My new footTake nothing from the deletion of Karen’s name from the blog. She did not contribute to last year’s blog and has said she has no interest in contributing to this year’s blog. So, it’s all mine. It’s also an experiment in CSS3/HTML5. It will look different in newer browsers like Chrome (17.0+), Opera (11+), Safari (5+), MS Internet Explorer (9+) and Firefox (9+). If you get a chance, try looking at it with one of the other browsers and you might be entertained. (It actually looks different under each. :( I think Firefox works best.) You can also click on the photos for an enlarge view.
January started off pretty low impact. I continued to work part-time nights as parking lot security. I still needed a “sedentary” position while my foot was healing. Not very stimulating, but it’s an income. However, with the crummy weather, I came down with something. I lost most of my voice, and when I was able to speak, I sounded like Harvey Fierstein. (This is a reference lost on many people, but one of the managers at work found this hilarious.)
My new footI received good news on January 19: the wound doctor declared the top of my foot healed. We pulled the bandage off and there was a tiny scab on the wound. This all happened one week ahead of the deadline. “Deadline?” Yes, when the accident happened, I asked, “will I be able to go SCUBA diving when I go to Hawaii at the end of January?” The prognosis was always positive.
Last year, when Karen’s sister Emma and her husband Tom, came to visit from Hawaii, we talked about a special event this year on Groundhog’s Day: their 50th wedding anniversary. We agreed, it would be fun to get together in Hawaii to celebrate. It’s fun to visit the islands in “winter” when the whales and dolphins are visiting to “de-calf-inate” (give birth) and “calf-inate” (mate). Our friends, Keith and Dottie, wanted to come with us and Keith’s mom, Marie, wanted to come too.
View from our balconyOn January 27th, we left for Hawaii. Our first stop was Maui. We had reserved rooms in Lahina, on the west coast of Maui. This was the preferred spot Karen and I wanted because you can typically stand on your balcony and watch the whales play in the water in front of you. And we did.
The road downhillI booked a bike trip down Haleakala. We went there at 5:00am to watch the sunrise. I took my time-lapse camera to capture the sequence of the sunrise, but I figure it was too cold for the battery. (I got 6 pictures.) After sunrise, we drove to another point and got our bikes. I had a helmet cam for video and the time lapse cam for stills. The time lapse camera worked for 5 minutes and shut down again. The helmet cam video was pointed down too far, so I have 2-hours of the road surface.
I also booked a dive. Keith booked three dives, which is good, because I forgot to put a storage card in my camera. The diving in many parts of Hawaii is not very spectacular. The coral is not very healthy and the water was cloudy, but the fish are spectacular when you find them.
On Febraury 1st, we flew from Maui to Kauai. We had booked some rooms at a B&B on the south side of the island. Before going to the house we stopped at Costco in Lihue. It looks alot like the ones in Pennsylvania, except there are wild chickens patroling the lot. Then you can go inside and get a wonderful rotisserie chicken in the store.
Click for a video clip from dinnerIn 1962, Emma, Karen’s sister, got married to Tom McAlexander. They were both working for the FBI at the time. Since I don’t recall the exact details, I’ll leave it to them.
We took the happy couple to The Beach House for dinner. Karen and Cathi (her niece) coordinated everything: menu, orchids on the table, leis and desert cake. Dinner was at sunset, which was great for some people on ONE side of the table. It was about this time the battery died in my camera. Oh, well. I’ll just have to enjoy the meal.
Waimea Canyon 
Hawaiian nanny and kid 
Hawaiian road warrior 
New recruits in training We did some site-seeing around the island. I wanted to go to the home of the Original Red Dirt Shirt. If you've watched Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, you might have seen the episode where he went to their shop to dye shirts. There’s not much to see, but the simplicity of their manufacturing is amazing.
We also went to Waimea Canyon, the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. It shares the massive canyons and spectacular colors of rock with the North American version. While we were overlooking the canyon, we spotted three goats nimbly scampering on the cliff-side. (They are hunted at times of the year.) And every stop had its collection of wild chickens, in a very beautiful assortment of colors. “Where do the wild chickens come from?” you ask. “Eggs.”
We continued on to Koke‘e State Park, which features a spectacular view of the Na Pali Coast. Except it was foggy... like the last time we were there, so we’ve seen nothing but gray.
March was pretty low-key. The weather has been nice and the trees can't decide weather to bud or not.
Orchids 
Anthirum 
Under the waves 
A hammerhead swims overhead 
A pretty red flower
Hula dancer The theme for the flower show this year was “Flowers of Hawaii.” I sent an e-mail to Emma shortly before it started, telling her she could still make it to the Flower Show. (She said she always wanted to go to the Flower Show.) I teased her that she would probably go around, “Got this. Got that. I see that at the park. Zeke and Randy have that.” She responded, “There was an article about it in the travel section of Sunday’s paper [in Hawaii]. Tom suggested I send it to you, but I told him you would just say, ‘been there, seen that, ho-hum...’ ”
The show was nice this year. The floor layout was nice (foot traffic was spread around) and the exhibits had a nice mix of flowers and imaginative use of multi-media. One of the multi-media presentations was a series of screens curving over the visitors as they walked in the door. On the screens they projected waves, giving the visitor the feeling of being underwater. The waves would ripple over you on the screen. At one point, they had a school of fish swim overhead and a hammerhead shark swim after them. In the other direction, they had a whales swim over your head. In between the screens were small tubes with orchids in them, susupended in a net.
They had a performance area where 8-10 hula dancers performed while an overly-dramatic voice-over told the story of Pele and the formation of the Hawaiian Islands.
I only took 260 pictures this year and will probably delete a 100 or so. I have 10 years worth of pictures from the Flower Show and have not done much with them, not to mention the various trips to Hawaii. I guess Emma was right.