Old Friends (Come and Gone)

Old Friends (Come and Gone) was Originally Posted on September 22, 2005 by lavarock

This blog is not quite as ominous as it sounds, as it could also be titled by the musical lyrics “There’s a Kind of Hush… All Over the World, Tonight”.

I was asleep and as I woke, the name and idea of this blog came to me. I got up t owrite it down quickly.

I just came back to the islands from a long trip to the mainland and what a trip! I left 3 weeks ago to visit relatives, friends and sell my car which is still on the mainland.

In order to use my Delta frequent flier miles and visit multiple cities, I had to do quite a bit of shuffling. Normally people fly roundtrip from city A to city B and return from city B to city A. An alternative is to fly into a city, stop along the way in an intermediate city and return back home. This “stopover” is useful if you want to say stopover in Las Vegas on the way back from picking up a winning lottery ticket. In my case, I used another lesser known procedure called an “open jaw” which allowed me to fly from city A to city B and return from city C to city A.

My actual Delta flights were to be from Honolulu to Daytona Beach Florida and return from Norfolk Virginia to Honolulu. I then scheduled a round trip flight from Kona to Honolulu to cover the outside of the trip and then scheduled two one-way trips, one from Daytona to Atlanta and another one-way from Atlanta to Norfolk. Although sounding hectic, it was quite doable and reasonably cheaper than booking a trip from Honolulu to Atlanta roundtrip and two separate roundtrips from Atlanta to Daytona and Norfolk. You have to trust me here

I won’t detail the whole trip but will pass along a few interesting items.

First, I wanted to take some pineapples from here to the mainland. Rather than pay perhaps $7 a piece for them at the airport (they come in a handy carrying case). I opted to buy 6 of the things at $2.99 each at COSTCO (the warehouse store) and pack them myself. You just have to make sure you tell the Agricultural Department when you check the box at the airport. I should have protected the pineapples a bit more than I did as they rode in the belly of the plane and got a bit cold on the trip. Still, I was the hit of Daytona and Atlanta when we cut into those things. The new “Gold” pineapples are absolutely sweet with no acid to bother the stomach. Even my Mom, who only thought she would try a piece, helped me finish a complete pineapple the first night there. In two days we went through 3 or 4 of the things ourselves and gave others away. The last pineapple ended up in Atlanta. I just wish I could have gotten one up to Norfolk, but pineapples are picked ripe.

Mom and I had a nice visit and we ate well and often. I even had an opportunity of visiting with a friend from my college days.

In Atlanta I stayed with a couple I have known for years. The husband and I used to work at Hewlett Packard. Gary has been storing some of my personal items, which did not sell previously and has had custody of my 1990 IROC Camaro. That car has now received a fresh coat of paint and will be up for sale very soon. I still need to work out the disposition of a few other items (one an antique).

While in Atlanta, timing could not have been better. HP is offering an “early retirement” to many people I used to work with. Many of us previous “retirees” crashed the party and had a very nice time talking story.

In the past few years, HP has been clearing out employees and buildings. The Perimeter Summit building used to hold 2100 HP employees. I think it is now down to a few hundred. HP used to completely fill the floors and now only occupies a few. Most of the employees have been let go or work from home. It truly is the end of an era and this is why being there to say goodbye to many friends was possible. Now the few left will rarely be in the same place ever again.

There are still people I wish I could have visited. Perhaps our paths will cross again. As an aside, in Honolulu on the way back home, I chatted with an HP Employee from Canada who also was involved in the retirement issue. We chatted like old friends and he almost missed his flight because of me J

Also in Atlanta I visited many of the old stomping grounds. These were restaurants or stores, which I don’t have here in Hawaii. A few memorable stops were Big Lots and Micro Center for knickknacks and electronics and Krystals, Ci Ci’s Pizza, Checkers and Golden Corral for food.

I had nice visits with friends and then onward and upward to Norfolk to see my Sister and her kids. Many of my nephews and great nephews are working now, so I saw them as they passed like ships in the night. One works all night stocking shelves and others work at an amusement park nearby. I think I saw every one of them at least once. A highlight of the trip was giving my Great Nephew his first Hawaiian shirt. It was the smallest one I could find, a Toddler 2 size! He will have to grow into it J

I was quite happy to return back in Kona after a very long and involved trip.

On the other hand, while I was gone, a number of file-sharing services shut their doors. One of these, WinMX will be sorely missed. I’m not talking about the file sharing part of the program; rather, I used the software to access a little known but widely used chat function. There were over 1500 chat rooms covering many different topics, all treated almost as an afterthought to those using the software for finding music or movies. I made many friends worldwide there over the years and hope that the servers will be reconfigured to allow us to chat again.

Prior to WinMX I used the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) which had even more rooms to talk in, but its popularity waned when I found WinMX. Perhaps that service will hold my interest again.

So you see, whether talking about traveling or talking about talking, the past 3 weeks held lots of talking and a lot of traveling. So it is now time for me to stop talking and start traveling back to bed. See, it is just 5am here now and I need to get back to bed.