Typically, my trip is over too soon. Tomorrow evening I fly home from Portland, into the fire and brimstone that is northern California, and back into what we think of as real life though I think if one does it right, travel is real life and work is the other thing we do from time to time.

I've spent the last couple of days exploring neighborhoods around Portland; though I think I haven't really even scratched the surface. My friends Bonnie and James moved up here several years back, and love it here; I rather suspect the 'tour' they've given us has been more a sales job for 'why move up to Portland'.

Portland is a funky town; I spent today trying to think of what it's like. It has some similarity to Santa Cruz, CA; but it's much more a place than Santa Cruz. It also has some similarity to Berkley, but Berkley has much more sense of self-importance. It finally occurred to me that it felt a bit like Austin; it's a college town, it's an oasis of culture and weirdness in a largely back-woods state, and it's a place which seems to see itself as apart from it's surrounds. It has a dynamic food scene (today's oddest treat; blue-cheese chocolate truffle), a somewhat unique music scene, and people on the street all seem a half step ahead of things, style-wise. Yet it's also very much a small town, not quite so cool as it thinks it is. You can see people trying to be cool.

I like this town. I don't, though, love it yet. I could immediately visualize living in Victoria (as I could when I was in Vancouver ten years ago). I actually pondered living in Seattle. Portland, though, I haven't yet come to terms with. I can't quite decide if it's self-aware funkiness more tips the scale toward appealing, or annoying.

Either way, it's a town I need to see more of. I don't know why it's taken so long to get up here to visit; the family I'm staying with are some of my favorite people in the world, and they've had an open offer extended to ages. It's not that far, and I can even see coming up here on two wheels some day, if I pick a good time of year for motorcycle travel.

I still haven't managed to get to Voodoo Donuts for a bacon maple bar, one of the key goals of my trip. I'm hoping to get that taken care of tomorrow. On the other hand, if I don't get there, it's one more reason to come back real soon now.

I kind of meant to keep a running log of my stay in Seattle as did in Victoria; or at least carry on a flirt-by-flirt, firework by firework overview.

I never quite got to my computer in seattle; maybe it was flaky WiFi, or maybe the lack of a decent writing surface in my room. Or maybe I was too busy by day and too beat at night.

I've been through Seattle a few times before, and sort of rated it as one of those 'what's the big fuss about' cities. The last three days in Seattle changed my mind completely. I drove in thinking, i should have stayed in Victoria, or gone to Vancouver; I left today thinking, I want to live here.

My hotel was almost exactly halfway between Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market; it would be hard to pick a more perfect spot for a first trip. This is the corner where the Seattle Fire started in 1889.

It's funny; my mental image of Seattle came from two sources. There was a teevee show around 1970; 'Here Come the Brides' or something like that. It presented 1860's Seattle as a folksy, rustic place.

That image stuck - though I can't recall ever actually watching the show at the time - until Seattle hit the public consciousness in a big way, thanks to Sub Pob Records and the Grunge scene. Somewhere around the same time, Starbucks started to its slow march toward world dominance.

My image of Seattle changed from from folksy to urban; like the rest of the country, I sort of noticed seattle for the first time in fifteen years or so. Trouble was, the new image was just as two dimensional as the old. What I saw wasn't that different than the music scene in San Francisco; punk, folk and metal bands all sort of converging on a common point, fueled by drugs, alcohol and coffee.

Several years ago, I came through the area on the way from one place and to another. What I saw was horrible traffic, crowds on tourists, and not much else. I pretty much got out of town quick as I could and haven't been interested in coming back since.

This week, I wiped out all that. Cheesy western teevee, grunge rock stereotypes, traffic and empty tourism; all gone.

What I realized the last few days is, I'd missed what made this city cool. The dynamic weather, the amazing views, the food, the culture. In one sweep of coast line, one can find two of the country's best ballparks, storied old quarter, world-class farmer's market, numerous museums, and thriving downtown.

Everywhere I looked there were shops, restaurants, bars, and yes, coffee houses, that were full of locals as well as tourists. People live here; the tourists spots are such because places like Pike Place Market are real, not hopped up for tourists.

I didn't get to do half of what I wanted; I missed the Experience Music Project, I missed several restaurants, several museums. I didn't get to shop for produce and cook (no kitchen in my hotel). I didn't have time for any live music. On the other hand, I managed to get to Pike Place a couple of times, found a tattoo shop I've wanted to visit for years (Vyvyn Lazonga), toured Seattle's underground, visited the Space Needle (something I've wanted to see since I was little. I saw forth-of-july fireworks and visited the Utilikilts store. I got out to see locks in Ballard, took my kids to Archie McPhee, and even managed to catch a musical with them (Aida, one of their favorite shows).

What I proved to myself is that I'd completely missed seattle last time I was here; and that I needed to spend a whole lot more time here than had this week. I liked Seattle enough that I started to visualize living here; the only things that stopped me from pricing houses were the thought that I'd just seen un-seasonably warm weather, and that the main high tech employer in town happens to be Micro$oft.

Plans for next time, though; condo, not hotel, so I can show Pike Place and then cook. And plan for much more time, so I can actually hang out.

It wasn't planned this way, but my family and I wound up in Victoria, BC for Canada Day (Or as my kids insist on calling it, 'Canadia Day').

This wound up being a lucky coincidence; the dates were picked around my mother-in-law's trip to Everett for a high-school reunion, my work schedule, and my kids summer school. We had no idea, when booking, that Canada Day fell on july 1st, nor did we think about the significance of this.

July fourth means little to me, apart from being the day we used to have fireworks (before local communities decided to punish the responsible many in order to weed out the irresponsible few, by outlawing all fireworks). America may be my country of birth, but now, and even when I was a child, it all too often it represents what's wrong in western culture. While I will root for American teams in the Olympics, and think the ideas upon which this country was founded are pretty damn good, I can't in good conscience stand for the national anthem or salute the flag; these things carry too much aura for me of mindless, reactionary, love-it-or-leave-it patriotism.

Particularly in this bush-era, post 9/11 world, the stars and strips says to me, 'we don't care of we're stupid and wrong'. Yes, I'm cynical, but I remember the sixties, when we fought another war far away for no reason anyone could justify; I remember when we wore american american flags on our jackets to say 'it's my country too.' We fought a culture war then, and thought we were winning. I don't always have the resolve to keep fighting it.

So it was particularly refreshing to come to a country in the midst of celebrating it's symbolic birth, when it's a country I have no emotional baggage with.

Canada is a northern neighbor, a country that's produced some of my favorite bands and musicians, a place where they share my passion hockey. Ok, sure, they don't know how to play football correctly and they kind of sound like Bob and Doug; but they have far saner policies on drug enforcement and gay rights, and they make much stronger beer. The sum is still pretty largely positive. So I could embrace the festival spirit easily, letting go my own opinions on nationalism and politics. Today, it was about red and white flags, fireworks, beer, and pretty girls (have I mentioned the girls in Victoria? Ok, let me put it this way - grrrrrowl.)

Victoria does a pretty good job of throwing a party. My hotel faces the Legislature building across Victoria's Inner Harbor; this means I was greeted at 8am - yes, 8am - by loud, live music from a stage across the water. This pretty much went on all day; bands, DJ's, speakers. It was going on when I went to breakfast, a couple hours later when I walked into town, and it was still going when we came out of the Empress Hotel after having afternoon tea.

I felt wildly out of place; I wasn't wearing red. It looked like everyone walking up and down the street, locals and tourists alike, were decked from head to toe in red and white, including a number of girls who'd found clever ways to fashion Canada's flag into tops and mini-dresses. Every car seemed to sport a flag, and everyone looked happy. No one was protesting anything; no anti-war demonstrations, no rallies, no nonsense; it felt like the entire city had set down it's issues for a party.

The best part about all this was how my kids reacted to it.

We planned a brief foray into Canada just because Ruby, my youngest, has no memory of being anywhere but the USA; I wanted to give her the experience of spending money that isn't all uniformly green. I wanted her to see road signs in metric; I wanted her to see what it's like to cross a border. But today's celebration gives her more than an experience of place, it gives her a sense of national identity. A week ago, she thought of Canada as a name on a map, and a place where sports teams or certain family friends used to live. Today, it's a people. It's a culture. She'll never forget seeing people in red, celebrating a flag and a nation that meant nothing to her only days ago.

Businesses were giving out small Canadian flags; our hotel has pins in a dish on the concierge desk. My kids decorated themselves with flags and pins, and dug through their luggage for any red garments they had. Happy Canada Day, they said, to anyone they talked to.

The party went on into the evening, culminating with a terrific firework display which was launched directly in front of my hotel; we were able to see both the display in the sky, but also the pyrotechnicians on the ground and the apparatus they used to put on the show. People had been camping out for hours to get a good viewing spot; but we had best possible vantages, both from our room, and from the hotel's rear patio, only a few yards from the launch point.

It was a terrific day; one of those experiences one can't really have, other than traveling with kids. Watching some vague concept become real and tactile and human; watching how that lights them up. I've traveled a lot, and those moments don't come every day, not even in every trip. But when they come, they make every penny spent pay off a hundred-fold.

Tomorrow, we leave Victoria for the states. The only good thing about this, for me, is that my iPhone will once again work over EDGE without paying insane international data rates. Apart from that, I can't think of anything I look forward to. I want another week in BC, at least. But the three days I've had are some of the best travel days I've had in quite a long while.

I'll admit, though, that I've been singing Blame Canada all day.

Victoria, BC; land of pretty waitresses.

I know. It sounds funny. But oddly, it's true. I've been on Victoria Island for roughly 30 hours. That's a dinner, a breakfast, a lunch, and another dinner.

It's not just that every waitress who's waited on me has been unusually pretty. It's that every waitress I've seen has been unusually pretty. And not just the waitresses; this includes busers and hosteses. Hell, there are even pretty waiters.

What do they do, farm them? Is it the water? That clear Canadian air?

At lunch today, the waitress who served us looked every-so-slightly like Christine Taylor. She was distractingly cute. The woman who seated us at breakfast, a dark-haired british girl, had a sort of school-teacher, marion-librarian look, like she she had a little bit of wild thing lurking behind a a professional demeanor. And she wasn't even the prettiest of a staff of pretty girls (and boys) at Canoe Brew Pub.

This afternoon, I sat in my hotel's lounge watching a bartender and cocktail waitress who could have been sisters; olive-skinned and exotic, and even when I pictured them together.

Even the girls who waited on us tonight at the snack-shack at Butchart Gardens were cute as hell; one corn-fed, plump and sweet, the other skinny and pale with way too much back eye makeup.

The killer, though was Saturday night's dinner. The hostess looked like a twenty-year-old Mira Sorvino, in a dress that came about as close to naked as one can be and still work in public. This girl was so stunningly pretty I had trouble paying attention to my meal, ordering the wrong dish and forgetting (three times) what I meant to order to drink. I can't remember a thing I ate, and was almost completely unable to maintain a thread of conversation.

Her dress was made of some sort of clingy white jersey; cut loose in the front, it had the effect, almost, of some greco-roman toga. But when back-lit, the dress went nearly see-through, with that light-between-the-thighs thing that makes me insane. When she turned, the back managed to fit her hips and butt like a second skin, revealing the color, and every seam (and the exact location of the label) on her lacey thong.

This is the kind of girl who should be getting paid to take off her clothes; the fact that she'd look amazing out of them could not have been more clear. Every single time she walked though the dining room, I lost track of my meal. She's the kind of girl who's going to stick in my head for a while and might turn up, some day, as a character in some piece of fiction.

Is this some secret, that Victoria has cornered the market on beautiful women? Is this where they're harvested, then taken to L.A. to be starved and then plumped with silicone and then stiffened with botox?

Or is it some plot among the restaurant managers of Victoria, to hire uniformly stunning people to serve food?

I will say, Victoria has turned into a very cool city. I Haven't been here in twelve or thirteen years, and in that time, it's grown up a lot. There are many, many new buildings, and many old ones are currently closed for upgrade and renovation. But what's cool about it, now, is that it's managed to preserve a european sense, while also developing a very organic sort of hipness. This is what Seattle must have been like twenty or thirty years ago, what I think Portland was like ten years ago. It's a city that hasn't quite been discovered as a hipster scene, but is heading there, in it's own way rather than because people are coming here seeking a scene.

Thirteen years ago when I visited Vancouver I thought, I could see living here. Today, I thought the same thing about Victoria.

Of course, both trips I've had the luck of unusually good weather; both times, temps in the high eighties with clear skies, then gentle night-time breeze. I might have a different opinion if I'd been here in February or so.

But as with every trip I've ever taken to the Pacific Northwest, I look around and think, yeah, I see why people leave California for this place. Particularly this month when California has the Stench of fire and brimstone in the air.

I'm in that last-few-days-before-vacation zone.

You know how it is; the spirit begins to leave and go elsewhere, while the mind deals with a steepening ramp of details, crossed with a descending curve of time.

I had this vague notion I would have some free time toward the end of the week; as it turns out, I've barely time to manage what I need to do before I leave. I have months worth of I should-document-that-in-case-I-get-hit-by-a-bus; my tendency to keep everything in my head is part if what makes me good at problem solving, but it always hurts when I need to leave. Because I'm that guy; the one who knows where the bodies are buried, the one who knows who everything works and why it works that way.

On the other hand, in four more days, I'll be in the PNW doing pretty much nothing. So there's that. Ok, it's not a tropic isle, with a dark-haired maiden, but it'll do.

I have virtually no plans for this trip. I'm not doing any diving; I'm not going to be doing any work (I mean it this time). I have no tickets to events. I have no agenda at all. The closest I get to plans is that I kind of want to spend a gift certificate I have at the Utilikilts store, though honestly, I don't really *need* another utilikilt (so if someone wants to buy a $400 gift certificate for a significant discount off face price, I could then spend that money on a new highland kilt I've been eying.)

Meanwhile, I can barely summon enough attention to pack, and no attention at all for anything else beyond getting through these last few days without my head exploding.

The whole reason for my recent SoCal trip was to see Wicked.

I'm not going to try to write a real review of of it; I'm no expert on stage musicals, and can't really accurately say how it compares to anything else in the genre. I also haven't read the book, so rendering a judgement on how well they did with a largely-gutted plot isn't possible for me.

What I'll say though, is that I loved it.

Read the wiki page linked above for a detailed description; in short, it's a re-imagined Wizard of Oz, from the point of view of a mis-understood Wicked Witch. The re-imagined fairy tale is a well-mined vein, but it's rich in possibility; everything from fractured fairy tales to Into the Woods have used the device, and we're far from done with it.

I don't know how many people have attempted a re-imagined Wizard of Oz; my personal favorite was PJ Farmer's A Barnstormer in Oz, which included a soft-core-porn, midget-sized version of Glinda, and all sorts of bizarre steam-punk-clockwork characters. More recently you may have seen Tin Man on the Sci Fi Channel, which managed to be both deeply tongue-in-cheek and deeply over-serious, but was most memorable (to me) for the fact that a large number of the cast were wearing Utilikilts.

But I have to say, Wicked did a fine job.

Since I've been on a shoe theme, I might as well show off my version of hollywood shoes.

I've wanted a pair of boots from Boot Star for ages, but the last two times I was in SoCal I managed to miss going in; first because I kept showing up when they were closed, and the second time, on the way home from Disneyland, I wound up having to ditch a trip through LA because of a carsick kid.

So my one agenda item for this trip, after martinis at Musso and Frank, wasa stop at Boot Star.

Now, I really didn't mean to buy anything. Boots like these, which I'd kill a man for, go for nearly two grand; and I just can't bring myself to spend that kind of money on footwear, even if I was still rolling in dotcom era dough. My intent was really just to shop and torment myself (kind of the shopping equivalent of a strip show, where you can look and lust but not actually get any).

Unfortunately, the lovely salesgirl (Heather, whom I'd let walk all over me in her patent-leather-cowboy-boots anytime), pointed out The Sale Rack. And I say 'unfortunately' because saving money is the best way to talk yourself into spending it.

Which is how I came home with these - because, you know, everyone needs a pair of hollywood shoes.

I sort of intended to blog about my short trip to hollywood as it happened, every stripper-encounter, every meal or drink in a local hot-spot, every random celebrity sighting.

It didn't quite work that way in practice; work chased me down over and over, and I spent the majority if the two-days-three-nights in SoCal fielding questions and answering email.

That's not to say there wasn't fun to be had; but I didn't manage to write any of it down as it happened.

When I say fun, of course, I mean, well, a celebs-eye-view of paparazzi action.

The party mentioned here was going on in my hotel wednesday night; I walked through the middle of it as I came home from seeing a show, after waking past an absolute phalanx of paparazzi to reach the door.

I was sitting in my room later in the evening watching celebs like Paris and Nicky Hilton, Gary Dourdan, Adrian Grenier, Gene Simons, etc etc, leaving the party and getting mobbed - and note that all those links are photos taken that night, as I was watching it from the hotel side.

I didn't spend a lot of time actually *at* the party, other than walking past Elvis Costello and Diane Krall, Natalie Portman, Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, Matt Leblanc, and likely several others. The real entertainment was the view of exactly how insane the papaprazzi swarm was. Even when I couldn't recognize the particular people from the back as they left the party, I could tell exactly how big a deal they are at the moment by the number of flashes that went off as they walked down the driveway.

It's a nutty life, being a celebrity; seeing it first hand from the inside really drove that home. And it's funny to walk into a scene like that and have every eye go to you, asking the silent question are you anyone?

I'm staying for a couple of nights in gray, rainy hollywood.

I'd like to say that I'm here for the oscars, which are this coming Sunday and for which several blocks of hollywood blvd are blocked off; but no, I'm here instead to enjoy a wednesday evening show of Wicked (which in itself is a good thing)

I'm staying in hollywood's gothic glory, the Chateau Marmont (or 'chateau marmot' as my mother and and children would have it); site of John Beluhi's tragic death, and setting of episodes of Entourage, recordings by Anthony Kiedis and Ville Valo, and where bad girls like Britney and Lindsay get themselves in trouble.

It's a hotel with a past; the kind of hotel where people look at you as you walk in and out to see if you're anyone. It's been here since the early part of the century, and one cannot help but wonder, who else has slept in this room.

I'd like to say I've been in the bar, drinking with people who make too much money and spend too much of it on cosmetics and cars; but alas, most of my day I've been working, solving all the problems that followed me out of work on a tuesday. I'm not out long enough to have actually nailed anything down, as I did when I went to fiji five years ago, nor even long enough that I needed to tell anyone but my boss; so of course my phone has rung a dozen times, and in the hour I spent in the air with my iPhone switched off, I got 10 emails I needed to answer and a half dozen texts.

Still; working in a king size bed at the Chateau beats being in my office.

It wasn't all work today; I managed a very fine lunch and several martinis at one of my favorite restaurants, Musso and Frank; the kind of place that reeks of ambiance, the kind of place where cops and writers, stars and moguls, politicians and gangsters, strippers and hustlers, tourists, locals and as-beens all step in for a perfectly grilled steak and an ice cold martini. It's the kind of place where the characters in my head meet and talk, brood, or seduce one another.

I also managed to have one of those moments I'm prone too, where I encounter a woman who gets into my head in a huge way.

Hollywood blvd is lined with sleaze, and I mean that in both the very best and very worst way. Cheap, glittery sex stores, tee-shirt emporiums, the kind of shops that have name brands on everything they knock off. The too-beautiful and the broken down, the very rich and very poor, the shiny and the tarnished meet in mid-block, the lines where one becomes the other never close to sharply defined. This means it's both a great place to shop for things you can't get anywhere else, and a great place to watch people.

Case in point; where else could one find, not one, but many places to buy thigh-high, florescent green plastic platform boots with seven-inch heels - in a men's size fourteen.

These sorts of stores draw me in; places that sell cheap leather and the sort of lingerie you'd only see on someone paid to wear it, or someone who can't tell the difference between whore-hot and whore-sleazy. The sort of stores where the shoe soles are not made for walking, but for pointing toward the ceiling.

We were browsing in one such store - my youngest daughter in a frenzy of fashion-shopping, finding the innocence and charm in all that vinyl, my older one trying to look pointedly away from all that funk and sleaze only to find it's every single place she can think of to look.

I was admiring a rack of stainless-steel-and-leopard-print stiletto heels (wondering vaguely what they'd feel like walking up and down my spine) when I noticed a very pretty young woman trying on a pair of shoes in the back of the store.

Now, I'm not really a foot fetishist; I love women's feet in that I love every single thing about women's bodies. Feet are important because they are connected to ankles, calves, knees, and on up, every inch being something love. But - well, some things make a fetishist of me, at least for a moment.

She was trying on the sort of shoes no one - at least no one I've ever known - actually wears; this sort of thing.

"Those shoes look incredibly good on you," I said to her, as she got up and wobbled across the store.

"Thanks; I don't know if I can walk in them though."

I looked at her feet, at the six inch spiked heels, at the impossible arch of her instep in them, like a body stretched just short of breaking on a rack; that perfect point of tension that's just short of too much.

She had tattoos on her feet and ankles, lovely curves to her calves, and these shoes did things to her legs and feet that would break hearts and start wars.

I couldn't take my eyes off her.

"They're not really made for, you know, walking," I said.

She smiled at me in the mirror, then went on practicing walking in them, wobbling around and looking at herself. I helped her look.

I made a vague attempt to leave her alone, but found couldn't. "They just look make your feet look incredibly sexy," I said, and she smiled and thanked me; it was the kind of smile I've seen before from women who make a living being sexy, but it was also real, with barest touch of self-consciousness about a compliment from a stranger.

"I'm used to platforms," she said. And I began to visualize tucking dollar bills in her g-string.

I had to walk away from her, my kids interrupting me before I could say more; I was going to ask to see her tattoos, to give me a chance to look at her feet some more; maybe ask her is she was a dancer, and more importantly (since I already knew the answer to that), where she danced.

I lost the moment though, and when I looked back at her she'd decided against the shoes, walking away with empty hands and flip-flop clad feet.

"I don't think I could walk in them," she said to me, as se left the store.

"too bad," I said to her back. Too damned bad.

I was distracted for a good hour, thinking about it, as I found Musso and Frank and ordered lunch; my mind filled, not with images of her hips, or thighs, or face or breasts, as would usually be the case after such a moment, but with images of her feet. I could not get them out of my mind.

Fetishes are funny things.

I'm off tomorrow to fly to Anaheim to visit family and The Mouse. I'd be driving down already, as are half my family, only Olivia and I have tickets tonight to see Mythbusters Live. More on that later, as I've no real idea how they can turn that show into a live thing.

Meanwhile, I'm packing kilts and my Sad Kermit t-shirt to wear to the park, trying to decide which combat boots are best for walking.

Sunday, I fly mouseward, and then wednesday, drive back here, stop quickly to drop my disneyland clothes and pick up my dinner party clothes, and head north for thanksgiving with a friend mine (who is a MILF, and I mean that both literally and personally), in the napa-sonoma area

I won't really be home for a week, and thus blogging is unlikely, unless I decide to live-blog from inside pirates of the caribbean on my iPhone.

Pack head, y'all. That's what this week's holiday is about. The feast of Saint Gluttony.

The sailor's legend goes that pigs and chickens don't swim; they would thus be very very anxious to get out of the water if dropped in.

This makes them a powerful charm against drowning, the animals desire to be out of the water helping one avoid a watery grave.

Sailors, the story goes, tattooed these animals on their feet as a charm against drowning. Sailors were and are a superstitious lot, and in an era when most people could not swim, drowning was always a great fear.

I am not particularly superstitious, and I'm not afraid of the water; I swim reasonably well. Yet, given the amount of time I spend in and on the sea, the old sailor superstitions have endless appeal.

Thus - Pig and Chicken, by Uncle Tim at Blue Kauai Tattoo in Hanalei:

I sorta intended to post some pics while I was here but i forgot to pack the cable for my camera. So you know, fuck it. Pix later, when I get home.

In any case, one last day on Kauai and then back to california. As always, I leave Hawaii a vague feeling of sorrow; I don't need anything from home. I could stay, giving up the mainland and not looking back.

There's never enough time; even my kona trip last fall, when I stayed for three weeks, i left with the notion that I'd done half of what I wanted. And yet it takes only a week for me to start thinking of here as home. This trip, I stayed in two houses on two different parts of the island, dove, swam, snorkled, girl-watched, cooked, ate, hiked, took pictures; I found time to sit on the front porch of my house on hanalei bay and watch the sky change. I travel at an un-hurried pace when possible, finding time to do nothing; but this always means as may things un-done as things done.

I'm ok with that; I don't need to finish. Travel isn't about what you do; it's about what you see, what you learn. If one is done, generally, one isn't doing it right.

I do not want to go home; in my heart, I am home already.

...and there she goes.

In other news, i have three days left of my vacation. Damn, they go by fast. Remaining plans: Night dive thursday (assuming no fucked up ocean conditions left behind by flossie's passage), tattoo on friday at Uncle Tim's Blue Kauai Tattoo, and fly home saturday. Today, wednesday - no plans at all.

Meet hurricane Flossie:

She's a cute lil' thing but she's comin' my way.

Actually, not quite my way; NOAA says she's gonna veer just south of Kauai. We're not under a storm warning yet. Which is good 'cause my house is right there at sea level facing open ocean. The word 'evacuation' was used to today in the town I'm just north west of, if in a vague and hypothetical way.

This could turn it a more exciting vacation that originally planned. And you know, that idea doesn't bother me at all.

The view from my house - Hanalei Bay, Kauai (Click to view full size).

I am roughly fifty feet from the ocean.

I managed to forget a charger for my laptop when I packed to leave, so the plan to do a little writing about kauai was disrupted. Luckily I managed to dig one up.

Annoying, really. One makes a simple plan and finds in foiled by a single missing part. I have nightmares like that, usually about dive trips where I've forgotten to pack some single piece of gear that's completely essential.

Thus on, I hope, with a bit of travel blogging. Though not tonight, due to an early-morning dive trip tomorrow.

I will admit, though, I've developed rather a liking this trip, for a beverage I bought only for it's lovely label.

In about five minutes I'll be boarding a flight for lihue - Kauai, here I come.

(posted via iPhone)

Today - high: 84, low: 75

Tomorrow - high: 84, low: 75

...and so on...

One week to go.

Nevermind the showers. It always says that.

I remember when I used to get home from trips and have time to write a big 'ol trip report with photos every time.

Actually I don't remember it, but I have posts like that, so I should remember it

I flew down late Wednesday; a great flight as it turned out. I'd been heavily girl-watching a woman at the ticket counter when I was in the security line, wanting to get a look at the front 'cause the back was so good; all the right curves in all the right places, and a whole lot of strawberry-blond hair. She was in a weird sort of shorts-pants-suit that shouldn't have worked, but for some reason did; it looked both casual and business-like, and cute.

The self-same woman wound up sitting next to me on the plane, and the front was even better than that back; she wasn't just cute, she was gorgeous. We spent the hour-and-a-quarter long trip to Anaheim talking about tattoos; she won my respect by knowing some of my tattoos were Maori, and she wanted as much of a tour of all my tattoos as I could give without 1) getting up or 2) dropping trou (which I'll admit I'd have done happily if asked).

So it was an unusually good flight.

D-land was great. We'd picked a dead week, so thursday night we were able to walk on to any ride in the park with no wait - and no major rides were closed, so I had my near fill of indiana jones, the matterhorn, haunted mansion, and of course, Pirates of the Caribbean (but more about that in a moment).

Friday, I went on a ride I'd never done before, at Disney's lesser park, California Adventure; Grizzly River Run. And I gotta say, this ride kicks ass. We got there late friday, and the temperature was dropping, so there were no lines at all; however, this meant that it was freezing. We rode until we were near hypothermic, and soaked to the skin. Only cold drove us off. The good thing is, we were staying at the Grand Californian, so our hotel was literally less that a hundred feet from GRR. I love GRR for the ride, of course, but an added benefit is what a good dousing of cold water does to pretty young ladies tee-shirts. Mmmm.

In any case, I flew home from d-land late saturday, took a cab since no one was there waiting to collect me at the gate (hey, a guy can dream), and then spent my sunday doin' nuthin' but reading a James Bond novel and nursing a sore foot (I'll be damned if i know what i did to it, but I managed to hurt myself two days before leaving; luckily darvocet is a good way to way to enhance enjoyment of the Magic Kingdom), and cookin' some fine caldo de pollo.

All in all, a way-too-short but very easy, low-key trip.

But let's talk about Pirates.

I'm leaving on a very short trip to southern california - getting on a plane in about two hours. I wish I had time for a real vacation, with time spent sipping cocktails by a pool, and energetically doing nothing. But this isn't that kinda trip; i've got two and a half days to hit d-land and possibly a few other sites in and around anaheim (though I'm sure, as usual, I won't have time to go get tattooed by jack rudy; that always happens).

It's the kind of trip where one has fun, but never had time for downtime which what I need most right now. That has to wait a bit, however, and it's virtaully impossible to be unhappy at Disneyland.

I fly back saturday afternoon, so at least I have a day of peace and quiet after the trip. I'll need it.

I keep meaning to post a whole ting about my hawaii trip with photos but 1) i have no time and 2) i have so damned many photos to go through.

So here's a sample set i like.

I was in the town of Hawi, northenmost town on the Big Island of Hawaii. This is King Kamehameha's birthplace, and a sort of artsy enclave unlike the more touristy center of Kailua-Kona.

I was walking from a store that sold jewelry across the street to a fantastic tattoo shop I'll post more about later (i only wish I'd had time to get tattooed). But i found this lizard (an anole, in Hawaiian, which is not the same as a gecko). I picked him up and we bonded; I could NOT get him to crawl off me and onto a nice safe branch. Seemed he was happier crawling up my arm to see the highest point.

Click the photo for a slide show.

(this is exported from iphoto, i'm not sure i like the way it builds the pages, but i didn't feel like waiting on stupid flickr uploads)

Dive Makai, the fine folks I was diving with the last two weeks, gave me a whole CD full of photos taken on our dives as a birthday present. Though that wasn't as great as the dive i had on my actual birthday with my man Todd Emmons (three different kinds of scorpion fish (Leaf scorpion, decoy scorpion, and a huge titan scorpion) on one dive, plus we got to watch a triton's trumpet dine on a crown-of-thorns starfish (there was much slow-mo carnage), and i got down to 150 feet in a Dr. Seuss landscape of wire coral and nitrogen narcosis.)

Still, it was pretty fuckin' cool.

Most of the shots are, you know fish, which you'd love if you're into that sort of thing (vs the ray-feasts-upon-the-flesh kind of fish.). But here's one of yours truly, just to show how completely dorky i look under water. What is the deal with those chipmunk cheeks?

As usual, click for a bigger version of the image.

I was gonna save this for some sort of HNT posting but i may have a good bruise picture for that.

Words can't add much here.

That's me (the one without the wings). I'm actually touching the manta (a no-no, but in the moment - well, you know how I get, I'm all hands.)

click the image to get a larger version - this is from a video another diver made of last tuesday's Manta dive. I'd like to post a bit of the video but it's in some weird format i can't figure out how to convert. If anyone's a whiz kid with the video maybe you can help me out with how to do that.

I keep thinking of profound (or so it seems at the time, but maybe that's the nitrogen narcosis) things to blog, when I'm under water, or on a dive boat, or looking at pretty girls sunning themselves on beaches, lizard-like in the hot sun.

But then later, here in my condo, between the cooking of dinners and the bedding-down of kids, and the daily fatigue of a trip on the go, i can't recall what I meant to write, or i can't summon the energy, or simply don't have time.

I'm not complaining. Snorkeling, diving, hiking lava flows, or just laying around on a beach in the hot sun, all beat out blogging. But i had a vague notion of a daily travel blog as with my fiji trip. For some reason, it simple hasn't seemed important.

I hope, though, to have pictures to post when i get home at the end of this week; and possibly video since I have a DVD of my manta dive last week, professionally-shot footage that one of the video people described as 'national geographic quality'.

I'm here for three more days. Tonight, we have the full tourist experience, the luau. Tomorrow is my birthday, and i plan to spend it underwater, hopefully with an all-day adventure trip that will take me to the far-south Kona coast to dive areas that rarely see dive boats; last time I did one of these trips I saw a twelve-foot hammerhead, so I'm looking forward to it. Wednesday is my last full day here, and while plans may change, my youngest daughter wants me to rent a harley and take here for a ride. And who can say no when a pretty little girls says take me for a ride, daddy?

This trip has gone by far too quickly. I've been busy, yet not in any way harried. I've had time to do most of what i wanted to do (not all, it seems that cannot happen on a hawaii trip - i need to live here). I do not look forward to being home or to dealing with Real Life; only missing friends (both real life and virtual/distant whom I lack time to keep in touch with while I'm here) makes me in any way long for anything but this. My kids asked for my three wishes yesterday as part of some game, and my first was to live here, and the second was to transport certain key individuals here with me.

The islands call me. I hear it all the time, and never more than when I'm here. Nevermind that the islands in my genes are in a loch in scotland; this is home.

My thanksgiving day started big-island-style with a 5.0 earthquake, centered just north of Kailua-Kona on the Kohala coast - same place the last one was, a month ago (though that one was considerably larger).

My condo was rattling and shaking - though i am from California so earthquakes are nothing new. I thought my kids were doing some sort of smackdown wrestling on the stairs above my head, until I realized the shaking was in waves, and coming from behind me, not above.

Later, sipping coffee on my lanai, I heard the woman in the condo below me calling home; she was describing the 'quake to someone on the mainland, and said '...and at first I thought, what are those people upstairs doing now?'

'Quakes are not a big deal around here; it's a volcanic island, some of the newest land in the world. But still, it got people's attention. If got mine, certainly.

My original plan for this holiday included my in-laws (you remember, in-law vs outlaw), though they wound up having to cancel for medical reasons, and a luau though we found that no one seems to run a luau for thanksgiving (imu roasted turkey sounds like a great idea to me, but what do I know.) When we didn't find a thanksgiving luau, we consulted the in-laws and chose an island-style thanksgiving buffet at the Mauna Lani Orchid to satisfy the in-laws desire for something traditional.

I was lying on the beach - or as much beach as you get on Hawaii's Big Island, which is more a giant hunk of lava than an island, and thus more generally rocky than sandy. I was in shady spot under a small palm tree, dozing after a picnic lunch and an hour of snorkeling just above Pu`uhonua o Honaunau.

As i drifted out of sleep, i noticed a woman sitting on the lava-rock wall near me

My best guess, though it can be hard to tell, is that she was in her late fourties, or her early fifties. Her hair, cut short, was a sort of color that made it hard to tell her age; hard to know if it was more gray or more sandy brown, but it was certainly somewhere between.

She was on her cell phone, facing away from me. She was loosely wrapped in a faded pāreu that looked like it was once vivid purple. I noticed her, at first, only because i could hear her voice. But then i payed more attention to her because i liked her tanned back. She was the color people get when they live here, that deep sort of tan one gets from being in the sun every day, not a vacation tan. She had the sort of athletic, muscled frame that ages well.

And then, as she moved her phone from hand to hand, the pāreu that was all she had on above the waist fell, and exposed her. I didn't see it happen, but the faint squeak she let out drew my eye; it was uncharacteristically girlish compared to her phone voice.

I missed seeing much of her, catching only the side of her breast as she covered back up; but clearly the local man sitting nearbye with his ʻukulele did not, for i heard him saying it's ok, Lady, I don't mind at all, in a casually good-natured way. She made some reply about living on the far side of the island, and that there, she was naked most of the time, and so didn't care.

I decided i liked her. She reminded me of a woman i used to know, Karen; a woman I'd long had a crush on, though with whom I'd never gone beyond kissing and some drunken, naked groping in the hot tub. Like Karen, this stranger wasn't particularly pretty, but had an earthy, hippy-woman beauty. The kind of woman who is at ease with her body, wears what fits and is comfortable, and who is far, far sexier than she'd ever imagine herself to be.

I was on my back, arms stretched back behind my head, my old, sun-and-salt stained boonie hat tilted forward to shade my eyes. I carefully maintained the look of someone sleeping, my eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. And I watched her, and thought about what she would look like the rest of the way naked, should one see more than tanned back and the side of one accidently exposed breast.

She finished her phone call, and then stood up and looked around; she looked at me, and, i assume, figured me to be asleep. I'm an inveterate girl-watcher, and though i tend to practice the notion that when I'm looking at a pretty girl, she should know she's being looked at (i.e. i nod and smile when caught looking), i'm also pretty good at the corner-of-the-eye method, looking while seeming not to.

She stood, turned side-on to me, and picked up a t-shirt (an over-sized red tank, roughly cut to bare the midriff), and dropped her pāreu.

Her breast, the one I could see, was lovely; almost as tan as the rest of her. I imagine they were fine and high when she was twenty, because now, at fifty, they retained a beautiful shape, yet with a natural sag that is so much prettier than most surgically enhanced breasts.

Her nipples were like little cocoa-covered truffles; chocolate brown, big as gumdrops. My mouth watered as I lay on the coarse sand, and i asked her, silently, to turn more and give me a front view.

She didn't; she pulled on her shirt, and then turned the rest of the way toward me (or rather, toward the ocean, since she had already dismissed my existence). She took up the pāreu, pulled it loosely 'round her hips, and tied it in front; this covered her bikini bottoms from the rear, but in front, only a slip of fabric covered her.

She picked up a pair of surfer-style board shorts, old and worn and faded like her pāreu, and then casually pushed down her bikini-bottoms, stepping quickly and efficiently out of them and into her shorts, then straightening, pulling them up just slowly enough to let me see her shaved-bare pussy, just glimpse enough to fill my mind with an image that will stay a while.

And then her shorts were buttoned over her tanned belly, and she turned and waked away; and I wanted to follow her, and... And what? Thank her? Ask her out? Tell her what I was now imagining, where I wanted to put my mouth? Tell her how much I wanted to taste her now while she was still sea-salty and beach-sandy?

Maybe I should have. Maybe this would have made her day, knowing she made mine; maybe she would have gone home and slipped a finger between those smooth lips the way I wanted to, and thought about the sunburned, tattooed tourist who said sweet or dirty things to her on the road between sea and parking lot. Or maybe she just would have driven home smiling.

I didn't though; I didn't get up; though I did roll over, to hide the reaction my own body had to her. And I thought those thoughts and half wished I'd gotten up; and half was glad I hadn't.

Well, i didn't wind up in a broken-off tail section, though i am on a vaguely mysterious island. More tales of my trip to come (for it is too hot to sit over my computer for very long).

But so far, i've been diving, i've made fresh ahi poke, i've had a waittress at the hard rock cafe partially disrobe to show me her tattoos, i've seen a weasel (ok, a mongoose, but weasel is funnier) tend to it's, ah, personal hygene needs, and I've found my condo has a minimal wireless signal.

So this ain't bad. And I'm not even quite on island time yet, which is to say, i still retain some sense of urgency. That should be gone in another day, about the same time I go to stock the condo on rum, vodka and sake.

Well, if i ain't packed it it ain't going. Since I'm leaving at the crack of way-too-fucking-early, there's none of my usual last-minute chick-minus-head running about.

Next stop, Kailua Kona (via LAX).

I plan to blog as i go but actual updates depend on where i find 'net access. Updates, then, whenever.

Whump

That was the sound of me collapsing at the end of my week. As of now i'm on vacation, until December first.

I'm not actually gone yet - that's still (as of now) about 78 hours away. But mentally i'm already high above the pacific, thinking about hula girls and slack-key guitar, and hoping my flight (Oceanic Air flight number 816) doesn't find itself a little off course.

This is about a mile from my condo; the dock on the right is in front of the King Kam hotel, and it's where the dive boat i favored used to go out (though they've moved north to the small boat harbor, and they've also sold, so i dunno if i'll still use 'em).

Keep an eye on that web cam, you just might see me. But not, you know, doing a show. You have to go look for Merrick for that action.

It's been a long and emotionally complicated week, and that ain't over. My mother still needs at least five days of care in the three days I have left, my mother in law's computer woes got worse (woise? Woes got Woise? Something like that), in that her computer went from needing a new drive to needing a new entire computer, which of course won't get here til' I'm gone so now I have to find her someone to set up her new mac.

And there's other shit complicating my life, small and large, but fuck it, I'm on vacation. That is going away for the next three weeks. Meanwhile, hula girls, bikini girls, girls in wetsuits (god you know i love girls in wetsuits), and a lot of not thinking. Though if i'm lucky, some writing, and if you-all are non-lucky, there will be blogging.

Vacation. I've forgotten what that feels like.

I'm incredibly wired.

If you've met me you know this isn't unusual. But I mean, I'm incredibly wired even FOR ME.

It's just sunk in that i have one week before vacation, and at least three weeks worth of things to do; mom to take care of (my mother's having some health issues and is needing a little help but mostly a whole lot of emotional support, and being the only surviving relative it's been me and only me for a couple months now); work, which means all the things no one else (literally, no one else in the whole company, i'm one of THOSE people) knows how to do have to be written down in my wiki so that people have a chance of being able to get through a week without calling me. I have to gather up my scuba gear - unused for two fucking years if you can belive that, i havn't been underwater since fiji in August of '04 - and make sure everything's working, replace what needs replacing. I have to pack that up (more gear than it used to be, now that my daughter's diving), i have to take care of my in-laws computer melt-down (which, typically, happens at the worst possible time).

And of course i have that time-compression moment where the mental list of things to do feels bigger than it really is, and the time feels less, in inverse proportion.

What this all does it put me in a near-fugue state where I'm vibrating so fast I'm still; i can't get anything done for task switching. I'm about to split in two and fire off in different directions.

One more week i keep thinking. Soon that will be good. Right now I just feel the stress and can't see past it.

It's been two years since i've had a real vacation; and in a lot of ways that two years seems like a lifetime, fire and destruction and re-construction, and i can barely remember a time when I was able to take off twice a year for stress-reducing tropical holidays. I took it for granted then; when i had all the vacation time i wanted, and the incredible luxury of dotcom money.

Now, i'm all too aware of my own luck in being able to travel at all, but today all i feel is - i just heard someone say 'pinball' as I was typing this and that's how i feel, like the big ball-bearing in a pinball game, whack-whack-whack-whack-clunk-ping-thunk, lights flashing, and around in a circle I go.

One more. week. Sigh.

Well, today I:

1) paid for my condo in kona, for a trip one month from today.

2) read the reports on a historically large earthquake in that same region.

In that order.

So you know, life remains interesting. More as I learn if this has any effect on me apart from possibly meaning it'll be easier than usual to get reservations at the best luaus.

Well, this isn't sounding like it's too terribly serious. Big pain in the ass for those who saw damage to their houses, and I'm sure, scary as hell, but unless i hear otherwise from the condo joint, i'm thinking all is well. Though I'm thinking a lot of silly people will now cancel plans for travel and crowds may be down.

Here's photographic evidence of how I spent my summer vacation.

(click that for a bigger view)

I had this idea I'd do some writing while I was alone, but it wound up as predicted; at work late every day, and then sapped of will when I got home. I started at least three blog entries, all of them now languishing.

Ah. Such is life.

Today i fly south to Los Angeles to meet up with the family - my daughter's birthday (dinner at House of Blues), and beyond that I don't even know what our plans are. My only items of interest are stopping in at Sunset Tattoo (just because I'm staying near it), Musso and Frank for martinis, and beyond that, I don't care. I imagine the kids will want to visit Olvero Street and the La Brea tar pits (because they always want to do those things), but I'm pretty much down with anything that doesn't include work. Likely there's also some plan to go celeb spotting in some night spot or other (Wait, I'll bring my checklist).

Whatever - it's the going I love. I need to find a job where I can travel and write for a living.

Sunburnt and stiff from a long day driving, I'm home; yet, not wanting to face the realities of vacation's end, of work and pressure and tasks that want doing, I live still far away, in sun and sand and sea.

I've unpacked my things, but can still smell the scent of travel on my skin. There's still sand in my flip-flops.

I don't want to be home, and facing life's little insanities. Always, the trouble with vacations is that they end.

It started out as a plan for a family reunion.

This would be a good place I said, to do a family reunion. The 'sometime' was implied.

My in-laws (you may remember them from an earlier episode, in fact many, known collectively as in-law vs outlaw) have one of those family reunion traditions. Sometimes we do these every couple years, sometimes not. And always, it's a case of, who's gonna plan it, who's gonna say they're coming, who's gonna show up, who's gonna pay for the ones who can't afford it.

We've done 'em close - monterey, tahoe - or far, idaho, utah, oregon. And every time it's a funny, silly drama, the kind you only get in families. Disorganization, mis-communication, flakiness. yet, always, we have a good time.

I don't fit with these people - they come from mormon stock, though a lot of them are not mormon anymore. But if you watch Big Love, when they show you the LDS people, you could be looking at some of my more-distant mormon in-laws. They're a straight-arrow bunch. And I'm - well, I'm the outlaw. The pirate. The biker. The counter-culture guy. They, truly, have no idea who I really am, unless some of them are reading this space.

Yet, they're good folks. There are some crazies in the bunch, even if they're non-drinking, never-gotten-stoned types. There are some who own guns, some who ride motorcycles. There's a group who have a real taste for mayhem. Sober mayhem, but mayhem all the same.

But - ultimately - they're family, and family means disorganization.

So a few months ago, we were at Disneyland, and staying at a nearby hotel, and I said, instead of the usual places, we should do the family reunion here, next year, a year after. Whenever, it'd be fun.

And I mentioned that in passing to my mother-in-law, who somehow converted that to now because that's how she is.

Everyone said, yeah, we can do that, great, we're in. There are a lot of big Disney geeks in teh family - some of 'em much bigger disney geeks than I am. So it was a no-brainer, they were fully into it. A date was picked, motel rooms booked. Everyone, even the arms of the family that usually drop out, said they were in, coming from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah.

And you can see where this goes.

One by one, they dropped out, like a set of dominos. Oh, wait, we can't do that week.

Until it was back down to pretty much just the LA locals (the lovely couple whose wedding I attended before my Fiji trip two years ago), my family, my in-laws.

But you know, we had the rooms booked, so it turned out to be a very small family re-union. And so, next week, I'll be in sunny southern CA, getting sunburned in line for It's a small world. Alas, Pirates is down for now - they're adding Jack Sparrow to the ride, an idea I don't like. But maybe this time I'll get time to talk to Jack Rudy about a tattoo I want, and in any case, not working is always, always a good thing.

lying in the cherry tree.
Savage bed foot-warmer of purest feline ancestry.
Look out, little furry folk!
He's the all-night working cat.
Eats but one in every ten
leaves the others on the mat.
...And the mouse police never sleeps

     Jethro Tull, '...And The Mouse Police Never Sleeps'

I was going to tell this story as part of an entry or a series of entries about my Disneyland trip this week, but I don't feel like writing about all that and sorting pictures today. I should be outside doing something with my last vacation day bit I'm more in the angry, sit and brood sort of mood, sort of like when you feed a kid too much sugar and red food coloring; bouncing-off-the-wall wired and then a steep slope down to crash-and-burn.

So we'll start with my last day (lastday I wanted to say, which is the sorta geeky sci-fi refere