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I’m sitting on American Airlines flight 2301 from Chicago O’Hare to Dallas Ft. Worth after a great weekend trip to Chicago. (By the way, I am in seat 26D which I highly recommend given the clear extra leg room as compared to other seats on this flight; check out Seat Guru before your next flight to select the best possible seat on any given aircraft or airline.) This trip was my second annual pilgrimige to see my beloved Chicago Bears play at Soldier Field in downtown Chicago. I came out last year to watch the Bears lose a surprisingly close game to the Philadelphia Eagles who ultimately went on to win the NFC before losing to the New England Patriots in last year’s Super Bowl. (As a side note, the Chicago/Philadelphia game last year featured Terrell Owens doing situps in the endzone after scoring a touchdown, a highlight that is frequently used whenever that idiot is featured in some football story, which is WAY TOO often.)

This result of this year’s game was much different, but I had just as great of a time visiting the Windy City. Our very good friends Andy and Heidi Graham are always excellent hosts. We have been out to visit them a couple of times, and they have come our way a few times as well, and each visit always makes me wish that our two families lived closer to each other. I worked for Andy the year that I lived in Chicago and I really like that city. But for the cold weather, which I do not mind at all but which prevents me from ever successfully convincing Wendy to move there, I would love to live in Chicago.

After catching an afternoon flight out of Long Beach Airport, changing planes in Dallas, I arrived in Chicago late Friday. I have to say that for all of the talk about the death of the legacy carriers, my trip (even the plane change) was remarkably comfortable, efficient and inexpensive. American is one of the few major carriers in the U.S. that is not bankrupt and that does not appear to be on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. They fly in and out of Long Beach Airport which is amazingly convenient as compared to the disaster that is LAX and even as compared to Orange County. It’s a little dumpy, but there is never any wait at security, there is a free wireless Internet connection in the terminal and getting in and out by car is easy.

Andy and I played golf, well it kind of resembled golf, on Saturday morning. Andy’s putter was on fire and he beat me by about 10 strokes but we were both in triple digits. Our outing ended just in time for the start of the USC vs. Notre Dame football game. I’m not much of a college football fan (in fact, I am not at all a college football fan) but that was a great game. I have to admit that even with my near total ambivalence toward college football, I was pulling for top-ranked USC where I went for my MBA. We left for dinner before the game was over, but got score updates from Andy’s cell phone as the game progressed. We watched the highlights later of the epic rivalry match-up as well as the highlights of another loss by the Angels to the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox, of course, ended their long World Series dry spell winning the seires 4-1. The City of Chicago, which typically ignores the Sox in favor of the much more popular cross-town Cubs, is in full-blown White Sox frenzy, as they should be.

Not having had nearly enough exposure to sporting activities, we woke up Sunday morning and, with our friend Tony, headed in to downtown to catch the Bears game. The Bears are playing pretty well this year. Despite three losses this year, including a blowout loss to a very good Cincinnati Bengals team, the Bears have finally added some offense to a defense that has been good for a few years. Rookie quarterback Kyle Orton can play and was a surprisingly strong replacement for constantly injured, and so-called ‘Quarterback of the Future’ Rex Grossman. Coach Lovie Smith has really revived the team since coming to the team from the Rams. The opponent Minnesota Vikings are really struggling this year and were coming off a week of controversy after a bunch of players were caught on a boat with some strippers. For what was supposed to be a contender, they have lost all but one of their games and their quarterback, Duante Culpepper has thrown a ton of interceptions. The game against the Bears was no exception as the Vikes lost the game and Culpepper made a number of mistakes that lead to Chicago scoring opportunities. And, finally, because they have some offense, Chicago was actually able to take advantage of those opportunities and ended up winning 28-3 with most of the scoring coming in the second half.

We were on the upper deck of the recently renovated Soldier Field and it could not have been a more beautiful day. It was cool, but not cold, and the wind was light (at least on the upper deck). Downtown Chicago has really been renovated over the last few years and, after the game, we walked up Michigan Avenue before walking up into the loop and parking ourselves at a bar in the historic Palmer House Hotel for dinner, a few more beers, and the afternoon games on the many TVs. Then it was back to Andy’s house to watch the Sox clinch the AL pennant, occasionally clicking over to see the Seattle Seahawks run up the score against the hapless Houston Texans.

From the surprisingly comfortable air travel to the always good to see friends to the nice weather and seeing a Chicago Bears home game, this really could not have been a nicer trip. I found myself throughout the weekend thinking forward a few years when Noah and, eventually his soon-to-arrive sibling, can join me on this annual outing to one of my favorite places to visit.

OK, I nominated myself for my own loser award of Worst Webmaster Ever! I know that the content on the site has been VERY bad. Part of the problem is that I have been focused on spending time with Noah and Wendy, preparations for a baby, a new job, a major construction project and ongoing obsessions with the stock market and the upcoming football season.

So, in addition to that short list of things, the site itself is starting to show its limitations. Actually, the problem is not the limitations of the site but the expansiveness of it. When I designed the infrastructure for it, I was planning to add all kinds of features but have not ended up having the time to add them in light of other priorities. Also, I don’t have time (or cannot justify prioritizing the time) to write all of the content that is necessary to fill the 6 top-line tabs and a multitude of second-tier tabs in the MyTinkleflick section.

So, what is the lamest webmaster to do? As part of my life simplifying programs, as fun as it is to geek out and write all this code, I am looking into a more manageable system and cleaner design that will be easier to use and will deliver what most of you who visit the site want: pictures and some updates of Noah plus occasional musings. It will probably be more of a blog-like structure with some pictures of Noah (which, despite my half-assed attempts to make our site look like a real news source, is what our site really is to begin with).

My goal is to have the new version of the site up-and-running before the new baby arrives so it can serve as a source of information for those of you who care about that event. If you have any comments or suggestions about our site while I am in the development phase, please let me know. In the meantime, I will do what I can to keep the content updated over the next few months with the hopes of a December roll-out of the new design.

While we are, of course, very excited about the impending arrival of the newest member of our family, we are not necessarily looking forward to adding an infant to our lives and having our comfortable life routine derailed for 6-12 months. Before this inevitable disruption, we decided to set out for a family vacation, likely our last as a 3-person family. Our destination: A little bit of paradise with a bit of a kitschy 60’s vibe, on the Island of Maui called Napili Beach.

Where is Napili?

Napili Beach is located about 10 miles north of Lahaina on the western side of Maui. According to Wikipedia , Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. without any incorporated cities. Instead, there are five counties, one for each of the major islands, and places like Lahaina and Napili are unincorporated communities called ‘census-designated places’ (the Internet really is amazing). So, anyway, Napili is a census-designated place which, according to legend, passed an ordinance limiting development to buildings that are no taller than a palm tree when they started building condos there in the 60s. As a result, developers since then have largely left the original lava-rock covered, low-slung, concrete complexes alone. There are no high-rise condos and no party bars like you find in Kaanapali or Lahaina just to the south or the mega resorts of Wailea. Napili is just a nice, quiet, family vacation spot…that doesn’t appear to have changed much since Elvis was making movies. You can walk across Napili Bay , and past the half-dozen or so resorts that line it, in about 10 minutes. We stayed at the Outrigger Napili Shores which is on the southern tip of Napili Bay.

Life on Maui

Noah did great on the smooth flight from OC airport, sleeping about half of the flight time. After arriving, we made our first stop at the Super K Mart to pick up our sand toys, a few Matchbox cars, some beach chairs and a case of beer. After checking in to our room, we went to the grocery store and stocked up on foodstuffs for the week. After that, other than a few activities, our days were pretty much as follows: (1) wake up, (2) have breakfast in the room, (3) lug all of our stuff (two giant IKEA bags full) down to the beach, (4) play at the beach (swimming, sand castles, snacks, etc.), (5) go back to room for lunch, (6) take nap, (7) go to pool, wear Noah out, (8) come back to the room and eat dinner, (9) go to bed. Multiply by 5 and shift things around a little here, a little there, add a couple of days of activities, and you pretty much have our vacation. All this activity finally caught up to Noah mid-week when we came back from the boat trip and laid him down for his nap at about 3 p.m. from which he did not awake until 7 a.m. the next morning!!! I’m gald I brough a stack of newspapers and magazines.

Have you Booked your Activities?

One of the nice things about Napili is that you don’t find the over-the-top commercial tourism that you see in some of the more popular spots. As you walk down Front Street in Lahina, for example, you cannot go 10 feet without being sold a tour of some sort or a Luau. Other than the ‘concierge’ at the hotel (who is basically an in-house activities salesperson who can be ignored), Napili is free of that stuff. As crazy as it sounds, we did eventually tire of sitting on the beach all day building sandcastles and we ventured out on a couple of activities. One day, we went on a boat called the ‘Reef Dancer’ which is a ‘mini-sub’. Basically, it is a glass bottom boat where you sit in the keel with windows along either side. They take you out to a reef and divers jump in the water and bring up urchins and other things to look at. It’s a good way to get a quick look at what you see when you snorkel (which Noah is, of course, too young to do). On our last full day in Maui, we went to the Maui Ocean Center , the aquarium in Hawaii. We were not expecting the Maui Ocean Center to be able to eclipse our own, local Aquarium of the Pacific but we were very impressed with the exhibits. There is a GREAT reef exhibit and another very cool turtle exhibit. Of course, it helps too that the center is located right on the water in Ma’alaea Harbor and has a really good restaurant overlooking the harbor where we had lunch. If you find yourself in Maui with an afternoon to kill, definitely find your way to the Maui Ocean Center.

Sneezy and Weezie

As you might imagine, the people-watching was first-class. In addition to a few guys obviously from Europe who should have been given two minutes in the penalty box for unnecessary wearning of Speedos, we nicknamed a couple of folks. First was an older guy who must have sneezed, while sitting in the pool, at least 20 times and, then, after contaminating the water got out and got into the jacuzzi!!! We nicknamed him ‘Sneezy’. Also, the couple visiting from Cincinnati and staying in the room next to us reminded us of the Jeffersons from the sitcom, so we started calling them Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson and we called her ‘Weezie’ (not to their faces, of course). Mostly, the people we met were extremely nice and, other than the few Europeans and the group from Cincinnati, almost everyone else was from Southern or Northern California. It’s amazing that, living where we live, we all climb into airplanes and spend thousands of dollars to fly for five hours to sit in the sun by the beach or the pool!!!

Watch Out for ‘Island Style’ Service on Aloha Airlines

While I have flown Aloha Airlines on several short-hop flights to Las Vegas and Reno without a problem, one of the glitches that we suffered on this trip was the inept customer service of the airline. They offer very convenient direct service from Orange County airport direct to Maui, avoiding LAX and also avoiding plane-changes in Honolulu. The problem is that they do not seem to be able to figure out how to effectively get people into seats on their very nice, new fleet of Boeing 737-700s . Our reservations were canceled for some unknown reason in both directions. Aloha blamed the cancellation on the travel agent that we used, but we were unable to corroborate that story. Also, once on the plane in Orange County, they obviously could not figure out why all the seats were taken because a passenger was trying to get on. So, we were asked, literally like 10 times, whether Noah had a paid seat. Also, their customer service on the telephone, which we had to access A LOT because of the canceled reservations, was very hit-and-miss (e.g., the first time Wendy called the night before we left, the customer service agent said ‘Your reservations have been canceled. Is there anything else I can help you with?’) This may explain why the airline is in bankruptcy !

We’ll be Back!

Overall, we had a wonderful time and it was great to get to spend so much time with Noah before things get crazy in December. We had been to Napili before, even staying in the same resort last November, and until the kids get old enough to want to explore the locations we visit, we’ll probably come right back. It’s relatively easy to get there, it’s a good value for the money and we all have a good time. If you are looking for an 80s style night club and fancy restaurants, Napili is not your place. However, if you want to lay by a picture-postcard quality beach and have some low-key R&R with your family, book your trip now for next year…we’ll see you there!

If you want to see a photo album from our trip, click here.