Preamble

It's Thursday night and we've had Angus and Emma over for dinner.
We're watching Masterchef, which I've likened to World Championship Wrestling of the '60's and '70's. 
The show that was hosted by Jack Little and was on at midday on a Sunday. It had "
"world famous" wrestler like  Mario Milano, Bulldog Brower, Andre the Giant and the Hawaiian Curtis Piehau Iaukea III, known as King Curtis.
Go take a look here for some real entertainment.
Yes it scripted entertaining BS which sucked in the viewer way beyond the level it deserved but it was the precursor to all "reality" TV that has followed.

I digress.

One of our favourite contestants got eliminated from Masterchef so I've decided to do something useful, like start this blog.

Why Hawaii?
It started as part of a much talked about trip which we had spoken about with our friend Greg.
The original intent was to stop in Hawaii for a few days and then head off to the US and do Route 66.
Not a bad plan? Great plan ..... until I started to delve into it the way I do for all our holidays.

The time slot was, due to both work needs and the desire for warm weather, end of July through to beginning of September. That would surely be enough to tick off all the things that one would do on Route 66,  we thought.
Route 66 just shy of 4000kms and it goes from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.
As Greg intends to head on to the UK after our stay together, and it's considerably cheaper to rent motorbikes if one goes from west to east, we considered starting in California.

As riding for 4000kms for the sake of riding 4000kms alone is not exactly appealing, and would be an inhuman imposition on Tiz, we started to look at other thing that we would enjoy during the trip.

One of the first things that became very apparent, whilst looking at accommodation in particular, was that we are heading over in the middle of their very long holiday season.
This makes finding a place, any place, to sleep difficult and if you do it's at a premium price.  
We still weren't deterred and the search for more info continued.
We looked at the routes we could take,  given that  the original Route 66 is all but gone, or "decommissioned", as some put it.
There are several ways to roughly follow the old road. It depends on which guide or book or blog or clip you read or look at.

We also looked at what places and events we could take in around that time of year.
Lots of people suggested Disneyland, at the very start. Although I had already been, many years ago, I was happy to return with  Greg and Tiz.

Where to next? Although by no stretch of the imagination would the next suggestion be remotely close to Route 66, Las Vegas was suggested. Over the years I have known many people that have gone to 'Vegas and they have all loved it. 
No matter how enthusiastic they have been in there description of the place and the fun they had no one has ever convinced me that I might have fun there.

Then there was the plethora of cafes and truck stops that promise a taste of the old route, that again failed to appeal. They all seem so "try hard" and "dinky". 

But, there was one very bright glimmer of hope in all the dull suggestions and likely places to "enjoy" - Bonneville Speed Week.  Woohoo! A gearheads Mecca.
I have dreamt about attending this event since I got interested in going faster, at around age 12.
It is an event that is held on the Bonneville Salt Flats, which are about 2.5 hours drive west of Salt Lake City, in early August, condition permitting.
We started looking at what we needed to do if we wanted to attend, at least a few days.
As the nearest town, West Wendover, to the west, has every bed and square inch of "camp-able" dirt booked out for years in advance the nearest likely town to rest up for the night is Salt Lake City.
The logistics made little sense and given that it was cancelled last year due to unseasonal rain the risks of it not going ahead this year made it risky.

We tried to justify doing the trip but when all things were considered we decided that it just wasn't the thing to do.

Two weeks in the warmth of Hawaii drinking Mai Tai's and chasing a decent luau made a lot of sense, and was sealed as the right choice just days ago when the 2015 Bonneville Speed Week was cancelled, because of heavy rains, which I am sure have nothing to do with climate change.
If you doubt me you need to listen to idiots like our prime minister Tony Abbott on the subject.   

Before you go into a spin, the irony of a speed week being cancelled  by what I believe is a climatic condition, at least in part, caused by gas-guzzling emission spewing behemoths is not lost me.
We all have our contradictions, so please forgive me for my major one.

Let's move on.

We leave on Saturday 25th at 6pm. We fly for about 10 hours and we arrive at 8:30am on the same Saturday. Thankfully we get to turn left instead of right on this trip as well.
That and a pair of Bose Q25 should make the trip bearable.

We're going to spend one week in Oahu and one week in Maui.
We have an apartment booked on both islands through Airbnb and are renting a car, again, on both islands.

At this point we have a Mai Tai sunset cruise booked, a plan to drive to the north eastern corner of both islands to hopefully spectate some reasonable size surf, spend a while on a waverider and pretty well anything else that takes our fancy.
No plans set in concrete other than relaxing our weary bones and taking it easy.



To achieve said state of relaxation  I'm thinking along the lines of a bit of this ...

... and some of this ...

... and bit of this ...

... and a whole lot of this!

Yep, it'll be a tough gig but we have an A1 crew that are up for the challenge. 

We come back on the weekend of 8th/9th August.

It should be one of the more laid back holidays we have had in long, long while and makes a pleasant change from some of the more intense jam packed ones we have had in recent years.

Mahalo, for joining us in our travels via the blog and we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoy writing it.