We settled in at the Mauna Loa Village, in Kona. A genuinely nice unit, its just ten steps from the pool. I have a pool-workout that lasts one hour. I do it every other day, so being close is a plus for me and Karin who also works out in the pool.

We had a surprise when a friend that I hadn’t seen for 52 years read in my blog that we were in Hawaii. He was here too. It has been a real treat to hear how his life evolved during all these ears. He is also a “water person” and we found we had a dozen mutual friends. He is 70 now and still swims three miles in the ocean most every day.

Karin and I have taken a few walks and enjoy the smell of the sea mixed with fragrance of all the flowers. What a powerful sense of smell is! It brings to the front of the memory list many moments in my life. Some of quiet introspection, some of maximum excitement being pulled through the water by a 300-pound fish on the end of my spear, some of just sitting around a campfire on the beach with my family all around me.

We are both writing every day. Karin is editing the first draft of her new book, and I am working on the start of a new one. I published two books in 2020, so I am resting. No pressure, this is a great place for that.

We found a place where we can rent a kayak for the day. That is in our plans now. We will be moving to a new resort on the ocean front in two days and be there two more weeks.

Getting here was not fun but being here is good. These birds will miss us when we leave – – we have breakfast together every morning. In October, we will be coming back to the island of Maui for two weeks. Karin and I realize that we are truly blessed.

We were very tired when we landed at 8:30 Hawaiian time (11:30 PT). We were tested again for C-19, then picked up our luggage. Moving everything out to the curb, Karin sat on the stone wall while I was going to pick up the car. I had to run to catch the airport shuttle that took people to the car rental yards.

Once on the shuttle and underway, I relaxed for about two minutes, before I remembered my wallet was in my briefcase back with Karin. When I rented the car on Priceline they told me all I had to do was stop and pick up the key at Enterprise. Everything was paid for. I got to the counter after standing in line for 30 minutes.

All was going well, I finally got to the point where I would get the key. I was very close. The key was on the counter right in front of me. Then he asked for my credit card.

I explained to him that it was in my luggage back at the airport. He said he needed the card to take a damage deposit on the car. “No credit card, no car.” I told him I would go with the car and get my luggage, along with Karin who was sitting on the stone wall for an hour now. I would drive right back with my card. He checked with someone behind the door in the wall then came back. “No credit card, no car.”

I was having to get back on the bus to get my card at the airport. If I hadn’t already been into this car rental for $1,400 (we were there for a month), I would have just taken a taxi.  I got back on the bus.

The driver was the same one that brought me to the rental car lot. He asked me, “What happened?” I told him my sad story. I should mention that I was using my walker this whole time. He told me he would drop me off to get Karin and my luggage then come right back after he dropped off the two other people that were on the shuttle.

I bounded across the street, grabbed Karin and said, “Hurry up!”. She didn’t know what was going on. No car, and we are rushing to catch a bus?  We made it back to the shuttle stop just as he pulled up. He jumped out and took care of all of our “stuff” and we were on our way back to the car lot.

When we arrived, the shuttle driver told me to go in and get the key and he would take our belongings over to where I could drive the car right up to them. I got the key then went out to find someone on the lot to find the car. The driver took the key and trotted off into the lot and drove our car right to our luggage and loaded it in. I think perhaps the bus driver was the reincarnation of one of my dogs – – I loved him.

Now very tired, Karin got into the car.  We set the GPS for the timeshare’s address which we had no idea how to get to, then pushed the GO button. The battery in the phone was dead.  JUST KIDDING. All went well. We found the timeshare with a note on the door which said, “Use the phone in the box on the door to call after hours.” It was definitely-after hours. We could hardly get out of the car. We made the call and were given a place to drive to and registered. A maintenance man, I think he was related to the bus driver, grabbed our stuff and put it in his cart and took us to our unit. I decided they were not related, they were just both Hawaiian.

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This is not about my time in Hawaii, but about the actual process of getting from my house in Aliso Viejo, CA to Kona on the Big Island. I have made this trip many times before and the process was always simple. Buy a plane ticket and fly to Kona. Rent a car and drive to my timeshare. This was not to be, this time. Due to a combination of the CV-19 virus and my incompetence, (I blame on my age not my IQ), it became a frustrating and expensive experience.

The process started when I found a flight with the perfect times for us, a direct flight out of LAX to Kona, taking off at 7am and arriving around noon. It was on Alaska Airlines. I gave Karin the fight information and she booked the same flight, but it was with American. Same plane and times. A few days later I got an email notification from Alaska saying,” Your travel plans have changed.” I was now on a flight that arrived in Kona at midnight, and Karin, was left on the original flight. I called and told Alaska that “my travel plans did not change” and I wanted my money back so I could buy a new ticket on American and be back with Karin. I did that.

All seemed to be back on tract. A few days passed and we got a message that our American flight had been changed. We were now taking off at noon and arriving in Kona at 8:30 pm. I called and changed my car rental to a 9pm pick up.

We got the information that we had to be tested for CV-19 within 72 hours of our take off time. OK we can do that. Then we were told that it had to certain type of test by a certified facility that the airline and Hawaii accepted. They gave us a list. I started calling places on the list and found out that we had to pay for the test because it was considered to be a voluntary test, not a medical test. I could understand that. After calling a number of places I finally found one in Carlsbad, 60 miles away, that only charged $170/test. Everyone had a different price. Some were up as high as $395 each. We drove to Carlsbad on Tuesday morning to get our test within the 72 hrs.

We were told that we had to create an account with the state of Hawaii and upload our results when we got them by email. Karin did that on her computer and I did it on my computer. We were under pressure by now because we needed to upload a picture of ourselves, fill out a health form, and upload our CV-19 results from an email we were to get on Wednesday. Once it was all complete, a QR code would be sent to us which we must have on our phone or we couldn’t board the plane.

With the help of my daughter and her husband we were able to figure out how to do the health form and the photo. I received my test results, but Karin’s didn’t show up in her email. It was now late Wednesday and I’m going into panic mode. I called the Carlsbad testing site.

They had sent her results to my email address, instead of hers. They guided me through how to find it on my computer. I found it, then sent Karin an attachment for her to upload into her Hawaii travel account. It didn’t work. I printed a copy of it and took it to the airport with my fingers crossed. It worked – – they let us on the fight.  We landed in Kona at 8:30 p.m., Hawaii time. I’ll pick it up at that point in my next blog. The adventure isn’t over yet.