We went on a walking tour / food tasting in Honolulu’s Chinatown. We arrived a little early and admired some rope dragons. The picture doesn’t do them justice. Somebody put a lot of time into making these. As often happens, that person’s children didn’t want them. So they ended up in the museum.

One of the things that impressed me was a statue of Kuan Yin (there are many spellings). This is the goddess of compassion. Somebody spent a lot of time, made an elaborate robe, and draped it over the statue. Sometime in the future, someone else will create another robe for her. The people never get the robes back. They burn old robes once a year. It demonstrates a deep sense of veneration.

The more we are different, the more we are the same. The pics aren’t great, but you can see them on the website. Tomorrow we go to Hilo.

We made it to Hawaii. We left the boat early. I planned to call the financial institution to get my account unlocked while we were waiting for the museum to open. As it happened, the grounds crew were making a terrific racket with their gas powered lawn tools. After we got inside, I got the account unlocked and all was well.

We decided to visit the Bishop’s Museum. They have the world’s largest collection of Polynesian artifacts. It was an impressive place to see. They wanted to build a new outrigger canoe with authentic materials. The problem is they didn’t have a large enough tree of the correct type. No problem, they teamed up with Native Americans in Alaska. Voila! New authenticate canoe.

For the first time ever, I attended a planetarium show and stayed awake for the entire show. They showed how to navigate with no modern navigation aids. A group called the Polynesian Voyaging Society built a dual canoe and sailed it from Hawaii to Tahiti and back using only traditional navigation techniques. They plan to sail around the world.

My favorite exhibit was the feather cape owned by King Kalani’opu’u. This was not a duplicate. It was the original cape, from the 1779.The king gave this cape to Captain Cook. In return, Cook made such an ass of himself that the Hawaiians killed him. You can read the story here. Death of James Cook. (No, they never thought James Cook was a god.)

Another fav was Kaneikokala. When the museum was renovated recently, the workmen couldn’t move the statue. They decided this god enjoyed being where he was. They carefully covered him and did the restoration around him.

I round up my top three with an ancient double canoe, which was restored. They pointed out that the lashings are considered sacred. That makes sense. The lashings are what holds everything together. Wood is strong, but the person doing the lashings better know what he is doing.

As usual, I will put a couple of pics in the web site. I hope all are doing well.

We had another day of very good weather. We thought that with the holiday over, Balboa Park wouldn’t be very crowded. How wrong we were. Not only is school still out, butthe first Tuesday of the month is free day. Every family within 100 miles with kids went to Balboa Park today. We spent out time at the Natural History museum. We broke early for lunch and managed to have a very short wait for some pretty decent food.

From the famous people files: You saw James Bond in the pool by himself (Skyfall – Shanghai). You saw Paul Newman in the pool by himself (The Color of Money). Now you can see Danita in the pool by herself (taken from our balcony). Pretty cool, huh?

One thing we don’t often get while on a cruise is good Tex-Mex food. So it’s tacos for us tonight. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain. We’ll be boarding the ship around 11:00. Then it’s five days at sea to get to Hawaii.

I’ll add two more pics on the website. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

A shot of Balboa Park

A somewhat unnatural dinosaur at the Natural History Museum

We had a wonderful flight to San Diego. It was only 60% full. Danita took the isle, I took the window, and we had an empty seat between us. The only problem was, it was one of the first flights of the day. We set our alarm to 3:30 Eastern time and stayed awake until 8:00 Pacific time. The hotel was generous, offering us free breakfast before we could check in. It helped that most of their guests were hung over from whatever they did on New Year’s Eve, keeping their breakfast open unusually late.

We spent much of the day at Balboa park, visiting the car museum and the aerospace museum. It’s not far from our hotel as the crow flies, but we had to pick up to pedestrian bridges over I-5. WE walked about 3.5 miles, not counting the walking we did inside the museums.

For dinner, we had a Domino’s Pizza, located across across the street. I’ll put a few pics on the web site.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

An organ rehearsal entertained a small crowd.

Loui’s car traveled from CA to NY and back to CA without ever stopping. They refueled while traveling. They even changed tires without stopping.

Sitting in a DeLorean was every bit as bad as they say.