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In Today's Tequila Treehouse... Bart in the Pacific   Bart in the Pacific Bart in the Pacific  Bart in the Pacific Bart in the Pacific  Bart in the Pacific Bart in the Pacific Bart in the Pacific  ...and it is humid and      Quote of the Day

 http://blog.bartcop.com     for Bart updates from May 19-29 
 
 
 

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 Bart in the Pacific

What an opening day we had.
Since the trip was given to us, we didn't make our own travel arrangements.
On the way to Tulsa International Airport, it was raining cats and dogs and
at one point I thought I ran over a poodle. That's an old joke, but I wanted
to get Tony Blair in this report somewhere.

So it's raining so hard we can't see - and of course we're running late - and
Mrs. Bart double checks out itinerary and it says "Northwest Airlines."
That threw us into a panic, because we're supposed to be flying Continental.

So after a couple of calls, they tell us that Continental doesn't really service Tulsa,
so they use Northwest's facilities, instead.  That makes sense - this is Oklahoma.
So we get to the Tulsa airport and it's dark.
Dark as in "no lights."

That figures.
Our once in a lifetime trip to Hawaii - to be cancelled by a closed airport?

We asked the dudes in charge what was goin on and they said the airport
generators failed, and with no power they can't screen the bags so obviously
no planes were taking off until cousin IT figured out how to fix it.

The lady in front of us said she worked at a hospital, and when power goes out
there they can't even tell when the power switches to backup. You see, Oklahoma
is one of those redder-than-a-spanked-hooker's-ass states, so we don't spend
money for 'worthless social programs' like backup airport generators.

So we planed (that's the opposite of de-planed, I suppose) and headed off to
George Herbert Herbert Bush airport in Houston. (BTW, the name "Houston"
starts with an "H," not a "Y."  The pilot insisted we were going to "Youston."
Captain Kirk is another one - remember at Spock's funeral, he said of all the
souls he met in his travels, Spock was the most "yuman."   Hey Bill, just because
you're from Canada doesn't mean you get a pass on that but I can't be too mad
at him because neither Jack Bauer nor our president can pronounce "nuclear."

At Houston, we were told we enjoyed "Elite" status with Continental.
That meant we got to walk on the fancy blue carpet to board the plane.
Those in steerage didn't get to walk on the blue carpet, the poor bastards.

It was only our second time on a big plane.
We were in the first row that was not First Class but we got to witness the luxury
I couldn't see it all, but what we saw was so decadent I couldn't believe it.

Each first class passenger was getting more attention than a turbaned guy
named "Mohammed" at an NRA convention.  They even had a "tong concierge."
He was dressed like Paris Hilton's prom date and he was going seat-to-seat
with these tongs handing out hot towels. What the hell's up with hot towels?

They had salads in glass bowls with real silverware. They had long, fancy menus
with what looked like tons of choices. After the meal they had ice cream and the
tong consierge went seat-to-seat with a chocolate goop dispenser.

Meanwhile, we got a turkey pastrami sandwich without any turkey - and pretzels.

We've had many surprises on this trip - the first one was how short the flight was.
The time flew by so fast - it seemed like a mini-jaunt from Tulsa to Dallas.
I'm lying.

It takes about 36 hours to get to Hawai'i from Youston.
We each had our own TV and our choice of ten channels to watch.
But the chanels played for two hours and then repeated - again and again.
Meanwhile, I peaked into First Class and saw they were playing POKER!
 

Did you know?
Richard Nixon financed his first congressional race with poker winnings.
 

Eventually we saw land and we touched down. Out next big suprise was the weather.
When we got off the plane at the Maui airport, the temperature was 48 degrees.
I'm lying again.

The weather is so nice here, the natives have no word for "weather."
They don't need one because the temperature is always between 75 and 87.

As we're walking towards the baggage claim, a young, brochure-cute Hawaiian girl
was holding a 'BartCop' sign and calling out "BartCop!  BartCop!"
I thought to myself, "That sounds a lot like my name," so we walked up to her.
She gave each of us a white and purple lei made of fresh-cut orchids.  They smelled great.
Didn't get a kiss, tho.  What happened to tradition?

Soon we checked in to our hotel and I tried to catch some pakalolo, but I struck out.
Next thing we knew, the season-ending C.S.I. was on.  That was a killer episode, wasn't it?

Sidebar:
Turns out, the hotel has no access to the internets.
They say they plan to get it later this year, which is what they told us in Palm Beach,
which is what they told us in Taos, which is what they told us last year in Key West.
Why can't the hippest vacation spots get their fecal matter consolidated before we arrive?

The next day we had the best breakfast buffet ever - if you like all-you-can-eat fish and rice for breakfast.
In Hawaii, McDonald's serves rice for breakfast and Burger King puts some worm-like substance
on their Angus burgers that I'm hoping to hell was nothing more exotic than carmelized onions.
Also, much to Mrs. Bart's chagrin, our hotel had no Room Service.

Y'know, I can't help but compare fancy hotels to the casinoes* in fabulous Las Vegas.
If you want a ground ostrich sandwich with Maytag and Kenmore cheese delivered to your room
by a tall Puerto Rican lesbian in a Chewbaca costume at exactly 4 AM - that's what you're going to get.
It might cost you $400, but by Koresh, Chewy will be there because the only time they say "No"
in Las Vegas is when you ask "Did I win?" at the blackjack table.

Then we decided to do some beach.

I got nothing bad to say about the beach - except that it was closed.
They had signs everywhere "Beach closed due to heavy undertow," something like that,
but a few brave people decided to risk all and venture out a few feet into the water

Since the beach was closed, we decided to check out the Sugar Cane Steam Train.
As you know, I'm obsessed with old steam trains but, like always, it was closed for repairs
until the day after we left town. This happens a lot.  (Check out every trip report.)

So we got ready for the big Pokerfest Maui.   I put on my lucky shorts and my lucky
red-flowered Hawaiian shirt and my lucky Maui floppy hat. (Think Gilligan's hat.)
Among the attendees who agreed to let me use their names were Symbolman, the genius behind
all those great flash movies at Take Back the Media.com and his lovely wife, Mrs. Symbolman.

Symbolman brought a bag of gifts - a TBTM t-shirt for me & Mrs. Bart, a CD of a recent TBTM
radio show (The TBTM boys taught Tommy Mack how to do that long-distance radio combo thing)
and a bottle of God's nectar, Chinaco Anejo, that isn't even sold in Hawaii. He got it off the internets.

Also in attendence was Fud, the brains behind the live chat room where monkeys are sacrificed
and his lovely wife, Mrs. Fud.   None of us were poker champs that night, (We each lost about $50)
but we had a good time telling lies and plotting the unionizing of like-minded web sites against Bush.

Walking back to the hotel from the Pokerfest, this punk kid walks up to me and says,
"How about a nice Hawaiian punch?"  so I covered my genitals and told him to go "F" himself.

Back at the hotel, I tried to catch some pakalolo, but once again, I struck out.

Saturday, Mrs. Bart played a trick on me. She asked if we could climb Mount Haleakala.
I figured it would be 2500 feet or so, so I wore my lucky shorts and my lucky Hawaiian shirt.

                    The clouds at Mount Haleakala.

Turns out, it's over 10,000 feet and all I had on was my lucky shorts and my lucky shirt,
but that's OK because I have ice water running thru my veins. When it gets cold, I don't
wear a coat until the temp drops below 50.   I laugh at cold weather.

It was our last night at the Maui Motel 6 with the fancy ocean view.

Sunday was fun day.  We drove the famous Road to Hana.

Hana is located in a lush, equatorial tropical rain forest.

How equatorial tropical was it?  When we checked in our room, the welcome book said
we needed to "make friends" with the geckos that were sharing the room with us.

This was all on Mrs. Bart - she wanted to visit the lush, equatorial tropical rain forest, so she
had to "make friends" with the geckos and the Casablanca-speed ceiling fan that replaced the A/C.
The highest number of geckoes* we saw at once inside our room was six.

There's nothing Mrs. Bart enjoys more than a half-dozen lizards running above her head on the ceiling.
Turns out the geckos were a good thing, because they were there to eat the tons of ants and bugs.
They had regular sixe ants, and half-inch sized fire ants and misc bugs of all types.
We decided to make the best of it and pretend we were on Survivor.
She was Boston Rob and I was Amber.
Wait, reverse that.

Yep, ain't nothing more fun than spending the night in a lush, equatorial tropical rain forest
but that's what she wanted so that's what we did  ...and it wasn't my fault :)

I gotta say - she took it like a trooper.

...and still, I couldn't find any pakalolo.

Note:
Sorry about the lack of news/politics, but they don't get those here.
At worst, we'll be back in Tulsa this weekend.
 

More if/when I can find a hotel with connections to the internets.
 

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