Volume 10: Pete in Hawaii - A small essay from a small island where the summers/bumbags are endless

You'll notice I've turned the seatbelt light on as we're about to crash...oh, sorry, it's just your entertainment system that's crashing – observations on the flight to Hawaii The problem you have as someone who lives in Australia is that you live on an island, meaning the only way of reaching other countries is either by boat, plane or an as yet to be invented catapult system that can launch objects/people inter-continentally. The boat has it's downside in that it takes extended periods of time to get anywhere, the plane has it's downside in that it seems a requirement under international law to have at least one crying baby for every 2 rows, while the catapult system has it's downside in that it hasn't been invented. I weighed up the pros and cons of each form of transport, before settling on flying budget carrier Jetstar. There's an old quote from the face of Mad magazine, Alfred E. Neuman, that goes “Ever notice how random chance picks you for jury duty, but not to win the lottery?”. It was that quote that entered my head as I was now sitting in front of the only entertainment system that had crashed on the plane. The ONLY seat. The chief of the flight crew was most helpful as she tried multiple times to reset it, all to no avail. I joked to her to tell the captain that this was an emergency and we needed to land immediately, to which she replied with tongue in cheek “Yeah, sure. We'll make an unexpected stop off in Fiji”. She was quite apologetic, whilst probably thankful I hadn't completely lost my shit over the prospect of having 10 hours to entertain myself using simply my own imagination. As a stroke of good fortune, 2 of those 10 hours were spent trying to untangle the headphones that had been in my pocket for all of 35 minutes, so it was only 8 hours I had to fill listening to music from my phone. And by the way, how do headphones and power cords find a way to get tangled in such a way? You put away an extension cord, it sits in a cupboard for 2 years UNTOUCHED and UNMOVED, yet by the time you pull it out to use it it's constricted itself into such a weird combination a snake looking at it would think, confusing it for another snake, “that bloke must hammered! How did he end up like that?!?”. To cap it all off, the young couple next to me (I'm assuming just married judging by the way they were all over each other and only the distance of the width of his pants material away from joining he mile high club) weren't even using there TVs. They'd pulled out their laptop and were watching a movie on it. So here I was, in the ONLY seat on the plane without an entertainment system, somehow stuck next to the ONLY 2 people on the plane who chose not to use their entertainment system. It's moments like these I think there is a god, but he's just a 5 year old boy pissing himself with laughter at the small misfortune and inconveniences he's creating for people. So about 2 hours into the flight I finally had my music on to distract me from Lord Humpington and Lady Humpington (and why did they place the man of the couple in the middle seat? Federal law should dictate passenger configuration should always go boy-girl-boy to minimise elbow related kidney injuries. Females are, as a general rule, smaller, and therefore less likely to have an elbow encroach on your guts). By now, the stupid cow sitting in the seat across the aisle (was a middle aged woman, and not a bovine with limited intellect) had decided she would spend the next hour standing (spend all that time in a paddock eating grass, probably just muscle memory for the stupid cow to stand?) so every single person and their associated ass or penis was now pushed against my shoulder as they squeezed past her. God, being the boorish 5 year old boy that he is, decided to turn this aisle into a track meet. I have never seen so many people so keen to move up and down an aisle, and so fast. It also included people leaving business class to use our toilet, which I found to be incredibly poor form. Not good enough to sit with the masses, but good enough to piss where we sit. I longed for turbulence and each business class passenger returning to their seat in urine soaked pants caused by that turbulence. There was no seat behind mine, just the galley, so I was free to recline my seat without fear of breaking the legs of the person behind me, although by now the excessive number of penises that had grazed my shoulder left me in such an annoyed state I would have happily crushed the legs of the person behind me so that someone else could share the pain I was enduring on this flight. Speaking of penises, the flight crew on this plane were a walking stereotype of the gay male flight attendant. You would have to venture into a gay club to be surrounded by this many gay men. I suppose only natural given they work in an environment that involves a “cockpit”, which I imagine is also the name of gay club somewhere on earth. The only real highlight of this flight came as a flight attendant walked past smelling pine fresh. It was a smell that immediately took me back to my first car, and the sweet smell of pine that I used to defeat the god awful funk of wet carpet. A tremendous choice of fragrance for a car, an unusual choice of fragrance for a human. Excuse me, but your infinity pool seems to contain a finite amount of water – observations on hotel related activities

My flight landed at Honolulu airport (or HNL when I'm telling chicks at the bar I'm a pilot) on time just after 6am. I cleared customs, not before being racially profiled (white man can't get a break in the US) and pulled aside and asked questions that included what was my profession, how often do I travel to the US and how much money I had on me. So not so much an interrogation but more like questions you might hear at speed dating. My limo driver (yes, I'm straight gangsta) a Mr Melvin Kim was waiting for me at arrivals holding an “Aloha Mr Peter Hart” sign, I couldn't help but feel the customs official/speed date would have sped me through customs with an escort if he could see I was important enough to have my name prefaced by “Mr” on a piece of paper in 24 point Times New Roman. Mr Kim was a pleasant fellow, as we talked over the PA due to the length of the limo (I told you I'm straight gangsta) about his golf game, the lack of a professional sports team in Hawaii and, as what would become an unusual custom for this trip, became the first of many to ask me if I was competing in the marathon on Sunday (fair enough, you have a deceptively huge upper body like me and people naturally assume you're an athlete). We reached the Sheraton somewhere in the vicinity of 7:30am. Now was to come the most annoying part of arriving at any hotel that early: the waiting game. The lady at the checkin desk offered to hold my luggage for me, while handing me a pager that was to ring when my room was ready. Now, for me, I associate a pager with something that is about to happen imminently and with urgency (think pager, think doctor, think life saving heart transplant). That association tends to disappear when you carry a pager that doesn't go off for 5 and half hours. I wandered aimlessly for about 4 hours, not wanting to stray too far from the hotel in the off chance the pager went off (forget a watched pot never boils, a watched pager never rings). 4 hours into waiting for the pager that does not page, and close enough to noon to not be deemed to be the act of an alcoholic, I decided this wait would be a lot more pleasant if I had a beer in my hand while staring at the ocean. I headed to The Edge bar on the Sheraton grounds that filled both criteria of having a beer while looking at the ocean, where I purchased my first beer for $4. Not happy with the fact my seat at the bar had my back to the ocean, I instead decided to setup shop at a table behind me which now had me facing the ocean to which I thought was a million dollar view. The next beer I purchased cost me $7, so based on that, as it transpires the Sheraton had only assessed it as only a $3 view, somewhat undervalued from my million dollar assessment. 2 beers in, I had grown to hate the pager. I'd been on a plane for over 10 hours, I'd been waiting 5 and half hours for my room, and by now I longed for the chance to shower and wash the stench of other peoples ass and penises from my left shoulder, so I headed to the checkin desk to see if something could be done. Thankfully, I was greeted by a delightful lass/angel who warmed to my story (I didn't mention the excessive number of asses or penises I had encountered earlier) and she promptly went about moving me from my as yet unready room on the 27th floor to a ready room on the 22nd floor. She handed me multiple sets of keys, as the Sheraton was in the process of changing the locks in each room, and crossed her fingers that at least one of those keys might work. As it turns out, crossing your fingers is not a technique employed by locksmiths, so I'm not sure why I was surprised to find neither key opened the room given what the boorish 5 year old boy in the sky had put me through so far. Thankfully, another angel arrived half way into my extended string of profanity in the form of the bellboy (if you can call an old man a boy) with my luggage. “Oh no Mr Hart! Your key doesn't work, oh no Mr Hart!” he exclaimed, for some reason making my frustration feel less knowing it was now shared. He, being an angel, had divine powers so was able to open the door, not before repeatedly saying “Oh Mr Hart! What a room! Oh Mr Hart! What a room! Whatever you did for them must have been great for them to put you in this room! Oh what a room!”. I didn't have the heart to tell him that them was technically the bank that issued my credit card as I was the one who had paid for the room, and not some drug lord who I'd done a hit for, but I soon shared his excitement as we entered the suite that was bigger than my apartment. 2 balconies, 1 with a view over an endless ocean, 1 with a view over Diamond Head; by now the boorish 5 year old boy in the sky had decided he'd had a great enough laugh and had now thrown me a bone. I don't have an official table ranking my best ever showers, but if I did this one would surely have found it's way into the top 5 ever. Content, I went downstairs to the checkin desk, for the 3rd time, to get what would be the 2nd set of what would eventually turn out to be 3 sets of keys when hotel staff changed my door lock 2 days later. I was delighted to discover the close door button in the elevator actually closed the door, as for many a year I've worked in an office building only to discover that button doesn't seem to be connected as I press it unrelentingly, hoping it closes before some twat in a suit walking in a bag on wheels, which of course can't be carried due to the excessive amount of weight 1 apple, 1 paper notebook and 2 pens creates. For me, the discrepancy between checkin and checkout times has confounded me for many a year. I had arrived in a hotel in Barbados in 2007, only to be told we couldn't checkin until 4pm, yet without fail each day before 11am housekeeping would knock on the door asking to come in. And don't dare stay in a hotel room until 11:05am in a hotel with a checkout of 11am, otherwise you will receive a friendly reminder in the form a call from the checkin desk that checkout time is 11am. Why is there such a massive time difference between checkin and checkout? Are there really that many hookers dying in hotel rooms at the hands of senators giving them too much cocaine that a coroner has to come in and conclude his investigation before anyone can check into the room? Each day I had the tremendous good fortune to enjoy breakfast on the 30th floor in the Leahi Club lounge (“Leahi” I believe being a local Hawaiian word meaning “You think it's complimentary, but price built into room cost”). It afforded magnificent views of Diamond Head, and also a view of some simpleton using a metal spoon to try to remove his toast from the toaster. I found myself, in a somewhat morbid way, cheering for natural selection, entranced, unable to look away half expecting to see the grim reaper touch the simpleton on the shoulder and remove the world of another idiot. The grim reaper must have had a prior engagement with some idiot using an electric iron in a shower and never did turn up. As for the toaster, I shouldn't have been surprised it hadn't sent the simpleton to meet his maker, for never before have I known a toaster to take so long to simply burn bread. Throwing bread onto Kalakaua Avenue still warm from the previous days heat would have created toast faster than this less than lethal toaster. Wonderful views, wonderful entertainment watching some idiot almost die at a toaster, only let down by the Sheraton staff member who decided to take crispy bacon out of the hot food breakfast rotation after day 1. Who takes crispy bacon out of a breakfast rotation?!? It would've been like Phil Jackson turning to Michael Jordan and telling him to sit out all of the playoffs; foolish decision. Hotel entertainment wasn't just limited to breakfast. I also had lunch at The Edge one day, enjoying my $7 view of the ocean while watching an amateur surfer try to stand on a board in a section where there were no waves. It's like giving your kid a new bike & then telling him he needs to learn how to ride it while it's stationary before he learns how to ride & pedal. Reasonably easier if you're pedalling & the bike is moving. I was also taking a small moment to enjoy the fact this was the first time I'd been in the US and never asked for ID when purchasing an alcoholic beverage, despite not looking 21 since I was 19. Right next to The Edge is the infinity pool, which I'm fairly certain contained a finite amount of water despite the name suggesting otherwise. As an adult with a full time job you tend to grow tired of rules. Rules like being in the office before 10am, always wearing pants in the office, not being allowed to refer to a colleague as a retarded fucknuckle despite tremendous years of evidence suggesting they are, but rules can also be of benefit occasionally. Take the infinity pool, for example. The Sheraton constantly had roaming uniformed staff, not too dissimilar to the Berlin Wall I imagine, kicking people out of the pool if they weren't residing at the hotel. If you couldn't provide a room number and a corresponding name, they kicked you out. Which was interesting in that they went to enough effort to carry a piece of paper with room numbers and corresponding guest name. Whereas when I hired the cabana I just said charge it to 2002. The honour system associated with the charging to a room number and signing a name is a nice little throw back to yesteryear where people were more honest. I could have easily have said room 2715 and signed it M Schlong, having a quiet chuckle to myself that the “M” was for “monster”, yet I didn't, somehow feeling compelled to uphold the honour system of the room charge. Once inside the infinity pool, you could order drinks and enjoy them inside the water, while enjoying the $7 view (and also in my case, farting to create my own spa). Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way to say Merry Christmas to you – observations on local culture

When you think Hawaii you think floral shirts, Mai Thai's and beaches. But based on my experience on my first day in Hawaii, I will forever associate bum bags with the great state of Hawaii. They were more ubiquitous than floral shirts, to the point I thought they must have been an official piece of Hawaiian heritage. When the Polynesian’s first arrived in outriggers back in the 3rd century were they all wearing bum bags and it's something that's stuck ever since? Why are tourists sacrificing the functionality and more ascetically pleasing nature of shorts with pockets for an item of clothing that makes me think when I hear a siren that it must be the fashion police finally coming to haul the bum bag wearer away? I'm 38 years in and people still confuse me. Of course, if you're not rocking a bum bag, you'll need some sort of other fashion accessory to be able to compete for the ladies who are throwing themselves at the numerous men wearing bum bags. At least I'm assuming that was the thinking of some 15 year old Bobby Brown shirtless looking kid one night who suggested I would look good in his leather jacket and it could be mine for the budget price of $60. I politely declined, not inquiring further as to whether that was $60USD or $60AUD, instead sticking to my guns and life rule of never purchasing leather garments from someone without a shirt. The function over fashion mantra of the bum bag peoples was not something that was entirely shared over the entire island. As I walked home from the University of Hawaii basketball game on Saturday night (read below about this epic journey) I past the iDo laundromat. Parked in their car park was a swank new Mustang (the car, not a horse) which left me wondering what thought process was followed that led to the purchase of reasonably expensive car ahead of an incredibly useful Whitegood? I can only imagine the thought process went “sure, annoying that I have to drive to somewhere to do my laundry, but god damn I look good driving there!”. The following day was the Sunday, the day of the marathon, and I know the reader will be surprised to hear I did not compete. Each competitor that finished the marathon was awarded a gold medal, so with 22,029 starters you can imagine late afternoon that day in Waikiki looked like a Mr T convention with seemingly every person wearing gold. Competitors were also awarded a green t-shirt, so the day after then looked like a Kermit the frog convention, with one lone lass deciding to wear her medal as well just in case the green t-shirt wasn't a big enough hint she had competed in the marathon. Once your vision has become accustomed to the abundant number of bum bags, your focus then drifts to just how many Japanese tourists find their way to Hawaii. To think that less than 75 years earlier the Japanese had bombed Hawaii, but were now welcomed is something I find quite remarkable. There are parts of Europe and the Middle East where someone stole a goat from a rival village 2,000 years ago, and countries are still fighting over that goat. You just can't imagine an American gunner shouting at a plane he's just shot down going “Take that you Japanese bastard!” only for the Japanese pilot to have his last words being “I might be about to die, but my family will be back in massive numbers, and to book out all your hotels and use their associated pool facilities!” as his plane crashed in flames into the ocean. The Sheraton was so welcoming of the Japanese that most signs were printed in both English and Japanese. Of course, while it's a warm feeling to see previous enemies welcomed and cultural differences embraced, the same can't be said for American pedestrian lights. The “stop man” is red, while the “go man” is white. Not green, but white! It's a subtle sign that coloured people are bad and are not welcome on the other side of the street, while white people are good and are welcome to cross the street. Blatant racism! I think almost as racist as using the term “coloured people”. So with Hawaii welcoming the Japanese, giving subtle reminders about white people, it is nice to find yourself walking past the Duke statue on the beach, a nice tribute to a local legend. Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku as he was formally known on a birth certificate I assume that is longer than a ballot paper used to vote in the Australian senate just to fit his name on, is the man credited with taking surfing to the world. He also visited Australia in 1914 (don't believe he ran for the senate, just a co-incidence that his birth certificate and the senate ballot paper share the same length) helping to launch the sport of surfing in our great country. It was only later that Mick Fanning would combine the sport with shark wrestling. The Duke also found time to win 3 gold and 2 silver medals across the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Olympic games, while today he can be found in statue form with his arms open covered in leis. Leaving me to ponder the thought he may have at one time propositioned a member of the fairer sex with “would you like a lei” followed by the unzipping of his pants only for aforementioned member of the fairer sex saying “sorry, I thought you said lei, not lay”, and Duke, standing there with his pants down, replying back “sorry, I thought you meant lay, not lei”. That is probably a wildly far fetched story I've made up, but given he was one of nine children I dare say that lei/lay confusion may have happened more than once among his parents. If you continue past the Duke statue, towards Diamond Head, according to Google Maps you will find yourself at the Honolulu Zoo. Having walked all the way down to Diamond Head volcano and not seeing anything resembling a zoo, one is left thinking that the only animals in this zoo are ants, so I made a mental note to send a letter to local authorities suggesting they rename it to the Honolulu ant farm. With Duke on my mind, I had lunch at Duke's restaurant inside the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort hotel. They say if you see a lot of locals eating in a restaurant, it's a good sign the food is good. In Duke's I further expanded that idiom to include if local pigeons eat inside a restaurant, then it's a good sign the food is good. Duke's is a restaurant that starts inside and expands outside to views of the ocean. So once a pigeon has finished working on its tan and starts to feel a bit peckish, it can go get a feed at Duke's. The ribs I had that day were delicious, with the meat just falling off the bone. I was served by a male waiter, whose name a I promptly forgot, wishing I could inform him no matter how great his banter was it would not improve his tip as I am a shallow simple man who only tips above 18% if I'm being served by a woman and my penis is stupid enough to interrupt thoughts from my brain by saying “I think she is flirting with us because she finds us attractive, it has nothing to do with her wanting a bigger tip”. It was over lunch that I could also ponder why I seemed to keep replying to someone saying “Aloha” with “hola”, and that while my brain was doing well to spit a word out of my mouth that contained all but one of the letters from “Aloha”, it would do well to use a Hawaiian word and not a Spanish one. Some people travel because they're excited by new cultures, some travel as they're excited by the arts (as someone whose been to the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I can say don't waste your time seeing galleries on continental Europe. 95% of the paintings are of Jesus, naked blokes wrestling each other, and heads on plates), while I get excited by local beers. That excitement reached fever pitch as I passed the Yard House for the first time and it's sign greeting patrons with the sacred words “World's largest selection of draft beer”. Over 100 beers in the 1 venue! And didn't I give it a solid crack of attempting to drink each 1! When I'm on vacation I refuse to acknowledge the clock as my entire life outside of the vacation is governed by the clock, but there is always an exception to that rule; happy hour. 2:30pm each day at the Yard House, be sure to have everyone in your party synchronise watches to ensure you don't miss a minute of this life altering experience that teaches you that hazelnut can in fact be a valid and delicious component of beer (life is all about learning, after all). My last stand out experience of Hawaii was the limo ride to the airport and the great pains the driver went to pointing out we were passing the school that Barack Obama had attended growing up, with driver beaming with pride like he was talking about his brother being the president. I couldn't see Donald Trump out the front demanding academic records to prove Obama was born and raised in Kenya, but the pride with which the driver talked suggested Obama did in fact attend the school.

Let's go team, let's go! – observations about local basketball

Hawaii was to be a short stop off point to recharge my batteries before continuing on to San Francisco for two NBA games. By a happy coincidence, there was also a college basketball game on at the University of Hawaii on the Saturday night so I treated that as an appetiser to the main dish of NBA about to be served a week later. I'm a man who loves to walk. Haven't driven a car in five years, will happily wander aimlessly for a couple of hours on a weekend through the Royal Botanic Gardens near my apartment, as I find walking to be a great way to clear your mind and process thoughts, and can come to terms with thoughts like telling a colleague they're a retarded fucknuckle is a career limiting thing. So, with that in mind, I looked at Google Maps, did that thing you do where you measure out distances using your index finger and thumb, and came to a conclusion that the walk to Stan Sheriff Stadium was only about 2.5 kilometres, so I could do that walk in about 20 minutes. It looked like a reasonably straight forward walk; head up Kalakaua avenue, turn right onto McCully street, cross the bridge and take the first right onto Kapiolani boulevard. When you get to a bend that heads lazily to the left, turn left up University Avenue and Bob's your uncle. For some reason, there was a nagging lack of confidence in my ability to negotiate that route, so in one of the stupidest decisions made on the island that day, I decided to walk up to the university sometime around noon, under an angry sun that seemed to be targeting all its rays at me, so that I would know how to get to Stan Sheriff stadium on game day. 20 minute walk? The only thing more wrong than that assumption was the decision by many to wear a bum bag that day. This epic journey was beginning to make Moses exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt look like a short stroll to a picnic to play fun ball games in a park. Around 40 minutes in I hadn't reached University avenue and was beginning to think I should document this journey like a 19th century explorer trying to find a passage from the south of Australia to the north. Something like “Minute 40, still no sign of Stan Sheriff stadium. The men grow weary, I fear they may eat one of the horses...”. To give the reader an idea of how remote this journey was, I actually walked down streets that didn't have an ABC store every 20 metres. In fact, there were no ABC stores prompting me to ponder whether I may be the first non local to have ever walked these streets. Wow, I really am just like a 19th century explorer. As I headed down Kapiolani boulevard, and as I was the first white man to have seen these parts, I felt obligated to rename it to something more Anglo. I couldn't decide between Flat tyre way (I saw 2 cars with tyres that look like they've been flat for so long that the car actually left the dealership with flat tyres) or Hobo avenue in honour of the pair of shoes that someone decided looked better on a concrete fence than on their feet. 50 minutes in I finally caught vision of the domed roof of Stan Sheriff stadium, spent the next 5 minutes trying to figure out how to gain access into the University grounds without success, gave up and headed back to the hotel to rehydrate in the hotel's infinity pool. I contemplated taking the hobo's shoes off the fence so that I would have some sort of reward for this epic journey, but thought better of it. Having had the same success as Burke and Wills (at least I didn't have to eat a horse. Oh, and I wasn't dead, so maybe I had topped their achievements) I caught a taxi to the stadium on Saturday night. The driver, having taken a small glimpse of my physique in his mirrors, asked me whether I was competing in the marathon tomorrow. I said “no, too much like hard work” to which he chuckled and replied “well, in terms of marathons, the Hawaiian marathon is a short distance”. I didn't have the heart to tell him that all marathons are over the same fixed distance, and did well to not fire back with “well, the only reason Usain Bolt runs so fast at the Olympics is because the 100 metre finals are shorter than the 100 metre finals at the World Championships”. Once inside the stadium that at times I had thought was just a myth, I was disappointed that only about 3,000 fans had arrived to this magnificent 10,000 seat stadium. It also looked like about only a third of the team's band had arrived, so I figure that everyone living on campus must have been out getting drunk given this was a Saturday night. Or perhaps they were embarrassed that their team nickname was the “Rainbow Warriors”. Who names a team after a Greenpeace boat sunk by the French? The French! A people who handed their guns over to the Germans quicker than someone handing over a house warming gift, which I suppose is fair enough as the Germans had setup house in France. The French! A people whose national anthem includes the words “I surrender”. As I saw the male cheerleaders in the pregame, my only thought is I've now found a job more demeaning than male nurse. Embarrassing. When the game finally started after 7pm, or in real terms, after my 2nd beer, I was struck by the fact the entire coaching staff for the University of Hawaii were wearing floral shirts (no sign of bum bags). It was like they'd just finished a shift at a resort, and were now working their second job. The equivalent would be an Australia team coached by someone wearing Speedos or a hats with corks. I should have known the standard of this game was going to be less than exemplary when the coach made his first substitution only 3 minutes in. Who needs to be subbed out after 3 minutes? Have the players, just like the coaches, just finished a shift at a resort and come from smoko direct to the stadium and are now short of breath? It was such a beautiful stadium, it was a shame it was being ruined by a game that didn't deserve to be played even in a high school playground. It was 31 a piece at half time, it was fitting that 2 mediocre teams were not good enough to be in the lead. To make the game more interesting I purchased my 4th beer at the break, realising I was starting to get a little tipsy. I didn't have the phone number for any taxi company, and wasn't sure my ability to negotiate the maze of an entrance on foot was being enhanced by this beer, but finished the beer happy in the knowledge that was future Pete's problem while current Pete was in a happy place. Entertainment that night also consisted of a small blimp flying around dropping free taco vouchers. I trust that when the Wright Brothers mastered man flight their true hope was that it would lead to technological advances that would see a remote controlled flying device that could deliver free tacos. What a magnificent age we live in. The game mercifully ended with the local team named after a sunken ship winning; it was time for future Pete to find a way back to the hotel. Sometimes you look at the $1/1MB international data roaming & you think that's ridiculous. Then you find yourself at a University of Hawaii basketball game, where only 3,000 of the potential 10,000 fans arrive, and you realise the likelihood of getting a taxi is remote. So you reach for your offline map app, which has all the detail of someone looking at Earth from Mars with binoculars, and then when you use Google Maps and it provides a walking path out of the maze you begin to think $1/1MB is good value. Future Pete had come up with the goods by using the pedestrian route option of Google Maps instead of the driving option, and I was soon walking down University avenue on a path that I knew well from the previous epic journey.

#hawaii #usa #hartofoz