The Good Life

Another picture of the crew just because I'm not blinking in this pic:

Well, life has been different since getting back from vacation. The big change is no Chris and Steve. It was nice getting to know them better over the last year and a half - they're pretty cool people. Yeah, things are lonely in the house with just me. Pros? Sitting around watching movies at full blast whist naked. Sleeping in Chris and Steve's huge king-sized bed. Con? I miss Taco Bell runs with the family. Anyway, it sounds like they won't be coming back (except maybe for a quick visit) until next year some time, so I better get used to it, eh?

Over the summer the work schedule is pretty lax. I'm working Mon-Wed for about 6 hours a day. It's enough to pay the bills and that's about it. But what else do I need right now?

The other days are pretty much spent at the beach doing various... beach... activities. The main thing right now is paddling. At 5:15am Tues and Thurs mornings and early saturday and sunday we have paddling practice. We had our first regatta last May 31st. I guess I wasn't prepared for how big an event it was. I was there about 7:00am and was there until about 5:30pm or something. Sorry, Mom, I got a little more sun than I should have.

Our crew did pretty well. We held the lead for the first half of the race and through the turn, and ended up fifth in the end. Last week we ended up fourth, but it was a dang close race with us being about 7 seconds from first place. Anyway, it's lots of fun and it keeps me in shape. Another 5 weeks or so of races and then long distance season starts up.

If you're interested, some pictures of the regattas are here: http://www.kiheicanoeclub.com. I'm in a few of them if you can find them.

Late Friday (Friday the 13th) afternoon I decided to go surfing so I called up my coworker Bret and we headed out. The surfing was great - the waves were huge. I got pounded as much as I caught waves, but all in all it was a good surf day. However, as I was leaving the ocean I came out at a different spot than when I went into the water. Much to my surprise I stepped on something pokey. That combined with the waves coming into shore brought me to my knees. I tried to sit a spell till the current set of waves passed and I could see the ground more clearly but that didn't happen. I tried my best to just walk in as fast as I could, but I just stepped on more spikes. I finally got into shore and my feet started burning. Yep, I had had my first encounter with Sea Urchins. I hobbled as best I could back to the car and let Bret know that he was driving me to the after-hours clinic.

Turns out there's not much you can do for urchin stings. They've got these glass-like barbs that just break up if you try to remove them from your feet. So I continue to hobble around like an old man for now. Oh, and they also gave me a Tetanus shot for good measure. And of course Saturday was Regatta day. My shoulder was pretty sore from the shot and that along with the not being able to walk thing made me sit out this series of races. It just wasn't quite the same sitting on the sidelines cheering the team on. And our team didn’t do so well this week. I’m hoping my shoulder feels good enough to practice with tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

So that's life right now. The boss man is on vacation for a couple of weeks so I have nothing better to do than study for the CPA exams and hang out at the beach. I'll keep you posted on anything else that goes on.

As usual...

here's a couple pics. Stories will come tomorrow. These are of our saturday regatta - the last picture is of our crew.

words. Lots of words.

So here’s a recap of some of my trip back to mainland a while back. 'Bout time I got around to typing some of this stuff up.

Moab – ah, good times with the Sloans/Knights (heretofore to be called simply “the Sloans”) again. It’s been too long. I pretty much stepped off the plane, unloaded some stuff at the parents’ house and headed out with the Sloans. The two things I remember most about the trip? (1) Hanging out at the campfire and just talking story pretty much all day and (2) the dust. Good crap, the dust. Things were pretty windy there which kicked up the dirt some. People would disappear into the tents to take a nap and emerge looking like they’d been buried alive and just dug their way out.

We did get some hiking in as well, and some driving and hangin out in Moab, too. Oh, and I can’t forget dinner at Sam Hawk’s on the way to Moab.

Back at the parent’s house in Sandy was nice. It was good to see, well, the parents, plus Annie and Ed and Josie again. Unfortunately things were pretty cold and it even snowed one day. I had planned on spending some alone time in the mountains and maybe hike Lake Blanche or something while I was there, but because of the snow in the mountains that was a no-go. Man, I can’t believe how fast Josie has grown up. Such a cute girl.

Oh, and I also got to eat some of my favorite foods while I was there, too. A pastrami burger from Apollo Burger, a pizza bender from Italian Village, and a nice big Costa Vida (Cedar City’s imitation Café Rio) burrito. Man, there’s got to be a way to get those things over here, eh? *drool*

I then headed to Cedar City for a night. Mini was in the middle of finals so I didn’t get to hang out with her too much, but it was nice of her to show me hospitality. The house she lives in basically has no heat, so I wrapped up in 5 different blankets, plus a couple of hot water bottles at my feet and my hoodie pulled up over my head. Despite Cedar’s best efforts, I survived the night.

I then headed over to the Ponderosa to visit Steve and Chris. It was so strange to be back there. I spent most of my time hiking by myself just because Chris and Steve were busy putting the spa together and fixing up their trailer. I had to hike the big stuff of course – angels landing and observation point. I hung out in the hottub some, too, which was fun. No real need of a hottub here so it’d been a while.
When Chris and Steve were able to take some time off we drove through the park and hung out in Springdale or at Steve’s parents’ house in Rockville.

Then it was back to Cedar City to brave the house of ice again. Mini graduated that Saturday, so it was great timing that I’d be on the mainland just in time for that. The whole family traveled there to see it, and it was good to have all the brothers and sisters together again.

One of the main purposes in driving home was shipping my car over to Hawaii so I needed to drive it to California. And I figured while I was in California I might as well spend some time in Yosemite like I’ve always wanted to. I had been there before with Chris and Steve but we just happened to drive in the day before the first huge winter storm of the year and we got snowed out. So this was redemption. I have a friend from Maui who had just moved back to the mainland to finish some school and his parents live about 3 hours from Yosemite, so we met up in the park. The park was beautiful. The winter was just melting away so the waterfalls were running full speed and everything was green and springy. Just perfect.

Anyway, I’d always wanted to hike half dome, so that was goal #1. We started early in the morning and it took most of the day. Nearing the dome we ran into something I didn’t expect – snow. And lots of it. At some points the trail was completely buried for long stretches and it was up to us to blaze our own trail up the mountain. And me in my chocos. You really had to dig your toes into the snow because a slip could mean a long slide down a big snowy hill and possibly off a cliff or something, so I manned up and dug my freezing toes in.

Then at the base of the dome, I almost turned back around. Without actually being there it’s hard to tell, but the friggin dome looks strait up. Like maybe a 80% angle or something. It was insane. And to make matters worse, usually the cables up the dome are supported by wooden planks across the ground (I assume like a latter) and bars that hold the cables up at arm level. Yeah, those weren’t up yet. The cables were just sitting there dangling on the mountain. At this point I was glad I was with Dave cause that kid’s certifiably insane and he’ll do anything. And force everyone he’s with to do it too. So we grabbed onto the cables and started our way up. It was the longest 500 feet of my hiking career. Of course Dave was all over the place and he’s like, “Dude take a picture of me,” and I’d be like, “no damn way I’m taking my hands off this cable so I can take your frickin picture.”

But joy of joys, we made it to the top. The only thing that diminished the time spent on top of the dome was the fact that I now had to survive shimmying down the cables and hiking down the steep slopes of snow in basically sandals to get safely home. But it was worth it.

On the top there were a couple domesticated critters – a couple squirrels and, I dunno, a badger? You tell me. But one of us would stay awake and throw rocks at the brave and stupid critters that would try to approach us while the other person slept.

Long story short, I made it back down the mountain. We were probably 2 of 8 people that went to the top that day. Pretty cool.

From there we spent a night under the stars in Yosemite valley. We built a campfire and talked with a bunch of rock climbers that were pretty stoned but really cool people. The next day we rented some bikes and tried to recover from the day before. After that we headed to Dave’s parents’ house for a night.

From there I drove the car to Long Beach. Steve has a brother that lives sorta in the area and he was kind enough to drive me to a hotel next to the airport so I could get a good night’s rest and catch my plane early the next day. As I had some dinner at the Denny’s there at the hotel I talked with a cool girl from Europe who was just graduated and just touring the world. Gutsy is all I can say.

And that brings me back to Maui. My car has arrived in one piece, I’m happy to report. Now there’s the matter of selling the other cars that I clearly don’t need to keep around any longer. More on life on Maui later.