CHAPTER THE THIRD -- VANCOUVER TO MAUI, HAWAII, USA

CHAPTER THE THIRD -- VANCOUVER TO MAUI, HAWAII, USA

by Foulweather Jake 14 October

In which plans are slighty altered by a mildly inconvenient hurricane

Wednesday, 23 September, 2026 — Monday, 28 September, 2026.
We awoke in Vancouver far, far too early for decent folk, because of course we had to get to the airport three hours before our flight.*
Eventually, we got on a plane, which (perhaps slightly ironically) temporarily took us back to PDX, in Oregon, roughly a two-hour drive from where all this started. That’s where we changed planes to get to Maui. Our son, Ethan (you know: the one who got the Author’s car), was also changing planes in Portland, because he was coming to visit Maui with us!*
It was Ethan’s first time in Hawaii, so we wanted to make sure he got to do all the fun stuff; we parental units, on the other hand, were mainly content just to exist on the island, hang out with our friends, and eat copious quantities of Hawaiian shave ice.** I’d made reservations at the Old Lahaina Luau, so we could have the quintessential Hawaiian tourist experience: drinking Mai Tais and eating roast pork while native folks valiantly attempted to educate us about their culture and history. As per longstanding mainlander tradition, we didn’t learn all that much , but it was fun and delicious and beautiful nonetheless.
We are blocking your view of an absolutely gorgeous sunset.

The one thing we hadn’t planned for was HURRICANE NOLO!!!*. While it had politely left us to our own devices on luau night, it otherwise provided an abundance — some might say an overabundance — of howling wind and driving rain through much of our time on the island. We, however, coming from the Oregon coast as we did, found it a nigh-delightful sort of howling wind and driving rain. Compared to some of the “rip off your roof and throw it into the woods” winds we’ve experienced back home, at least Hurricane Nolo had the advantage of providing warmer (and therefore more comfortable) drenchings.
Still, the weather did impel us to trade out most of our planned “swimming in the ocean” time in exchange for more “doing indoor things” time. The latter isn’t exactly what Maui is really all about, but we did our best. We visited the aquarium in Maalaea, did an escape room in Wailuku *** (there is something faintly perverse about traveling several thousand miles to a tropical island and then paying someone to lock you indoors, but circumstances required flexibility), hung out with our friends a lot, and ate the foreordained copious quantities of Hawaiian shave ice. All in all, we had fun despite the hurricane.
All too soon, though, it was time to take our leave of Maui and get further outside of our comfort zone, so we bid farewell to our friends, said goodbye to Ethan, and left the island.
RETIREMENT TAKEAWAY: Maui is glorious and wonderful and all the other positive superlatives. However, it also features studio apartments of 350 square feet for $2000 per month, so unless we win some sort of “here’s a free house on Maui” contest, it’s (sadly) not very likely to be our retirement solution.
* There’s no real narrative need for the Reader to know this; the Author just wanted to gripe a little bit.
It was cheaper to fly from Vancouver, B.C. to Portland to Maui than it would have been to just fly from Portland to Maui. This makes no intuitive sense to me, but I’m sure that someone, somewhere has managed to logically justify it. Somehow. Maybe.
* Yay!
** Despite what the Reader from the continental US might think, this is nothing like sno-cones. It’s at least two orders of magnitude better.
* In our (mild) defense, none of the songs featured subtitles.
Emphasized to imply rather more Hair-Raising Peril than actual events can support.
* We won, of course. The Author doesn’t believe we’ve ever failed to escape an escape room, because we’re just that good.
** The Reader didn’t need to know this either; the Author just wanted to brag a little bit. Also, there is no need for the Reader to point out that most escape rooms, as money-making endeavors, are designed specifically to ensure that the majority of groups can successfully escape within the allotted time. The Author prefers to consider himself a Rare Genius and will therefore willfully ignore any such comments.

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