A Long Time Coming

A Long Time Coming was Originally Posted on January 14, 2009 by lavarock

I’ve been offline for a while in more ways than one.

On December 24th, I was off to Florida to keep my Mom company while my Sister flew to Vegas for a few days to celebrate her birthday. I shut down the website because I would not be able to ship things and I was running out of coffee at the time.

While sitting at my Kona airport gate, I watched a man on a cellphone. He was walking all around the area pulling a roller-type case back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. This continued for at least 10 or 15 minutes. I was tempted to yell at him to sith down and give us a break.

My flight went from Kona to Honolulu and then on to Houston with a final destination of Orlando. I tried to get bumped in each airport to no avail. Not that I wasn’t wanting to get to my destination, but if I could break the trip up and get a bunch of money for the delay, I would be happier! The holidays area perfect time to get bumped, especially when there are airport delays and many people fight for too few seats.

Although Orlando is a nice airport I have to admit I just cannot figure out the place and got very confused getting from the Orlando Airport to Ocala. Trying to follow the directions Thrifty gave me got me back to airport arrivals and not then the opposite direction of the toll road. I made another wrong turn north of Orlando and ended up on a different toll road. GGGRRRRRRR! I spent over a half hour on the cell phone with my Sister, getting a “talk-in” to my destination. My Sister lives quite a distance out of Ocala and it made the trip all that longer.

I enjoyed a number of things during the trip; many of them others would find strange. Aldi Foods opened a store in Ocala and my Sister and Mom have never been there. I had a chance to take Mom there to see the bargains. Compared to Hawaii the deals are fantastic, but even by Florida standards, the prices were still great. Milk my Sister says costs $3.50 or so was priced at $2.67 or so. Cans of soup were 49 cents compared to lots more in regular stores. Later in the week my friend Jeff came up to visit and he too was introduced to Aldi. I believe that when one opens near him, he may well start shopping there.

I took advantage of trips to dollar stores and my favorite, Big Lots, to buy some things that either I cannot get here in Hawaii or canot get cheaply. I found reading glasses at $2 and some sunglasses I decided I needed to drive in Floridas sunlight. I even found a cheap neck pillow for my return trip on the plane.

My Mom has never been a fan of pets. I think that is because all us kids wanted pets but never got the “taking care of” part down to a science. There also is the problem that when you have had lots of pets, you have also had lots of reasons to either give away or outlive the pets. Many of us know the sadness of losing a pet. Anyway, my Mom and Sister were outside Wal-Mart a while back and someoe was giving away a little terrier-like puppy. For my Mom it was love at first sight. It only took me a couple hours to see just how loveable the dog is. “Pepper” has that way with people.She would be sleeping with my Mom but when Mom got up to go to the bathroom, “Pepper” would come bounding down the hall and jump up on my bed to give me a little “Pepper” time.

My Sisters dog “Iggy” is a schnauzer-type dog and about the same color of “Pepper” which looks silver. “Iggy” really didn’t like me at first and would bark when I stood up or walked by. It only took “Iggy” a few hours to jump into my lap to sleep.

My Sister has had the third dog, “Sam” , for at least 13 years now and I remember him from many years ago. “Sam” is the dog that my Sister went back to when she was considering moving here to Hawaii. She didn’t think he would make the transition to the islands. “Sam” has some hip problems and is missing some of his front teeth. He is a sweet dog too but was more content to sleep on the couch than on someones bed at night.

My friend Gary came down from Atlanta and spent the night, then he and I drove to Orlando for a Disney Adventure. We stayed at Pop Culture and got a Park Hopper pass. By the 1st night we had been on most of the rides and through most of the parks which Gary had scheduled. We had been there before so we could jump around all we wanted. The next day we went to Animal Kingdom and took the Safari. I think it was the highpoint of the trip. I had never been to that park or any similar to it. Even with the digital camera set for action photos, a number of mine came out blurry. I think the problem is when I extended part optical zoom to digital zoom. Even so, I still have lots of nice photos. I think I found a service where I can easily upload photos and make them available for my blog. I may try that with these Florida pictures.

Two local news items in Florida were John Travoltas son’s death. He will be buried near my Sisters place in Ocala. Second is an ongoing story of a Mother thought to have killed her daughter and then a wild set of lies and misdirections to the police investigators.

I was scheduled to wake up on Thursday the 8th at 3am to get to Orlando for my flight back home. At 8pm the night before, I got very ill and almost cancelled my trip back. I had slightly considered trip insurance but have never taken it out. This time it would have been in my best interest. I tosses and turned all night and never did get any sleep. So at 4am I got into the car and headed south towards Orlando. I took advantage of both service plazas to use the facilities and did my best to stay awake.

My Sister had given me directions to the airport, but unfortunately, the car rental return spot is no where near the airport. I spent another 1/2 hour getting on and off toll roads trying to find gas and the return place.

I tried to get bumped again, if for no reason than to get a hotel room and get some sleep. On the flight to Newark, I was again unable to sleep and hardly ate. At Newark I had more layovers and finally started an 11 hour flight to Honolulu. You guessed it, just short naps on that flight, little food and pretty uncomfortable. It was all my fault, not that of the airline.

I just missed getting an earlier flight in Honolulu and arrived in Kona on time, only to have to wait for an extra 45 minutes for my ride which had a delay for my pickup. This was 24 hours after my getting in the car to drive to the airport.

I got to Sandra’s after 11pm to retriever my retriever “Koa”. I thought that would be easy. because I was ill, my Sister had given me a windbreaker to wear. I would have taken that off but was trying to stay warm until I felt better. I was hoarse and had picked up a smell of cigarette smoke from my Sisters house. It was very dark out there,a I only had a small penlight flashlight and no idea which kennel my dog was in. In a hoarse voice I pleaded with the dogs to keep quiet and I reached my arm into each area trying to feel the heart-shaped tag hanging from my dog’s collar. All of the dogs know me, so I had no thought that this could be dangerous until I finally found Koa and entered that kennel run with 2 other dogs. IHe could not recognize my voice and kept running away from me. It was at least 5 minutes of chasing him until I finally “collared” him and got him to get a good smell of me.

Getting home after midnight I did a quick unpack of a couple items and immediately got into bed to sleep. I woke up a mere 5 hours later, yet felt pretty well rested, even though it was only real sleep since leaving Florida.

Friday was spent taking care of my health and then Saturday I went into work. I have been careful not to spread whatever I had, and I’m not sure what I had. It may have been one illness or a combination of a cold and food poisoning. All I can say is I was not well for days.

The other day we had a front come in and had some heavy rain. I lost a papaya tree which had all the malings of growing the largest papayas I have ever seen! The tree is lying on the ground and the roots are still intact, but I doubt any of the fruit will ripen any.

Just before I left on my trip I reworked my nursery area for the coffee trees. I had the sprinkler working automatically every two days and just enough shade to keep the plants from burning in the sun. The storm took both canopies and dashed them to the ground in twisted rubble. Some coffee farmers up closer to town lost power for anywhere from half a day to a full day!

While I was gone, Halemaumau has slowed down flooding the atmosphere with vog. This is good and bad news. Although our Kileaua volcano has been active since 1983, this other crater has been more active and the cause of lots of volcanic smog (Vog). The air now is clearer and I have had many night recently with perfect views of the stars. The drawbacs are twofold. First, people have a bit less chance of seeing volcanic activity in the Volcaneos National Park. The smoke stream was impressive since there was no actual lava flowing in the park. The second drawback is that with the clearer skies, the sun heats up the island it it gets very hot out there.

With that storm gone, we now have a new storm causing us some issues. Within the next couple of days we expect ocean swells to arrive. Oahu will host 30 foot wave faces! With me afraid to go on some of the rides at Disney, imagine how far I will stay from 30 foot waves!

I took delivery of a tractor for the farm, and am almost ready to finish my 5 acre area of new coffee. I received most of my water pipes and valves for the irrigation system. On Thursday I will receive my flail mower and hope to clear the high grass up the upper part of the farm. I will need to start hiring people to work for me at least, part-time. I need to have rocks moved, more holes punched for trees, a long trench dug for the main water pipe, the pipes and valves all hooked up and then the water pump attached. There are gutters and a roof to be repaired and when all is hooked up and tested, I can get part of the cost offset on my contract.

There is more, but I’m sure you are as tired following along reading as I am writing. Until next time…