diamonds and pearls

It seemed apropos to tour Pearl harbor with a migraine.   It kept me somber.  Probably it kept me more cranky than somber, but I'll tell myself I was somber.  I woke up at 4am with a migraine on my second day in paradise. 
  

I made coffee with my newly acquired Costco supplies and hoped the caffeine and the hot shower would help.  Then I dressed and walked 100 feet to the beach to watch the sunrise. 

It was so glorious.

sunrise

The water was the perfect shade of blue, what I've always called Caribbean blue.  Now I know it's also Hawaiian blue.  The trade-winds were blowing.  And just as the sun crested the horizon, a cast of crabs started poking inquisitive heads out of tiny holes.   One mutually scared me.  I yelped and he retreated quickly. 

I reluctantly left and walked back to my cottage.  My head wasn't getting better, so I popped some meds.  And got bombarded by a flood of texts about family drama -- missing car keys and missing cellphone. 

Off to breakfast and then an 8am tour of Pearl Harbor.  

As one of the few people with a working cellphone, a sense of direction, and the address of where we needed to be, I sat up front and navigated.  With a migraine.  Oh well.  I've faked it through worse scenarios.  I got us there and met up with the rest of our party.  Only 10 minutes late.   I'll call that a win. 

Walking in from the parking lot, I took more meds.  The pain was up to a 6 by now.  We had to take a shuttle onto Ford island to see the USS Missouri.   I used most of my concentrated powers not to puke on the bus.   Yippee.  It worked. 

USS Missouri

The battleship was huge and impressive, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate the significance yet.  I took pics as I could in case I wanted to see where I'd been later.  

Pops said he didn't want the guided tour, so we humored him and wandered on our own.  And then joined the guided tour ahead of us already in progress.  After posing for family pics.

I had zero knowledge of what importance the USS Missouri had and was surprised to learn it's essentially where the Pacific theater part of WW2 ended.  It was very humbling to see the spot where 74 years ago, one side formally surrendered to the other.

Surrender formally signed

Instrument of Surrender

They erected a plaque there.

Surrender marker

The second bunch of meds were kicking in and mellowing me.  And I ended up hanging with Pops.  He said he'd been on the Missouri previously right after the war ended in NYC harbor.  And the stories continued from there. 

He and I toured the underbelly of the ship, with him reminiscing and explaining everything to me.  I took tons of pictures and learned more about his father and brother who were both in the Navy.  He was the rebel and had gone Army. 

One of my sisters found us halfway through and we started clowning around and taking pics.  I also got the welcome news via text that both the car keys and cellphone had been located.  But mostly I wasn't getting any texts because of being inside so much metal. 

When we finally surfaced, my phone blew up again with "Where are you guys" texts?  Apparently they had all skipped the underneath part of the tour, which was considerable, and had been waiting an hour.  Oops.

We got back on the bus to tour another museum but our tickets didn't work there, so we cut the trip short fortunately.  I was done in.  And ready for lunch.  So was Pops.  I think this took a lot out of him emotionally. 

We had a delicious lunch of Hawaiian pulled pork, and I navigated us home and bailed to go nap.

menu

Pork Plate Lunch

I woke much better but still groggy and went to the beach for fresh air and exquisite water.

resting in the shade and fresh air