... been away for about 3 weeks (not that I would expect anyone to notice ) ...
Lydia and I took a trip to Hawaii with stopovers in LA and San Francicso (Scott Yee... wanted to get in touch with you in San Fran but Lydia has a cousin in Marin who kept us really busy the one day we were there ... sorry about that)
Basically the lay overs were just to avoid back to back 5 1/2 hour flights.
But Hawaii is BEAUTIFUL, and very interesting ... Spent 4 night on Oahu, 4 on Maui, and 3 on "The Big Island" ... all different and having their own beauty and 'feeling' ...
Pearl Harbor was very impressive and the "Arizona" Memorial leaves quite an impact ... The Polynesian Culture Center is beautiful, fun, and educational and the "Ha: Breath of Life" show is fabulous ... http://polynesianculturalcenter.com/?gclid=CNKPpsSW86sCFQpo5QodwBqXIw

the "Big Island" was hosting the Ironman Triathalon - no, I did not take part this year - the area of Kona was mobbed with people from all over the world ...
We took a 'Blue Hawaiian" helicopter tour over a live, flowing volcano ... pretty exciting ... http://www.bluehawaiian.com/bigisland/tours/

One thing I noticed was that a good number of the restaurants had live music, from one to 5 pieces ... and let me tell you, the solo acts - guitar/vocals or piano/vocals - have to know a million songs by memory ... they get requests from people all over the world and I was amazed that they could answer so many of them ...

All in all a beautiful experience which I would recommend to anyone ...
t.