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I’ve been in love with New York’s Finger Lakes region pretty much ever since we moved to New York in 1981. My first sight of any of those lakes came that first summer. We moved here in June, I think–pretty quickly after I completed fourth grade in Hillsboro, OR–and when we got here my mother had to do a bit of coursework to fulfill the requirements for her new teaching job in this state. This meant trekking from Allegany to Geneseo, NY, mostly every day for the summer. Sometimes my sister and I would stay home, other times we’d goDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Buffalo and The 716, On Travels and Adventures, Passages
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Two giants of my early eating and drinking life, Tony Marra and Patsy Collins, died in 2021. Patsy ran a bar. Tony ran a restaurant. Patsy’s bar was called The Burton Hotel, or The Burton for short. It’s located on a street corner in Allegany, NY, and it was one of my parents’ favorite watering holes for much of the time they lived down there. I spent quite a lot of time sitting in The Burton with my parents as they quaffed beers and I quaffed grapefruit soda right along with them (at least until I turned 21). I supposeDown the rabbit hole….

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So much of one’s time in Hawaii is spent looking up, or out. Up to the sky, or out to where the sky meets the sea. And there’s a rainbow almost every day. In Buffalo, I might get to see a rainbow three or four times a year. In Hawaii, there were rainbows almost every day. I’d get up, make coffee, go to the balcony to greet the morning, look to the right (west) to the rain clouds descending (and breaking up) from the mountains, and…rainbows. And then there were the sunsets, and the lingering light once the sun was down:Down the rabbit hole….

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Longtime readers may remember that I was a big fan of the show Magnum PI back in the day. That is, the original show, the one that ran in the 1980s, and not the new reboot show that is running, well, now. (Nothing against the current incarnation, which I’ve watched a couple of times; it seems like a perfectly acceptable procedural show, but it’s never going to replace the original for me.) Being in Hawaii, where Magnum was set, gave me a chance to see some familiar locations from the show up close. The biggest draw for an old Magnum fan would almost certainlyDown the rabbit hole….

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Our trip to Hawaii was…amazing. Just amazing. In fact, it was quite nearly perfect. My mother dreamed all her life of going to Hawaii, and at some point after she had safely seen her two children off to lives of their own, she put her foot down, announcing to my father that they were going. This was sometime in the 1990s. Since then, she has gone to Hawaii something like a dozen times. For this last visit, she treated my family and I to going along with her, as part of her celebration for having turned 80 this past August.Down the rabbit hole….

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UPDATED and CLARIFIED below! So, the trip home from Hawaii was supposed to go like this: December 23: Board plane at HNL, about 12:30pm. Arrive LAX, around 8:00pm. Depart LAX for DTW (Detroit), around 12:00am. Arrive DTW, around 6:00am. Depart DTW for BUF, around 12:00pm. Pick up luggage and come home, December 24. The trip home from Hawaii actually went like this: December 23: Boarded plane at HML, around noon or so. After circling LAX a time or two because of bad weather and enduring twenty minutes of nothing but turbulence, landed at LAX around 9:30pm. Took phone off Airplane Mode toDown the rabbit hole….

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Only two days remain in our Hawaiian adventure. This morning we woke up for the first time to cloudy skies. Since gray skies tend to be the norm for Buffalo in winter–a season that I find beautiful in many ways, in ways that incorporate the gray skies, even though I have to admit that the gray gets to be too much at times–this almost feels like Hawaii is trying to prepare us for our return home. Nice try, Paradise, but I’m not ready. Nine full days here will turn out to be many things, almost all of them wonderful, butDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Travels and Adventures, Writing
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To justify the Jimmy Buffet reference, here’s the cheeseburger I had the other night. And here I am, writing. Both of these things happened in Paradise. Some writers are insistent about doing their work in their preferred environments–their home offices or libraries–but I’ve always been able to write just about anywhere I can plunk down with my computer for a while. I actually like having a bit of hubbub around me, and when I write at home I don’t like it to be too quiet: I’ll almost always have music going, and nowadays there is the wonderful world of soundscape videosDown the rabbit hole….

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“It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.” –Haruki Murakami I wrote the other day about the somewhat overwhelming nature of the sea here in Hawaii. Over the days since, I have come to realize that the sky is every bit as overwhelming here. And like the sea, the sky is astonishing here no matter what time of day. This city gleams with brilliant light, but as you stand on the street in front of our hotel at night, you see the brilliant light on oneDown the rabbit hole….

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It is, Red. It is. I didn’t want to blog about this until we were at the very least on the plane (I felt like I was jinxing it by even pre-scheduling a Daily Dose of Christmas post obliquely referring to it!) but…we are in Hawaii. Specifically, Oahu. More specifically, Waikiki. Strange thing about Hawaii…it’s never been a place I’ve really even dreamed about visiting, because for many years it just didn’t even feel like a possibility. And even this trip owes everything to someone else’s good graces (Thanks, Mom!). But…well, it’s just a place, isn’t it? It’s a placeDown the rabbit hole….