January and February have been tough months for me in recent years. It seems as I get older I’m more sensitive to the loss of light that Seattle winters bring. In the shortest months I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. It can get to me after a while.
That’s why, for our first timeshare trade, I suggested to Art that we go to Hawaii in January. My father was stationed on Oahu when I was in college in the late 60s, and I went there every summer and Christmas. I’d been to the Big Island for one overnight visit with my sister and my grandmother in about 1969, when a volcano was erupting. I knew it would be warm and sunny in Hawaii in January and I thought it would break up the winter pretty well.
Part of it, I think, was that because of the desirability of our timeshare location (Whistler, BC), we were able to snag a really good trade. It was kind of a testimony to the wisdom of our impulse purchase last April, when we went to spend a week with friends at their timeshare at Whistler – and giving them a hard time for buying one! – and ended up buying a week ourselves.
Art had never been to Hawaii, but he was willing to go. So far, in all our years of traveling to places I suggest, he’s never had a bad time.
The biggest problem in getting ready to go was that it was impossible to find summer clothes in the stores. We ended up using mail order catalogues to find a few lightweight shirts, and we dug out some old shorts to take along. Add to that Birkenstocks, walking shoes and hiking boots, raingear and trekking poles, binoculars, pedometer, camera and Art’s new GPS, and we were fairly well set.