Just one more Blog Post

This one is a short epilogue, assembled to show a few more videos as well as the 'Andrea and Fiske' FitBit statistics for the trip!  Those familiar with our blogs will recognize our tradition of step counts.  We were interested here because we intended to relax......and not push ourselves too much, as it was only a week.  Our perspective shifted a bit the volume of our Hawaiian food intake! We tried, minimally, to pick up the pace a bit in terms of moving our laden bodies around!  It is a tough metric to evaluate.  Our daily pace was not too impressive, but our weekly total of 28 miles sounds good to us! Now we need to pick up the daily exercise routines and walks!

Also included here are a few more videos that did not make it into earlier posts.  

Mahalo to Hawaii.......a two day post for the return trip

One of the changes with our trip this year is that we decided to fly non-stop both ways.  This is particularly a challenge on the return flight as it necessitates a 'red-eye' through the night.  Normally we make a stop and spend the night somewhere in California.  This time we decided to push through the full distance!  This means we will remove the 'daily' distinction and treat it as one long day!

The nice thing about this is that we left in the afternoon.  Our flight was at 3:30.......and +/- 10 hours later we were in Boston around 6 AM.  We got a late check out at the hotel and had the morning to goof off.  We got up around 8:00 and had coffee on the balcony, then headed down for a swim in the ocean (and for me the hot tub!) and then headed back to get organized and have a slow breakfast.  The only interruption was a series of emails, followed by phone calls, regarding some questions on one of my projects that the team felt 'could not wait.'  In fairness, the person that initially called probably did not know we were on vacation.  Anyway, after going at a leisurely pace we had to pick up the speed and head out a little after 1:00.

We stopped to fill the rental car with gas and had no traffic problems at all getting to the airport.  It seemed to be a quiet day everywhere, including security, and we got to the gate about an hour before the flight.  All went well, except the food was a bit weird on the flight.....and ultimately we did not really sleep.  The lie-back seats were ok, but we just weren't tired.  Writing this around 5:30 Thursday night, I can tell you the 'exhaustion' is really starting to hit.  Fiske III was nice and came over with some groceries and we had lunch here.  I ended up having 4 hours of ZOOM calls during the day that were inescapable......and rather tiring.

The worst thing had to be arriving at Logan with light snow and a temperature of 34 degrees.  As unpleasant as that was, I guess it put an exclamation mark on how much we enjoyed 8 days of sun in Hawaii!  Ironically, the only time it rained was as we approached the rental car drop off at the airport.......shedding a tear for our departure, haha!

Working in Kailua

 Tuesday required a bit of an early start.  So far we have not had to use the alarm, but today we needed to have breakfast by 8:00.  Our early start greeted us with a spectacular sunrise. For the second day of the GTAB meetings we were headed out to Sheryl Seaman's house in Kailua, which is about a 30 minute drive. I had also been assigned passengers who did not have a car, which included Peter Arsenault (St. Louis) and Brad Perkins.  Each were staying in a different hotel which meant I needed to leave the Kahala by about 9:10.

The timing actually worked out fine and we were able to enjoy a quiet, relaxed breakfast.  The quiet, however, was somewhat interrupted at 9:00 by some renovation construction work.  We had been warned about this......and it was a bit of a nuisance.  During the morning, however, Andrea had a spa appointment and spent some time in the main lobby lounge (porch) overlooking the dolphin pool.  

I headed out pretty much on time, first picking up Peter at the Park Lane Hotel and then Brad at the Kaimana Hotel.  Interesting that the Kaimana is the new name for the 'New Otani' hotel which we have stayed at in the past, and is where the Hau Tree restaurant is located.  Brad, however, was a bit late coming down.  We ended up heading out for Kailua about 15 minutes late.  We made up a bit of the time and arrived at Sheryl's house around 10:15.  

I will spare the details of the meeting (which was all good).  We had several board members on a ZOOM call for most of the day, including several from Shanghai in the afternoon.  Jumping to lunch, just like last year, we walked to Buzz's for lunch (15 minute walk).  This is a rather well-known fish shack on the Kailua beach with great sandwiches and is always packed.  We had a reservation for 10, which was great as there was already a line outside.  Lunch was more than we needed and everyone was 'replete!'

I had made it known that I thought it would be great to finish on schedule so that I could head back to the Kahala for a swim with Andrea!  The balance of the afternoon was to be a happy hour and a swim in Sheryl's pool!  I ended up driving Brad back to his hotel as he was still suffering from jet lag coming in from Mumbai on Sunday night. 

The schedule worked out fine and I was able to say my good-byes and head out at around 3:30.  Andrea and I had time for a beach walk and a swim.......and even a short nap.  Dinner tonight was at 7:30 back downtown at Orchid's at the Halekulani.  We had talked to them on Saturday night when we were at 'House Without a Key' in order to ask for an outside table on the porch. Everything worked out great and we had a truly fantastic meal for our last night in Honolulu.  

PICTURES FROM THE DRIVE BACK TO THE HOTEL

A Day at the University

 Going a bit backwards here as we have taken a couple days off........and have not been keeping up with the blog.  At the moment we are on the flight back from Honolulu.  We are somewhere over the Pacific about 3 hours into our 10 hour flight.  We should be landing in Boston tomorrow morning around 6:00 AM........so we have plenty of time here to catch up!  Actually it would be great if we could fall asleep!

Monday morning was the first of my two days of work with the Advisory Board of the Global Track program for the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii Manoa.  We try to meet twice a year to review student work and ongoing progress/issues with the program.  It is a dual degree (M'Arch and Doctorate of Architecture) which is shared between UH and Tongji University in Shanghai.

We didn't start until 10:00 which gave us a chance to go for a swim first thing and indulge in the buffet breakfast before I headed off to campus.  Andrea got a day of deserved relaxation at the pool and the beach!  At the School of Architecture we had a fairly full agenda (boring details to be left out) but made some good progress on new academic planning and next year's cohort.  We had pizza with the students for lunch and were able to wrap up discussions by about 4:00.  I made it back to the hotel by 4:30 hoping for a swim, but we decided to rest and have a shower instead.  

Our schedule was driven by needing to go back to the school for a lecture at 6:00.  We ended up a few minutes late, which was fine.......as the lecture was being given by Brad Perkins of Perkins Eastman.  He is an old acquaintance from New York who was there with me and Dean Clark Llewellyn at the start of the program 15 years ago.  He talks a lot and is not a very exciting personality on the stage!  Anyway, it was all fine and a group of us went out for a nice dinner at 'The Little Plum,' a nice Japanese restaurant just off campus.  The food was great and everyone seemed to have a really good time.

I will wrap things up here, but will add that Andrea had a very calm and relaxing day......and had the energy to make dinner engaging!  We made it to bed by midnight.

I just realized that I did not take many photos today!  Fortunately Andrea picked up the slack. She actually takes much better pictures!

Below are a couple of shots from the School of Architecture and our Board Meeting......not too photogenic!

WAITING FOR A PHOTO TO BE SENT FROM UHM

And Even More Videos

 
After this we will go back to trying to include videos in the daily blog........as the current approach is causing some file size challenges. 

A Few More Videos

 

Looks like we are only able to load 3-4 video clips per blog post.......so we will add a couple of separate posts here. 

Catching up on Videos!

We are sending out a separate blogpost in order to catch up on videos.  For whatever reason, we just have not embedded these in our daily posts.  We are not sure if this will all work because we may overload the capacity of the blogpost limits, but will try anyway.  If not in one post, we may do several. 

THE LOBBY BAR AT TURTLE BAY

THE WAVES AND SURF AT TURTLE BAY

SOME SURFING ACTION......BUT NOT TOO MUCH!

Enjoying Kahala

 We woke up to another beautiful sunny day.  The views from our room are amazing.  As it is a corner room we can see both to the north (hills and lush greenery over the golf course) as well as to the east (over the ocean and up to Hanauma Bay).  We took advantage of the nice weather and went down for a swim in the pool before breakfast. We went at a fairly slow pace.....back to the room for a shower and eventually heading down to eat.  The strategy of waiting until after 9:00 really works, and we were able to get a nice table on the terrace under an umbrella. 

We took another round of checking out the dolphins and went for a long walk along the beach.  The day just slipped away.  We had another light lunch at the Seaside Grille.  It is a small but wonderful cafe along the beach near the pool area.

Beyond that, it was another one of those 'blurry' days where you are not really sure what you did.  It was. just a pleasant day.  Dinner was at the Hau Tree restaurant at the Kaimana Beach Hotel.  This is about half way from Kahala to downtown Honolulu and is a place we always try to visit, as the outdoor tables are very close to the beach, and wonderfully romantic under the Hau trees.  We got there a bit early and talked to the maitre'd and asked for a beach side table.  He was very nice and worked something out for us.......the 'anniversary' celebration again!  We waited for a bit in the bar and struck up an interesting conversation with the two bartenders and got introduced to a very nice Hawaiian gin called 'Fid Street.'

Dinner was amazing and the sunset was beautiful.  This was quite the evening!