMV sold flowers and had a giant picture of a completely fake (and much prettier than the real thing) city hall that happy newlyweds can stand in front of for photo ops.

The friendly lady at window four (brand new building, same window number) helpfully goes through the entire stack of unprocessed licenses yet again. No dice. Now she turns to the folders labeled “PROBLEM” in huge black letters. These include licenses that haven’t been signed properly, licenses where the wedding officiant wasn’t actually legally registered to perform marriages in this state (!!), and licenses where the best man puked on it midway through the reception and now it’s illegible. Fortunately — sort of — our license wasn’t there either.

Now I’m feeling about ready to beat up a girl scout, or a puppy, or something. The only viable solution to a lost license is to get a new one, back-date it to the date of the wedding, and then send it around to the exact same officiant and witnesses for signatures. This would require some effort, considering the officiant lives way out in Long Island, and one of the witnesses lives in Paris. Not impossible, of course, but a further source of delay during a period where we seriously don’t want to be delayed any longer.

“Well, let me go check the processed archives, just to be sure,” the lady says, in a voice that says she’s about as sure that she’ll find it there as she is that Jesus himself will come crashing through the windows to deliver the license. But she goes and looks. I lean against the counter and pray for a swift, merciful death.

And then, just like that, the wave recedes. The bad luck washes away, and my new best friend at the Marriage Bureau shows up holding a sheet of paper and smiling.

“They put it in the processed pile without processing it!” she tells me, and I’m too elated to say anything more than “awesome!”

So there you have it, my friends. Charlotte and I are now officially married in the eyes of New York State and the United States Government, after seven weeks of limbo. We can file her papers this week, and she can go forth into what we hope will be a short, relaxing break before she begins a new job. We’ll continue enjoying our New York life – which currently involves a lot of looking for houses and bitching about the cold – and all will be very well indeed.

And that is my tale of misery, and woe, and joy!

I am a lucky man.