Hearts in Hawai'i
Our Trip To Maui (2018)--Day 5
5/9/2018
The day started off (after the usual breakfast and coffee on the lanai) with a short walk over to the Lahaina Alano Club for their 9 a.m. meeting. Roughly 30 of us were in attendance and it was an excellent opportunity to get myself "grounded". You might think that the simple act of being on Maui would be all the serenity you would need, but these meetings certainly help. Connection with others working the program and finding their happiness and joy is always a good thing, regardless of where I am.
Early morning on the lanai
The sun was out and strong today so I managed to get about 1 1/4 hours out in it before getting a bit fried. Patty had already finished her hour in the sun by the time I hit the lawn.
It was time to revisit Cool Cat Cafe for tonight's dinner--originally we were thinking of driving up to Napili and checking out Kitchen 5315, which replaced the Iron Imu, but Patty wasn't overly impressed with the menu we found on their website. Going to Cool Cat was a good decision. The burgers, as always, were very good (I had the Bogy Burger).
View from our table at Cool Cat Cafe
Hey! The car stereo plays music from my flash drive! I had filled my new 128 gb flash drive with Hawaiian music prior to our trip in the hope we would be renting a modern enough car to have this feature. It did, rendering the five CD's I brought with us totally unnecessary. With the music on, we drove up to the Napili Kai and locating the Aloha Pavilion, but encountered quite the long line when we arrived. We expected this, as tonight's featured entertainer is slack key virtuoso Ledward Kaapana. But we still ended up with excellent seats (these aren't reserved, but there really isn't a bad seat in the place). A large group of youths from one of the local Hawaiian schools was also in attendence and they were, at one point, led up to the front where they performed a chant and song. It was outstanding! They were raucous throughout tonight's concert, however, but their chaperones did a very good job of keeping them in check--at least to the point kids can be kept in check, that is. 
At one point, Led was standing in the aisle next to me talking to someone in the student group. I noticed his black shirt (he also wore a black hat, and I think this is kind of a trademark with him) had written on the back "Forget the cracker. Polly wants a drink!". I struck up a quick discussion with him on this. He's a very genial, gentle man who thanked us for coming. Led represents the epitome of Aloha.
George Kahumoku started off the show as he had two years ago when we were on Maui and saw Nathan Aweau, and was very good, but Led was the star. His playing style can only be described as "perfection" and he did about six or seven songs before we had an intermission. After that, five artists, including George, Led, Sterling Seaton and Peter D'Aquino took part in a long jam session. It topped off a wonderful night of listening to Hawaiian Slack Key music.
The inside of our car windshield was seriously fogged up! You don't notice this during the daytime but it became readily apparent at night. It made for a somewhat difficult drive back to Lahaina.
This was as close to the perfect day as one could expect.
Previous: 5/8/2018--Our Trip To Maui (2018)--Day 4
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