Hawaiian time is over…home is where the heart is

What a sunrise…quite the change from watching it come up over fields of corn and beans. Both are beautiful

The day started as usual with a spectacular sunrise. During our stay I’d usually head down to the Starbucks coffee kiosk and grab a cup while Connie slept for a while longer. I’d take my notebook with me and jot down some notes for these blogs. While everything went perfectly for us while on Hawaii (good health, safety, good weather, etc.) it sure wasn’t home, nor was I ready to settle down in this tropical paradise.

One thing that we constantly ran into was folks not knowing where we were from. They’d ask us where we were from and we’d reply “Iowa” then they’d start on how they knew someone from Ohio, or Idaho and ask weren’t we “big Ohio State Buckeye fans?” Ah…no. Iowa. It got to the point that I’d just reply “we live three hours west of Chicago.” After meeting us a lady from Los Angeles whispered to her husband “not many people make it out of Iowa” to her husband after we met. Dead serious. It must be the twenty foot walls at our borders that dissuade us from leaving the Hawkeye State.
Our trip back to the airport started with a bunch of packing and getting everything back into the Mustang.

Our bags loaded, my copilot giving me the “Hawaiian thumbs up” we’re on our way home…towards the airport

I’m a regular “Joe-Flyguy” now…my bride…maybe not so much (on the plane just minutes before leaving Maui)

As we boarded I slipped one of the flight attendants a fiver and whispered in his ear “just make sure that we’re topped off on the gas tanks would ya pal?” My concern addressed he took my money and assured me that he’d check as soon as possible.

After yet another safe take off (my number one concern) we settled back into our seats. After being in the air for about forty minutes or so one of the flight attendants spoke over the PA. “Due to technical difficulties…(pause of about five seconds during which everyone in the ENTIRE PLANE LOOKED UP AND GAVE THEIR FULL ATTENTION)….we will not be able to show the featured movie or TV shows…”. I could have done without the five second pause, lady. And the TV shows are essentially CNBC shows that I’ve never heard of and the movie is pretty bad…but at least it’s something to watch. As for me…I stayed busy with reading a book that I bought to purposely keep myself occupied during our flights. I plugged into the planes “music channels” with my ear buds but was asked to retake my seat when the Hispanic channel caused me to involuntarily get up and start dancing the rumba in the aisle. (There’s just not enough space in coach to properly dance the rumba if you’ve got the vivacious hips of a Ripley…which I do)

Goodbye Maui!! Notice our planes shadow along the bottom edge of this photo? Kinda cool…heh?

After we reached cruising altitude the pilot throttled back the engines. I looked at my watch and set it five hours forward, to Iowa time. I thought to myself “God willing we’ll be home in thirteen hours.” With my watch telling me what the current time was in Iowa, I began to unwind and relax a little. Flying over the Pacific Ocean at thirty-five thousand feet at over five hundred miles per hour night began to fall though my watch told me differently…it’s back on Iowa time…a place my heart never left and probably never will. I missed home. I’m an Iowa boy.

Thanks for reading. Peace to you and yours,
R

Day 3 another plane ride…I call shotgun!!

We departed Oahu midmorning and took a small prop plane to Maui. I did a little better this flight but only because I told the flight attendant to tell the pilot that I had a Google map ap on my phone that he could use if he wanted too (but that I’d get to ride shotgun if he did. He did not take me up on my generous offer). Once on the ground in Maui we picked up our rental car…a 2013 Ford Mustang convertible!!! Well played Connie Sue, well played. We ventured out for our forty-five minute drive to the hotel that we were to stay at, with top down on the car.

Never having driven a convertible I thought that it was a lot of fun.

Most of the rock walls lining the highways had a sort of wire mesh anchored into them to catch falling rock…which was great since we had no roof on the car.

The drive to our resort was real scenic. Ocean on the left, mountains on the right.

It’s about damn time someone recognized the importance of the fifth and FORGOTTEN FOOD GROUP…SUGAR!!

Now let me say this, the Ripley’s are “Holiday Inn Express” type of folks. We’re not fancy; we fly coach and drive Fords. Our hotel in Oahu was quite nice, our hotel room on Maui was…over the top nice (by our standards). Two words, “ocean view”.

The view from our fourth floor deck off of our bedroom. Just awe-inspiring beautiful.

…and the view to the right side of our deck

We had lunch poolside were the sandwiches were awesome, but the 10 ounce fountain Coke was $4 and not even that good. So later on at night we ventured into town and purchased some beverages for our room refrigerator, including some of adult nature.
That night we ate at the Pineapple Grill, where we had our favorite meal of the whole trip. Our server was Jessica who explained the menu, foods and Maui as a whole. She was our favorite person of the whole trip.

My meal was New Zealand salmon with garlic flakes, bok choy sauce and some fancy carrots (I’d rather have some corn or peas but maybe that’s just my Midwestern upbringing).

The red stuff on top is roe, the whole meal was delicious.

The purple stuff on Connie’s plate was Hawaiian sweet potatoes and it rocked!!!
We returned to our hotel and ventured into the surf again. I was only wanting to go in up to my knees. See how that worked out?

“Tourist amazed by rolling surf. Film at 11”

Tomorrow we head to the sea to do something that neither one of us has tried…snorkeling.
Until the next blog…God bless and peace.
R

Good God Almighty…I HATE TAKING OFF!!!

Few things make me as spiritual as funerals or the moments just after lifting off from the runway in a plane. Its been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, I think that the same could hold true for take-offs. Many a fuselage have emanated the earnest prayers of its passengers, rivaling Sunday morning sanctuaries. GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY…I HATE TAKING OFF!!!

My bride isn’t much better which is quite ironic since she’s the one who planned our whole twenty-fifth wedding anniversary trip to Hawaii. Since there’s no known roads or interstates to Hawaii we pretty much had to take the airborne route, driving west on Interstate 80 won’t cut it. I don’t fly much. I could count the number of times that I’ve flown on ONE HAND. We arrived at the airport weary from a night of strong thunderstorms and not much sleep. At the TSA checkpoint I tried to keep up with everything that was going on and what needed to go where. Normally I’m a joke-machine and run off at the mouth, but today I’m quiet and compliant. I asked the nicely dressed business lady behind me if she’d like to go ahead of me since I hadn’t done this kind of thing very often (as in eight years ago), but she politely declined. I thought that I was finished with doing stuff when she whispered “take off your shoes.” Which I did very quickly. Then she whispered again “take off your belt.” Again I obliged very quickly, (you’d have thought that Connie would have gotten interested that a nice looking gal was literally telling me to undress, but “no”. The lady could’ve continued “and now your pants and socks” and there’s a fifty-fifty chance that I would’ve done it until I got tackled by the TSA guys…or Connie for that matter.

After the checkpoint we settled into our waiting area where there was a church group in matching tee-shirts having a prayer service. I’m all good with scripture, they were heading to Haiti on a mission trip, and am real relieved that they didn’t proceed into the 23rd Psalm “and though I walk through the valley of Death” thing or I might’ve gone a little weird. Nice people, though.

On the plane I sat across the aisle from a high school girl who was busy texting, as we were puttering around the lead up to the runway. Now the flight attendant had already told everyone to turn off their electronic devices several minutes earlier, so I was debating whether or not to say something to this youngster who was starting to make an already edgy and paranoid Rich Ripley go totally ape-shit crazy as I hadn’t planned in dying in a fiery plane crash that morning with her texting somehow interrupting our precarious existence in flight. So, to my credit, I reached across the aisle, touched her on the arm and pointed to her phone and asked her to turn it off, which she did. Now I say that I said it politely but I’m sure she looked at me and saw a middle-aged man sweating profusely with a look of sheer determination upon my furrowed face. Whew! Now that I had the passenger compartment under control our pilot (who was wearing black shiny cowboy boots, or shit-kickers as my bride calls them) could fly us to Dallas/Fort Worth. Maybe its my father-in-law that calls ’em shit-kickers…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree is all I’m sayin’.

I prayed as the engines on our plane started revving up to take off:

Angel…”Lord. Rich Ripley has an urgent prayer that he’s really concerned about.”
Lord…”I’m not letting him win the lotto…”
Angel…”It’s not that prayer this time…he’s flying.”
Lord…”Flying?! What’d he jump off of this time?”
Angel…”No Lord…he’s flying commercial.”
Lord…”Who’s the pilot?”
Angel…”Randy Johnson.”
Lord…”It’s not Randy’s or Rich’s time yet. Direct Rich’s attention to some pretty clouds or better yet, he’s always blabbering about umping baseball games so let him see some from eight thousand feet, or the clouds.”
Angel…”Yes Lord.”

As we leveled out after the climb Heavenward I looked out the window and thought “Dear God…it’s beautiful up here.” To our east a flat horizon of pure sky blue while to our west the horizon was interrupted occasionally by clouds that shot straight up like Dairy Queen jumbo twist cones (I owe the Angel a big one).

Our flight and landing went off without a hitch into Dallas/Fort Worth, except for the fact that I chose to finally use the bathroom on the plane just seconds after the pilot announced our descent into Dallas. CURSE YOU COFFEE!!! It’s like peeing in a Porta-John during a windstorm with someone tipping it partially sideways. Anyway…mission accomplished. For some reason I’m totally cool with landing. It’s a natural progression of being so high and honestly I’m relieved that the flight will be over soon. Our second flight was from Dallas to Oahu, Hawaii…which in my opinion they should’ve stopped somewhere along the West coast and topped off the gas tanks, maybe grabbed a burger and stretched their legs…but no…they fly straight through. I mentioned my concern to my brother Brian, an all around nice guy and world traveler, and he assured me that there’d be enough fuel to get us that far without stopping to refuel. Mind you, I remember the time when I was around five years old and I climbed on top of my bed, his was right next to mine, and I whipped it out and whizzed all over his bed. I can’t remember why I did that, but I remember that he was real, real mad about it. Since I was so much younger he couldn’t extract a pounding on me like I deserved so I figured that he’d eventually give me some bullshit story that I’d believe in desperation like “sure there’s enough fuel to get you to Hawaii” as we plunge into the ocean, well short of the island. Well played, Brian, well played…forty years later and you finally got your revenge for that pee-prank your baby brother pulled on you in nineteen seventy-one. At that point during take-off from Dallas I was relatively sure that Brian wouldn’t do that, but only because he’s fond of my wife Connie. Relatively sure….

We loaded onto the American Airlines 737, through the livestock chute…er gangplank, whatever they call it. I resist the urge to squeal like a hog being led to slaughter, if only to keep my bride from back-handing me. I internally rationalize that if my aunts, who are in their 60’s and 70’s, can fly all over God’s creation and not make a scene then maybe I can too.

Again we sit on the runway, this time in a big silver tube with wings. The engines throttle up, the big girl lurches forward then launches down the pavement. It just doesn’t seem possible that this big multi-ton piece of metal, plastic and wire can get into the air much less stay in the air. Faster we roll, faster my heart beats. Palms sweaty, face mighty stern, stomach in knots…and she lifts…first the nose then the rest. We’re climbing and gaining altitude. Seconds pass and we continue the ascent. My thoughts during those moments aren’t fit for print. Let’s just say that they’re profanity laced religion to a certain extent. Nothing sacrilege…just very plain and direct…then a pretty cloud catches my attention.

We arrive to Oahu safely and on time. Relief washes over Connie and I, I’m as serious as a heart-attack…we don’t do well with flying…actually I like flying its just the whole take-off thing that has my undies in a bunch. As we stand at the luggage carousal an elderly man approaches us, using a cane. He’s in his 70’s or 80’s and was a couplea rows behind us on our Oahu flight. He stops and with a smile on his face asks us “May I ask you a question?” We reply “sure”. He continues “Do you fly much?” Both Connie and I laugh and answer “No. Not very much at all.” He smiles, shakes his head in agreement and continues on his way. We laugh at our obvious trepidation and fear, so apparent to others. “I bet that he saw us pressing our faces against the window, looking at everything under us” I tell Connie. Later on, after we’re in our room for the night I revisit our exchange and the day. Perhaps he’s an experienced traveler and the whole “flying thing” is old hat, or maybe, just maybe he didn’t see the pretty Dairy Queen jumbo twist cone clouds that I saw. It’s probably a little of both…but God-willing, I hope that I’ll ever get tired of looking at those delicious clouds.

On the ground for the next couplea days…we rest that first night having been awake for almost twenty-four hours.

Next stop, Pearl Harbor. Until then…peace friends.
R