Team
VFH may be cheap, but we know how to travel well. Often we are forced to take
great delight in destinations closer to home as our cheapness rules the day.
For this we are extremely grateful. As world travelers our love for far flung
destinations had caused us to be dismissive of sites that were close to home for
their familiarity offered no alluring reason to visit and explore. Secaucus or
Philadelphia will never be as alluring as Paris or Sydney we thought. How
easily we were able to overlook the joy and beauty that is in our backyard and
this endeavor, now in its fifth year, has given us many more happy experiences
than expected. Too often our travels insulated us from family and friends as we
would just “flit” off to somewhere else, but friendships and familial binds
combined with finely honed mooching skills has given us a great new appreciation
of what we would have considered the “mundane”. We have rediscovered the
radiant beauty of the girl next door.
 |
| Aloha |
Okay,
are you buying this? I’ve just compared Secaucus to Sydney, Philadelphia to
Paris. Yeah, sure there are things to do or see, like the Dragon Boat races
along the Schuylkill River or renting kayaks to explore the Hackensack as it
meanders through Secaucus. And, truly what did Socrates say? “See one
promontory, and you’ve seen them all.” An old timer engineer at ABC said of the
people of Sarajevo when I was there for the Olympics, “they’re just the same as
us, they just talk funny.”
True
everywhere lives are lived and though the vistas may be more alluring elsewhere,
they all offer something. The best part of all these “cheap” years is we’ve
learned to slow down and see the beauty around us. Rather than having to go
over the next mountain like that bear in the incessant children’s song seemingly
never satisfied, we’ve stopped to explore our neighborhood. But in between all
these lovely little trips to discover nuances of where we live or rediscover
the joys of our neighborhoods Team VFH likes to plan these side trips and we
throw open our pocketbooks and fleece our coffers. This year, we are going to
Hawaii.
We will
visit three islands. We fly into Honolulu mid-July and we will stay on the North
Shore near Haleiwa, Oahu for three days, before a week at a resort in Lahaina, Maui
and then on to Hilo on the Big Island for another week. This is Janet’s first
trip to this beautiful place and my seventh; the last time for me was in 2001
to run the Honolulu Marathon. Everyone should visit this place and I wanted Janet to see its beauty for herself and I, selfish, wanted to return. There are few places in this world that I feel like I belong, that I pine to return. The serenity that is Hawaii, her Aloha spirit calls me.
But, you may ask what's all this talk about being cheap? Fear not, we will not go nuts in spending money. Hawaii can be cheaper than you would expect, that is once you get there. Come back, we'll tell you.
But, you may ask what's all this talk about being cheap? Fear not, we will not go nuts in spending money. Hawaii can be cheaper than you would expect, that is once you get there. Come back, we'll tell you.
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