When I Get to Heaven

There are lots of things I want to do when I get to heaven, here's one of the stupid ones. I want to drive cars off cliffs. I have always wanted to do that. Often times, I come down steep Wikolia Street and wish I could just floor it and see how far I can launch my Jeep when I get to the road's end. In heaven, I imagine we'll get to do stuff like that.


This cliff by Beach 69 would be a great place to try it:

Here's what it would look like, just before the Jeep's wheels leave the ground. Sail away, baby!

I'm a Sponger

Every surfer I know has been jonesing for waves. Pine no more, winter water has finally arrived. I just didn't feel like surfing today so I grabbed my boogie board and headed north. It was big and nasty at Kua Bay. It sure looked fun, but I didn't feel like dying today so I moved on. There were some beautiful waves breaking off the southern point of Beach 69 in Puako, but they were too big for me as well. So I decided to fight the crowds at Hapuna, I don't think I've been there for a year or more. And I had a blast! I forgot how fun boogie boarding is...make fun of me all you want, I enjoy it more than surfing. I can't even tell you how many times I got barrelled (OK, so I went over the falls a few times, too, but even that was fun) I rode waves until I was so exhausted I could barely walk back to the car.


Body boarding Hapuna Beach- my waterproof houseing didin't hold the water out for long in today's conditions. It started leaking after two sets of waves.


Kua Bay was gnarly. It looked fun but I was just too chicken:

Showing off the loot

Everything you see here: a homemade skirt, a water purifier (now I can hike Waimanu Valley) venison, elk and buffalo meat, a 1-gig USB flash disk, trekking poles, a Buck knife, three movies (Blues Brothers 2000, Napoleon Dynamite, Endless Summer 2) a Chris Tomlin CD, a John Deere tin, and an original water color painting by Jerri. Oh yeah, I forgot the color books and crayon set Lydia and Camille sent.

Silliest Gift

Cousin Jeanne gets the award for sending the silliest gift. It's a palm tree with Christmas lights that dances and sings Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. I thought about taking it to work tomorrow but it's pretty loud, so it may not be appreciated there.

Stylin'

My Five Star advertising team cruised to the West Hawaii Today Christmas party at the Hapuna Prince Hotel in style. I admit I wasn't that excited about the limo ride until we climbed in and started pouring the drinks, we had a blast! I did have to learn a little limousine etiquette, however. I showed up with a cooler with growler of Lavaman Red Ale and a stack of plastic cups while everyone else sipped champagne from long-stem crystal glasses.

The room the party was held in looked familiar, it was at the old Splash! At Hapuna nightclub, one of the lamest nightspots I have ever been to. But there was nothing lame about our Christmas party, good food, good dancing music (Lava 808) good company!

Here's Ron and Jennifer (it was a masquerade theme) Mahalo to whoever took the picture:

Backyard Driver

They're building a house right next door to ours which is a major bummer because we're going to loose a lot of our view. And the noise and dust is obnoxious. But there is a positive side to all of this. The guy doing the excavating leveled out our backyard so we no longer have a rocky canyon behind our house. Now we have plenty of room for fruit trees!

I figured once the house is built next door I'll never be able to drive to the backyard, so I took that opportunity today. It's pretty steep and loose. It took me four tries to get up the hill in 4 low. If I have the urge to try again, I'll see if I have better luck in 4 high. Maybe I can get a better running start up the hill that way.

Fun-filled Weekend

The Holualoa lights festival is a Christmas tradition I look forward to every year. I love the small town charm and old Hawaii feel. My favorite group this year was the ukulele band singing Christmas songs in Hawaiian on the lanai of the old Holualoa post office, which is practically small enough to fit in my bedroom. We continued the festivities at Baron's with pizza and beer. Sorry I forgot the camera.

Saturday was kayaking with my new friends Chris and Laurie. We set out on the beach at Kiholo Bay and paddled north where we did some snorkeling and Chris tried to catch an octopus. The wind picked up and it was REALLY blowing. Paddling against the wind would have been entirely out of the question, and we couldn't turn right or left, either. It would have been a scary situation except the wind was blowing in the exact direction we needed to go. So we braved the swells and whitecaps as we coasted all the way back to the beach without hardly even paddling.

Here's a photo I took after the wind died down:

Hawaiian Santa

You know the song...Hawaiian Santa is a sight to see, when he comes surfing into Waikiki, he waves aloha bringing Christmas cheer, Mele Kalikimaka and Happy New Year...

The Christmas decorations are up. The tree, the Christmas village, the exterior illumination as my dad likes to call it, the ten-foot star on the roof, and Surfin' Santa hangs ten once again on his plywood wave beside the driveway. I love this time of year!

Christmas movie recommendations:
Deck the Halls is not the greatest, but it is entertaining. It's definitely worth a laugh, and I hate to admit it but Danny Devito outdid Christmas Vacation's Clark Griswold with the Christmas lights.

The Nativity Story: Awesome! I loved it. It's a realistic look at an amazing story that is, in my opinion, often misrepresented. Nativity scenes are just a little too cute. This movie reminds us that the most influential King of all time, the Son of God Himself really did enter this world in the most humble of ways: as helpless baby in a stinky barn. Mary's own life was in danger when people assumed she had been promiscuous. The couple faced an exhausting 100-mile journey to Bethlehem, then later had to flee to a foreign country while King Herod went on a rampage, killing every baby in the area. It's refreshing to take an accurate look at what that first Christmas was really like. Well done!

All Shook Up

October's 6.7 magnitude earthquake has left its imprint on people's minds. That was illustrated yesterday when rumors spread that a large earthquake that would trigger a tsunami was about to hit the Big Island. The Civil Defense was flooded with calls and Hawaii news channels assured people the rumors were false. (can earthquakes be predicted at all?)

Some folks had a hard time calming down after our 5.0 that hit Thanksgiving Day. Maybe I'd be on edge, too, if I had been here for the larger quake in October. But I was in flight when that quake struck. Being from Indiana, I am not used to feeling the earth shake, so this is all kind of new and exciting for me. I was at church during Thursday's 5.0. Folks looked at each other and kept smiling and singing and no one seemed to care much about the quake. My only fears were for my dad's porcelain Christmas village (which was not damaged) and for our turkey in the oven (what if a power outage delayed our eating?)

One thing I do find spooky about earthquakes is that there's no warning. I grew up in tornado country where the weather was a good indication of whether a tornado was likely. Earthquakes strike with no warning signs.

Here's a photo of the seismograph at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park that recorded the 6.7 on October 15th. The first quake that hit at 7:07 is on the right, and the aftershock that happened 7 minutes later is to the left of it, in the center of the paper. Each column on the paper represents one minute.

Road Test

We took the Liberty to Makalawena today and it did great! I didn't scrape on one rock, I am really pleased. It's amazing what 3 or 4 inches will do.

Getting there is half the fun:



Was the lift worth it? This is Makalawena, one of the many places my newly lifted Jeep can go. You decide.

Houston, we have lift off

Stuart installed the lift today, to my surprise he was done when I came home for lunch. I gained 3 inches from the rock rails on the sides of the Jeep, and a bit more than 2.5 under the front skid plate- and that's where I needed it most! You can see that the skid plate gets its use! Now I have almost as much ground clearance as Chrysler's specs advertise. I hope to fill up my wheel wells up with tire now, after I get 30" or 31" tires I'll have more clearance everywhere, even the axels.

Here are the before and after photos Baron requested:

Precious cargo

I had some friends to pick up at the airport today. My heart was filled with joy when I saw the Hawaiian Airlines jet touch down on the Kona runway. I'll be honest and say I was more excited about the contents of friend's suitcase than anything. He arrived with one 2.5" Jeep Liberty lift kit. He's gonna install it tomorrow!

Moon light Magma

It's not everyday you get to watch the full moon rise over the ocean with a lava flow in the foreground. You can see a lot more lava than this photo suggests. A tripod would have served me well.

It's a pretty good flow going into the ocean right now and you only have to walk about 200 yards from the end of Chain of Craters Road to get a view. Bring binocluars or plan to hike a couple miles to get a better view. There is also a lot of lava coming down the pali, more than I have ever seen.

For daily eruption updates call (808) 985-6000

Underwater spelunking

Jim and I explored the Queen's bath by Kiholo Bay a couple weekends ago. It's a lava tube that's filled with fresh water by an underground spring. It goes back about 100 feet and it's really fun to snorkel through. It's pitch black in there- luckily we had Jim's dive lights. I have heard stories of people drowning in the cave when the tide comes up. However, I am not totally convinced that the tide has any effect on the water level, though I bet rainfall does. There were spots where the water was less than a foot from the roof of the cave, it'd make me nervous to be in there it was any higher.

Swimming into the cave:


A "skylight" offers some light in part of the cave, most of it is pitch black.

O Happy Day



OK, so I'm a little behind on my blog. This post would have been best if I had actually posted it on Thursday when we learned the Democrats got control of both the House and the Senate.

Hidden Canyon

Another awesome hike was the one to Hidden Canyon. It was another steep climb, but the views on the way up were fabulous, and the sometimes narrow trail added to the excitement. At the top of the hike was the narrow Hidden Canyon, which was pretty fun to explore.

I reccommend Zion National Park. It's so beautiful and there are are so many fun and fantastic day hikes I could hardely choose which ones to go on. I estimate that I hiked close to 20 miles on my first full day, it was so fun I couldn't stop until I was literally ready to drop.

The exciting trail:


Pool on the top of a cliff:

Angel's Landing

This may be the most fun hike I have ever gone on. The trail ascended 1,500 feet from the floor of Zion Canyon. It was a steep climb and in some spots the trail was pretty narrow with cliffs to the right and to the left. One slip and you're a gonner! The view at the top was incredible. I can see why an angel would want to land here!

The trail followed the ridge to the top of this:


Don't tell my mom I dangled my feet:



The rewarding view:

Road Trip!

After our visit I headed north to Utah because I had heard good things about Zion National Park. Snow was falling on the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff! I also drove across Navajo reservations, through the Painted Desert, past the Vermilion Cliffs (beautiful!) across the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, it was a feast for the eyes. I forgot how fun it is to drive all day looking at new, amazing things. And the coolest part of the drive was watching a lightening storm follow me most of the day but never catch up.

Here it comes:

Phoenix

It was awesome to hang out with Jen and her family. Jen and I grew up next door to each other in Indiana, I had never met her kids until this trip. We took Noah to a pumpkin patch, made clay sculptures and wrestled with the dogs. It's always neat to catch up with a life long friend, reminisce and find out what the gang from the old neighborhood is doing these days. And Erik and Jen took me on a really fun hike up Pinnacle Peak and to the Yard House!

Sedona

After the Grand Canyon hike I spent two nights camping in Sedona. I did some hiking in Oak Creek Canyon, including the West Fork River hike pictured above. After three miles the trail is the river and red canyon walls rise up out of the water on either side. I appreciated the fall foliage and the scent of autumn leaves and ponderosa pines.

My second night of camping became exciting when a storm rolled in. Huge lightening bolts tore across the sky so I retreated to the car for safety. The wind picked up pretty good, too, which didn't concern me until a huge tree fell down in the woods right behind my tent. The lightening came and went throughout the night so I kept going from the tent to the car and back. I finally got sick of that so I packed up at first light and headed south toward the sunshine to Phoenix.