Hawaii and other thoughts

I'm in Maui now (I know, rough life), weather is good and the fam all made it here all right (Parents, and my brother Larry's family from Vermont). I went to Honolulu a day early and did the tour of the island, the north shore for some surf spectating (they were catching 25 ft. waves!), Pearl Harbor (which was really pretty well done, though it made me want to dive more wrecks!), and then walking Wikiki beach at sunset by myself, it was romantic :) I was pretty tired so I just ate at the hotel, I know I'm not much fun. Got up the next morning and hiked up Diamondhead crater which was nice, though it was a bit cloudy so I didn't quite get the outstanding views but it wasn't bad. Then off on a 37 minute flight to Maui too meet up with my parents, which all worked out. We drove down to Kihei to get into our condo's, which will work just fine, and I went and played in the ocean and had a happy hour drink (which is from 2-6, nice!). Of course, Hawaii is expensive, but the weather is nice, and we've got ziplining, diving, biking down the volcano all set up here, and tonight we are going to a "traditional" luau, apparently it's differnt from the normal ones? I have no idea how, but I'll trust my parents on this one.


As for Pearl Harbor....in my travels now, I've ticked off a lot of WW2 sites: Pearl Harbor, Truk Lagoon, Churchil's bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler's bunker (which is a parking lot), Brandenburg gate, the orginal Nazi meeting room, and even Auswietz (I know I spelled that wrong, sorry...), and the more I see, the more the was doesn't make any sense. A lot of people died for one man's vision of a perfect world, and that guy was aboslutely insane and caused the world a great deal of tragedy. The whole thing seems pointless, especially Japan's involvement with him. Just frustrates me that one man for not much of a reason can really screw this world up and cost so many people their lives...