Adventures?

What do you do when guesting a friend in Hawaii? This question kept us up for an hour one night as we compiled a list impossibly long for a one week visit. In the end we decided to start simply. And of course our plans got complicated. Our host convinced us to work for a few hours the morning of Jon's arrival picking desiccated coffee beans (vog or drought, it's hard to say). A trick seemed to have occurred since we ended up picking mostly alone as Man Host picked for 30 minutes before heading to Costco to buy a computer and She Host just wasn't around much. So it goes. At lunch time we broke off for food and sped off to the coffee shop before being corralled for more picking.

We left the coffee shop in plenty of time to stop by a farm to buy a lei on the way to the airport (we'd given up on making one for various reasons, some of which included late night rummy games and g&ts), never suspecting that all the farms and their roadside stands would shut down by 3pm. So it happened that our quest for a farm fresh lei resulted in frantic driving up an down a half dozen side roads and no lei. Fortunately the airport sells fresh leis for very decent prices. And since we arrived minutes before Jon walked out the gate there was plenty of time to toss a fiver at a lady in a flowered shirt and run off with a pretty purple plumeria lei in plenty of time (30 seconds or so) to greet Jon at the gate.

The huge grin he wore to greet us never wavered until after he'd left the island (or so I assume). And there was rarely a time that some variation of "oh my gawd this is AWEsome," wasn't leaving his lips. Watching his enthusiasm, even for the airport, was so much fun and really renewed our awe (which honestly, hadn't flagged) at the beauty around us.

How did we introduce him to the Big Island? A short drive through the vog brought us to the Kona Brewing Company's brewhouse. Pizza and beer and a 5 gallon keg of Pipeline Porter to go.

It was great to see Jon and fun to have our first guest!

Check out his "I'm in Hawaii" Jesus pose.