Cruise to Hawai’i (with incidental motorcycle content)

[PhilB]

Had a good opportunity to take a 2-week cruise to Hawai’i on the Holland America line (one of the better ones) for cheap. My wife was hired to teach classes in knitting and dyeing and such on the ship, so instead of paying $3K each, her ticket was paid for, mine was half price, and she got paid for teaching in addition.

Neither of us had ever been on a cruise before, or been to Hawai’i before, and if not for an opportunity such as this, probably never would have done either on our own dime. Hawai’i is mainly about beaches and good weather; we have that at home. It makes more sense as a destination for all you poor snowbound suckahs.

We were on the Zaandam (below), a 799-ft ship; holds about 1400 passengers and 600 crew. 5 days at sea each way, and 4 one-day stops at various islands. My wife loved the experience. She loves being at sea in the first place; she’s a long time deep sea fisher, and last year at about this time she was on a 40-ft sailboat, with two other people, for a month sailing from Panama to the Galapagos Islands. I was fairly lukewarm on it; I’d rather have flown there and had two weeks in Hawai’i than spend two-thirds of the trip getting there and back.

It went well for her, and she looks to be contracted to do that some more. She’ll probably teach on one or two cruises a year, and I’ll go sometimes depending on my work schedule and projects, and whether it’s going someplace I really want to see.

I’ll skip the days-at-sea part, since the highlight of the days-at-sea for me is that I found some people who were willing to teach me to play bridge, and no one wants to read about that.

OK, one thing – they folded the towels into cute animals each day. Below: a lobster that looks more like a trilobite, a peculiar beast that we guessed was a turtle, and a quite good orangutan who nonetheless looked too much like me.

[PhilB]

The first stop was Hilo on the big island. Our tour group had a planned event there, and K and I went with. We visited Hawai’i's only working sheep farm, and then a vanilla orchid farm. This is what happens when you are travelling with 26 women who knit, and 4 husbands just tagging along. Nice rainbow in the evening.

[PhilB]

The second stop was Honolulu in Oahu. Yep, it’s a medium sized city.

We went independent on this one, rather than whatever the group was doing.

We went to a vintage Hawaiian shirt store and got presents for family and friends. This place had the whole range, from used shirts for $10 to collectors’ items for $5K. I pretty much stuck to the $20-30 range; found some cool gifts.

Then we went to the Academy of Arts – Honolulu’s best art museum. It was medium-sized, but had a high quality collection, including one of the best exhibits of Asian art in America. I won’t bore y’all with it all, but two highlights were a fine Pissarro, and an amazing Chinese sewing set carved entirely from ivory – even the scissors.

They have a beach there, too. Pahoehoe lava on this one (as opposed to Aa, the other kind of Hawaiian lava).

In the evening we went to a luau (one of the ship’s planned excursions. It was all touristy and stuff, but fun anyway. Apparently neither of us took any pictures of this.

[PhilB]

Third stop was Kauai, the most scenic of the major islands. This is where much of Jurassic Park was filmed. We rented a car with a couple other people and drove around the island. Yep, scenic.

[PhilB]

Last stop was Maui. This was the only stop where the ship did not dock; it anchored offshore from Lahaina, and brought everyone in on the tenders.

We went on our own again on this one. We rented a Harley-Davidson Road King in Lahaina to tour the island on. We had pre-arranged this before leaving; it was pretty cheap since I had a $100 off certificate from, testriding some Harleys previously. When we inquired about riding gear being available, all they had were some openface helmets, and no jackets or anything. We decided to go with their helmets, since we were just going to be sightseeing, but neither of us was comfortable with going without leathers at all, so we had to pack our own jackets and take them with us.

From a riding standpoint, the Road King was really an excellent bike for the purpose. It was low and torquey and relaxed, with a big back seat that K could relax on and take in the scenery and take pictures from and all. Big hardbags made dealing with stuff easy. A winding coastal road with a 25 mph speed limit made the riding relaxed; on a sportier bike it would just have been frustrating. It was a bit of a handful on the dirt surfaces of some of the outlooks and turnouts, but not terrible if one was careful.

We rode around the coast; it was beautiful. We had been warned not to take this road, because it “was all twisty”. We were also told that it was not paved all the way, and the H-D rental guy confirmed that there were a few miles of dirt and gravel (The part on the map, in West Maui, that says driving here will violate your rental car contract), but the other guy there (Duane) said it wasn’t that bad and we should go for it. I was admittedly apprehensive about 800 lbs of bike, with a passenger, on loose surfaces, but we decided to go anyway. In fact, it turned out to be paved all the way, although a few miles were one lane only and the pavement was unsealed and rough. No big deal.

Shot of me and the Road King;, a map of Maui, and shots of the scenery.

[PhilB]

Along the way around the coast, we passed a sign that said “Sculpture Garden”, but didn’t stop. Shortly thereafter, we passed a large sculpture by the side of the road of two giraffes, carved well in wood. So we turned around and went back to the sculpture garden. It was a treat. There was a family of sculptors, the Turnbulls, a husband and wife, and his uncle. They were all master sculptors and the garden had a fine selection of works in various styles and media – wood, marble, bronze, ceramics. The studio had smaller works, and those that were not suitable for outdoor display, such as clay or plaster.

We wound up purchasing a small bronze of two Hawaiian hummingbirds, which pretty much blew the money we had saved on the cruise tickets. Oh well; no one said travel was cheap.

We rode around to the other side of the island, to the heliport (near the Kahului airport), as we had also booked a helicopter tour for the day. We had blown our planned lunch time at the sculpture garden, so lunch was chips from the heliport vending machine. Neither of us had been in a helicopter before, and that’s been a dream of my wife’s for 30 years.

Shots of scenery from the bike, sculptures, the helicopter, and scenery from the helicopter.

[PhilB]

We got the full one-hour flight. The helicopter held six passengers, and the other two couples had paid for the extra feature of a stop on a meadow for champagne, so we got a free upgrade to that as well.

One of the highlights was spotting a humpback whale from the air.

Shots of the ship from the air, the whale, the helicopter in the meadow, Charles Lindbergh’s last house, and a nice waterfall.

**More of the promised incidental bike content!**

We got back the heliport a little before 3 PM; plenty of time to make it back to the ship before the last tender at 4:30. We dawdled a bit, got a t-shirt, a video of our flight, etc. Went out to the bike, and – it doesn’t start. Modern Harleys have a keyless fob; the bike will start if you’re within 6 feet of it with the fob. But there’s an extra switch involved; you turn the big switch to “ignition”, then hit the start button. So getting off, I had hit the killswitch, locked the steering, and walked off, leaving the lights on. Oops. (I think they should engineer it so that when the fob goes away, it shuts off the lights as well as disables the ignition, but that’s just me, I guess.)

So we call the rental place back in Lahaina, and ask what we should do. I’m not up for trying to bumpstart that beast. He calls the main Harley dealer they are affiliated with, which fortunately is on the side of the island we are on, about 10 minutes away, and they send out a guy to jumpstart it. So he shows up, and he’s grumpy and moves like molasses, and he brought one screwdriver and one wrench, and it’s the wrong screwdriver. And it turns out that to getting to the battery is not a trivial exercise on a Road King. So we’re borrowing tools from the helicopter mechanics, and he has to take off the backrest to get to the seat screws, and the seat strap is a separate piece screwed into the bike, and then there is a circuit board and a plastic cover over the battery. So half an hour later, he hooks up his portable jumpstart unit and – it doesn’t start. He claimed I’d deadened the battery too far. I think his charger wasn’t charged enough. Either way, he fiddled with it for another 15 minutes without success, and now it’s looking dicey to get back in time. And this is the last island, so if we miss the boat, we find another way home, and K’s classes on the return trip get canceled and she doesn’t get to do this anymore. So she’s a little upset with me.

Being our first cruise, we didn’t know that whenever you leave the ship, you should take the phone number of the harbor master, so we didn’t have it. The heliport people were trying to reach the ship for us to tell them we were running late, but not having much success. We call Duane back at Lahaina and ask for what we can do now. He talks to the guy on our end, and they decide that the best bet would be for him to take us back to the dealer and have us ride another bike back. Which was a nice act of customer service on their part – above and beyond the duty. So Jim takes us back, and it takes a few minutes to prep a bike, and he hands us keys and walks off. We step outside and there are about 50 bikes there, and we don’t know which one we’re supposed to ride off on. We find it after a couple minutes. But by now it’s 10 after 4 – we’ve got 20 minutes, the ship is 21 miles away, and the speed limit is 35 the whole way. And we have no idea if anyone has reached the ship yet.

K calls Duane and asks if he is willing to run down to the dock (about 4 blocks) and tell the tender that we’re on our way and will be just a few minutes late, and he agrees to do so. Jim calls out “don’t wreck my bike”, as I make an illegal left directly out of the dealer lot, scraping the floorboards on the Softail as we go. We’re splitting lanes (illegally) and passing when possible; I’ve certainly never ridden a Harley that hard. But it works well enough, and off we go. I was a bit surprised, thinking back, on the fact that I didn’t think about the bike much on the trip, which means that it was doing what I asked perfectly well. I would have thought that the Softail’s poor ground clearance, 2” rear suspension travel (and 2-up, no less), cruiser handling, etc., would have hampered my progress, but at real world speeds – meaning as fast as you can go in real life under traffic, road, and law conditions – it did the job just fine.

We pull into Lahaina at 4:40, and can see that the tender hasn’t left yet. Whew. I drop K off a block from the dock, and ride the other three blocks to the rental place, throw them the keys and the helmets, and a $50 for good service, and run for the boat. Duane is telling me to ride it over and leave it, and he’ll get it later, but I figure for 4 blocks I’m just as fast on foot.

Anyway, we made it, which was a great relief. K didn’t make me pay too much penance for my screwup. It’s all good.

[PhilB]

Last shot, the next day, a rainbow so bright you can see it reflecting off the ocean.

PhilB

[LaurenOE]

Cool write up! Nice adventure!

[NeedinJustice]

Very cool Phil! Glad you got to go and wrote about it, then shared.