I went to Hawai’i for a week. I intended to post but then I didn’t write anything in advance, and I thought I’d write while I was there, but that didn’t happen either. Shocking.
the milky way, several shooting stars, and a little moon aurora from partway up mauna kea
the little red glow in the bottom is the lava pool at kilauea
We went to the actual island of Hawai’i. It was beautiful, in an unfamiliar kind of way. The whole island is lava flows from several rather large volcanoes (as are all the Hawaiian islands), and it’s very strange to see the jutting, rocking A’a lava flows across the island. They look like someone did a terrible job of discing a field, but of course, you can’t really disc lava.
I wish we’d had time to go to the Hawai’i botanical gardens — I’m such a plant nerd. The plant life in Hawai’i was already amazing, so it would have been extra neat to see it all collected in one spot. Next time.
lava tube coming out of the kilauea eruption
What we did get, before we even left, was a rather alarming wake-up call. We stayed overnight at my in laws’ place (it was a family vacation so we were all driving to the airport together), with luscious plans to wake up at 4:30 in the morning and drive to the airport for our 7:20 flight. At 3:15 in the morning, MIL knocked on our door and I bolted upright in bed, afraid we’d missed the wakeup call.
“You don’t need to get up right now,” she said, “but the toilet’s been overflowing for hours and the hallway is full of water. Your carpet will probably be wet.”
there are thousands of feet of waterfalls in the more heavily-forested regions of Hawai’i
this one was in a valley over from the Waipio valley
I mean, there’s no response to that really.
The house is on septic, being out in the boondoggles, and the leachfield on the side of the house where our bedroom is situated has been struggling this winter. The heavy rain and waterlogged ground just don’t drain the water from the toilet and shower away the way it should. It was actually two plumbing problems at once that caused the issue. Someone used the bathroom late at night and didn’t notice that the bowl was filling. Normally this would never crest the bowl of the toilet, but the tank also malfunctioned and kept running. And running. And running.
Boyfriend’s sister got up in the middle of the night to pee and thought, at first, that she’d stepped in puppy pee. But when she put her second foot down on the carpet she knew it was no pee spot. When she opened the door to the hallway, an inch of standing water greeted her.
We spent from 3:15 to 4:20 mopping the hallway and drying off anything that we needed for the trip. We still made it to the airport, and fortunately there’s nothing left of the incident but a vaguely mildewy smell that should go away soon.
Nothing like country life, amirite?
Zen and the Art of Baby Horse Management 