“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
When I was in seventh grade in 1977, my favorite television show was Charlie’s Angels. That year, I remember watching the second season’s premiere, “Angels in Paradise,” and marveling at the beautiful scenery of Hawaii. As a rural Alabama kid who had never been anywhere, I was transfixed.
That year, producer Aaron Spelling pulled out all the stops to ensure the show’s success. The first two episodes were filmed in Oahu, and for good reason. After the 
behind-the scenes drama of the first season, Spelling needed a glamorous opener to the 1977-1978 season. Superstar Farrah Fawcett-Majors, who was married to actor Lee Majors at the time, had quit the show to try and be a “serious” actress. Spelling hired Cheryl Ladd (who looks superb in a bikini) to replace Fawcett-Majors and sent the Angels on a Hawaiian adventure. Charlie had been kidnapped, so the Angels had to come to Hawaii to rescue him from his captors. The girls sported awesome tropical clothing, packed some serious heat, and kicked some serious bad-guy ass. What young girl wouldn’t have wanted to be them?
I loved the show and made my young cousins, Monica and Amy, play-pretend we were the Angels doing detective work. Farrah was my favorite actor on the show, but to be authentic, I had to let Monica play her or Cheryl Ladd’s character because Monica had blonde hair. I played Jaclyn Smith’s character. We made Amy be Kate Jackson’s character, Sabrina Duncan. Not even three, Amy couldn’t even say “Sabrina” and would just call herself “Breena.” Sabrina was supposed to be the “brainy” one of the three Angels, so I’m not sure what it says about us that Monica and I didn’t want to be her. I’m sorry, but she just didn’t have long, “swingable” hair.
So much for the games of childhood. My first impressions of Hawaii failed to live up to those exciting images of Hawaii I created in my young head. While I didn’t take the headliner picture above, it reflects my first impressions of Honolulu particularly and Hawaii generally during the taxi ride from the airport. Speaking of which, I was a little surprised at how dingy and beat up Daniel K. Inouye International Airport was. It appeared that renovation is occurring, though. It needs it.
I was pretty tired after getting up at 2 a.m., Colorado time, flying from Colorado Springs to Denver, then hopping on a 7-hour flight from the mainland, so all I wanted to do was get to the hotel and crash. I ordered room service, curled up, and watched a little Fox News coverage of the Lamb-Saccone House race. I was asleep by 6:30 p.m. Honolulu time. Clearly, I lack the stamina to be Jaclyn Smith fighting crime on Oahu. And I have to come to terms with the fact that when I showed up in “paradise,” it reminded me of drizzly, traffic-snarled Seattle with palm trees. I lived in the state of Washington, near Tacoma, for three years and was never fond of the dreary weather.
The good news is that the food at the hotel is excellent. Last night, I ordered a Kalbi Steak Salad and couldn’t resist the Portuguese Bread Pudding.
The dessert was MAGNIFICENT. For those of you who don’t know, the Portuguese have had a significant influence on Hawaiian culture. Many Portuguese immigrated to Hawaii in the nineteenth century to work on sugar plantations, particularly after a fungus blight struck the vineyards of Madeira. Vineyard workers hoped to settle in a place with a similar climate as the one they came from. The Portuguese are credited for introducing the ukulele (or an instrument similar to it) to the islands.
I had some time to do a little preparatory reading on the flight from the mainland. I’m trying to finish James Bradley’s Flags of our Fathers, a book about the American soldiers who posed for the iconic flag-raising photo from the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. It’s about 6 a.m. here now, so in a bit I’ll go walk along Waikiki Beach and see what it looks like. Today I plan to relax and read before the tour officially begins tomorrow.
Stay tuned for more updates.
