The Week #214

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  • 🇺🇸 We flew to the US. First to Hawaii and then to Seattle. When we landed in Hawaii, we were immediately escorted to immigration for 2 hours. Turns out we were supposed to file some paperwork and or apply for certain visas as my wife's green card had expired. We thought going in under esta was the right thing to do (as it's what we did last time) and turns out it wasn't. Turns out immigration in Houston is just much more lax than Honolulu. A stressful couple of hours and $675 dollars later and we made it in. The coming months will require us to think about the feasibility of maintaining PR or not...and then filing the appropriate paperwork and or maybe start planning regular long-ish trips back to the US.
  • 🌴 After the ordeal of actually getting into the country, we got to the good part  – hanging in Waikiki. Hawaii is beautiful. I finally understand the hype. A day in and I was trying to figure out the timezone math for me to be able to meet with both Europe and APAC so longer-term stays could be viable.

    We didn't go with any agenda on our trip – we just wanted to relax. We stayed at the Royal Hawaiian and it was great. Our water pressure could have been better, but being directly on the beach and the environment of the space was really great. That said, pries in the US are high and prices in Hawaii are even higher. I wasn't expecting it to cost $100 for 3 (amazing!) burgers, an order of (amazing!) fries and a lemonade.
    Looking at Waikiki while on a run

    Duke Kahanamoku statue
  • 🌲 After a few days 3 nights in Hawaii we took a flight to Seattle. Seattle is also so beautiful. But the weather... the weather is exactly what I was after – 30 degree highs (where it doesn't hit the high until 2pm instead of 8am) and lows around 14 (a bit chilly!).

    While in Seattle we've gone out and rode horses in Mt. Vernon and rode a historic train. The train ride was a lot of fun, but it was like an oven because not all of the windows could open.
    Views from the train

    On the drive out there we went through some really cute towns. Washingtonians are a fairly active folk, so we also so plenty of people taking advantage of the excellent summer weather and gravel biking along trails. And for the second time I couldn't help but imagine another possible life (though more realistic this time). Living in Seattle, driving out to the mountains to enjoy the small towns, hiking and cycling, wearing socks with my Birkenstocks. How great would that be? But then I think about the required driving and the political division and the guns and think maybe it's just the relief of escaping Japanese summer speaking to me. Maybe I should plan how to do that every year.
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