I am completely puzzled by Hawai'i. I mean, how is it possible that the same set of environmental conditions can produce such radically different effects in different areas of the same country. For instance, when it's 85 degrees and 90% humidity in Hawai'i, one sighs gratefully, sinks into a beach lounger and pops the top of yet another beer while embracing a sense of supreme contentment. On the other hand the exact same conditions in Orlando would have normally result in my holing up in some sort of air conditioned Fortress of Solitude, which some may call a hotel. At the very least, there have been times, not many, where there may have been muttered accusations about why Mary, my wife, doesn't love me because she made me come to down from the cool, dry mountain fastnesses of Colorado for a late spring trip to the place where humidity goes to vacation. Mary often wonders why we don't spend more time in New Orleans where we have family, gumbo, crawdads, beer, and Dixieland music. It's because it also has a degree of relative humidity that makes you want to shed your skin like a snake. And not because my siblings and their offspring make fun of the Western Yankee at all.
And what's with the lack of bugs in Hawai'i? This seems wrong. It's a tropical island - why aren't there insects, large and small, that have evolved to dine on the tasty pale flesh of Northern Europeans? I mean you go to Orlando or pretty much anywhere south of the Mason Dixon line and there's colonies of voracious bugs just waiting to suck the blood from your body leaving behind a desiccated husk that once was a man who liked to work the New York Times crossword even though he had absolutely no facility at it. Not in Hawaii. The bugs there are small and friendly and apologize when they land on your arm, completely by accident, you understand.
On our recent trip to Hawai'i, we spent several nights with the windows in the bedroom open, listening to the boom of the surf and not once did I hear the ominous buzzing that meant something with a proboscis was trying to punch a hole in my delicate skin. What a delight. Oh, and there weren't any notable rooster calls in the predawn which was a constant feature of our one trip to Tahiti where semi-wild fowl have overrun the whole island chain. All in all I'm amazed that the Hawaiian islands doesn't have a population that exceeds that of England. I'm certainly tempted to move there. Well, I would be if they'd drop the requirement that everything served in restaurants has to have pineapple, or macadamia nuts, or ideally both in the dish.
