STAND UP FALL DOWN, STAND UP FALL DOWN, REPEAT

I finally did it today. I rented a stand up paddle board. Believe it or not this is the first day since we've been here that the water was flat enough for flatwater Alex.

However, frankly, it wasn't flat enough, and I spent the first half hour I had the board going into the water and climbing back up on the board. I am going to be so sore tomorrow.  Plus, I can hardly get up from the floor on flat land.  Note the grace in standing up.  

And by that time I was getting tired and I thought I don't even want to keep this board for the whole hour, I'm going to go turn it in. And then while I was sitting on the board, I thought, "what's wrong with this picture?"

I have good balance, I can stand on the board in flatwater, I can sail a windsurfer in sort of choppy water, what am I doing wrong.?

What I'm doing wrong, is I'm trying to stand up and stand still, instead of moving the board forward.  As soon as I had this little epiphany, I started paddling the board forward and went all around the beach in and out of the waves, tried to ride the waves, though not too successfully, and never fell in the water again.  

This water looks a lot flatter than it felt, by the way.  Even while paddle boarding successfully, it just isn't as much fun as windsurfing, but I was never able to get up on a windsurfer in the ocean.  SUP is basically more work than fun, at least at my level.  

Of course doing this involved standing out in the sun on the board for over an hour with basically no sunscreen, due to the fact that I washed it off in the first 200 falls.  

John got sunburned too, because he was trying to get pictures of me and he stood there for a very long time because who knew when I was going to finally get up and stay up for more than two or three seconds.

A few days ago I bought some tourist trap skin treatments, which were so expensive that they gave me a free facial so they could sell me more stuff.  The woman who is selling the stuff could sell ants at a picnic.  But I managed to resist.  The facial was pretty wonderful, I have to admit.  

The facial was pretty wonderful, I have to admit, and I am obviously gorgeous.  

We had dinner at Merukame, a restaurant that specializes in fresh, made on the spot, udon noodles.  The place has a giant line most times of the day, but it moves pretty fast.  

And the noodles and broth are delicious.  It's incredibly cheap, too.  

NORTH TO THE SUNSET (BEACH, THAT IS)

It's always fun to go to the north shore, and today was no different.  We rented a car, an expensive proposition in Hawaii, and we bought the insurance because we didn't want to be painting the car in a parking lot with spray paint, as we did on one trip here.  So it ended up costing us $85 for one day.  And god forbid we didn't get it back by the time they closed or we might have had to pay another $25 to park it overnight.  On the good side, we only used three gallons of gas and drove the car all day.  

Our first stop was the Cafe Hale'iwa which is a funky little cafe with delicious food.  I think maybe they only serve breakfast.  

They had some interesting art, too.  

Our first beach stop was possibly the most fun, due mostly to Sunset Suzy and her two dogs.  

I noticed the dogs when we arrived, but didn't know who they were with.  But after we had been there for about a half hour, I saw them both trotting down the beach, looking out at the waves.  

Clearly, they could see their owner was getting ready to come in from surfing and they were going down to meet her.  Is this too cute for words?

We also went to Shark's Cove,

Pipeline, and Sunset Beach,

the latter where they were having a surf contest and we got to see the junior women's final heat.  I'm not sure this bus load of tourists even knew there was a contest.  

Our day was topped off by a visit to the Big Wave shrimp truck

and the Dole plantation for a Dole Whip.  

HOORAY, HOORAY, HANAUMA BAY

My favorite excursion today, to Hanauma bay. I swear, this is the best deal in Honolulu. Hanauma bay is a nature preserve with tons of fish you can swim with and coral reefs you have to try not to trash by touching them, or especially, walking on them.   It only costs $7.50 to get in.  Hanauma Bay is the remnant of a volcano and is down about 500 feet from the surrounding terrain.  Full of coral reefs and colorful fish.  

The only bad thing that happened was that John, while trying to pull his swimming shirt off, lost his balance and fell on his sunglasses and really bent them out of shape-- unwearably so.  

When we got back to town I looked up opticians and we went to a wonderful little shop I found, Mr. Yamamoto.  He was able to fix the glasses, hooray.  

We had dinner from the Blue Water Fish Company food truck,

but it was kind of windy so we brought it back to the hotel and ate it on our lanai.  I had Mahi mahi and John had Ahi.  Both were delicious.  This was a place that used to be in the old International Marketplace food court.  

NIGHTTIME WAIKIKI

Mai tai and dinner at Duke's Hula Grill 

Dessert.  Hula pie.  This is really a hot fudge sundae with a chocolate cookie crust and macadamia nuts.  It's also delicious.  

Evening beach

Chess.

Ubiquitous ABC stores

Cheeseburgers in paradise 

REPEAT

Swim, or sink?

Watch out, lady!

Eat.

Swim -rent boogie board.  

Beached whale

John gets a good ride.  

Relaxing after the beaching.  

Sunset.  

A LITTLE SWIM

We got up this morning and went for a swim.  

While we were at the beach and fortunately after we'd been in the water once, it started raining.  This giant cloud might have been a good clue.  Usually when it rains at the beach, people just go stand under the eaves of any nearby roof until it stops, but we just went back to the hotel and went to lunch. 

 

John's been having a stomach problem, and came right back to the hotel after we ate.  I was forced to spend the afternoon alone, sitting on the beach, coming in out of the rain, going back to the beach, shopping, and having coffee at Starbucks.  

We went out to dinner at a noodle place on kuhio and had the Vietnamese version of chicken soup.  I think John feels better tonight.  I hope it was just a little indigestion.  We were going to go down and watch the fireworks tonight, but it was raining again, and we didn't want to walk down in the rain.  And of course, I was just as glad not to have to be that close to fireworks anyway.  

WALKING AND ALL THAT JAZZ

We took my favorite walk this morning which is to go over to the road that goes up to Diamondhead, but we walk on the beach. Because they are experiencing really high waves right now, a lot of our walk wasn't available on the beach because the water was covering the beach.  However, we did get some good quality beach walking time, anyway.  

It was quite hot. I think this is the last day it's  going to be hot. it's supposed to be much cooler tomorrow and possibly showers, then rain on Saturday.

On our way, we met this painter, Mark Brown, painting in the park.

This is a painting from his website. I would really like one of these. 

It was also too rough to bother swimming with the fishes today, but tomorrow when it's cooler and maybe a little flatter water we will either snorkel or rent a paddle board.  

Our afternoon excursion today was to go to the Episcopal Church for the jazz vespers.  The bus ride was a bit of a mistake, because of course we got on the bus at 5 o'clock, and you know what that means anywhere.  The vespers were amazing.  They had about ten members there for vespers, and started with a social time where we were personally introduced to each individual attending.  And at the end each individual member asked us to come back next week.  This church dates from 1914, and in the 70’s they had the plain glass windows replaces with stained glass.  

The designs are quite wonderful, made from chunks of glass which gives many of them a real three-dimensional effect. 

And then the Jazz started.  This is usually a quartet, but the saxophonist is out of town so it was a singer, pianist, and stand-up bass player.  I thought they were marvelous.  And the singer, Starr Kalahiki, could hold a note forever, decrescendo and crescendo on it, with no vibrato and totally maintain a perfect pitch.    I loved them.  The pianist was Jun Howard, and the bassist was Alyka Lyman.    

I'm hoping we won't be too much in departure mode to go see them again next Thursday.   

We were going to go to a restaurant John found called Cha Cha Cha tonight, except it turned out it was from an old guidebook and closed in 2013.  So we just had a pizza.  

Marknbrownfineart.com

CHECKING OUT THE FISH -- SWIMMING AND COOKED

This morning John got up early and went and had breakfast while I sawed some more logs.  Then we went down to the aquarium because there is a ocean preserve right behind it and we watched the fish, which are many of the same fish that are at Hanauma Bay.  As we were walking along the path we found a fish that had been thrown all the way up over the railing, and it was still twitching.  He was only about 3 inches long and 2 inches wide. Hilarity ensued as we kept trying to pick him up and throw him back in the water and he kept wiggling away.   We finally succeeded by using my glasses case as a spatula.  There was some kind of netting lying on the ground, and we flipped him into that and flipped that over on the water.  And he swam away.  

Our next stop was a cafe at the beach where we had a Kalua barbecued pork sandwich with lots of french fries.  I wasn't hungry, and it was still delicious.  And you know you're in Hawaii when you get an orchid in your french fries.  

We had a leisurely stroll back up the beach, sat looking out at the ocean and texted pictures to friends so they could enjoy -- I wonder why working people get so testy?  

By the way, this is probably one of those things that people back east particularly can't understand.  This beach is in the middle of a gigantic area with probably 20,000 hotel rooms, and it's practically a private beach.  And there are lots of beaches like this on this most densely populated of the Hawaiian islands.  

Back to our hotel to change into swimsuits. John was going to check out his new snorkel and goggles.  After two cataract surgeries, the prescription diving glasses are useless.  But by the time we left for the beach, he decided not to bother.  There were "high" waves at Waikiki today, but that's a relative term because Waikiki is relatively flat in the winter, and not much bigger in the summer.  You can do some pretty lame body surfing, but probably enough for senior citizens.  

We have a lot of food on our list to try.  Don't know exactly when we'll get to it.  Mochi ice cream in dozens of flavors, frozen yogurt at a place with 20 flavors, hula pie at Duke's --and that's just the sweet stuff I can think of right now.  

We had fish tacos (at a much better place than night before last) and my favorite island frosty treat, Dole Whip, tonight.  

Tomorrow we plan to go snorkeling near the aquarium and see what it's like.  Perhaps in the afternoon I'll rent a paddle board.  I think in the evening we're going to go to the Jazz vespers at the Episcopal church.  My idea of religion -- give me a concert and I'll tolerate the praying.  

PARADISE

Due to an inconsequential time difference of about two hours we fell asleep last night at 8 o'clock. So of course we were up early this morning. We walked over to Ala Moana  mall to get our five dollar bus stickers so we can ride the bus for the rest of the time we are here.  But I had forgotten that at that satellite station they don't have the stickers after about the fifth of the month.   So we took a half hour trip out to the Kahili transit station so we could get our stickers 

We decided to return to the shopping center,  but on the way back we noticed a farmers market that we had been to two years ago that we really liked, and it was next to a Walmart downtown, so we stopped there, hoping John could find a pair of cheap sandals at Walmart as well as go to the nice market. It turned out it was a craft market rather than a farmers market, and there were no sandals at Walmart, either. 

So, back we went to the shopping center, still in search of sandals, where he got some nice Teva sandals and I got a cute new iPhone cover.   

I am so bummed out about the way they have torn down the old international marketplace and are replacing it with just another fancy developer oriented mall with expensive shops. It appears that for the moment they have saved the big banyan tree

that was in the center, but usually things like that end up getting killed when they start doing all the digging and plumbing lines and pile driving.  

Here is a developer's rendering of the new and improved International Marketplace.  All they saved was the name.  

Just for comparison, here are some old pictures I took off the web of the old funky tourist trap marketplace.  

Not much else to say. we had green curry and grilled salmon for lunch. Other than that, just another day in paradise.