Retired Windmills
Our captain was very proud that he was early, and the gate for our next flight was only a couple doors away. I had time to go to the bathroom again, and then it was time to board. We got an exit row again that we had to share with a guy on the aisle. We finished our movie and watched another one. Then we started a third movie, but I slept through most of it. We had to switch over to the other laptop to watch the rest of the movie, but the battery died about 30 seconds from the end of it. By then we were landing.
The airports in Hawaii are all outside. There are fences and walls for security, but everything else is open and exposed. There are roofs to keep you from getting rained on, but no jetways and certainly no air conditioning. We found a rental car bus to take us to the rental lot, but Berck remembered when we go there that we had gotten on the Avis bus instead of the Thrifty bus. Fortunately, Thrifty was just across the little road. The Thirfty lady convinced us to upgrade to a Jeep for $30 more. So we had a Wrangler for three days for $160! I changed from my T-shirt and long-sleeve button down into a short sleeve linen shirt in the Thrifty washroom while Berck rented. Then Berck changed into a T-shirt and shorts while I tried to figure out how to take the Jeep's top off. There are several clamps to unclamp, three windows to zip off and remove, pillars to fold back, and then a whole top to bring down. A guy returning with another Jeep he had just washed came over to help us figure it out.
One good thing about the Jeep is that it has two cigarette lighter outlets, so we could plug up the radar detector in one and recharge a laptop or phone or camera battery in the other.
Of course, now our packs and laptops were exposed, not that a locked Wrangler is hard to get into—you just unzip the windows. We drove down the road a little to find lunch (United doesn't give out snacks anymore, and we were starving) and had to put the top all back together again. We ate at the Kona Brewing Company, which has surprisingly excellent beer. We ate delicious Cajun seared ahi and a parmesan sausage, red pepper/onion pizza, which reminded us of Picklefish, although the crust wasn't great. Berck ordered a winter wheat, and I ordered the lager, but we switched and enjoyed each other's choice. The winter wheat tasted of passion fruit and was delicious. I also couldn't resist having a brandywine, since Berck was driving.
Thus fortified, we continued south along the coastal highway. The Big Island is the least densely populated of all the islands, and we soon passed out of the populated area, through coffee bush fields, macadamia nut orchards, and finally into cow pastures. Each of the Hawaiian Islands has its own series of ecosystems, ranging from dry scrubby desert-like areas to rain forests, depending on where the rain clouds form over a mountain. We turned south at the southern tip of the coastal highway and headed toward the southern most part of the United States.
The airports in Hawaii are all outside. There are fences and walls for security, but everything else is open and exposed. There are roofs to keep you from getting rained on, but no jetways and certainly no air conditioning. We found a rental car bus to take us to the rental lot, but Berck remembered when we go there that we had gotten on the Avis bus instead of the Thrifty bus. Fortunately, Thrifty was just across the little road. The Thirfty lady convinced us to upgrade to a Jeep for $30 more. So we had a Wrangler for three days for $160! I changed from my T-shirt and long-sleeve button down into a short sleeve linen shirt in the Thrifty washroom while Berck rented. Then Berck changed into a T-shirt and shorts while I tried to figure out how to take the Jeep's top off. There are several clamps to unclamp, three windows to zip off and remove, pillars to fold back, and then a whole top to bring down. A guy returning with another Jeep he had just washed came over to help us figure it out.
One good thing about the Jeep is that it has two cigarette lighter outlets, so we could plug up the radar detector in one and recharge a laptop or phone or camera battery in the other.
Of course, now our packs and laptops were exposed, not that a locked Wrangler is hard to get into—you just unzip the windows. We drove down the road a little to find lunch (United doesn't give out snacks anymore, and we were starving) and had to put the top all back together again. We ate at the Kona Brewing Company, which has surprisingly excellent beer. We ate delicious Cajun seared ahi and a parmesan sausage, red pepper/onion pizza, which reminded us of Picklefish, although the crust wasn't great. Berck ordered a winter wheat, and I ordered the lager, but we switched and enjoyed each other's choice. The winter wheat tasted of passion fruit and was delicious. I also couldn't resist having a brandywine, since Berck was driving.
Thus fortified, we continued south along the coastal highway. The Big Island is the least densely populated of all the islands, and we soon passed out of the populated area, through coffee bush fields, macadamia nut orchards, and finally into cow pastures. Each of the Hawaiian Islands has its own series of ecosystems, ranging from dry scrubby desert-like areas to rain forests, depending on where the rain clouds form over a mountain. We turned south at the southern tip of the coastal highway and headed toward the southern most part of the United States.