| Day 61 - Wednesday, October 19 - Hawaii | << Index |
| Anticipated: Play golf at Pearl Country Club, Hawaii |
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| Click on the photos below to enlarge | ||
 Aloha to Honolulu sign at airport and Pearl Country Club sign |
 (top) L to R Joey Sakaue, Kevin Kashiwai and Patrick Boe (bottom) Jim, Jean Kuratani, Yuko Winders and Pat |
 (top left) Kats Shodai and Michael Tao (top right) Young Min Bell, Pat and Annette Fonseca (bottom left) Del and Brooke Hernandez (middle) Jim, Brooke and Pat (lower right) Jay Jarman |
 (top left) Pat’s final putt of the 61-day CanAmAthon her 6708th stroke (top right) Jim’s final putt of the 61-day CanAmAthon his 5402nd stroke (lower) L to R Jim, Kevin Kashiwai, head professional, and Pat Jim and Pat standing on 18th green in front of Pearl Open sign Pat being interviewed & photographed by Vanessa Stewart & Terry Sagawa |
 Scenes from the golf course (note on lower left picture the Arizona Memorial) |
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ALOHA
Last night at 7:30PM we watched a beautiful sunset over Honolulu Bay. Since we had a 6-hour time change, we were quite fatigued and retired early. This morning we awoke just after 5:00AM to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, we didn’t see a beautiful sunrise, what we saw was a cloudy sky and rain! Oh, no! Would this, our 61st day of our venture, be the day that we would get rained out? We checked out of the motel at 7:00AM, thinking that we would drive to Pearl Country Club and have breakfast there, wait for the rain to stop, and try to play between showers. By the time we reached the club, the rain had stopped and there were patches of blue in the sky! Our luck continued to hold.When we entered the pro shop we were greeted by the head golf professional Kevin Kashiwai, and two of his assistants, Joey Sakaue and Patrick Boe. Kevin accompanied us to the dining room where we met the manager, Michael Tao and the waitress Kats Shodai. They offered us coffee and told us that the breakfast was complementary in honor of our final day. The breakfast menu had many offerings, but we both selected their special of eggs, bacon, toast and fried Hawaiian rice. We had a wonderful breakfast while sitting on the veranda overlooking Pearl Harbor. During breakfast we had a nice conversation with Jay Jarman who was sitting at the next table. After breakfast Michael gave us bottles of water and some snacks to take along on the golf cart. We especially appreciated the water, because at tee time the sun was shining brightly and the temperature would reach the high eighties/low nineties before our round ended.
We were able to tee off ahead of an outing at 8:40AM. We had had an 11:00AM tee time, but were able to change it to the earlier time. Pearl Country Club is really “A Pearl”. Every hole has fantastic views and we were enjoying the scenery and taking many pictures along with playing golf. It will be difficult to choose the pictures that will appear in our journal, because there were so many fantastic views. If any of you reading this journal want to play a great course when you visit Hawaii, we highly recommend The Pearl Country Club. You won’t be disappointed.
Since the 18th hole was our 1098th and final hole of our wonderful journey, we were both reluctant to tee off. It is a very beautiful par 4-hole, and we lingered at the tee until the group in front of us cleared the green 400 yards away.
As we came down the 18th fairway we noticed several carts and a group of people gathering around the green. When we hit our approach shots and walked up to the green, Kevin and Michael came to take pictures of our final putts on our final hole. Two girls also came with beautiful fresh flowered leis and placed them around our necks. We were also given Pearl Open caps as souvenirs of our day at The Pearl. More pictures were taken and we were treated like “royalty”. The other golfers shook our hands and congratulated us on our accomplishment. We were told that there would be a lunch provided for us after we got our clubs loaded into the car. When we got to the parking lot a TV reporter from KHON, Vanessa Stewart and her cameraman, Terry Sagawa were waiting to interview us for the Honolulu evening news. This took about 20 minutes and was on this evening’s television newscast (unfortunately, we were at the airport and unable to view the program).
Note: As stated in earlier journals, Pat’s goal was to break 110 and Jim’s was to break 90 on a daily basis. Pat needed an 8 or better on the final hole, to bring her stroke average under 110. She made 7 for a final stroke average of 109.967. Jim needed a par 4 on the last hole to break 90. Unfortunately, he rimmed out a 5 foot put for a bogie 5. Jim’s final stroke average was 88.557. In the 61 rounds of golf, Jim took 5420 strokes and Pat took 6708 strokes. We rode a golf cart for 60 of the 61 rounds, which means that we were in a golf cart for approximately 240 miles (the only course that we walked was Club de Golf Val Neigette in Rimouski, Quebec----we also walked the 1st nine at New Mexico Highlands University Golf Course in Las Vegas, New Mexico).
We met two more of the waitresses while we were having lunch, Annette Fonseca and Young Min Bell. We also met Brooke and Del Hernandez on the veranda. Del is retired but works part-time as a cart attendant. Brooke is originally from Fridley, Minnesota so we exchanged some Minnesota reflections with her, as we had lived there for four years prior to moving to Michigan.
We were able to take showers in the locker rooms, which was wonderful. The day was rather warm, so it was nice to get “cleaned-up” prior to leaving for the airport. Before we left, we went back up to the pro shop to say goodbye to Kevin, and we met two more of the pro shop attendants, Jean Kuratani and Yuko Winders. We really enjoyed our short stay at The Pearl Country Club, and we want to thank Kevin for waiving the green and cart fees, and Michael for the complementary breakfast and lunch. We also want to say that everyone we met at the club treated us with the utmost respect and friendliness.
We left Pearl Country Club at 3:30PM for the short drive to the airport. Our Delta “red-eye” flight from Honolulu to Cincinnati was scheduled to depart at 7:35PM, but it was delayed for an hour, which caused us to miss our connecting flight to Grand Rapids, but we only had to wait an extra hour for the next flight (we departed Cincinnati at.1:00 PM for the 45 minute flight to Grand Rapids).