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)

All good things must come to an end, including presidential vacations.

After several golf games, beach days and dinners out, President Barack Obama and his family are leaving Hawaii to head back to Washington and the waiting White House.

Unless First Lady Michelle Obama has anything to say about it,  that is.

“I’m trying to mount a coup,” Mrs. Obama joked to reporters about staying in the sunny island state. “Are we all in?”

The president may wish that coup had succeeded when he gets back to Washington on Monday. A debate about U.S. national security in the wake of the attempted  bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day awaits him upon his return.