Shower:

I've been thinking a lot about this. Which is better- taking a shower in the summer or taking a shower in the winter?

Sale:

Tomorrow is REI's Attic Sale. Used and returned items are marked down to some very reasonable prices. Anything you'd like me to look out for? I'd gladly pick it up if I can find it.

Hawaii4:

The last island we stopped at was Kuai. We spent all of Saturday kayaking up and down the Hanalei river. When we hit the ocean, we took some time to do some wave riding and snorkeling. This island is the really tropical one. They shot Jurrassic Park and the original King Kong on Kuai (along with a dozen other movies I can't remember). There was some pretty exotic flora and fauna, plus some incredible mountains. Since kayaking took all day and we were spent, we relaxed for the rest of the evening enjoying the hot tub and duck for dinner.

The next morning we woke up really early again... I think it was about 4 AM... to go see Waimea Canyon. It was basically a lot like the Grand Canyon except on some parts the canyon was covered with wildlife. Around noon, the boat set sail again as we cruised around the Napali Coast of Kuai. It was a nice coast line. I'm not sure how to describe it and I can't post pictures so...

The cruise ended the next day in Honolulu, where we did a little more shopping and did a lot of waiting at the airport. There were a bunch of fiascos on our return trip with the airlines being all screwy, but whatever. And that was basically my trip... pictures do it better justice.

Hawaii3:

I'm having troubles uploading pictures these days, so you'll just have to deal. Or I guess you can go to facebook and look at some of the pictures I put up there.

Maui. We woke up and did the "road to Hana" (pronounced like Hana Quon), which is a long 4 hour drive to a remote town in the middle of the island. The brochure said it was more about the journey than the destination. We stopped to hike a nice 2 mile trail and checked out some nice waterfalls. Round trip, the drive took the whole day so just crashing back at the ship was a welcomed relief.

Day two in Maui started out beautifully. We woke up around 4 AM to catch the sunrise at Halakalea crater. Basically we drove to the top of one of the tallest mountains on the island and watched the sun break on the clouds. The view was simply awesome- standing above the clouds with a few peaks breaking through the cotton floor, a giant crater rolling far down below you, the beaches and endless ocean behind... it was all there.

After staring at the sun for awhile, we headed back to ship for breakfast and then headed out to hit the beaches. This is when I had my incident, which you can read about in one of those previous posts. After surgery and dinner, we ended the night with a magic show on the boat.

The next morning we set anchor at Kona, which is on "the big island" but on the opposite side of Hilo. Kona is well known for it's coffee, so we went to Greenwell Coffee Farm. It was pretty awesome to learn about some incredible coffee. I'm not the biggest coffee fan, but I could tell this stuff was pretty good from the free samples. I hope the experience doesn't turn me into a coffee snob. So we bought some expensive coffee and did some shopping around town and then went back to the boat for dinner as usual. Also worth mentioning, one of the dishes I had was the ahi sashimi which was absolutely delicious. Maybe one of the best things I had eaten on the whole trip.

Phew... I'm tired and you're probably getting bored since there are no pictures so I'll pick it up from here next time.

Syracuse:

Just a quick insert inside of my slow coming Hawaii epic... I'll be heading out to Syracuse tomorrow morning for the weekend, so if you need me then try contacting me the way you normally would... I probably can't help you, but you can ask if you'd like. Peace out, bean sprouts.

Hawaii2:

We boarded the boat Monday afternoon. It took a little bit of time to get all registered in, but it was relatively painless. Upon boarding, we took a little bit of time to look around and familiarize ourselves with the fun things the boat had to offer. Then we had our first work out session followed by an excellent hot tub session.

Later in the evening we enjoyed tapas for dinner and called it a day.

The next morning we arrived at Hilo, which is on the big island (it's name is Hawaii... but so is the state so they just call it the big island). We met my recently wed cousin and her husband and they took us on a personal tour of Hilo since they lived on the island. We got to see some Volcanic craters and walked on some lava rocks. Then we went to a black sand beach that was only 10 years old. It was just like a beach, but the sand was actually black! How weird and cool.

(again, blogger isn't letting me insert pictures... yet)

From there we visited the Mauna Loa macadamia nut factory. The tour was closed so we just went the gift shop and got free samples. Yum! After getting back to the boat, we went for another hot tub run. At this point I invented a little game for us. We developed this method deemed "The Asian Clog" where the point was to be the final jaccuzzi occupants. It worked like this: first one or two of us would jump into a moderately occupied hot tub. Then a couple more of us would trickle in, making our family's presence in the hot tub more overwhelming. As the other parties surrendered and left due to our sheer presence, additional family members would be called in to fill in the spots until finally the hot tub was claimed as ours. By the end of the trip, we had succeeded 4 times and had never been defeated.

We set sail that night and stayed close to the shore so that we could see some active volcanos spewing out lava and forming new land. It was really pretty and neat; right in front of my eyes I was watching a new part of Hawaii being formed.

The next day we arrive in Maui, and that'll be our next chapter...

Hawaii1:

Let's see...

We flew into Honolulu, HI and crashed in our hotel since we arrived pretty late. The next few days we relaxed and took some time exploring Honolulu. It's a pretty cool city with a loooot of shopping and a lot of beach. We were right across the street from the famous Waikiki beach.

This is the view from my parent's room balcony.

It was a fun place, though as one would expect the waves attract a lot of young people and the beach becomes one giant version of "the show" around midday. Maybe it's just my conservative worldview.

We spent a day at Pearl Harbor and saw the museum and memorial there.


(It was more sunny there than it appears)

One afternoon we hiked up Diamond Head peak. It was a short, one mile trail but it had a lot of features like steep steps and tunnels. From the top you had a pretty good view of a lot of the island including our hotel, a neat light house, and the beaches.

Come Sunday we rode out to Hanauma Bay which was beautiful. It's considered one of the best places to snorkel. I didn't see any sea turtles, but I saw a whole bunch of different fishies. They were very tropical looking with bright colors and strange shapes. I saw this one fish that had a silver body and a long, bright red beak. I'm not sure what the fish is called, but it was absolutely beautiful. The rest of that day we spent riding along the North Shore visiting beaches and eating shrimp cooked in a vendor truck parked on the side of the road. It was an ultra local thing to do, which was refreshing because of all the touristy things we'd been doing. The next day we boarded the boat, so onto the next chapter...

PreHawaii:

While I'm still sorting through pics and stuff, I thought I should post about one Hawaiian experience because it had... should I say... repercussions.

Sometime in the middle of the cruise we visited the beaches of Maui. While kayaking and snorkeling in the Pacific, long story short, I had to debeach on some rocks. It was fine and safe and everything, but by the time everything was sorted out I felt like I had a small bruise on my right foot. Immediately, I disregarded it for the rest of the day. Finally when we got back to the boat and I was about to jump in the shower, I gathered enough sense to examine my foot. Much to my surprise, instead of a bruise there was a small black spot. It was a small piece of rock that was lodged in my foot.

I thought to myself, "no problem" and tried to pull it out with tweezers. It turned out to be a slippery little sucker so eventually my parents decided it best to give the ship doctors a try. They said "no problem" and tried to snatch it out with their fancy tweezers. But much to my dismay, after a half hour of picking and pulling at it, it looked like they were just pushing it in deeper. So they used a local anesthetic and took a scalpel to it. I've never gone under the knife before, but I wasn't worried or anything. I was more concerned with how long it was going to take them since dinner time was fast approaching and they were serving lobster that night. The doctors (that's right, three people tried using different tweezers and needles to push the rock out) called the procedure "coring" so you can use your imagination to figure out how they managed to get the little thing out.

The pain was and is mild, but I've just been hobbling around everywhere for the past week. So I won't be running any marathons these upcoming weeks, but anything else I am still up for! More Hawaii to come.

Travelling:

-Seven hours in the Honolulu airport (due to some baggage complication)
-A five hour flight into Phoenix, AZ
-Two hour layover
-Another five hour flight to BWI
-One hour spent looking for our lost luggage (eventually found)
-A one hour drive down to my brother-in-law's house
-One hour dinner
-One hour to drive back up here

In summary... I woke up at 6 AM Sunday morning, lost six hours and arrived home at 10 PM Tuesday night. I still haven't got my landlegs back yet.

Vegas:

Greetings from Las Vegas. There seems to be plenty of wifi access in the airport. Free, albeit slow internet. Yes, there are slot machines everywhere in airport... scattered around in clumps for anyone's gambling pleasure. As we were flying in, the pilot said it was a brisk 93 degrees out so I'm glad I can just sit in the airport. It's 2 PM here whereas it's 5 PM in the real world (Maryland). That's all I've got right now. See ya'll at the next access point.

Cruising:

Tomorrow I leave for the airport waaay early in the morning. Our flight isn't until 11:00 AM but since my sister is dropping us off and needs to be in at work, we'll probably be leaving the house around 6:00. We fly into Las Vegas and have a couple hours in layover. Then we're going to fly into Honolulu.

That's my hotel for a few days. It's right on the Waikiki beach front so I'll probably get a nice tan. Then from there we board our boat (I think it'll be Monday).

The Pride of Hawaii. It looks like a pretty nice boat from what I can gather from the floor plans. Apparently there's a tapas bar that is open all the time and doesn't charge anything extra. That's good news to me, because I enjoy a quality round of tapas. The only thing the ship is missing is a rock wall. I'll just have to find some other way to spend my time. I'll be bringing my laptop with me so I may be online whenever I can find a hotspot. But if I can't, see ya'll on the 11th.

Blue:

Six months and one day. And I've lost my blue hairband while changing my oil. That little thing meant a lot to me, so I hope I can find it.

Dirty:

Whenever I drive into school, I'm always scanning the radio stations to see if anyone's playing my song. Ridin' by Chamillionaire.

Bunnies:

I've consistently seen two bunnies in the front yard this week. One is of a smaller size while the other is about medium size. I'm pretty sure we dined on Papa bunny.

Happy Fathers Day, by the way.

Movies:

Tonight's movies included Memoirs of a Geisha and The Last Samurai. Very interesting.

Pictures:

Tonight I was sorting through all of the pictures I've stolen from other people through webshots, facebook, etc. and I was pleasantly surprised. This past year had a lot of great memories and some great pictures, mostly due to some awesomely random bashes. You know, fun events that are thrown together just because. Booher's party, Jayme's ball, thanksgiving dinner, mystery dinner theater, nerf war, zombie party, and probably bunches of things that I'm forgetting. Who in the world does these sort of things? Well anyone who doesn't should because they're refreakindiculously fun.

I enjoy browsing through my pictures. Some remind me of the good times I've had, others remind me of how far I've come.

Earthtreks:

Holy mackerel. Never before have I had this much trouble trying to form a fist. Yesterday we had a climbing marathon and spent about six hours at Earthtreks Columbia. I've seemed to have hit my next level as I was able to do my first V2 and almost finish my first 5.10. I would be really happy if I could do V3/4s and complete several 5.10s because that would put me at about average climbing skill.

This is going to sound rather strange, but I've come to a new shirt-off policy. It's actually really intuitive. Before, I used to evaluate whether or not a guy should have his shirt off by his musculature. I mean, if you've got nothing to show off then please, don't go showing it off. But then, guys who do have it are probably doing just that and nobody likes a show off... put a shirt on. So therefore, a guy may only take his shirt off if 1) it is really hot or 2) he's fixing his farmer's tan. That's my new policy. There's no reason why somebody should have their shirt off in an indoor gym. Simple and settled.

Mensa:

Acronymers, you will love this: Mensa Puzzles

Download and fill in the blanks... it even has an answer checker! Thus far, I've gotten 20 of them.

edit: I figured out three more with an itty-bitty amount of help, so I don't think those count fully. Upon finding the answers, there are 5 of those facts which I definitely did not know so I don't think it would have been possible for me to figure them out.

edit2: Sorry about the broken link. It's fixed now.

Bachelors:

99 bottles of beer on the wall. 99 bottles of beer. take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall.

Yum:

And then I browned the meat, added water and a bunch of vegetables and let it cook for almost three hours. It tasted like stringy chicken. Andy's dad called to tell me that I was a brave man.