Thursday January 20, 2022,
First things first. I have to formally introduce you to my two best friends on the island. I have mentioned them before but here is irrefutable proof that I did not make them up!
So folks, may I present, the tremendously talented twins ;
Milo and Mason!
For those of you that know me, you know I don't have any grandbabies of my own, so I have to "adopt", like the Peanut in Edmonton (special aside for Gracyn: WLYB?) And now, "the boys"! Gonna miss the two tykes when they have to jet home to the mainland!
Okay, now on with Thursdays events. I did about an hours ride this morning and on the home stretch said good morning to Josh. I assume he was was headed off to work, eager to nurture, refine and positively influence young impressionable minds!
I'm sitting here watching another gorgeous sunrise, waiting for my darling bride to emerge from her much deserved slumber. The coffee is set to go, and as soon as Munchie is ready we are off for our morning stroll!
Got another delivery from the Amazon today! Ordered some splash guards for the bike. I am always amazed at how the vendors can do it? From the mainland to Hawaii in less than 48 hours, free shipping and the guards were under $20! The packages are delivered to the front desk and they call me to come and get it! Its like Christmas! Marge at the front desk is usually the one that calls me (this is my 3rd package since we got here, 2 for the bike and a set of beach chairs!). I told Marge she must be Santa's best helper on the island, she agreed!
Josh and Alayna came over in the evening and Munchie, of course, prepared what she called just a few easy appies! Double baked hot wings, stuffed mushrooms, veggies and dip, and of course her awesome nacho cheese dip! And she topped it off with some of my favourite vegetables, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies! We had an awesome time. Josh and Alayna are a great couple! They shared some very exciting news with us, they are expecting their first child! Munchie is hoping for a girl, so she has an Island surrogate grandbaby to spoil! Munchie told Josh and Alayna about our Peanut and how she knows her designer labels (especially MK). Josh and Alayna told us about how they ended up here on Kauai, what a great story! Josh was submitting his resume to a number of different places and sort of out of the blue he got a call from Kapaa middle school and within a week they were selling everything in Oregon and heading to the islands! What a great adventure for them. And what a great place to start a family!
We look forward to keeping in touch with Josh and Alayna and are hoping to get together a few more times while we are here!
Friday January 21st. (moving day!)
The day started with the usual 6am bike ride for me then coffee, cards and muffins when I got back. Then we had to pack up the place for a move to another suite. However there is one little hiccup, our next suite isn't available until tomorrow! We have one night in a smaller one bedroom suite in the K building, up front. We managed to have everything packed and loaded on a couple of carts and fortunately the K unit we moved into was ready to go before 11am, so we didn't have to use the hospitality suite as an temporary luggage depot! The only real logistical concern was the frozen and perishable goods, but with the direct move it was not an issue. Hopefully, we have another seamless transition tomorrow.
We have to hop suites a few times, the down side of availability when booking our bonus weeks with our timeshare. The upside, we still wake up in paradise!
We went over to Paco's Tacos for lunch, it was very good!
It used to be the Ono Family Restaurant, which was a great place to eat.
We saw Milo and Mason headed off to the beach for their last time on this visit to Kapaa. They took their parents and auntie along to enjoy some fun time in the surf and sand! The boys are headed home on an 9am flight. We will miss the twins.....oh yes and their mom, dad and auntie!
We had met a couple from Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the flight over, Ed and Beth Long. They are staying at the Pono Kai and are also timeshare owners here. They are here until mid March! They do a bit of room hopping too, again a bit of a minor inconvenience, but not too bad. We see them often on the walking path and around the complex. They are a delightful couple!
The other day Ed told us they have a spot they enjoy walking over to for happy hour at the Coconut's Fish Cafe. Its about a 20 minute walk from the Pono Kai, over by the Safeway. So today we met up with Ed, (Beth had to pass, she was a bit tired) Ed's daughter Natalie, son-in-law Craig, another long time Pono Kai alumni, Barbara, and Marie.
We all walked over to Coconut's and had a great time and conversations. I do so enjoy meeting new people, everyone has such great stories, experiences and adventures! Here's to new friends!!
We met the franchise owner, Carol, a great ambassador for her business! Upbeat and friendly! A shout out to her Carol and her staff, the place was extremely clean and tidy and the food and drinks were awesome. The surfboard motif is a neat theme!
Saturday, January 22, 2022.
This is a very important day in history, on this day in 1946, James Allen Medley entered the world!
Jimmy is our group of retired Mounties elder statesman. He joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on April 20 1966, but his most noteworthy feat was getting Stella to marry him on July 5, 1969! Jimmy I think you still owe Stella $800! (that's what he had to have in the bank to be granted permission to marry by the RCMP at the time!)
Happy 76th Jimmy! (you ole piper you!)
Today is another move day for us, we have to vacate our one night suite (K203), and wait for our next unit to be ready, A102.
Check out of K203 was at 10am, check in to A102 is 4pm. This meant we had to use the hospitality suite to store our luggage and supplies until A102 was ready. We had things pretty organized so it wasn't too bad. There are 3 refrigerators with freezers there for guest use and we were able to store our frozen and perishable goods there.
Saturday is a busy check-in/check-out day at the Pono Kai and the hospitality suite was being used to capacity!
We spent the morning sitting in the lobby talking with the 4 girls from the US east coast (New York & Atlanta). Hazel and her 3 daughters, Anne-Marie, Janet and Gillian, were in the E building, a 2 bedroom suite just up and over from us. They are originally from Jamaica. Munchie and the girls, especially Janet and Gillian shared shopping tales, and it became very apparent that they shared my darling bride's keen interest in shopping! They were all very interested in who shopped where for what bargains!
We hope our paths cross again here at the Pono Kai, Munchie would love to prepare and share some wonderful Ukrainian dishes with you!
The Pono Kai housekeeping were able to get A102 ready for us in record time and we were moved in by 1:30 in the afternoon.
You can't get any closer to the ocean than A102!
We had rain most of the day, so we didn't lose any beach time because of the move. Things just seem to work out!
We got settled in the new suite and were sitting on the lanai, playing dominoes, when our neighbour poked his head around the corner, Jim from E106! He and Christine were our neighbours for our first week here.
We had been talking to Jim in the lobby earlier and he had said Christine had to return to Ontario for work, but he decided to extend his stay. He had bounced around different suites here and ended up in A103 for his final few days. We had talked about him joining us for happy hour on our lanai, and he ended up right beside us, too cool!
So we had a beer on our lanai, then decided to walk down to Jimmy's to check it out.
Jimmy's did not disappoint! There was a fellow playing the guitar and singing, and he was awesome! Munchie immediately attempted to set up a gig for the Spurs!
(for those of you not familiar with the Spurs, they are a super star trio of retired Mounties, Gerry (Slash) Babin, lead guitar and vocals, Jean (JT) Turgeon, just a rhythm guitar player, and Chris (Animal) Carroll, drums and back up vocals)
I tell, you the fellow at Jimmy's was awesome! A great variety of tunes and very good!
We had a cocktail, Munchie had a prosseco, in a regular glass on ice, no fru-fru sh#@! Jim and I had a Red Stripe. Munchie had the fish (mahi mahi) & chips and said it was excellent. Jim said he had the Jimmy burger before and was having one again. I had the same. The burger was great!
It was a very enjoyable evening!
To be continued.........
Good morning guys, just got caught up on your blog. You mentioned eating at what was formally known as the Ono Family Restaurant...in my first life when I went to Kauai (1987) for my former brother-in-law's wedding, we ate there. Grandma, mom and dad worked in the kitchen while the littles served us. Their motto at the time was "you don't like it, you don't pay". That was a great place to eat, we went a few times during our 7 day stay! Keep it up, stay safe...stay healthy!
ReplyDelete