Uber
This is going to be short- the events I am going to recount actually strung out all day, under brilliant sunshine with some scattered puffy clouds. I am not going to get into the latest horror in Orlando, which happened before we actually went to sleep here, but didn’t find out about until our eyes eventually blinked open this morning. It is nice to be away from all that for the moment.
We were intending to make it a beach day- just head down to the park at Kailua Town, park the car and get the Old Man crisply done in the beach skillet.
Didn’t work out that way. It wasn’t that the ocean was closed or anything, but we circled around the one-way entrance next to the Kalapawai market about four times before we had to give up on finding a place for the big Ford SUV. Then, we thought that the beach at Bellows Air Station where we used to go, years back, would be fun to revisit, but wound up on the Mokulua loop. Apparently the road doesn’t go through to Bellows these days, though I seem to recall that it did, and we headed back past the store with the windows down and struck out again on a parking place, then headed back out to State Route 72, which was a parking lot with sirens.
We gave up and went back to the apartment and decided to Uber over to the Hale Koa, the military resort hotel on the beach at Waikiki. We ditched the beach chairs, but otherwise stayed geared up for snad and surf and my son punched in the details to summon a driver.
A quick note on how Uber works here. Back in DC, you are liable to get some third world maniac at the wheel, as Jon-without and I discovered the last time we used it. Here, it is different. It is an article of faith that the Honolulu County cops will nail you in a sobriety check-point, and the aversion to driving while even slightly drunk is as profound as it is in a hard-drinking country like the UK.
Cynthia, our first of three Uber drivers that afternoon was a laconic lady of indeterminate ethnic background who ushered us up the Pali and over the hill down into Town with only the admission that she was considering moving to a town south of Missoula in Montana after 26 years on the island.
I said it was pretty country and then there was silence in the car until we were dropped off on the street in front of the Hale Koa. The steps up and down through the lobby were daunting for me, not so much for a young man in the prime of things. It seemed prudent to stop and refresh with a couple Super Main Tais at the Barefoot Bar next to the ocean-front pool and the ocean itself, and then one thing led to another.
It was largely a military crowd, as you would expect at an R&R facility that still echoes the ghosts of Vietnam. But these warriors- their women and men and children- seemed to have a tattooed wariness in their eyes amid the frosty beverages. And a lot of great ink displayed in places that don’t show under a uniform.
It was a pleasant afternoon, and we had a general understanding with some local friends to hook up at what was supposed to be a great dive bar over on Beretania- a place called Anna O’Brien’s. We called Uber and retraced our steps through the hotel and back to the street. Our Uber driver this time was an MP on his day job with a pregnant wife and a desire to be back in Rhode Island. No accounting for taste.
When we got over to Beretania, we found Anna’s to be a cozy place with a small knot of afternoon regulars who were drinking and smoking and having a good time. We settled in to await reinforcements, yacked with a cute bartender who was the size of a Valkerie, had a drink, and decided that some ramen would be a good thing to consume.
Our local had a place he liked- Agu Ramen- and we walked over from the bar past the ball field under the rainbow. The noodles were not bad- wheat thick ones as I recall- in a creamy red sauce. Things might have been getting a little hazy, by in large, and at some point were were back at Anna’s as the evening crowd started to fill up the place. I asked one of the regular who was puffing away on a Marlboro directly under sign that said that smoking was strictly prohibited under penalty of law.
I asked what was up with that, and the Valkerie responded that the law specified that only the Health Department could enforce it, not the cops on private property, and their inspectors only worked until three in the afternoon. After that, it was puff city.
It smelled like a real bar. Eventually, it was Uber back to the North Shore that seemed to be the best answer, and at $25 a pop each way, a great deal and no one expected a tip.
The third ride was piloted by a nice Air Force retiree who was originally from Taiwan or someplace and we learned about the closest three generations of his family and their service before we were finally ensconced on the sofa in front of the big screen, and I was sensible enough to head for bed before I found myself there in the morning.
What a place. Checked all the tourist stuff on a very fun day.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
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