This would be a new experience. I had never taken a day off in the middle of a tournament before.

My first stop was back at the Partnership Desk. I arrived there a little after 8 a.m., but a couple of ladies were already behind the desk arranging the cards of people who were looking for partners on Wednesday. I asked them for my card. I changed the day to Thursday and pinned it up on the big board with the rest of the cards for Thursday.

I did not bring my camera to breakfast. The photos are from the internet.

Sue and I remembered the Honolulu Zoo as a low-key place that could be experienced pretty thoroughly in a few hours. Since it was open from 9 o'clock to 4:30, we had no need to rush. The plan was to eat breakfast at Goofy and then make our way to the zoo. We knew that there were several trolleys that ran up and down Waikiki. Surely one of them went to the zoo. We did a little research and discovered that a one-day pass cost at least $25 per person.[1] Sue said that we should just walk. I was a little skeptical of her ability to do 1.4 miles in tropical heat, but perhaps we could hail a cab if we stuck to the main roads.

We found Goofy on the second floor of a small shopping center set back from Ala Moana Boulevard. Ten or so people were sitting or standing along the balcony. Whether they were waiting to dine at Goofy was unclear. The system was to ink your name and size of the party and hope that someone would eventually invite you to come in. Meanwhile, you could do whatever you wanted. There was no official waiting area, but a large menu posted next to the door allowed customers, at least in theory, to order quickly after being seated. The only other establishment that was open on the second floor was Lulu's Hair Salon. Lulu was plainly visible, but no customers were.

We waited for about twenty minutes before they called for us. During that time several other parties climbed up the stairs and examined the situation. About half of them signed in and stayed.

The Classic Hawaiian Omelette was served in a small skillet on a plank with a salad and a muffin.

The restaurant was not a very large place. We were seated at a table for two with only a few inches of space on either side. To our left and right were similar tables occupied by two young[2] couples. In point of fact, we were the oldest people in the place by a few decades. Sue was comfortable with this arrangement, but it really bothered me to be subjected to other people's private conversations.

This classy exhibit is right next to the entrance to the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

The guy at the table on my right was a “mansplainer.” He pontificated about how O'ahu's beauty was superior to Maui's, which foods to eat in Hawai'i, the joys of poi, and a few other topics. He addressed his dining companion as “Baby.” When Sue's order of pulled pork arrived, he immediately asked her what it was. Sue seemed to like this communal approach to dining, but I had had enough of it at Boy Scout camp, the college dorm, and the army.

I ordered the “Classic Hawaiian Omelette,” which was a mishmash of eggs, sausage, avocado, and I am not sure what else. It did not look like an omelette; it looked like scrambled eggs with a bunch of stuff in it. It tasted pretty good, but it was not worth $12. I had had better omelettes at IHOP, Sue liked her French toast. She brought most of the side order of pulled pork back to the hotel to serve as the guts of a future sandwich.

I really liked these three statues.

A little later Sue and I set off for the zoo. I got directions from Google Maps on my phone. We started by walking through a park, and later we saw a few trolleys, but otherwise the views were mostly of retailers. It was a little warm, but this after all was Hawai'i. It almost never gets below 70°, and Sue has always considered the seventies as unbearably hot. It was late in the morning, which meant that there was very little shade.

The trolleys were omnipresent on the main streets of Waikiki.

We took our first break when we had only gone about a quarter of a mile. By the time that we had covered half a mile Sue was totally spent. We hailed a cab, which drove us the rest of the way. It certainly took less than five minutes. We were only three-fourths of a mile from the entrance.

That was fine. At least Sue would have a little energy left for walking around the zoo.

The zoo was just as we remembered it. We began our visit by walking past the flamingos and the hippo sculpture toward the restroom. We both took advantage of the facilities. I noticed a coke machine nearby that advertised 20 oz. bottled sodas for $2. I wasn't thirsty yet, and I was confident that the zoo would have plenty of places that provided refreshments. I was wrong.

Sue spent a lot longer in the restroom than I did. I devoted the time to taking photos of some of the trees in the nearby park area. This was a good idea, because I came to realize that my lens was smudged. I used a little saliva and my tee shirt to address the issue.

The zoo was laid out so that there was a fairly natural counter-clockwise circuit from the restrooms up through the primates, reptiles, and elephants to the African Savanna. It was a good idea to follow this route. By the time that you reach the Plantation Cafe, you would probably be quite ready for a break. Furthermore, the animals seemed to become more and more interesting.

Sue has always had a strange fascination with Masai warriors. The entrance to the savanna area had a very tall statue of one in full battle array. I took a photo of Sue standing in front of and beneath him. Incidentally, in Tanzania we had seen plenty of real Masais in native garb minding their cattle. They looked nothing like the statue, and they did not like tourists taking their photos. Some could be persuaded for a few dollars.

It was hard to argue with the claim that this was the best zoo within 2300 miles.

I was very glad that I brought my Canon, which had a fifty-times zoom. Anyone could take good photos of many animals with the camera app on a phone, but I was able to zoom in on distant aardvarks, wild dogs, and several other sleepy beasts. On the other hand Sue was able to take some interesting movies using her phone.

Of all the animals that we saw I was most excited about the rhinos. It was very easy to get outstanding views of them at the zoo. This contrasted sharply with our experience in Africa. We saw one or two in the Ngorogoro Crater, but they were so far away and intermixed with a herd of buffalo that I was unable to get a distinct shot of one.

Another big treat was the family of wild dogs. We saw three wild dogs in the Serengeti, but they were on the other side of the river and moving too fast for me to photograph. Our guide there was very excited about this sighting because wild dogs had not been seen in the northern part of that park for several years.

This shot of some huge goldfish came out amazingly well.

The turtles were good at posing.

I forgot to make note of what kind of monkey this was.

I had recently watched a PBS television show about wild dogs. The ones at the zoo did not resemble the ones on television very much. The markings were similar, but the dogs in the zoo had a much more deliberate gait. The ones on the TV program sort of pranced.

I think that this was supposed to be art.

The zoo has much more than animals. The vegetation includes banyan and rainbow eucalyptus trees.

I recognized these from Kaua'i. The pigs there liked to hide in the tangle of trunks.

The major problem with any trip to a zoo is the fact that most of the animals sleep during the day, and they prefer to sleep in dark protected areas. They are therefore difficult both to see and photograph. By far the most active of the large animals in the Honolulu Zoo were the Galapagos tortoises. I had seen these monsters before, but they had always been motionless or nearly so. These guys, by contrast, were on the move. I took a dozen or more shots of them.

The male orangutan came right up to the fence.

The female left one hand outside of her makeshift sleeping compartment.

The Asian elephants were the same color as the walls of their enclosure.

These little guys were very fast swimmers and difficult to photograph.

I have no idea what this might be, but it was big.

This is not a rat; it is a sleeping aardvark, which is many time as big as the largest rat.

The giraffes at the zoo posed. We saw so many of these in Tanzania that I stopped wasting valuable pixels on them.

Ditto for baboons.

Egrets are everywhere on the savanna.

Two rhinos in one photo!

And a close-up! Check out those hairy ears.

We planned on stopping at the Arusha Town Snack Bar, but it was closed.

This pigeon boldly popped up on our table.

We stopped for lunch at the Plantation Cafe. We both ordered sandwiches. I was very thirsty, but I was not thrilled at the idea of paying $6.50 for a cup of Diet Coke. Instead I decided to walk rapidly back to the restrooms near the entrance and buy one from the machine. This was a fool's errand. Not only did I take a few wrong turns; when I got there I discovered that the machine did not take credit cards. Furthermore it decisively rejected all of my $1 bills.

This sparrow was even cheekier.

So, I retraced my steps back to the Plantation Cafe and ransomed a souvenir cup. I don't think that this entitled me to a refill, but I took one anyway.

Sue and I enjoyed a leisurely lunch in the shade. We were joined at our table by a couple of extremely assertive birds that landed right on our small round table. They could not understand why we needed to eat every scrap of our food.

I inserted my pricey souvenir cup into my backpack to bring back to the hotel room. I planned to use it while I played on Thursday and Friday.

I was excited to see the wild dogs.

Some were actually moving around.

This sleepyhead was a long way from me.

The Komodo Dragon was enormous.

A close-up!

I never thought that I would be able to get a tongue shot.

Sue spent some time in the gift shop. She purchased, among other things, a tee shirt for me that featured the words “Not So Fast” above a menacing-looking three-toed sloth. This was slightly misleading advertising. The zoo did have a sloth, but it was the two-toed variety. We had learned in Costa Rica that the two were no more closely related than cows are to horses.

My most vivid recollection of the previous visit was of the hornbills.

We went in the bird enclosure, but this was the only one that we saw.

We saw storks in both Africa and Slovakia.

Slow down; the hare will never catch you.

It took us a few minutes to get a cab. We informed the driver that it had been 8° Fahrenheit when we left New England. He was amazed that I was able to convert this to Centigrade in my head. He then asked me if I knew what a nonillion was. I said that I had never heard of it. A little later it occurred to me that the “non” prefix must represent nine. I went through the sequence in my head: million, billion,, trillion, quadrillion, etc. If a million had six zeros, and a billion had nine, the formula must be n=3x+3. A nonillion would therefore have thirty zeros (three times nine plus three), which agreed with what he had previously heard.[3] He told us that he was very impressed that I could figure this out.

It's also a quadrillion quadrillion.

When we arrived back to the hotel both Sue and I took naps. I then went down to ABC to pick up a couple of bottles of Diet Coke.

On my way back to the room I passed a group that was on a tour. The guide stopped in front of some enlarged black and white photos that were displayed on the corridor in the ground floor of the Tapa Tower. He drew their attention to a photo taken in 1961 of the area that now contained the Hilton complex. There was no beach. I was shocked to hear him explain that the Waikiki Beach was man-made. They even had to truck in the sand, and they occasionally needed to add more.

Back in my room I checked my phone to make sure that no one looking for a partner had tried to contact me. I also checked the email on Yoga, but nothing was in either place.

It was a good idea to take a day off. I felt a little better about everything. On the other hand, I was apprehensive about playing with strangers at this level of competition.