Aloha Oy

My folks left today for a vacation in Hawaii. They've been there several times before, but never without me and my brother tagging along with them. (I want to use "my brother and I" there, but you wouldn't say "without I tagging along with them," so I think "me and my brother" is actually correct in this instance...it still looks wrong...)

This is probably for the best. I like Hawaii a lot (what's not to like?), but I always feel a bit out of place there. Let's face it - I'm an overweight bearded Jew. I have about as much business on a tropical beach as Nanook of the North. When in Hawaii, where the population is largely Polynesian and fond of saying "mahalo," I tend to stand out.

I far prefer vacations where I can blend in with the local population. In Hawaii, I'm so clearly a tourist that I don't get to really experience anything. Everywhere I go, it's "let me get you a towel, sir" and "here's another fish entree with a name that includes 20 vowels." Everyone in Waikiki's from Des Plaines or Fresno or Waxahatchie, Texas. It gets kind of weird after a while.

I'm reminded for whatever stream-of-consciousness reason of this one trip to Vegas with my friend and roommate Nathan. We stayed at the Frontier Inn on the Strip and I had to wake up extra early one morning to catch a cab to Henderson airport for a flight back to LA. So, I'm standing there on The Strip, and it's about 9 am, and for the first time, I really see the street for what it is. At night, there's so many people and lights and so much activity and noise and commotion, you get caught up in it, you kind of give yourself over to the illusion.

But in the morning, when the street's bare save for old people and hardcore gamblers, and all the lights are off, and the hot morning-in-the-desert sun is beating down on you, you really see The Strip for what it is: a dank patch of oversized buildings huddled together in the middle of nowhere, packed to the gills with strangers from various states sleeping off their collective hangovers.

So, that's not really like Hawaii, which would be a beautiful tropical paradise even if all the tourists and activity went away. But it's kind of how I feel about Hawaii after several weeks of being waited upon and treated like a visitor. I prefer visitng a culturally enriched major city to which I've never previously been. You get to check out the major urban centers, interesting museums and landmarks, and meet different kinds of people with different backgrounds.

Although Hawaii does have the benefit of those Volcano drinks with the eight different kinds of rum in them. Let's see Chicago try to top that one.

It's also good that my parents are taking this trip because they rarely leave comfortable environs of Southern California. My mother and I share a disaffection for travel, though for me it's more the actual transportation part that's a bummer. I hate long car trips, and I really hate commercial air travel, but once I get where I'm going, I enjoy myself immensely.

My mother, on the other hand, doesn't really relax from the moment she leaves the house until the moment she has returned, and this doesn't even include all the packing, unpacking and pre-arrangements that cause her strain and irritation.

Plus, once we get to the hotel, she always insists that we change rooms for some bizarre reason. Now, granted, sometimes there would actually be a slight problem with the room, such as not having enough beds or a faulty air conditioner or something. But sometimes we'd walk into rooms that seemed perfectly fine to me, and yet we'd still have to switch rooms. Sometimes more than once.

I think the idea was, you always assume that the hotel will want to put you in the cheapest, crummiest room they have available, so if you keep shifting rooms, eventually you'll get to one of the good ones. But it's hard to believe that every time you check in to a hotel, they're trying to foist you into some dismal, dank corner they reserve only for the suckers who accept the first room they're offered.

Part of the problem is, my parents share a strange obsession with having a "view." I don't get the need at all for a view from a hotel room window. I mean, okay, maybe, if you're staying somewhere with one clearly identifiable thing, maybe it'd be nice to see it from your hotel room. Like, if you're in St. Louis and your hotel is right near that Archway thing, you might want to be facing it if possible. Because what the hell else are you going to look at? St. Louis?

But some hotels just don't look out on to anything interesting. And how much time are you really going to spend sitting in your hotel room staring out at the horizon? I suggest that, if it's more than 10 minutes total for the whole vacation, you don't really know how to have a good time. Why not, instead of worrying about the view from your room, you go out and move around in the landscape, three-dimensionally? It kind of enhances the whole experience.

Now that I'm re-reading this post, I realize it could be seen as making fun of my mother, which she clearly would not appreciate. But I'm going to post it anyone because (1) I am something of an inconsiderate son, (2) it's a very gentle ribbing as opposed to a harsh critique and (3) she's off in Hawaii, and the wireless Internet remains a mysterious and futuristic concept to my parents, so I'm betting Moms will be incommunicado, cyberwise, for the next week or more.