January 11, 2016
Day 1: Kona: Is Bugs Bunny Gay?
We fell asleep trying to keep watching a great documentary about CERN on PBS.It put us mentally back in Geneva. But when we woke up, sure enough, it was palm trees and ocean breezes. Yes, we are in Kona.
The first order of business for us here is what - food? swimming? putting bikes together?Nope, it's the ABC tourist trinket store!
ABC is actually all right. It has packaged foods, crafts, books, and clothes of semi-decent quality. Many of the items are previews of what we will see in small factories and outlets as we circle the island: chocolates, cookies, chips, macadamia nuts, coffee, fruits. Oh, that's all food, and seemingly high calorie or caffeine laden. Oh well.
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ABC also had nice postcards for mailing to grandkids. Later we found the post office and mailed off the first round.
Splashers, the restaurant, was next on our list. Bacon and cheese omellette, pancakes, tropical fruit salad, coffee - were all great. Sitting on the windowless (open air) deck with this quality breakfast, and looking at the sea, qualifies as one of the most pleasant experiences of all our travels.
What came next was also strangely pleasant. It was the unpacking and assembly of the Bike Fridays. The large amount of disassembly that we do to pack them away makes for an equivalent amount of assembly fun. It's more, actually, because in assembly the adjustments have to be right. It's a good feeling, though, getting everything squared away and tightened.
With our bikes functional, we set off up the hill to find Sports Authority, and our hoped for supply of camping gaz. Finding this is always an issue and a gamble for us in the States. This time we scored! So it will be hot coffee and hot noodles all the way around the island!
Next we needed to actually buy those noodles, so it was off to Walmart. Here I got parked outside, as usual, with the bikes. There is not much risk of having to answer a lot of questions about the weird bikes out here (where I am writing this) because Americans, and maybe particularly Hawaiians, are not much interested in bicycles. And of course, tourists are not exactly an interesting rarity here!
This does not mean my time in front of Walmart was serene. A woman and a man were waiting for the bus nearby the only free bench, which is where I was. The woman was smoking and was upwind of me, so I was already suffering. But then she launched into a loud conversation wth the man. They began by denouncing the public transit system. Maybe fair enough, since they seemed to stand there an awfully long time. But theh they moved on to gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. These, they said, were overrunning the society. Worse, they were overrunning TV. Not only did every show now have a token member of this group, but even old standbys like the TV dad are becoming whimpier. Why even Bugs Bunny, who started with a feisty New York attitude is probably gay now, they said. What we need in this country is Donald Trump, they said. Now that self made guy will put all these losers in their place. We just can't wait to get rid of that Obama guy. Who voted for him anyway?
By this time I was getting ready to puke on my tablet. But fortunately the bus came and I was rescued. In due course Dodie came out, with about $70 of Walmart goodies. Here it is. We are pinning our hopes on this to keep us going for the next week!
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We will not strike off around the Island just yet, though. We have tomorrow to explore the immediate Kona area. After the palm trees and the Trump supporters, who knows what other tropical specialties we will encounter!
Today's ride: 8 km (5 miles)
Total: 8 km (5 miles)
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