The Decompression of a Boomer

I should be done blogging about our January trip to Kauai, I know. Except, FYI, when I left off we were still in Kauai – at the airport bar in Lihue – sucking down Mai-Tai’s. You might be worried about us. (Huh?) You know, that we might drink too much, fall off our chairs, and miss our flight. (Could we be so lucky?) As you might recall, we were self-medicating in the Lihue Airport Bar so as to induce sleep on the pending 5-hour Red-eye flight to LA…

Alas, we’ve boarded the plane now.

You’re posting this ugly photo?

I’m still taking photos since I can’t sleep – sandwiched between Eric and David. David has drifted off to sleep. Eric is awake, and he and I start scrolling through the photos on my I-phone… We pause on the photo of Eric at the Kalypso Restaurant in Hanalei, you know … (I’ve already posted this photo once, but I can’t resist…)

Eric having an ecstacy experience

We’re laughing uproariously over the photo. And our laughter is cackling through the dark silence of the plane like a bolt of thunder in the night sky over sleeping campers. It’s the first moment I realize the plane has gone completely dark and silent, because everyone is trying to sleep. Sleep? I try every method possible to coax myself into sleep, counting my breaths, counting backwards from 100, counting sheep leaping over fluffy clouds … I do apparently drift off to sleep, as suddenly the pilot announces we are descending for a landing….

We land in LA at 5 AM. Although feeling pretty brain dead, Eric and I decide to try and find breakfast. David says he isn’t hungry. I don’t know where we ended up. We didn’t have much time and the pickins’ were slim, if that helps explain it. All I know is, we end up in this fast food court and I order what Eric orders. Ranchos Heuvros – or something. I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t typically eat Mexican food either. This is what we get:

How do you spell delicious in Spanish?

Black beans on one end of a black plastic sectioned plate, rice on the other. I like to mix them. Tortilla in the middle with fried eggs on top. Not sure what that is on top of the eggs. The egg white is tough as lizard skin, I discover, as I woefully attempt to cut it with my fork. I taste a bean. David moans in disgust watching us trying to eat. I dunno. Could any food look edible at 5:27 AM, jet-lagged and sleep-deprived?

Fast forward seven hours – we’ve landed in Salt Lake and are driving the last 140 miles home to Idaho Falls.

Eric’s fur lined leather bomber hat magically appears on his head. Was it in his coat pocket? I’ve changed from flip-flops into the frozen soles of my winter shoes that had sat in the truck our whole trip.

Good news awaits us, weather-wise, over the next six weeks. All we weather is a couple of bouts of hoarfrost

January 21, 2015

And a skiff or dusting or two of newly fallen snow.

The winter snow had melted off by mid-February, a full month before it normally does. David and I took this selfie in our front yard on February 15.

Does it look like spring to you?

We were going to send it to Victor’s I-phone as a joke. But then, that just seemed too cruel. Victor and Steph left Kauai at the end of January to spend the rest of their winter in …. Boston. Ouch. (Need I repeat how miserable their winter has been, likely the most miserable winter in Boston history…) I kindly have not kept Steph and Vic abreast of the goings-on for us here in southeast Idaho weather-wise. Suffice it to say, we had the warmest February on record, from records kept since 1850. That’s the warmest winter in at least 165 years, with an average daily temp of 47.1 degrees.

So, yeah, time to put a wrap on the Kauai blogs. Heck we’ve had crocus blooming here for several weeks. And we noticed yesterday, the robins have returned. Or maybe they never left this year.

But wait! I do have one more photo of Kauai – taken on our hike in Wiamea Canyon.

This one’s for the ladies:

This picture’s for you, Steph

Now you have a new ‘happy place’ to escape to. You know, like if you’re on a plane or something, trying to lure yourself to sleep… Or if you live in, say… Boston.

Tags: hoarfrost, Iniki Mai Tais, Kauai

This entry was posted on March 14, 2015 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Kauai, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.