Geeky Ramblings

Well, we’re off on another adventure.

This time to the UK and Ireland.

Had to wake up ugly early. But managed to get out of the house on time.

Mike, our taxi driver from American Taxi, was great. Even checked the status of our flight when I couldn’t get online with my phone. I got his card for the return trip. He said to text him with flight info and he would be there.

Check in was uneventful. TSA guy was WAY to chesrful. Someone needs to check his coffee.

Right now were waiting at the gate, hoping for an upgrade to business class. Ginny checked availability yesterday and it looked good.

Before we left, I pointed the webcam at Riley’s food, so we can check up on him.

Found out that boingo now offers 15 minutes free wifi access if you watch a 15 second ad. The ad, however, does not play on the iPhone. I’m not complaining.

Now all there is to do is wait for the flight to board.

Today was our first full day on Maui … I woke up really early … around 2am Hawaiian time (due to the time change). Dinked around with the computer a bit (of course I brought it along). Around 4am I made coffee for Ginny and I and we watched the day break.

Ginny and I went for a walk on the beach with our cameras … nothing amazing to see though. Ginny decided to go to church, so I was on my own for a few hours. I sent for another walk on the beach with my camera … tried to get some longish exposure shots of the waves breaking over rocks. I haven’t downloaded those pictures though … so I’m not sure how they came out.

After Ginny got back we went snorkeling … the water was kind of rough by then, but we gave it a go. It was kind of cloudy in the water, but not too bad. I managed to get a really cool video of a turtle though.

(sidenote: A bit of an observation … this is the first video I’ve uploaded to YouTube … and I noticed that, in a lot of the similar videos (of turtles in Maui), the videographers got REALLY close to the animal. This is expressly forbidden by the Fish & Wildlife authorities in the islands.)

After snorkeling, and rinsing off, we wandered around Kihei and grabbed lunch. Then it was back to the condo for some serious relaxing.

For dinner we’re going to try and grill some fresh tuna we bought at Safeway yesterday.

Well, here we are again … on a plane going to Maui. It’s Ginny’s birthday in about a week and we’re going to celebrate. I’m not going to say how old she’s going to be, but I’ll give you a hint … it starts with 5 and ends with 0. You do the math.

Our flight was entirely reasonable … leaving at 10am, so we only had to wake up at 6am so we could be on the road by 7am. As usual, the cab arrived about 20 minutes early … but we didn’t try to rush. Riley wasn’t happy, but that was to be expected.

I checked us in using United’s website … seemed like a good idea. The only problems occurred when we checked our bags. First we had to hike down to the other end of the terminal to get to the “United.com bag check” area … and the barcode scanners at the bag check stations couldn’t read our boarding passes. I think they were broken though … as two other people had trouble using the scanners.

Once our bags were checked, we went through security. I really hate the security check … even though I know and understand the need for them. I wish they had a longer run-out after the x-ray machine. If people are the slightest bit slow getting stuff off the table, things get jammed up. It would also be nice if you didn’t have to take off your shoes.

Because we arrived at the airport so early, we had some time to kill. We picked up some coffee and muffins for breakfast and I wandered around a bit and picked up a book and a copy of Wired magazine (I only read Wired when I’m traveling).

I did see something interesting in the airport terminal … so sponsored kiosks that were nothing more than really small carrels with power outlets. One was sponsored by Verizon (advertising their wireless broadband service, but there was no wireless broadband service available there) and another sponsored by Principal Financial Services. They both were basically just billboards. Nice idea though. I also noticed a distinct lack of available power outlets in the terminal seating area. Ginny ran out and picked us up some sandwiches for the flight. I’m not sure what’s better, buying in flight or before we leave. The meals they have in flight are only $5, but I suspect the fare you can buy in the terminal is better quality.

No big problems boarding the plane … Ginny asked if there was any possibility of getting upgraded to economy plus, but the flight was completely booked. Considering how many open seats I saw when I checked us in, I was quite surprised they weren’t asking for people to volunteer to take a later flight.

So far no big problems on the flight … it’s a little bumpy, but nothing too bad. Sometimes Ginny gets nervous when the flight is bumpy, but she’s fine.

We’ve been feet wet for a while … it’s 11:47 HDT (4:48 CDT) … so we have about 2 hours of flying time left. The flight crew reported we may arrive a little early, so that’s nice.

About 3 hours ago I realized I had forgotten my camera tripod at home … I always forget something. I’m going to see if Steve can send it over. Not sure what the cost would be, but I suspect it would be cheaper than buying a new one. Of course our walking sticks (which I didn’t forget) have camera mounts in the head … but that’s only good for short term stabilization … not enough for long exposure. Of course there’s always the option of asking Steve to just get it to my mom & dad, since they are joining us in 5 days. That would probably be harder to manage than just having Steve ship it to us.

Ok, I just found another nice feature of this laptop (Dell Latitude D630) … the screen is a little shorter than my Inspiron 600m was (because it’s a wide screen), so it fits better on the airplane tray without bumping into the seat in front.

Weather is looking pretty sketchy, so we’re just going to drive around town to see what’s to see today. Ginny wants to go out by the airport to see “Aragorn Studios” … and I would like to scope out the airport to see where we will return the car.

Had lunch at a local cyber café … I had a chicken roti … pretty tasty. Kind of like a West Indian burrito.

Aragorn Studios is a art collective place … lots of different artists, some working on stuff, and some just selling.

My only big gripe is that all the vendors had a 5% surcharge for credit cards. I ended up paying cash.

Leaving, we tried to find the airport Avis location … with no luck. Kind of odd, I know that Hertz, National, and Thrifty had booths in the lobby of the airport building.

On the way home we decided to make our own dinner, so we stopped at the Rite Way again and picked up stuff for pasta & garlic bread.

Before dinner I took my laptop out to check mail & stuff. I managed to catch Riley on the webcam as he sitting on the table. I tried to get his attention by changing the way the lights blinked on the cam. Changing a setting might have caused a slight click, as he turned his head quickly when I did. Not entirely sure though. He looks normal though, so that’s a good thing.

Today we decided to check out one of the local snorkeling beaches. Smugglers Cove was listed as a good spot, so we pull out the map and start driving.

The drive was, shall we say, interesting? It went from lousy local roads, to dirt roads, to rocky roads.

We did finally get there … and it was fairly nice. We didn’t snorkel, as the water was a bit rough. But we bobbed around in the water, which was relaxing.

Bought lunch from a beach vendor … grilled fish & rice with a tangy sauce. Not bad actually. The guy used his car for electricity.

Had dinner at Fort Recovery’s “Restaurant” … food wasn’t bad, but the service left something to be desired.

I decided to load the pictures from my camera on to my computer … and I discovered that the ‘stain’ that I thought I had on my filter was actually on the cameras sensor.

This basically means that all the pictures I took that have a bright background in the upper right hand corner are going to show a spot.

I’m going to have to take the camera in to Wolf to see if they can get it repaired. I hope it’s still under warranty. I’m pretty sure it has a 1 year warranty.

We weren’t feeling up to going to ‘The Baths’ today, so we decided to just stay on board. That’s disappointing, as I’ve heard ‘The Baths’ is pretty interesting.

We realized that the one bottle of Dayquil wasn’t going to last long enough, with both of us not feeling great, so we wandered around town a bit looking for a drug store & grocery store, maybe the beach.

Found the stores, never got to the beach. The drug store was interesting, as they carried absolutely no American or British products. No Nyquil or Dayquil. We spoke to a pharmacist, who only spoke marginal English, and she gave us some cold medicine. Not sure it worked very well. We’ll have to pick up some more familiar stuff tomorrow in Tortola.

Almost went on the island tour, but decided we weren’t feeling up to it. We went back to the boat to relax.

Work up around 6am still feeling lousy. We decided to go ashore to find some cold medicine.

Had a very light breakfast of some honeydew melon and toast … I’m sure that anything heavier would screw me up something fierce.

Turns out that every morning the captain hosts a ‘Story Time’ where he tells us what’s going on for the day and any other bits of info. I did my best to give a hearty “Good Morning Captain Sir”, but my head & throat rebelled … so I only croaked a it. Ginny was able to belt it out … I suspect she’s going to regret it later.

The captains’ name is “Fernando” … he introduced the crew including Debra, the ‘Activities Mate’, and Laurie, the Purser. He also covered important stuff, like safety guidelines, etc.

We had lunch at a little French place called Antoine’s. Ginny had some good gazpacho soup, I had a chicken sandwich. I would have liked the soup, but wasn’t feeling very adventurous in a food way.

We wandered back into town to find a drugs store … and found one. They didn’t have a lot of stuff, but they carried Nyquil & Dayquil, so we bought one of each. Not sure if that will last us, but it should get us past the next few days.

We’re on our way … wake up at 4am, cab arrives at 5am, flight is at 7am. OMG am I tired.

Arrive at San Juan, find a place for lunch. Nothing special, but ok.

Fly to St. Martin in a puddle jumper. We sat right next to the prop.

After clearing customs, we went to the main lobby of the airport and found the windjammer rep. We had to wait a bit to get on the bus because they had to wait for some other people. Bus ride was ‘interesting’, as the roads were very narrow. Everyone joked about inhaling a bit to squeeze by.

Bus stopped a few blocks away from the dock, so we had to hike down to where the launch for the boat was.

Check went fairly smoothly, although we had to go through the safety briefing twice. Were taken to our cabin, which was VERY VERY small.

Around this time I noticed a slight cough and dryness in my throat.

We went to bed around 10pm, after having dinner and wandering around on the deck.

I woke up around 3am feeling lousy. Head ache, sinus congestion, scratchy throat. Oh crap, now I have a sinus infection.

We’re off on another vacation … this time to the Caribbean for a Windjammer cruise and some time on the British Virgin Island of Tortola.

Riley has figured it out … he’s seen the duffel bags and knows we’re going away. He’s not in a good mood.

Ginny has a cough that hasn’t gotten any better … probably caught it from some of her co-workers. She thought it was gone a week or so ago, but it came back. I was quite surprised that I hadn’t caught anything. I’ve been taking Echinacea and 1000mg vitamin C tablets for the past 8 weeks to avoid getting sick.

I aimed the web cam at the chair Riley likes to snooze in, so we might be able to watch him when we get to Fort Recovery.

Ginny realized that we forgot to get more dry food for Riley … so she left a note for Pat, our pet sitter, and a ten dollar bill, in case she need to get a small bag.