Kaimusailing

Hilo, Hawaii, is the nation’s rainiest city and so far it hasn’t been rainy during this visit until last night and now today, downpours, and a steady rain giving us a quiet restful day. Last night I was treated to a magnificent dinner, perfection from the kitchen. We had baked chicken, cole slaw made with grandpa’s dressing recipe, potato salad of gourmet quality, and excellent guacamole made with avocados from the tree outside. It is the best guacamole I have ever tasted. My younger brother arrived and we had a group photo, brothers three.
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The next day was rainy and we relaxed and ended up souvenir shopping and getting some fresh basil and a large bulb of garlic to make a shrimp dish at my brother’s. At his house they had 2 lbs. of beautiful shrimp and avocados off one of their avocado trees. I forgot to get a lime or lemon and my sister in law went out and got a lime off their lime tree. It was early, but in a while she put on a pot of water to cook the pasta for the dish. The pasta was rainbow garden rotini, my favorite.
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I had to get to work. Prep the avocados, one for the sauce, one for the salad. What beautiful avocados, yellow flesh with a little dark green near the skin, scoop out with a spoon. The first one, the softest, was put in the food processor along with a handful of the Hawaiian basil, large leaves, aromatic, and 4 cloves of garlic. The lime yielded a tablespoon or more of juice and that went in on top of the rest in the processor. It took a while, but the result was a green creamy mixture. I added black pepper and some garlic salt.
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The pasta was in a colander, the second avocado was in nice little pieces on my cutting board, the shrimp was ready to go, but with tails on. I put the pasta in a large bowl and dumped in the avocado pieces, then scraped the avocado sauce out of the processor bowl onto the rest, the shrimp had tail on so I prepped them by removing the tails and adding them to the salad.
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Next mix it all together, it takes a while, lots of parts in the mix, bring a small plate with a shrimp and a couple of the rainbow pasta out to my brother who is ascertaining that the wine is OK, he tastes and then nephew tastes, they say good, whew, I’m done with cooking. Yes, the wine is good, pinot noir from Black Box. Red wine with pasta? Well, we have seafood chowder with tomato in the sauce, pink sauce, you can have red wine or white zinfandel.
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We sit on the lanai while birds came to the bird feeders. The food is rich, the wine is smooth, the birds are colorful, but when I turn to take a photo they flee. The bird feeders are empty.
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The next day we come back and the birds do too. We stop at the grocers in Keaau and look for ahi tuna for sushi but find steaks on sale, grass fed at very low prices. I buy four steaks, a little over 6 lbs. of meat. At the house in Paradise Park we while away the afternoon. Niece wants me to go with her to watch her partner bulldoze the land down by Kalapana, but she really wants her dad to go. Time passes and we don’t go anywhere.
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The steaks are cooked on the skillet for 2:30 on each side. The steaks are huge, covering a large plate, each. I had a triangle of nice meat from one of the steaks.
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The next day we had one more visit for lunch and we waited for daughter and partner to arrive from Kona. They took me to the airport where I passed through TSA quickly, it’s so much nicer at a small airport with fewer passengers, no cattle drives. I was flying Southwest who is reputed to have lower fares and better service.
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In Honolulu I would have to make the long journey from the interisland terminal to the international terminal. I rented a smart carte and endured the hike. At the gate I again waited to be among the last to board. I ended up sitting next to the largest person I have ever sat next to aboard an airplane. The flight attendant felt sorry for me and gave me a couple of amaretto’s to add to my coffee. I did not, could not, sleep. I spent the time playing woodoku on the cell phone. I find the game very difficult at the higher levels. I was up to level 70 something during this flight.
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We landed in Phoenix and then took off for Philadelphia, an airport that I hate. True to form, the airline and airport I both hate really socked it to me. Our flight was a bit late and my layover time was like 45 minutes. We landed at a gate in the B concourse and my outgoing flight was at the F concourse. I grabbed an idle smart carte and went as fast as I could through the airport. This was a very long trek, at least a mile, from one end of the airport to the other.
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The flight to Salisbury was in a small biz jet kind of plane. My seat number was 1A, across from the flight attendant’s station at the front of the plane. The flight was like a sight seeing flight and only about 20 minutes in the air.
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At Salisbury I was waiting for my prearranged taxi ride. She said she would be late, about an hour after I landed. Two taxi’s in front of the terminal offered me rides but I said I had one coming along in a little while. While waiting I spoke with an Egyptian-American woman who was also speaking with an old family friend who just happened to be going through the airport. She offered to give him a lift, they were both local to Salisbury. Meanwhile my ride texted me that she couldn’t make it. I ended up with the taxi the Egyptian gentleman had ordered and it took me to the marina in Crisfield. The gates were open because the Shanty was open for business.
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I stopped in the Shanty and had an Orange Crush. I went to SUNSPLASH and slept.
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The second day back, which due to time differences was like waking up at 2PM and feeling unwell to resume duties, it was getting hot, hot sun pouring down, I had enough water for a cup of coffee and I had the Hawaiian coffee brewing as well as frozen ham and cheese, and eggs two weeks old, at least, a sort of scrambled egg omelet which would accurately depict my brain at this point.
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I was fortified by the eggs, cheese, and ham. I was a mess, wearing the now obligatory yellow lifequard tee shirt and the red cheapo shorts from Walmart, maybe it was time to hit the showers, which I did.
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I had to go to the store to get bread, cheese, water, p-nut butter, and I brought along some chocolate covered macadamia nuts, to give out to Cuddily and Teri. We were meeting at the Legion. I had a meatloaf sandwich and 3 glasses of wine. I got antsy as the afternoon light got golden and then the sun set. I left and biked to the Shanty where I had 3 Orange Crushes. I was on Hawaiian time, stay out late drinking and sleep in late in the morning, hey, that’s kind of normal for me.
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The image is of the Orange Crush I had on arrival. I thought it was Thursday night, it was Friday night, I had been traveling for 40 hours.