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Tue. January 4, 2000, 09:04pm PST
Watch that knife please pineapple lady
As one of the rental cars (with me in it) drives back from Sunset Beach, we quietly attempt to determine where we'd like to eat this evening. I say quietly because we're not talking much due in part to the fatigue brought on by this rather fulfilling day.
First up the group met in the hotel lobby at about 8am to soon depart for the USS Arizona Memorial. When there, we sondered around a small information area and gift shop of the national park. We were soon herded into a theatre and viewed a film on the tragedy that jolted Pearl Harbor and the entire US on that morning of December 7, 1941. With and odd yet somewhat appropriate soundtrack, the movie was well assembled and gave a powerful account of the event. A launch awaited us just outside to take us to the Monument. Once there, a stunning yet slightly uncomfortable experience greeted me. The memorial is a beautiful tribute to the lives lost that day. With the American flag vigorously waving overhead, I also felt slightly uncomfortable in the presence of the numerous men entombed below me. I personally know none of the deceased which creates a very distant feeling of sorrow. Eerie, marble-sized pods of oil percolate up from the tomb and burst on the water's surface even today as if the spirits of the deceased escaped one by one from their graves. It is a stunning memorial that should somehow be a required visit to be a US citizen.
Next came a trip out to one portion of Del Monte's pineapple plantation. Led by a woman who made the visit nothing but interesting and enjoyable, she told us much about the long and complicated process of growing, harvesting, and either delivering or processing of pineapples. As she fielded our questions she picked a few prime examples of the fruit and delicately sliced (with her brilliantly sharp and shiny) it into bite-sized chunks. The hungry and hot college students gobbled up the offerings and cringed when our tour guide passively tossed the remaining pineapple back into the brush. The plantation was fascinating and had an extra bit of coolness added on when formations of military helicopters thumped overhead near a large satellite dish above a large underground military communications installation. I swear I was listening on the tour! Really!
All except for one car out of four soon drove north and preceded, with one brief recess at Dole's tourist trap for a little pineapple ice cream, to the island's northern beaches. Some of us frolicked in the water as it washed onto the steeply sloped beach. Although I soon joined the other beach bums chillin' out on their towels in the sand. While Matt endured/enjoyed a sandy burial just above the surf, the Sun crept below a bank of clouds near the horizon only to briefly peek out between those same clouds and the horizon. 'Twas a lovely, somewhat cliché Sunset of which many pictures were taken.
So now the evening winds to a close after a group of us first attempted to eat at the all-too-expensive Sizzler then sided in favor of the much more college-budget-friendly Subway. And now, TV...
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