Yesterday, 2-1-10, was Lahaina, today 2-2-10 it was Honolulu and the North Shore.  Big waves on the North Shore - double red flags.  We saw a lot of fire rescue action going on down on the beaches and snapped some really impressive pictures of the waves.  They were having a surfing competition today.  

Candice and I did the 'Lost' thing today and I'll let her tell you all about that but we got our pictures with Hurley, Jorge Garcia, out at the ranch where they filmed a lot of the first season and jungle scenes throughout the other seasons.  It was quite awesome running in to him and getting a little interaction!

So the car rental today went about as smoothly as possible with one exception, this damn Hawaiian language was too much!  Too many K, H, L, A's and I's in their small alphabet.  As I was driving Candice was working off of 5 different maps.  Most of the maps of the island were general and the detailed maps were just sectional, so it was like a jigsaw puzzle trying to tie them all together.  Every street upon first glance looked like it was the street on another map but a closer look reveled that it was one or two letters off.  There were some American names to streets like 'Pensacola' and 'Ward' so we decided we'd just map out a way back to the car rental return using only those streets we could pronounce and spell.  Ha, ha.  We did make it back okay, a few miles more, but that was a-o-k with us!  We definitely butchered the Hawaiian language all day!  It was quite fun trying to figure out how to say Kaka'ako, Kalakaua Ave., and Kawai'i Kai.  We did learn today that if the 'w' is in the middle of the word it is pronounced as 'v,' so it really is HaVaii.

We lose our other satellite TV programing as we leave Hawaii, but somehow we keep getting Fox News, which is great!  Cunard knows something about news!  Don't know if Fox just broadcast this far out and the others don't or what.  It will take us four days to get to Pago Pago from Hawaii running at 20 knots.  It took us four days to get to Hawaii from SF running at 18.1 knots.  It's out there baby!

Our dinner table is getting rowdier and rowdier.  Neil our 70'ish retired Air Force guy from Arizona is trying to sell tickets to the best table in the house, ours.  And Leona and Gail, who are from Australia, are keeping up with him just fine.  They invited the captain to join us.

The other night Candice and I were on the 10th floor and we had hit the elevator button for a down elevator since the 11th and 12th floors at the back of the boat are reserved for the "Grilles" people.  These are people who paid anywhere from $75,000 to $225,000 per person to go on the same trip that we are on and in suites.  (we're just steerage)  So, the bell dings on the elevator and not paying attention, we step in.  Six people in this elevator asked if we were going up.  We said oh no, we need to go down.  So, we hopped off, told them 'it was short but sweet' and the doors closed.  I looked at Candice and said, "Do you realize that was a million dollars worth of people standing in that elevator?"  We had a good laugh!  But hey, they are actually subsidizing our cost, so that's another thing that is a-o-k with us!  We told this story at the dinner table and it got a big belly laugh.  When worlds collide......  

Sandy