Month: November 2011

We had such luck leaving the resort on Monday that we tried it again on Tuesday. We loaded up the car and drove over to The Coffee Shack, one of our favorite places to eat here, not so much because of the food (which is just okay) but because it’s perched up on a hillside with astonishing views, and because the deck is home to lots of adorable, tiny, tame geckos. As we expected, River loved the geckos, though he got a little fussy as we lingered over our bottomless cups of kona coffee.

On the way out, we stopped to wait while Heather bought some coffee. On the bulletin board I saw a real estate flyer for a weird house for a mere half a million bucks, on 2.5 acres, which also includes a guest house (bigger than my current apartment) and a straw-bale structure. Fantasized about buying it and running a little artist’s colony. But I guess I’ll have to pay off all that credit card debt before I start buying real estate.

We did some Grim Tides research (well, I did — my wife and kid thought they were just doing tourist stuff, ha). Went to the Place of Refuge, where I’ve been before, but this time I took notes, since I have a major scene set there. It was hot and muggy, so we decided swimming was in order. Drove around, rented some snorkel gear, and went to a beach. Good for snorkeling, not so good for playing in the sand and surf (too rocky), so River was bored. We drove back toward the hotel, and went to Anaeho’omalu Bay (where another major scene is set). That was a bit more fun for the boy, though less good for snorkeling, since it’s very sandy. Beautiful beach, though.

My wife and kid played while I walked the trail from the beach to the hotel (since my characters walk it, and I hadn’t seen it). A very fun and interesting path, past sea turtles and beautiful sea vistas and other neat things. A nice walk.

Back at the room, I put the kid to bed, and played some Skyrim (and fought Dwarven robots, as one does) while my wife wandered the hotel and hit hot tubs and things. A good day, though the beaches weren’t ideal. Today will be better.

Much better today. Despite the fact that our insurance provider initially attempted to send us to a clinic on another island — good thing Heather looked up directions before it was time for us to go — we did finally get River’s ear checked by a doctor. The poor kid does have an infection (and he had a mild fever during the checkup), but the eardrum doesn’t appear to be perforated, so we don’t have to be excessively vigilant about his ears getting wet. Whoo! We’re not going to let him submerge his head, since the doc wasn’t 100% sure the eardrum was intact (his view was slightly blocked by some ear glop), but we’ll let him splash about. All it cost us was the $10 for the antibiotics. (We didn’t even get charged for the office visit, though I suspect a bill will be along eventually. Still: a lot cheaper than an emergency room!)

With his ear on the road to recovery, and painkiller in him to make him cheerful again, the day was a lot of fun, and yesterday’s crankiness is a distant memory. (All credit goes to my wife, who worked the phones with vigor and skill to get him seen by a doctor that our insurance would cover, which is harder than it should be, when traveling.)

So today is mostly a litany of good things: we hit the breakfast buffet early, where much astonishingly fresh pineapple was consumed. (Along with many other yummy things, including that mythical breakfast treat, available only at buffets, known as Enough Bacon. It is rare for me to get Enough Bacon.) We had to drive about 45 minutes south to see his doctor, where it was far less windy than it is at the hotel. (Which is still pretty crazy windy, though today was less so, and tomorrow should be even less.) So we stayed there after his appointment. Last time Heather and I came to the Big Island, back in 2005, we stayed in that general area, so we were able to find our way around with ease. We got an awesome lunch to go from Da Poke Shack, and found a little beachside park to eat it in. Then we walked around the park, where a couple of green sea turtles were crawling on the beach. I was chastised a bit briskly by a local woman for getting too close to the turtles. She clearly thought I was a haole tourist asshole who was going to go thump its shell or something; I actually hadn’t noticed the turtle, as my eyes were on the flat expanse of lava rock and its attendant tidepools, and when I realized I was getting close to the endangered wildlife, I stopped. (I am, of course, a haole, and very much a tourist, though I endeavor not to be an asshole, with varying degrees of success.)

I showed River some coral, and explained about the difference between rocks and coral and shells. We looked at the animals in some tidepools, and made a little tower of stones. Then we drove a bit further to a nice little beach, and played until nearly sunset. The weather was overcast but pleasant, and the weather was so wonderfully warm — it was pure delight to be in the ocean, bobbing on the waves, and great fun playing in the surf and making sand castles and moats and lakes with River. Really fabulous. The kid was in rapturous delight for much of the day, just grinning, clapping his hands, and saying “Yay!” (There was also a fair bit of “This is boring” and “I hate [inset noun here — sharks, turtles, dolphins, Hawai’i, the ocean],” mostly when he was between painkiller doses.)

We drove briefly with the top down on the convertible, but River didn’t like it — we think the wind wasn’t so great for his ear — and the sun was at a rather blinding angle, so we didn’t do it for long. More tomorrow, probably, when we go to Volcanoes Park.

Heather wanted to do a bit of shopping, so we drove over to a mall, and grabbed some dinner, and strolled around until 7:00 or so. The kid was fading by then, so we headed back up to the hotel. River slept on the ride back, and slept in my arms back to the room, and pretty much slept through getting put in his jammies and dosed with antibiotics. It’s exhausting, being sick and having so much fun. Now I’m in the room, where the wind is howling on one side of the room, and birds singing wildly on the other side. That’s more pleasant than it sounds.

It’s Heather’s night to stay in with the kid. I may head over to the bar and have a drink and read for a bit. The world is my bivalve.

A rather inauspicious beginning, I’m sad to say. (We’re on the Big Island in Hawai’i. Looking back I’m not sure I ever mentioned where we were going. Anyway: it’s both a vacation, and some research for Grim Tides, the manuscript of which has several sections that say “Fill in details after you go back to Hawai’i.)

The travel itself wasn’t bad at all — we got to the airport late, but arrived at the gate just in time to stroll on board our flight, which was only about half full, so that was fine. The kid was very good on the trip, really quite patient, and all was well… except for his ear.

He’d told us late the night before that his ear hurt, and it still hurt in the morning. We got on the plane — unwilling to cancel our trip over an ear infection — and his ear began oozing a little gunk on the flight. No good. After we landed Heather spent literally hours on the phone to our insurance provider (who, after we expressed dismay at the prospect of being forced to go to a hospital a couple of hours away, said in bewildered tones, “But Hawaii’s not that big, is it?”) and calling various hospitals and clinics to see if we could get a doctor to see River on a Sunday — for less than five hundred bucks at a random emergency room, which turned out to be pretty much the only option. (And as for whether or not we’d ever actually get reimbursed by our own insurance for that? Who knows.)

Eventually we talked to a nurse who said, assuming the kid wasn’t in distress (he wasn’t — he didn’t even complain about it hurting after the flight, and has had no fever, etc.), that we could wait until Monday morning and go to the clinic, which is vastly cheaper. So that’s the current plan. Not the most fun way to spend day two, and the kid won’t be able to put his head in the water, which rather sucks for a tropical swim-based vacation. But at least it’s not any kind of serious illness.

After all that was settled, we tried to enjoy the day a bit… but it was windy. Really windy. Like, palm fronds torn from the trees and flung through the air at thirty miles per hour, outdoor chairs flipped over, paddle boats trying to tear loose from their moorings in the lagoon, pools filled with random crap blown from all over the island, type windy. Really rather windy. And the forecast, as I write this, is for the winds to continue until, oh, around Thursday. There are red flag warnings so we can’t swim at the beach, and our attempt to use the hotel’s little fake beach failed when a few gusts picked up sufficient sand to create what felt like a wind of knives, making my kid literally scream in pain. (Doesn’t Nalo Hopkinson have a story about windstorms of broken glass? Like that.)

The name of the place we’re staying means “Windy City,” which should’ve been a tip-off, though everyone here says this is unusually bad. It is warm and actually gorgeous weather-wise when the wind dies down.

The hotel is very pretty, too. There’s no in-room wifi, but to my surprise, there’s free wifi in some of the common areas, and we can even slurp the wifi from a nearby hotel restaurant if we sit on the balcony. Of course, with the wind blowing so hard, the balcony isn’t very pleasant, and I risk having my laptop torn from my hands every time I go outside… but still! It’s a nice surprise. I doubt I’ll be online much, but I won’t be as entirely disconnected as I’d expected.

This litany of sadness isn’t even touching on the annoyance of all the expenses that aren’t covered in the package deal we bought. (It was a pretty good deal, but once you buy insurance for the rental car, and upgrade to a car that’s actually large enough to fit a kid’s carseat and our luggage, and pay for hotel parking, it kinda eats into one’s mai tai budget. Fortunately, we’d already decided this trip was pretty much a big family Christmas present, so we’ll just be getting small gifts this year. I just hope the rest of the vacation goes better than today has.)

Wish us luck, a sympathetic doctor, cheap antibiotics, and calm winds…

But! Lest I sound too sad: I mean, we’re in Hawai’i. A bad day in Hawai’i is still pretty fantastic. (Mostly I’m just tired from traveling and generally grumpy. I think it’ll pass.) So good things: The artwork at the hotel is amazing, and there’s a lot of it. We spent lunch sitting outside eating and looking at dolphins, including a very boisterous baby dolphin. The vast resort where we’re staying has boats that run in canals, and a train line, to get to various areas of said vast resort — the kid loves, loves, loves riding on the boats, and doesn’t think the trains are too shabby, either. (And honestly, the boats are quite fun.) The pools here are lovely, and the staff has been amazingly friendly and helpful.

I’m feeling more hopeful now than I was when I started writing this account a couple of hours ago. We have a week ahead of us. I’ll let you all know how it goes.