Tales from the Trail

President Barack Obama on Monday sought the time honored refuge of any parent dealing with damp vacation weather. Clad in shorts and flip-flops, he took the kids bowling and then bribed them with shave ice.

Marshaling a gang of around 10 children, including his own daughters Sasha and Malia, the president spent several hours bowling and playing basketball with family friends before retreating to a favorite haunt, Island Snow ice parlor in Kailua, for a tasty treat of flavored ice.

“Why don’t you guys go outside so you don’t spill in here,” he instructed the milling children after distributing numerous towering and luridly colored treats, whose exotic flavors included ‘lolo lilikai’ and ‘godzilla grape’. Sasha got a yellow and red shave ice and Malia a tropical blue one.

Picking a dazzling blend of melon, cherry and lemon-and-lime for himself, the president offered to treat the accompanying  pool of reporters. This generous gesture was declined by those present, who might have been worried about the mechanics of safely balancing a camera or a note pad at the same time as the ice.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Hugh Gentry (Obama and daughter Sasha order “shave ice”); REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (Rainy day on the beach at Kailua Bay where Obama family is vacationing)

If it’s Sunday in Hawaii, it must be beach day. Actually if it’s any day in Hawaii, it’s beach day.

But for President Barack Obama Sunday was the first day for a real  beach outing since he arrived in Kailua for the presidential Christmas break last Thursday.

Obama and family ventured out to Pyramid Rock Beach on a nearby Marine Corps base where the president stopped briefly yesterday we imagine to scope out the waves considering that Obama is known to locals as a more than adequate bodysurfer.

On the day after Christmas, President Barack Obama had an early morning conference call with national security advisers about the Northwest plane incident, went to the gym with his wife Michelle, went back to his Kailua holiday home and then… it was tee time!

Obama and four friends, yes that’s right a group of FIVE, went for 18 holes on the Kaneohe Klipper course at a nearby Marine Corps base.

Now for non-golf aficionados (like me) a foursome is the customary maximum for a golf  game. So five would raise some eyebrows in golfing circles.

“Hey everybody, Merry Christmas.”

That was how President Barack Obama greeted military families in the NCO Mess at Marine Corps Base Hawaii on Christmas Day.

It was his second visit of the day to the base which is near the first family’s Hawaiian holiday home in Kailua on the island of Oahu, a 30-minute drive from Honolulu.

In the early morning hours, the president and first lady went to the gym on the base to exercise, and then they returned in late afternoon to give handshakes and hugs to Marines and their families having a Christmas day meal.