Maui, Hawaii

Well, obviously we’ve been busy here or I would have found a little more time to write in here before the end of our trip.

Let’s start with the most important things first… I miss my kids! While we’ve been here both Amanda and I think about how much fun they would have playing on the beach, snorkeling, or whatever. This trip was definitely fun for us and good to do alone, but I’m looking forward to spending some time with my children.

Second, we completed our race. It was a 15k (9.3 miles). Amanda did it in 1:41:23 which is under an 11 minute mile… a good time for her. I did it in 1:25:23 which was a 9:10 mile… really fast for me. The course was slightly downhill, which I think helped. The funny thing is Amanda had a really hard time with the heat. Of course, she didn’t follow my lead and try to acclimate when running on the treadmill. During my training I turned up the house heat a notch, had the humidifier on full, and didn’t use our treadmill fan. During the run I felt pretty good. Amanda said she was dying by mile 2 so I think my efforts paid off a bit. The night of the run we went to a luau and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Some of the other highlights from our trip…

We took a day trip over to Molokai. It was a fun trip, although the boat ride was a little rough and Amanda got pretty sea sick. On the way back several people on the boat were getting sick as the seas were typical, but pretty big. We did see a whale breach just a short distance from us, so that helped distract people for a little while. While on Molokai we rented bikes from Phillip. Nice guy; I guess his wife went to Service High and skied cross country in the ’92 Olympics (Silver medal). She still skies out at Kincaid a lot and does a lot of training in Hawaii.

Anyway, Amanda and I rode around the west side of the island, about 20 miles out and 20 back. It was a long ride for my butt – it is still a bit sore – but a very relaxing and pleasant ride. The weather was very pleasant for our entire ride.

We spent another day at Haleakala (http://www.nps.gov/hale/) and did a hike into one of the craters. Again, we lucked out on the weather as the clouds that seem to have been there for our entire trip moved out for the day. The park is a very unique and cool place.

Today is Saturday and we are on our last days. An old college roommate of mine lives on Oahu and is flying over today for lunch. We’ll spend the afternoon with him and his wife, whom I’ve never met, so I’m looking forward to that. Tomorrow we’ll probably take the road to Hana and then out to the airport. We spent yesterday snorkeling and lying on the beach. We saw whales about 50 yards offshore – it was amazing. A baby whale was breaching and playing around his mom and put on an amazing show for us.

Like Amanda said, this is paradise, but this isn’t reality. I miss my kids but am still wrestling with the fact that vacation will end, I’ll have to get my mind back in work gear, and the daily chores will start again. There’s some comfort in that, some longing that the vacation would continue.

Aloha

Amanda and I greet you from sunny, somewhat windy Maui, sitting in sight of a beautiful rainbow (which also means a light rain). We have the absolute privilege of being able to leave our kids with our extended family and take a vacation to Hawaii.

We arrived late Friday evening at the Maui airport. We called our rental car agency, Island Car Rentals. We decided that it would be fun to rent a convertible. But, I couldn't justify paying the upgrade fee at one of the national rental agencies. So, we went with a local place and a little older model, which made the price something I could live with.

We called them and they picked us up, then took us deep in a residential area to a small shop. They were nice folks, but it was 11:30pm and the three guys hanging out had started "getting their drink on" with a half-rack of Budweiser. They got us all checked out, gave us some friendly advice, and we were on our way.

We arrived at our condo, the Maui Kai, which is very nice. It is right on the beach and we can look out our lanai onto the Pacific and the migrating whales. We spent today driving around picking up our race numbers, checking out the course, eating lunch, buying groceries, and driving around. We're still a little tired from the late night, travel, and the sun from today. Tonight we're going to cook dinner, take a walk on the beach, and retire early. We need to be down at the race end to catch a shuttle at around 5:30am, so it'll be an early morning.

We'll let you know our results. Both Amanda and I don't feel completely prepared, but we'll see how we do.

Kumala wine

We tried a new wine tonight, Kumala, a South African wine (http://www.kumalausa.com/wines/wine.php?id=183). It was a good wine, nothing special. Slightly sweet, definitely nice fruit flavors, although I didn’t detect the spiciness that they mention. I don’t think I’m a fan of real spicy wines, although a little pepper undertone is nice. Also, in this wine I didn’t taste the tannins.

Although we’ve been drinking wine for several years, now, I find I am still really unable to identify or describe the tastes and smells of a wine adequately. I have a good idea of wine I really like (so far the Shingleback Cab is high on my list) but I can’t exactly describe why. Sideways not withstanding (I liked the movie) I’m not a fan of many Pinot’s. Shiraz is ok, but Merlot’s and especially Cab’s I really really like. In general, enjoying a glass of wine with Amanda at the end of the day is my slice of tranquility… I will pontificate on this experience more later.

New Year's resolution???

Yeah, I'm doing great. Here it is January 9th and I haven't even posted this year. Ahh, but I do have some pictures coming. So far it has been a good year. New Year's day the family went sledding at Kincaid. It was a perfectly beautiful day with tons of other families out. The hill is a pretty wide hill with no real defined paths going up so when you start walking up you're on your own as far as watching out for those coming down. Luckily, we didn't have any major catastrophes.

We are about done with parties, though. The boys birthday is November 18th. Jenna's birthday is January 18th. Between those two dates we have our 4 kid's birthdays, Kameron (6) and Merril's (4) birthday – the kid’s cousins who recently moved back to Anchorage – then my Mom’s birthday, my sister’s birthday, my Grandma and an Aunt both have birthday’s for good measure, and then Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s! Whew… no wonder I don’t want any more cake!

This was the first year in a while my side of the family has all been in town. Sheila and Mike moved are stationed here for a while after three years in Japan, so it was good. Our kids are the same age and they all love each other, so that’s another blessing. We sort of feel we own Sand Lake kindergarten, though. Between Kameron, our boys, and Kiera (Amanda’s sister Pam’s daughter) we have a kid in each of the 4 kindergarten classes.

Amanda and I leave in 3 days to head to sunny Maui. We signed up for a 15K race there (http://mauisurfsandhalf.com/) and then will spend the next week relaxing, doing some hikes, going to Molokai, and whatever else we feel like doing the morning we wake up.