I’m in a Hawaiian bike and fishing shop. It’s too hot for biking and too windy for fishing. But all I want to do is exchange the set of bike tires I bought earlier for a better size. The ones I want to exchange for cost a bit more than the ones I had purchased here an hour ago. The owner says something in Hawaiian and waves away the difference with the back of his hand. It’s a gesture that dismisses the matter and directs me to the door.

On the way back to the place Aki’s other human and I are staying, I wonder how the little poodle-mix is doing back home. She has already taken her morning walk in the rain when the temperature was close to freezing. She would have enjoyed the brief time we spent on this trip in Anchorage between flights because there was sun and new snow. But there were also eagles roosting in trees along the Cook Inlet trail I walked while waiting for my flight to Honolulu.

She would be having a great time here in Hawaii scooting over the beach sand as long as the scooting were done before the heat of the day. She’d be here for the sand and interesting food scraps and, I hope for a chance to spend more time with her humans if she didn’t hate to fly.