Forgotten Things

I managed to forget a charger for my laptop when I packed to leave, so the plan to do a little writing about kauai was disrupted. Luckily I managed to dig one up. Annoying, really. One makes a simple plan and finds in foiled by a single missing part. I have nightmares like that, usually […]

I managed to forget a charger for my laptop when I packed to leave, so the plan to do a little writing about kauai was disrupted. Luckily I managed to dig one up.

Annoying, really. One makes a simple plan and finds in foiled by a single missing part. I have nightmares like that, usually about dive trips where I’ve forgotten to pack some single piece of gear that’s completely essential.

Thus on, I hope, with a bit of travel blogging. Though not tonight, due to an early-morning dive trip tomorrow.

I will admit, though, I’ve developed rather a liking this trip, for a beverage I bought only for it’s lovely label.

Sailor Jerry

Kauai bound

In about five minutes I’ll be boarding a flight for lihue – Kauai, here I come. (posted via iPhone)

In about five minutes I’ll be boarding a flight for lihue – Kauai, here I come.

(posted via iPhone)

…and counting

Today – high: 84, low: 75 Tomorrow – high: 84, low: 75 …and so on… One week to go. Nevermind the showers. It always says that.

Today – high: 84, low: 75

Tomorrow – high: 84, low: 75

…and so on…

One week to go.


Kauai Weather-1

Nevermind the showers. It always says that.

Pirates of Marketing-land

I remember when I used to get home from trips and have time to write a big ‘ol trip report with photos every time. Actually I don’t remember it, but I have posts like that, so I should remember it I flew down late Wednesday; a great flight as it turned out. I’d been heavily […]

I remember when I used to get home from trips and have time to write a big ‘ol trip report with photos every time.

Actually I don’t remember it, but I have posts like that, so I should remember it

I flew down late Wednesday; a great flight as it turned out. I’d been heavily girl-watching a woman at the ticket counter when I was in the security line, wanting to get a look at the front ’cause the back was so good; all the right curves in all the right places, and a whole lot of strawberry-blond hair. She was in a weird sort of shorts-pants-suit that shouldn’t have worked, but for some reason did; it looked both casual and business-like, and cute.

The self-same woman wound up sitting next to me on the plane, and the front was even better than that back; she wasn’t just cute, she was gorgeous. We spent the hour-and-a-quarter long trip to Anaheim talking about tattoos; she won my respect by knowing some of my tattoos were Maori, and she wanted as much of a tour of all my tattoos as I could give without 1) getting up or 2) dropping trou (which I’ll admit I’d have done happily if asked).

So it was an unusually good flight.

D-land was great. We’d picked a dead week, so thursday night we were able to walk on to any ride in the park with no wait – and no major rides were closed, so I had my near fill of indiana jones, the matterhorn, haunted mansion, and of course, Pirates of the Caribbean (but more about that in a moment).

Friday, I went on a ride I’d never done before, at Disney’s lesser park, California Adventure; Grizzly River Run. And I gotta say, this ride kicks ass. We got there late friday, and the temperature was dropping, so there were no lines at all; however, this meant that it was freezing. We rode until we were near hypothermic, and soaked to the skin. Only cold drove us off. The good thing is, we were staying at the Grand Californian, so our hotel was literally less that a hundred feet from GRR. I love GRR for the ride, of course, but an added benefit is what a good dousing of cold water does to pretty young ladies tee-shirts. Mmmm.

In any case, I flew home from d-land late saturday, took a cab since no one was there waiting to collect me at the gate (hey, a guy can dream), and then spent my sunday doin’ nuthin’ but reading a James Bond novel and nursing a sore foot (I’ll be damned if i know what i did to it, but I managed to hurt myself two days before leaving; luckily darvocet is a good way to way to enhance enjoyment of the Magic Kingdom), and cookin’ some fine caldo de pollo.

All in all, a way-too-short but very easy, low-key trip.

But let’s talk about Pirates.

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Mouseward

I’m leaving on a very short trip to southern california – getting on a plane in about two hours. I wish I had time for a real vacation, with time spent sipping cocktails by a pool, and energetically doing nothing. But this isn’t that kinda trip; i’ve got two and a half days to hit […]

I’m leaving on a very short trip to southern california – getting on a plane in about two hours. I wish I had time for a real vacation, with time spent sipping cocktails by a pool, and energetically doing nothing. But this isn’t that kinda trip; i’ve got two and a half days to hit d-land and possibly a few other sites in and around anaheim (though I’m sure, as usual, I won’t have time to go get tattooed by jack rudy; that always happens).

It’s the kind of trip where one has fun, but never had time for downtime which what I need most right now. That has to wait a bit, however, and it’s virtaully impossible to be unhappy at Disneyland.

I fly back saturday afternoon, so at least I have a day of peace and quiet after the trip. I’ll need it.

anole

I keep meaning to post a whole ting about my hawaii trip with photos but 1) i have no time and 2) i have so damned many photos to go through. So here’s a sample set i like. I was in the town of Hawi, northenmost town on the Big Island of Hawaii. This is […]

I keep meaning to post a whole ting about my hawaii trip with photos but 1) i have no time and 2) i have so damned many photos to go through.

So here’s a sample set i like.

I was in the town of Hawi, northenmost town on the Big Island of Hawaii. This is King Kamehameha’s birthplace, and a sort of artsy enclave unlike the more touristy center of Kailua-Kona.

I was walking from a store that sold jewelry across the street to a fantastic tattoo shop I’ll post more about later (i only wish I’d had time to get tattooed). But i found this lizard (an anole, in Hawaiian, which is not the same as a gecko). I picked him up and we bonded; I could NOT get him to crawl off me and onto a nice safe branch. Seemed he was happier crawling up my arm to see the highest point.

Click the photo for a slide show.


IMG_0635

(this is exported from iphoto, i’m not sure i like the way it builds the pages, but i didn’t feel like waiting on stupid flickr uploads)

everyone looks dorky under water

Dive Makai, the fine folks I was diving with the last two weeks, gave me a whole CD full of photos taken on our dives as a birthday present. Though that wasn’t as great as the dive i had on my actual birthday with my man Todd Emmons (three different kinds of scorpion fish (Leaf […]

Dive Makai, the fine folks I was diving with the last two weeks, gave me a whole CD full of photos taken on our dives as a birthday present. Though that wasn’t as great as the dive i had on my actual birthday with my man Todd Emmons (three different kinds of scorpion fish (Leaf scorpion, decoy scorpion, and a huge titan scorpion) on one dive, plus we got to watch a triton’s trumpet dine on a crown-of-thorns starfish (there was much slow-mo carnage), and i got down to 150 feet in a Dr. Seuss landscape of wire coral and nitrogen narcosis.)

Still, it was pretty fuckin’ cool.

Most of the shots are, you know fish, which you’d love if you’re into that sort of thing (vs the ray-feasts-upon-the-flesh kind of fish.). But here’s one of yours truly, just to show how completely dorky i look under water. What is the deal with those chipmunk cheeks?

As usual, click for a bigger version of the image.

Karl Kona 11 06-1

I was gonna save this for some sort of HNT posting but i may have a good bruise picture for that.

me ‘n the manta

Words can’t add much here. That’s me (the one without the wings). I’m actually touching the manta (a no-no, but in the moment – well, you know how I get, I’m all hands.) click the image to get a larger version – this is from a video another diver made of last tuesday’s Manta dive. […]

Words can’t add much here.

That’s me (the one without the wings). I’m actually touching the manta (a no-no, but in the moment – well, you know how I get, I’m all hands.)

Manta

click the image to get a larger version – this is from a video another diver made of last tuesday’s Manta dive. I’d like to post a bit of the video but it’s in some weird format i can’t figure out how to convert. If anyone’s a whiz kid with the video maybe you can help me out with how to do that.

islands call me

I keep thinking of profound (or so it seems at the time, but maybe that’s the nitrogen narcosis) things to blog, when I’m under water, or on a dive boat, or looking at pretty girls sunning themselves on beaches, lizard-like in the hot sun. But then later, here in my condo, between the cooking of […]

I keep thinking of profound (or so it seems at the time, but maybe that’s the nitrogen narcosis) things to blog, when I’m under water, or on a dive boat, or looking at pretty girls sunning themselves on beaches, lizard-like in the hot sun.

But then later, here in my condo, between the cooking of dinners and the bedding-down of kids, and the daily fatigue of a trip on the go, i can’t recall what I meant to write, or i can’t summon the energy, or simply don’t have time.

I’m not complaining. Snorkeling, diving, hiking lava flows, or just laying around on a beach in the hot sun, all beat out blogging. But i had a vague notion of a daily travel blog as with my fiji trip. For some reason, it simple hasn’t seemed important.

I hope, though, to have pictures to post when i get home at the end of this week; and possibly video since I have a DVD of my manta dive last week, professionally-shot footage that one of the video people described as ‘national geographic quality’.

I’m here for three more days. Tonight, we have the full tourist experience, the luau. Tomorrow is my birthday, and i plan to spend it underwater, hopefully with an all-day adventure trip that will take me to the far-south Kona coast to dive areas that rarely see dive boats; last time I did one of these trips I saw a twelve-foot hammerhead, so I’m looking forward to it. Wednesday is my last full day here, and while plans may change, my youngest daughter wants me to rent a harley and take here for a ride. And who can say no when a pretty little girls says take me for a ride, daddy?

This trip has gone by far too quickly. I’ve been busy, yet not in any way harried. I’ve had time to do most of what i wanted to do (not all, it seems that cannot happen on a hawaii trip – i need to live here). I do not look forward to being home or to dealing with Real Life; only missing friends (both real life and virtual/distant whom I lack time to keep in touch with while I’m here) makes me in any way long for anything but this. My kids asked for my three wishes yesterday as part of some game, and my first was to live here, and the second was to transport certain key individuals here with me.

The islands call me. I hear it all the time, and never more than when I’m here. Nevermind that the islands in my genes are in a loch in scotland; this is home.

5.0 Thanksgiving

My thanksgiving day started big-island-style with a 5.0 earthquake, centered just north of Kailua-Kona on the Kohala coast – same place the last one was, a month ago (though that one was considerably larger). My condo was rattling and shaking – though i am from California so earthquakes are nothing new. I thought my kids […]

My thanksgiving day started big-island-style with a 5.0 earthquake, centered just north of Kailua-Kona on the Kohala coast – same place the last one was, a month ago (though that one was considerably larger).

My condo was rattling and shaking – though i am from California so earthquakes are nothing new. I thought my kids were doing some sort of smackdown wrestling on the stairs above my head, until I realized the shaking was in waves, and coming from behind me, not above.

Later, sipping coffee on my lanai, I heard the woman in the condo below me calling home; she was describing the ‘quake to someone on the mainland, and said ‘…and at first I thought, what are those people upstairs doing now?

‘Quakes are not a big deal around here; it’s a volcanic island, some of the newest land in the world. But still, it got people’s attention. If got mine, certainly.

My original plan for this holiday included my in-laws (you remember, in-law vs outlaw), though they wound up having to cancel for medical reasons, and a luau though we found that no one seems to run a luau for thanksgiving (imu roasted turkey sounds like a great idea to me, but what do I know.) When we didn’t find a thanksgiving luau, we consulted the in-laws and chose an island-style thanksgiving buffet at the Mauna Lani Orchid to satisfy the in-laws desire for something traditional.

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