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.