Working on Holiday Blog

I have photos and stories from Thanksgiving to share, but by the time I get home in the evening all there's time for is building a fire, feeding the animals, and cleaning up. I really, really do NOT like winter. It's not that cold in Sloughhouse, the dark is the worst part. I stumble around enough in full daylight, dark is more than I can handle.

Bob is working full time now, so he's not home during the day to keep the fire going or handle some of the chores. I had asked to work 6.5 hour days when I requested a 180-day schedule, but nooooo. So some afternoons I need to just walk out of here an hour or so early and let the time accumulate to a full day of sick leave. I don't like that, either. It's hard to convince city folks that when you leave in the country and have a bunch of animals, you can't work from dark to dark every day.

I do have Wednesdays off. Everything I need to accomplish in my life now gets done on Wednesdays. Correction: it NEEDS to get done on Wednesdays. That doesn't always happen.

We've had a couple of hard frosts and all the flowers that I couldn't bring myself to pull out while they were still blooming have turned to mush. Nasturtium mush, Impatiens mush, Petunia mush. So now I can get out there and do the heavy-duty gardening I've been putting off.

We will have a Christmas tree this year. My "niece" Jen came out Sunday to cut her tree and we cut one for me, too. I only fell in the mud once. Bob and I both have Wednesday off, so putting up the tree is one more task for that day.

Stay tuned for Thanksgiving pix.

Thanksgiving Geese

In its earlier days, California was for the birds.

With snowmelt from the Sierras, the Central Valley was a wetland haven for millions of birds that use the Pacific Flyway as a migration route. But by 1994, over 94% of that habitat had been lost to farming. In the upper valley the clay soils of the Sacramento River floodplain created perfect conditions for growing rice. 

In 1900 there were an estimated 50 million ducks, geese, swans and shorebirds that wintered in the upper Sacramento Valley. By 1990 that had declined to barely 4 million.

For years it was the practice to burn rice straw after the crop had been harvested. Rice straw decomposes slowly. From 1983 to 1992, 82% of rice straw was burned. This created a smoky mess in the valley that lasted sometimes for weeks. The valley is surrouded on 3 sides by mountains. In 1991 a state air-quality law was passed that required farmers to find some other way to deal with rice straw by the year 2000. The official farm response was one of doom and gloom. Farmers are successful only if they can control their production costs.

But some farmers were experimenting. The Lundberg Family Farms reflooded their fields instead, using a roller to mash the straw into the mud, where it would decompose quickly. A byproduct of this was artificial wetlands for birds on the flyway.

In 1994 Eldon Lundberg said “These fields are mostly organic, and we’re real happy with our yields. There are ducks and geese here all winter, which is fine with us because they mix the straw up and add a little fertilizer. The only drawback is that some of the local duck-hunting clubs got pretty mad at us last year because we were getting all the ducks. They really seem to like those basmati rice fields."

The Lundbergs and other concerned farmers of the California Rice Industry Association became part of the Ricelands Habitat Partnership, which also includes conservationists from the California Waterfowl Association, Ducks Unlimited, and the Nature Conservancy.

Today when you traverse the upper valley in the fall, as I did for Thanksgiving in Chico, you see miles and miles of rice fields in the various stages of flooding. And this is a common scene.

This was not an easy year for the rice growers. They traditionally plant wet seed (by plane) in March, but late rains kept them out of the fields until almost May. The crop has to be harvested before October, when rains start again. This year the growing season was short, rice was harvested at a higher moisture level than the farmers prefer (20-22%) and that required some mechanical drying after it was harvested. But the yield, I read in a farm magazine, was still good at 8000 lbs per acre. Last year one farmer harvested 9,000 lbs per acre. His record is 10,000. Arkansas produces more rice than California, but California rice has a higher yield than anywhere else in the world. This is not genetically modified rice. In fact, because a large percentage of their crop is sold overseas, in 2007 the rice growers passed a resolution to prohibit even test fields of genetically modified rice in their area. 

In some counties these days, less than 10% of rice straw is burned. Some is still burned to deal with insect infestations, but the stack of regulations farmers must deal with to burn straw probably creates more pollution than the burning itself.

Rice was originally planted in the north valley to feed Chinese immigrants. Now there are many varieties of rice grown for a wide variety of immigrants, as well as rice products that are produced for consumers all over the world.

And the birds are thriving. People in the cities don't have rice burn to complain about anymore. Now the weenies are complaining about geese on their golf courses - oh my! geese are soooo dirty! And they imagine terrible diseases must be transferred in goose poop. 

Would the world be worse off 

if there were more geese and fewer people?

Spend Spend Spend

Just as soon as you cram that turkey and taters down, right after your second piece of punkin' pie, get out there and start shopping!

They're not even subtle about it anymore, are they? And they've infiltrated the internet. There were 34 unwanted emails on my computer this a.m. Some from stores I've never set foot in, and don't intend to.

I have a stack of catalogs that have been coming in the mail for the past month. It's already a foot high. One clothes company sends me a new catalog (it has a new cover) once a week.

If our economy really needs us to spend money on junk, the government should be more specific. Why leave it to chance? Send me a letter in early November, like a tax bill, that says: this year you are being asked to spend $135 on decorations, $50 on eggnog, etc. I'd like the option to make a contribution and get no doodahs in return.

I may not buy anything this Christmas. No one I know needs anything that I could afford, and I don't want them to think they need to reciprocate. The little kids in the family are still babies; the stage where they appreciate the boxes as much as the toys that come in them. And some of their parents have wisely requested that we don't add to the pile of stuff that will end up in a landfill. I will probably make a donation to Heifer Project. We adopt a family through work. Sometimes there are other charities that need help.

Has Christmas lost its meaning? Nope. It's still a great time to decorate the house and see people. Bob and I have decided to do that this year, as early as we can. I might even bake cookies for the first time in years and we'll have scented candles and Christmas carols playing in the background.

So stop by if you're in the area, or if you're headed home from a shopping trip. Tell me what you bought and about how terrible the crowds were in the stores. I'll give you a cookie, or some peanut butter and celery if you're diabetic. The house will be warm and cozy. I'll have a hug or two for you.

That will be my Christmas season experience.

Yes, I understand the religious significance of the day. If you prefer, I'll say this is how I'll be celebrating the Winter Solstice.

Chilly Wednesday

It's 39 degrees (F) outside at 10 a.m. I have a fire roaring in the stove, two cats cuddled in front of the electric heater, one still in bed on top of a sleeping Bob, and one here in my lap as I have my second cup of Folgers Chocolate Silk coffee.

The sun is shining, it's a cool, crisp day, just what you'd expect this time of year. I'm going outside after a bit to feed the horses and the goat. They're more patient now that new grass is coming up in the pasture - they have something to keep their minds off hay.

I've read my usual blogs this morning already. Uncle B reminded me of Simon and Garfunkel. I had "Feelin' Groovy" floating around in my mind, so I played it on iTunes as loud as my little computer speakers would go and sang along. Charley hates my "singing," I'm sure he thinks it's "CATerwauling." When I attempt to hit the high notes, he slaps my face. By the time I got to the end of the song, I was laughing so hard I had tears running down my face.

Oops. I think I woke Bob up.

The Down Side of House Cleaners

I realize what a dumb thing this is to complain about. Who wouldn't simply appreciate it when someone else cleans their house? I mean, even if you're paying them to do it, it's such a nice thing. I love (mostly) coming home on the Tuesdays that my house has been cleaned, it's like the house is holding the front door open for me with a big smile on its face.

So these comments are to provide balance for those of you who are considering whether or not to pay someone to clean your house.

I came home to a sparkling house this afternoon. The carpet was as clean as it will get, considering there are 4 cats here, and everything smelled so fresh and clean. Well, almost. Gollie had left a present on one of the couches and covered it with a couch pillow. She gets freaked out when there are strangers in the house. Strangers with vacuum cleaners especially send her off the feline deep end.

I cleaned the pillow and thrww it into the washing machine with a bajillion chemicals to thoroughly remove the odor. I cleaned the couch, then I sprayed it with more expensive chemicals. Won't be sitting there in front of the fire tonight, reading my book.

Gollie spends most of her time in my bedroom. I have a cat box for her there. She won't use it, she never fouls anything in that room. But Charley uses it. He does this on cleaning days because he's afraid of the vacuum cleaners. I cleaned the box and sprayed it very well.

Velcro had thrown up under a chair in the den. She doesn't like the cleaning ladies and their noisy machines, either. You can tell she's upset if she gives up even a molecule of food.

After an hour of searching and spraying I had run out of nice book-reading corners. So I gave up and went to my computer instead.

The cleaning ladies had unplugged everything to clean underneath the computer and its components. I don't know about your computer, but there are 50 miles of various cords attached to mine. It took me 30 minutes to get everything back in place, but the monitor still did not work. Sigh. Another 20 minutes to troubleshoot that.

I think the basic idea here is that if you don't want to deal with problems, you do the work yourself. I understand that. I don't want to deal with the work, either, though. I just want my house to be relatively clean and my animals to be mellow and well-adjusted.

Maybe I should put that on my Christmas list.

John G, this is another reason why your blog makes me smile on the days you're trying to clean house around the doggies.

Sabotage

There are all sorts of insidious ways that foreign countries are sabotaging our country, our workplaces, our homes. Coffeemakers are one.

Most of the coffeemakers in the U.S. are probably made in Asian countries. For the models they ship to the U.S., there are carafes that are impossible to pour without having coffee dribble all over your kitchen counter. Manufacturers in Asian countries probably get a good chuckle over this as they're drinking their carefully-prepared cups of tea.

We got new coffeemakers at work a while back. They are made by Bunn. Bunn claims to have its corporate headquarters in Illinois, but I'm sure that office is a sham. They are really made in Germany, and the Germans are getting back at us for being on the "wrong" side in their last war.

You not only cannot pour from this carafe without spilling liquid everywhere, the coffee-making process is so complex and counter intuitive there is only one person in our office who can reliably accomplish the task. There are many people in our office who have advanced degrees, but they can't make coffee in these things.

There are at least 5 different ways to fail, each of them resulting in a disappointing mess.

Well, the rest of you in this world need to know that we in the U.S. are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore. It's bad enough we have to get x-rayed and harassed and felt-up every time we need to fly somewhere just because of a few rabid foreigners and their threat to airline safety. Someone, somewhere, is probably getting a good laugh out of that, too.

We're going to counter the coffeemaker threat with Starbucks. No more making our own coffee and spilling it all over, we are going to put not one, but TWO Starbucks on every block. And we will do this in cities around the world!!! The companies that make these subversive home appliances will be out of business. Their chuckling foreign employees will be begging for alms outside their local Starbucks door.

So there!

Christmas List

The subject of nightgowns prompts me to ask, do any of us ever really get what we want or need for Christmas?

When I ask people what they want for Christmas, usually it's a big-ticket item that they know quite well no one is going to buy for them. I mean, really, a pair of $500 diamond earrings? No way. Being more realistic, what would you like for Christmas? Please use my blog space for your Christmas list. Would you prefer gift cards? What kind? If you feel so inclined, tell us what you do NOT want as well.

I'll start with my Christmas list:

Jan James wants:
___ Bob to keep his dirty laundry washed and put away.
___ Gollum (the cat) to stop pooping in the living room.
___ A clean garage.

OK, I know, those are as unrealistic as big-ticket items. This is my "for reals" list:
___ A box of your old magazines. I hate to buy them, but I love to read them then pass them on.
___ Chicken feed or cat food. Any kind, it will all get used. Don't wrap it.
___ Green Acres gift cards.
___ Anything handmade. Doilies, a couch pillow, a dish towel, a potholder, art, slippers. If you made it, I will treasure it.
___ Photos. Printed photos of the family, jpgs I can use for a screensaver, snapshots for my kitchen door.
___ Bath soap. Plain, fancy, whatever.

What I do not need:
___ Books. I've probably already read it, or it's on my Kindle already, waiting to be read.
___ Perfume. I love it, but you can't wear it in public anymore or everyone who prides himself on his allergies will bitch about it.
___ Big stuff. Don't have room for anything that takes up a lot of space.

What's on YOUR list?

Long Nightgowns

Ladies, do any of you wear long nightgowns to bed?

I just got a shopping alert - I get 6 of these a day for various things, now that the "shopping season" is upon us - about nightwear on sale. Half of the nightwear consists of long nightgowns. A lot of it right now is sexy stuff. This is on a site that sells clothes for larger women. I can't imagine any of our bodies stuffed inside that sexy stuff, and it looks really uncomfortable anyway.

But my question is, does anyone really wear long nightgowns? Some of it is beautiful, but I have never been able to manage it. Long nightgowns get all wadded up and wrapped around my legs. When I turn over I get choked. If you have flannel sheets and a flannel nightgown, everything really gets wadded up because the two fabrics work like velcro. Add a cat or two sleeping on top of you and it's even more difficult to turn over.

A long gown takes up too much space in the one drawer I have allotted to nightwear.

I just wear t-shirts to bed. The same ones I wear during the day, dual-purpose t-shirts. I think a lot of women do this. (My favorite has this message: "All men are created equal. Poor things.")

So who buys the long nightgowns? Mennonite women who also braid their hair and wear nightcaps to bed? Little girls - because the nightgowns are decorated in their favorite Disney princess motif?

The Vermont Country Store has flannel nightshirts for men, too. Have you ever known a man who actually sleeps in one of these? Is this a product, like a necktie, that is sold at Christmas to people who don't really know what to give the guys on their list?

Is this another example of creating a market for products that no one needs?

A Few Years Between Birthdays

When I was in charge of the composition department (typesetting and paste up) at Central Press many years ago, I hired this young lady, who was fresh from New York, as a proofreader. She was a great proofreader, she personally cut the number of spoiled jobs down to almost nothing. Helene also became a good friend.

This photo was at a birthday party at my house, I think. I recognize my old dishes in the foreground. The picture was probably taken in the late 70s or early 80s. Helene went on to get her masters degree and then a doctorate and has spent her life doing environmental research. She bikes, she kayaks, she does cross country skiing.

I hadn't seen her for years until last night, when she invited a bunch of us from her past just to celebrate. It was fun, I hope I get to see Helene more often than once every 20 years.

A Stormy Day in the Neighborhood

...and all over the west, I guess. This morning offically marked the beginning of winter in Sloughhouse. It was the day the dust turned to mud. The dust has been kicked up by tractors plowing continually for 2 weeks. Now that it's washed off the trees, I can see that they are in glorious fall color. I'll have to go out and collect a few and start a new gourd painting.

I like having something to do on long winter evenings, and gourd painting is great. You can paint and listen to music or books on tape, or meditate all at the same time. I have a great laptop (Apple of course) and could theoretically watch shows or movies. I do watch "House" and "Dog Whisperer" and "30 Rock." I've been watching them on Hulu. It looks like Hulu is going to start charging for its services. That's their privilege, but there is no way I'm going to pay them.

I wouldn't mind paying for the shows I like. I'd pay in a minute for new episodes of FarScape, but I'd want my money to go to the people who produce the show, to help pay for it and free them from having to sell out to advertisers.

TV has been pretty much a dead thing in this house for many years. The sounds coming from the game room are from Rockband or from happy young people beating each other at board games or computer games. They don't sit and stare at a wall together, watching over-dramatized, reality shows, they're living their own reality - having conversations and having fun.

There isn't much sound inside the house in the winter. The sound of the fan on the woodstove. I love it. I sit in my chair with a cup of hot tea and 3 kitties on my lap, reading a book on my Kindle (there's not even the sound of pages turning).

I just finished Freedom by Johnathan Franzen. I haven't read his first book yet, but I enjoyed this one. I especially identified with the character Walter in his love of birds, and his frustration in trying to preserve habitat for them. I like books that follow a set of characters through their lifetime. It's like real life condensed into a short space of time. You don't forget, by the end of a person's life, that they were completely different when they were younger.

This is one of my pet peeves in my work, that few educators are able to look into the future and see that the kid they've written off just because he can't read in the third grade has other attributes that may serve him well. Where I work, we develop programs to train teachers to teach reading better, so fewer of those third graders will be written off. But I see Bob and his group of friends all grown up now, and it's evident to me that our local public school would have failed them even if they'd been great readers right on schedule (and some of them were). It wasn't academics, ultimately, that gave them the tools they needed, it was their extra-curricular interests and the work habits - doing REAL work - they learned from their parents and other adults. And maybe the confidence in their own abilities that they learned from having opportunities outside the academic world.

It just doesn't work to try to thread all of humanity through the eye of an academic needle. We keep paying more and more money trying to do just that, then complaining our schools don't work because we aren't spending enough. Bull pucky.

Many of the kids who DO make it through the eye of that needle can't afford to go to college. And the ones who do find a way spend years paying off their loans, at jobs that pay no more than the kids who left high school to do real work.

I have to go now. Need to mellow out.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I have no excuses. I must get outside today and plant tulips. I shall also fill the woodbox and make Bob clean the cat boxes and take out the garbage. It would be easier to do that myself than nag him, but I can't lift that stuff. Wednesday is the day we both have off. I'm surprised he doesn't volunteer to work someone else's shift on Wednesdays.

Are you getting ready for Thanksgiving? Our plans are firming up. I'm not cooking. Bob might be, which is OK because he's a better cook than I am.

Looking forward to meeting grandniece Tessa for the first time and to seeing relatives that I don't get to see as often as I'd like.

I hope your Wednesday is sunny, too.

Down the Hill with Mike

Jonathan took this little video from the second seat in the van as Mike was driving us down Haleakala to the point where the boys could take off on bikes. It's about 4 minutes long, but you'll get to hear the whole bloody story of the Iao Valley, you'll get to see the van going across the yellow line occasionally as Mike, driving with one hand, points out things of interest with his other hand. And you will see that there is no guardrail. Eeek. And imagine the German tourists in the back of the van trying to figure out what's being said.

I'd like to add that, in hindsight, Mike is a very skilled driver. He was friendly and helpful and tried to tell us as much as he could about the scenery. If he'd been a laid-back Hawaiian, talking at 1/3 the speed, we'd never have gotten to hear so much.

So here is Jonathan's "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride."  (Movie)

Hawaiian Sunset

As promised, here is a glorious Hawaiian sunset for you.

Miscellany

On Oahu there are many types of public transportation. They prefer that you don't drive because traffic jams are common. On Maui, however, we had to have a car. I'm sure there were busses, I just didn't see them. This is what I did see:

Here is another form of transportation I saw.

The first time I saw a paddleboard, I thought that was how people got their surfboards out to where the big waves are. I wondered what they did with the paddles when they caught a wave. Well, you only see paddleboards on the tame side of the island, most of the folks who were on them weren't coordinated enough to actually ride waves, they were just doodling around and having a good time.

Hand Signals

Moms, I want you to know that I forced the guys to pose for the Iao Hand Signal picture I posted yesterday. They are too polite otherwise. (Well, Bob isn't, but he's my problem.)

It took a few days to get the "Hang Loose" signal perfected. I found a t-shirt with a picture to guide us.

And by the last day, the guys had it figured out.

They were good sports about my hounding them for a picture every time we got ready to leave in the car. Thanks guys!

And by the last day, even I had the finger thing figured out.

Too bad, just about the time we figured out how to hang loose, we had to head back to the mainland.

Iao Valley

At the Iao Valley I sat in the car and read my Kindle as the guys were hiking. I had given my camera to Bob, so he took these pictures.

This one is the Iao Needle. Even though they will tell you that the Hawaiians saw it as a phallic symbol, they call it a "needle."

Here is a picture of Jon next to a warning sign.

And here are the guys, obviously not heeding the sign's warning.

Ancient Hawaiian Iao Valley salute, used by Maui warriors in defiance of King Kamehaha, who had invaded the island.

Birds and Blooms

I love both birds and flowers, so the Hawaiian islands are a fun place for me to be. There were more birds around our condo that you'd see anywhere else, I think the lush landscaping attracted them. Also the cars running over kukui nuts and cracking them. At sunrise every morning, the birds would starting singing. Okay, most of them would sing. The Gray Francolins would land on the railing right outside the patio windows and shriek. Bob and I are accustomed to a yard full of roosters crowing in the morning, but the Francolins are louder.

They would also come at breakfast time and share some of my cereal.

This is a bird that is not native to the island. It was imported from the middle east as a game bird. After staying up late and partying, the boys were ready to shoot them in the morning.

The mynahs are also noisy, but their songs are more random. Here is a pair in the palm tree right outside the patio, waiting for the big, fat Francolins to leave a few scraps.

Overall, there are fewer birds on the islands than we have at home. On a beach in our bay area you will see gulls and shorebirds by the dozens. The beaches on Maui are bare. On Oahu there are doves and pigeons that hang out on the beaches to clean up after people.

But there are so many more flowers here than at home. The red and pink and orange bougainvilleas are everywhere. They are not just bright, but form huge masses of brightness in the landscaping.

Another of my favorites is hibiscus. You see mostly yellow hibiscus, it's used even in landscaping along the roads.

Lots of people pick them and put them in their hair. There are also pink hibiscus.

In the Iao Valley there are flowers and interesting plants everywhere. Here are some pictures Bob took. I don't know what this groundcover is, the main thing I noticed is that in none of these pictures do you see evidence of insects. The leaves and flowers are all intact! At home my flowers always have chewed leaves.

Bananas!

A monster philodendron. The leaves are 2 feet long. You will also see Golden Pothos growing in the trees, with leaves as big as dinner plates. It's hard to go home to my little potted plants knowing what they'd look like if they were growing wild on Maui.

And finally, here is a plant with a bird's name: Bird of Paradise. If you're a Farscape fan, when you see one of these you start looking around for Scarrans.

Maui is not entirely a lush paradise, however. The places that get no water - and there are many - are more reminiscent of the American Southwest. 

Breakfast With Alex

One morning, thanks to the marvels of electronics (specifically a video phone call), we shared our pineapple and bacon breakfast with Alex. That's Alex, up in the right corner.

Beach People

On the next to last day we visited beaches on the north side of Maui. The first was just east of Pa'ia, a beach that the map said was popular with windsurfers and surfers. When we got there, the boys took one look at the rock-strewn beach and said, "no way." There were dozens of people on surfboards out off that shore. I asked, "well, how do the surfers get back to shore, then?" Jon answered, "verrrry carefully."

So we came back down to a public beach park just west of Pa'ia. That one worked out fine. We got there late in the afternoon. I sat in a beach chair.

The boys just enjoyed the view and dug holes in the sand.

I noticed the people on this beach were different from the ones on the south side of the island. On the south side the people are mainly tourists. They are pale. On this side, there were a lot of joggers with nice tans and they looked at home in their bathing suits. They just looked more like people who probably live on Maui.

As I sat on the beach, I took some photos for you.

 I elected this pair Queen and King of the Beach.

 This man was chubby, but he had a well-tanned tummy.

Beach people make pictures more interesting.

Like this fellow. He was walking along holding that stick and concentrating on something in another world, obviously a philosopher. Maybe a Kung Fu retired CPA philosopher. Or maybe this is Gilligan.

There were several people who brought their dogs to this beach. This man was introducing his not-very-cooperative pooch to the waves. He's pointing out "the big one." Most of the other dogs at the beach were having more fun.

We left almost at dark, after a spectacular sunset. Photos of that tomorrow.

Bob's Sunrise Picture

Bob climbed out on the rocks, through the fierce cold and wind, to get a much better picture of the sunrise from the top of Haleakala...with his cell phone. Here it is, for your enjoyment.

Snorkeling and Cycling

There are beaches here that are best for boogie boarding, some that are best for surfing (but too dangerous for the boogie boarders) and some that are best for snorkeling. The one above was a snorkel beach. It also had BBQ pits and picnic tables, so we perched there for a late lunch. A very windy site, it was, but we managed.

Monday we got up at 2:00 a.m. to see the sun rise from the top of Haleakala. The sun doesn't come up until 6:30, but it took us a while to get to Pa'ia, where we got into a van and were driven to the top of the 10,000 foot mountain. We sat in the van for 45 minutes, until it started to get light and people (there were MANY people up there) gathered to see the same thing that happens all over the world every day - the sun came up.

Our driver, Mike, is quite experienced. This is how he experiences the sunrise.

He was actually an interesting fellow. He moved to Maui from Massachusetts about 5 years ago, with his wife and 3 big dogs, to begin a new life. He'd been a fisherman on the east coast, a dangerous job, he said. Now he just drives up and down a road with dozens of hairpin turns twice a day.

On the way up the mountain, in the total dark, Mike pointed out all the interesting sights along the way. No, we couldn't SEE them, but it worked. There were two other tourists on our van. They were from Germany. Now, Mike is from the east coast of the U.S. and even though he speaks Hawaiian slang, he still talks very fast and draws out his "r" sound. (Hahvaaad for Harvard.) There is no way the German people in the back of the van could have figured out what he was saying because I was sitting right next to him and I was having trouble. Since he was throwing in directions and safety tips along with his history lessons, it was actually kinda important. But oh well.

No, we weren't hijacked by Arabs. It was coooold up on top of that mountain. And the wind was blowing pretty strong. Bob wrapped himself in his towel before he got out of the van to watch the sunrise.

This is what the sunrise looked like. Ho hum. It occurred to me to ask who ever came up with the idea that everyone who comes to Maui should drive up that godforsaken road just to see the sun come up? I mean, were there people who sat around thinking up ways to help the island economy or something? No, I found, the person responsible for this tradition was Mark Twain. He climbed the mountain and spent a couple of days up there, and wrote an article about the beautiful sunrise for a newspaper. That guy really got around, didn't he?

A little way down the mountain, the boys got out of the van and they and the Germans got on bicycles and rode the rest of the way. Here they are with Mike.

Please note, Mike knows how to do that finger thing the right way.

I got to ride down the mountain in the van. Unfortunately, when you're going downhill you're on the outside of the narrow road with no guardrails. I'm squeamish about that, but I don't think Mike noticed as he swerved back and forth across the double yellow line, cutting corners rather than slow down.

We stopped at a small coffee shop along the way to wait for the boys and make sure they were OK before we went back to Pa'ia. Mike said he needed to check his traps there. Huh? He sets traps to catch hens. There are too many in the area and Mike is catching some to gather his own laying flock. He said, "I hope it's a hen that I've caught and not a rooster, I don't know how to tell the difference." I told him, "You're in luck, brah (Hawaiian for brother), you're traveling with a poultry expert." I emptied the trap for him, determined it was indeed a pullet, and just as I was putting it in a box for him, up rode the boys. Bob thought it was pretty funny to see his mom standing in front of a coffee shop with a chicken in hand.

I picked up some bottled water for the boys, and a special Hawaiian treat - Spam Musubi. You wad up sticky rice and slap it between two pieces of fried Spam. They haven't eaten it yet. They may never eat it, it was the thought that counted.

So after surfing and snorkeling and surviving a 25 mile bike ride down the mountain, and after a lesson from Mike, when we got back to the condo I asked for another "finger" picture.

Still need practice.

Searching for Waves

The goal today was to find some big waves for the guys. After another big breakfast, they loaded the boogie boards and the coolers.

And we were off. I drove while the guys took pictures.

And inspected every beach along the way to find the perfect waves.

In some places, the waves were only a foot tall. Not good enough. We were beginning to wonder where the good waves were, north? south? east? west?

When we saw this sign, it was obvious this was the right place.

Of course it was...there were other signs.

Not to worry, though, moms. Lifeguards were on duty.

And the guys had a great time.

At the end of the day, the experienced surfers tried that finger thing again. I think they need more practice.