We don’t travel much. But this week, we’re coming to you from Maui. That’s a good thing. We flew here in Alaska Airlines. It’s a little odd, I’ll admit, to tell people “we’re taking Alaska to Hawaii.” Does Sarah Palin know about this? Does she even still live in Alaska? Can she see Hawaii from her house?

While you ponder that, I’ll move on. We upgraded our tickets from Economy to Economy Premium. Economy used to be called Coach, and Economy Premium used to be called “lucky enough to get a seat in an exit row.” They should go back to calling it Coach, because there’s nothing particularly economical about airfare. Now, on other airlines, upgrading may not be a wise use of your money. Their “premium” seats should be called “Economy and a Smidgen,” because while you get just enough extra legroom to take your knees out of your chest, you get nothing else for your investment.

Alaska tells you that, because you spent extra money to get a seat, you get to sit in it longer. Congratulations, you can wait in your row of seats in the plane, instead of in the row of seats in the terminal. We got to get in the plane right after the first class passengers. And the active duty military. And the children under two. And the adults traveling with children under two. And the people with walkers, crutches, wheelchairs, bone spurs and band aids. And the people with service animals. And the pilot’s brother-in-law. There were a lot of people ahead of us. But, we got there.

The other benefit Alaska affords you for spending what you can’t afford to get extra legroom, is free drinks. You feel really good about asking for a bloody mary that you don’t really want, but will order because it’s free, until you realize that you spent $109 for a place to put your feet and order a bloody mary. (You can get the same thing in a bar for about $100 less, usually with more leg room and a stalk of celery). You can’t possibly drink enough to make that worthwhile. You can’t. Me, on the other hand…

We landed on Maui, where the airport is in Kahului. The airport code for Kahului Maui is OGG, which just points out how difficult it must be to come up with three letter abbreviations for airports. It is way harder than the two letter postal abbreviations for states, which are hard enough.

Question: does one land in Maui, or on Maui. One clearly lands in Denver, because landing on Denver would be a disaster. Landing in Denver is no treat; the airport closes at the first sign of snow anywhere on Earth, and you could find yourself waiting at the gate for days or weeks. But again, in Maui or on Maui? I’m pretty adamant about “in” rather than “on” when it comes to boarding the plane. I definitely want to get in the plane, not on the plane. It gets really damned cold if you’re on the plane at 30,000 feet. Not to mention the difficulty with hanging on.

Anyway, we get out of the plane and we are in/on Maui. Every street, highway, road, and alley in Hawaii has a Hawaiian name. Seems fair enough, except that every one of them starts with the letters K and A, and after that are completely unpronounceable. Ka is apparently the Hawaiian word for street, highway, road, and alley. There are a lot of words here that mean more than one thing. Aloha means “hello,” “goodbye,” “love” and “please seat yourself.” It’s really one of only two words you need to know when you visit Hawaii. The other is mahalo, which means “do you want your receipt?”

There aren’t really towns here. There are just areas where people live, which the government calls “census-designated places.” They would be towns if they had mayors. Legend has it that a native Hawaiian set out walking with a bag of food, a t-shirt and a bobble-head doll. When he couldn’t walk any farther, he stopped and built a hut. The next day, a businessman bought the hut, the food, t-shirt, and bobble-head, and opened an ABC Store. The Hawaiian man gathered more food, a bottle of wine, coconut oil lotion and walked on. That night he built another hut and another ABC Store sprang up. This continued until there were gatherings of stores, and people, all over the island.

We’ve gone to Hawaii several times, but it’s been many years since we’ve been in/on Maui. If you haven’t been, you’ll be relieved to know they drive on the right, though slowly. And almost everyone speaks perfect English. If you’re now hoping I’ll say something that hasn’t been said four trillion times before about getting lei’d in Hawaii, you will be disappointed. There is no joke about a lei that hasn’t been said at least four trillion times.

We came because we were offered the opportunity, and, why not? Once we looked at available dates the trip just happened to coincide with my umpteenth birthday. Though I am in my early umpteens, I recognize that the best thing about the umpteens is that you never get any older than that, though eventually they won’t let you drive.

So as for Maui. We are not seeking out a luau, because, we’ve had bad food at high prices before and, honestly, it’s not that satisfying. It was better to walk along the beach to a bake shop and get malasadas. Malasada is the Portuguese word for beignet, which is the French word for fritter, which is defined in most dictionaries as a waste of time. But tasty.

We did take the road to Hana. It is along the coast and was formed by following the wild chickens. To hear others talk about it, I was under the impression there was some reason to go to Hana. There is not. Gertrude Stein could have been talking about Hana instead of Oakland. It gives meaning to the expression “getting there is half the fun.”

And we spent a fair amount of time doing nothing of any significance at all. And that suited us. So please don’t ask if we did this or tried that and, if we didn’t, we really missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime. I think we’ll bear up under the disappointment just fine.