Aloha from Hawaii

We awoke this morning to the sirens at 6 AM. We turned the news on and saw that there had been an earthquake in Chile and that a tsunami wave might hit Hawaii. What a shock. We are staying in a condo in Wailea that is high above sea level so we were not worried about getting washed out, but we were concerned about flights home, power outages and any number of other things the local news was reporting. After watching the news for 2 hours we decided that golf was the answer. The course we played on Wednesday was high above sea level and only about a mile from our condo. We went online and booked a 10 Am tee time and off we went. As we played we could hear the sirens sound every half hour. The day was beautiful though. Probably one of the nicest we spent on Maui. When we finished golf we found out that the wave damage was minimal. What a relief. Parts of our group are leaving tonight so we are anxious to hear about the airport but as of this writing everything appears to be normal. We survived the tsunami of 2010.


On a brighter note I need to write about yesterdays bike ride down a volcano. Fun!Fun!Fun! We started the ride at 6500 feet above sea level and coasted down the mountain for over 23 miles. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant half way down and enjoyed an outdoor picnic with a bottle of wine. It was a very nice day. Part of it was a little scary. The brakes were used almost constantly for the first half of the ride. The bike lane is about 30 inches wide and when you are making hairpin turns around mountains you do not want much speed. The views from the top are spectacular which is the great part of doing a tour like we did. We basically rented the bikes and had a short tour up the mountain. Coming down was all at our own speed. We could stop any time we wanted to for as long as we wanted. The lower half is just fun coasting down the mountain with great sights sounds and smells. We stopped at a flower farm and passed eucalyptus trees and wild coffee plants.

Ocean Views

Plantation Course and Diving

A little downtime after a morning of diving is allowing me to download recent pictures. Monday we played the Plantation Course at Kapalua and there is probably not a course on earth with more beautiful views. It is a very tough course with lots of blind shots so it was nice to be playing vacation golf with a few mulligans and given putts. The photos of the course are ok on the blog but really do not do justice to the magnitude of the landscape.

This morning we arrive at the boat dock at 6AM for two dives. The highlight was seeing whales as we boated back from the dive site. We saw a mother and three babies circling our boat. The mother was within 10 feet of our dive boat. Some of the divers actually put their masks on and looked at the whales under water. Hawaii has the benefit of having some of the very best whale protection laws in the world. They must observe a "100 yard minimum" law, which states that whales within 100 yards cannot be approached by any means, including by boat, kayak, sailboard or even by swimming. Being wild animals, whales can approach us as they wish. Fortunately for us the babies were curious about the dive boat and swam right under us. We were able to see the three baby whales, the mother and the escort whale. Very very memorable. We did not see any whales while we dove but it is an eerie sound to hear them underwater.

The diving was not great. We saw lots of fish but the colors here are much more muted than what we are used to in the Virgin Islands. The water temperature is around 74 which is close to 10 degrees cooler than the BVI too. We did see some interesting frog fish but they camouflages themselves so well it is hard to see them in the pictures. It is located right in the center of the picture that just looks like the bottom of the ocean.

Hawaii Golf Day One

It is a long plane ride to Hawaii from Perrysburg. We left on Friday morning from Detroit at 9:30 AM, travelled through Minneapolis to Honolulu and then caught the island hopper to Maui. We arrived at 5 PM Maui time which is 5 hours later than P-burg. So in all it was a 17 hour travel day. The time change is pretty easy although both Steve and I woke up at 3AM both days we have been here. It is kind of nice to force yourself to go back to sleep for 2 or 3 hours. We have been trying to make it until 10 PM at night to help adjust. As I write this at 4PM the condo is very quiet and I think there are some sleeping beauties. We played golf at 9AM on the Kapalua Bay Course finishing in about 4 1/2 hours. It was a beautiful course but the greens were very hard to putt. There is the ocean factor, and the mountains, and the grain of the grass to contend with. Since neither Steve nor I had played golf since last November we were pretty happy with our play today. Using the Sarge LBI ( lost ball index) rules Steve shot par golf, meaning he did not lose a single ball. As for me I put 2 into the ocean on the signature holes.

Tomorrow we play the famous Plantation Course at Kapalua. There is much more opportunity for trouble on this course. Hopefully we can continue with vacation golf rules and enjoy the scenic vistas.

Beside the beautiful golf courses I wanted to share some colorful Hawaii pictures. We saw this bird on our balcony yesterday and named him Buckeye bird because he reminds us of home.



We saw this Volkswagon parked after golf today. Later I saw the owners, a 70ish couple driving around in it. Only in Hawaii.

Missed MMEMFM

As much as I have felt bored with winter I can't believe that I have not been updating the blog.I have loved sharing my thoughts and feelings and have found it interesting to look back at previous posts. Next winter I hope I will be able to look back and see that I need to have an action plan in place before the snows hit. It is times like this winter when I really miss having a job. It is relatively late to resume a career at this point though, and getting any kind of job that allows one to take as many vacations as I do, would be hard. I have been helping some of my senior friends navigate the computer and a few referals have helped to fill the time. While most of my computer savvy is self learned it is amazing how much I do know, and my real skill is in sharing, i.e. teaching those with little or no knowledge. I am in the process of tinkering with hard drives and recovering files on crashed laptops now, as well as making videos of old family slides that I have transfered to the computer.

Hawaii is fast approaching. We leave Friday and it is none too soon. We have 5 days of golf planned and 2 days of diving. We may bike down Haleakala Mountain this trip too. Being outside in the warmth and sunshine sounds like great medicine for the soul. I was going to say being active outside, but we have been cross country skiing here the last week and it just doesn't have the same affect on the psychological system as being out in the warmth.

Mike is fine and I have left all of your numbers with him in case something comes up that he needs assistance with. Thanks for everyone that volunteers to be available. Hopefully the snows will not be substantial while we are gone. Driving in the blowing and drifting snow has been a challenge for all of us this winter, but especially Mike who is still relatively new to driving. Fortunately his little Honda Civic has plowed through the snow and only gotten stuck once, and that was in his driveway.

I have several reading selections for the long plane rides, but I am always open to a new title so if you've got one let me know.

We will have a laptop in Hawaii and I am suppose to pick up a new zoom lense for the camera today, so look for some great photos in the next posts.

Monday Morning

Maybe it is time for the MMEMFM again. That is [Monday Morning E Mail from Mom] what I used to try to do when the kids were in college to keep them up to date on what was going on around the house.

I am definitely in the winter blahs. I just can't seem to get motivated to do much of anything. I have caught up on all of the shows that I regularly DVR. I have researched all I want to on Hawaii. I don't want to spent any more time on Facebook. (I have shut down the Farm and the cafe). I am tired of exercising in the basement and want to get outside but it is too cold. I guess I will just keep counting down the days until Hawaii and hope that when we get back it will be nice enough to get outside more. Both Steve and I are looking forward to some nice weather and golf and we are even planning a scuba dive or two while we are there.

Winter in Ohio is boring unless you have a job or a second home to escape to occassionally. This is my first winter as a true empty nester and I understand why moms go back to work, even if it is just at the local department store. It is too easy to just stay in the house. I can not imagine what it must have been like before the computer. Lots more books were read and maybe there were more neighborhood get togethers in the daytime.

Oh well I just wanted to let you all know that I am here but just don't have much interesting to write about.