The Duchess and I are planning a safe and sane 2020 Christmas ensconced at home in North Carolina – but we can’t help recalling the past three years when we spent the holiday in paradise, aka Maui. I recently came across some notes from our December 2017 trip (documented in the above photo):

THE BEST 2017 MAUI MEMORY is certain to be observing Penny simultaneously happy and relaxed. She is often happy and sometimes relaxed, but experiencing her in both states at once is wondrous. (As ongoing readers know, I rarely meet criteria for either condition.)

Nonetheless, there are other 2017 Maui Moments we won’t soon forget:

• We endured a verified sighting of the thought to be extinct thong bikini.
• One of the few glitches in our trip was an insufferable delay at our car rental. The holdup was created by a customer who spent so much time discussing the process at the desk that the first words he spoke to the agent could only have been “I’ve heard that there are places that will rent you a car. How does that work exactly?”
• This is said to be Maui’s “coldest Nov-Dec” in the last decade/since they have kept records/forever/since last year. A clerk selling us overpriced jewelry (yeah, I know “overpriced jewelry” is redundant) hugged herself, shivered in a self-delighted sort of way, and informed us that in Lahaina “It got down to 65 last night.”
• Because we are staying for an unusually long period (for us), we are leaving tips for the housekeeping staff daily in those envelopes hotels routinely provide in that desk no one uses. After three days, that desk now contains a lifetime supply of envelopes.
• And I will always proudly recall the look of admiration in Penny’s eyes every time I successfully fended off intrusions to our walks by vendors offering free beauty lotion samples and timeshare salespeople proffering discount coupons for luaus, parasailing, dinner cruises, whale watches, etc. with a brusque “no,” sans explanations of any sort. That curmudgeon thing is finally paying off.