Maui how do I miss thee, part 2 (Pearl Harbor)

The alarm went off at 4:15am. It’s disturbing to even type that. [Remember, you’re looking at someone who doesn’t let her kids get up before 8am because anything before 8am is still considered "the middle of the night".] We had to check out of the hotel, stop for gas, return the rental car and shuttle on over to the airport. Supposedly, all before 5:30am. *shudder*

How to make a smart-mouth comedianne who has had 3 hours of sleep seriously agitated:

Interrogate her with agricultural transport questions. (Apparently they frown on packing pineapples in your suitcase.) Then make her strip off her shoes, belt, watch, and any accessories that may have at one time been in the same room with something metal. (Gee thank goodness I wasn’t wearing sparkle body spray – the machine would’ve had an all out seizure.) "Ma’am, could you please step into this porta-shower and exfoliate yourself with this here official TSA loofah before proceeding through security?"

Dear Al-Queda,

You are seriously pissing me off now.

Signed,

One Fed Up Accessory-less Infidel

Gee, thank goodness there haven’t been any reports of a "bra-bomber" or we’d really be in for a treat at the security checkpoint! "Free mamogram with all flights!" SHEESH!

I’m so rattled by the time I get through security. Gee, do you think that Starbucks not 20 feet on the other side of security is some sort of accident?

And speaking of – might I just take this opportunity to express my annoyance with the Maui airport Starbucks. After ordering $10 worth of beverages, I asked for a glass of ice water. "That’ll be an extra $1.35 for the cup." Seriously. I just paid you for $10 worth of caffeinated beverages that are going to dehydrate me and then I am going to step onto a plane that is going to further dehydrate me and you won’t give me water without charging me $1.35 for a .25 cent cup?? WOW! "Hey Starbucks – think about it you sell caffeinated beverages in an airport. Dontcha think that someone might rewuire a glass of water at some point??" I didn’t realize natural resources were that expensive in Maui – perhaps you’d like to also charge me for a napkin? Or perhaps you could charge me extra for my receipt, oh wait – that would take up more receipt paper…

I wouldn’t even DARE to calculate the THOUSANDS of dollars we have spent at Starbucks over the past 10 years. Never mind the fact that we just spent a total of $115 at Starbucks in the span of 6 days.

[Now, don’t judge me yet – I know that sounds like an absurd amount to spend at Starbucks in 6 days, but we actually budgeted in getting lattes every morning of the trip, and we ate sandwiches there, and we bought several Maui emblazoned travel mugs for gifts there. And we had a giftcard for part of it. End aside]

Anyway, all they could give me for free was a 5 ounce dixie cup of water. And they didn’t even put ice in it – just lukewarm tap water. Wow, that would NEVER happen in Seattle. EVER.

So, the rest of the day was better.

We caught our flight to Honolulu (where we had a 7hr and 15min layover). We were going to spend the day at Pearl Harbor so we caught a shuttle to a car rental place and got a car for a few hrs since I had found out it was $30 to catch a cab one-way to Pearl Harbor and it only ended up costing $18 to rent a car for the day!

Pearl Harbor was amazing. We took a ferry out to the memorial for the Arizona (the ship that was sunk by the Japanese bombers entombing over 900 soldiers. We also bought tickets to go aboard the U.S.S. Bowfin submarine and the U.S.S. Missouri ship (where the Japanese signed their surrender). It was very interesting. Here are some pics:

Hubby on the U.S.S. Bowfin Submarine.

Me driving the sub "DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!"

"We all live in a yellow silverish-grey submarine…"

Hubby manning the guns.

Then we headed over to the Battleship U.S.S.Missouri…

The ship was enormous.

"This is your captain speaking…"

The Arizona Memorial is very sobering. I didn’t get any picture of the outside of the memorial (cause I’m a ding-dong) but here is one of the inside. There is a giant wall with the name of all 1,177 crew members who died that day: 

Here is one looking into the water from it. You can see the ship just under the water (some of the parts actually stick up out of the water). See the oil on the surface? We kept watching little bubbles of oil come out of the ship and surface. Apparently it leaks up to 1-2 pints of oil a day. Even after 65 years.

We spent about 4 hours at Pearl Harbor and headed back to the airport for our strip search to head back through security.

We arrived back in Seattle around 9:45 and after making the rounds to pick up all of our sleeping children, we got home somewhere around Midnight.

It was a great trip – we had a ton of fun, thoroughly relaxed, and got VERY tan or shall I say "deliciously dark"? *Thank you Banana Boat tanning oil!*

See, look how dark Hubby is:

<img alt="" src="http://render1.snapfish.com/render2/is=Yup6aQQ%7C%3Dup6RKKt%3Axxr%3D0

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Isn’t he a cutie?! *sighs dreamily*