I found some backlog photos you might like. Turns out I have a backlog. A sizable one. There might be some back-and-forth for a bit, so check the dates if you care about such things!
We dressed her up to go in the water but then when we got to it we decided the tide was a little to high for her. We can’t see the edge of the water from where we are, because there’s a steeper decline to the beach.
This was a fairly lazy day in feel, but not in activity. Ava slept enough, but not a notable amount.
I’ve got a short list of places I want to snorkel on the island, and one of them is nearby. I wrote about Hale’iwa Trench last Sunday as well, that’s odd timing. I walked over to the beach park again to try to get in the water. When I got there, the surf was up, but not dangerously high. Just “uncomfortable to swim in” high? I still didn’t want to swim through it.
I watched the waves for a bit and plotted a route through a non-wavey area past the waves and across the back of the choppy section. I found out that the reason it was non-wavey was because the water was only knee-deep, and for a long time. I walked across it for 7-8 minutes and ended up getting stabbed in the foot by a sea urchin. Which stung a bit when I realized what had happened.
I finally got to a point where I could swim and got busy. Good snorkeling out there! And not to choppy, as I thought. But as I enacted my plan to swim around the choppy bits, I realized that this plan was going to have me swimming behind a somewhat dangerous piece of water, that I didn’t know what it would do, and that if it got bad, I would have no where to go for safety. I turned back. Still haven’t seen the trench.
That night I drove to circus again! I have a couple videos, but they are entirely to dark to post, and my video editing software is crashing whenever I try to brighten them. So for now, no videos. 🙁
I met up with the same people as last week and, armed with knowledge of how the event goes, brought a couple skills I wanted to teach. Twizzle, monkey flip. Skills that Tracey and I have done so much that we’ve cut them from our list because they’re overdone by us. I taught the Twizzle, but Angel wasn’t comfortable trying the monkey flip without a padded floor, so we moved onto the skills in the video above that she and her friend Robert showed me.
I spoke at length with a lady named Abby who was quite a big deal in gymnastics when she was younger.
When I left, I got more lost than I have ever been in my life. I missed 2 turns, then when I got into the highway ended up in an Exit Only lane and was forced back into Honolulu, then go navigated to 3 different highway entrances before I got onto the highway again, then took a wrong split off the highway, then missed another highway entrance and went backwards for a bit, before ending up back on the highway for a re-do. Miranda was apparently getting worried. She had a right to. >.<
This morning it’s overcast and threatening to rain and we’ve nothing we have to do except, as Miranda says, eat at Giovanni’s 12 more times. So it may be a day of technology, tv, and maybe some shrimp.
I don’t think I have any photos for this one either, but I need to have a good scouring of my photo sources to make sure. Later. I have 4 camera-like devices myself, and Miranda, to collate.
This is an easy one to write – we put Ava in the water again in the morning. I wanted to get her in there again before we tried kayaking in any form, to make sure for sure she was ok. This was more of a functional try – we tried out her lifejacket, and her new floaty tube, and her lifejacket with her new floaty tube. Unfortunately for her, the latter looks safest. She’s very small still, and with just the floaty she tilts forward to much. Or maybe just the jacket, depending on how we make this kayak work. We were thinking of pulling her tube behind us (it’s a very lazy river) in the tube.
We did that in the morning because the forecast was for overcast and rain all afternoon, and there were spots of sun that morning so I bolted out into the spotty sunshine. That afternoon, as we packed up for our third trip to Walmart, it was sunnier than ever. >.<
How I can pad this entry? Food.
We’ve been to Oahu 3 times now, and the food here is excellent, across the board. Even the stuff that isn’t great, is pretty great. We have a number of places that are top top top picks that we crave when not here:
And a few places we’ve been before that aren’t necessarily top-picks:
We’ve tried a few new places this trip:
So far, nothing to add to our top-picks list. But except for Chili’s, which is a chain restaurant and in Miliani, the food in Hale’iwa continues to be worth dreaming about!
I woke at 4:50am yesterday. It’s an hour to Honolulu and I needed breakfast, and to be at the dive shop for 630am so 5am it is. But that’s ok, because we’re still on Vancouver time!
I got to the Hale’iwa McDonalds just as they opened, but they didn’t know that because the 4 employees were sitting outside waiting for their manager to arrive! I didn’t have time to wait so I drove to Mililani about 20 minutes away and used the drive-thru there.
I got to Reef Pirates Diving right on schedule. I dove with these guys last time I was in Oahu. They have a small boat and only take 6 or less divers, so you really get a chance to meet and talk with the other divers, which I love. I met a young lady who was staying here with 3 friends in one of their homes on Oahu, an Australian who was living in Whistler, and a dive master from Virginia. It was an excellent group!
I had Amazon Primed a red photography filter to our Hawaii apartment. I had read that when diving the water absorbs the red spectrum of light first as you go deeper, so scuba photographers use red filters to bring it back. Unfortunately, this meant I have no photos to show you. Here’s what happened.
I asked where we were going to dive today, the Captain responded “where ever you guys want”. I said I wanted to dive the Corsair, a very famous WWII plane that is at about 107ft down. It’s like, the most dived wreck in Hawaii and I wanted to see it. There was agreement all around. Also, at that depth, red filter for sure.
When we got to the Corsair though, the water was so choppy that they couldn’t moor the boat. And the dive master was saying that we’d have had to hold onto the mooring line to stay put in the water! So they ditched that plan, and made a new plan closer to the island, and also shallower.
Our new dive was excellent. But unfortunately I didn’t want to open my camera case (and risk getting the camera wet) to take the filter off. So now I have some wonderful photos and videos that are entirely red and orange. Because at 25-30ft, not enough of the suns red light is absorbed by the water to make the red filter functional. 🙁
However, excellent dive. I would previously have catagorized Hawaii diving as “some rocks, a lot of sand, and a couple fish”. This dive, at a place called Hawaii Loa, had the most amazingly colourful coral to start! As we continued, we saw these amazing tiger-striped fish that were swimming in and around these great chasms in the rocks and coral. I found someone elses photos for you. 😛
We finished and got up on the boat and the wind was absolutely howling! Usually when diving in the tropics you get on the boat and strip your wet suit to half and stand topless on the boat. This time, I put a shirt on, then wrapped a towel around me and then huddled in the covered area of the boat with the other passengers while I shivered uncontrollably. I was shivering so much that my hand would move whole inches if I held it out.
We drove to our next spot, and one of the girls said she wasn’t going to do the second dive, and a guy who I never actually spoke to also. That meant one of the dive guides stayed on the boat, so we were down to 4 people diving. It was much warmer in the ocean! As first…as you stay in the water longer, it starts to get to you.
The second dive wasn’t as nice as the first, but it was still quite good. It was a big crater of coral with a sand pit in the middle, and we circled the crater looking at stuff. Apparently this place was called Turtle Canyon (AZ), which is interested since last time I was here I dove Turtle Canyon as well. I wish I’d labelled my old videos and photos about where they were from, but I guess I was busy last time.
Speaking of, here are those videos and photos. My current camera is much better than the one I was using here though. So use your imagination. 🙂 I’m diving again next week, so I’ll get some good photos then!
I went for lunch at the Kona Brewery with the two ladies and the dive master, which was super nice because I love Breweries and had the best beer ever! It was called Koko Brown and it was a darker beer, but not to dark, and had a amazing taste of toasted coconut. It was absolutely delicious. And then the dive master bought lunch, which was weird and super nice of him!
We’d been having some car troubles over the last day. It was acting a bit like it was having battery troubles, but then it would start after the 5-6th time you tried. So while I was down in Honolulu, I got a replacement. It took an hour to get a replacement, which was longer than we’d hoped. 2 blocks out of the rental place I almost got into an accident — some dude decided that it was his turn to turn left onto a busy street. Then, in a continuing genius move, he stopped right in front of me. I braked so hard the ABS kicked in, and stopped about a foot from t-boning the guy. Scary.
At home, Miranda was having a pretty chill day. She wanted to relax and do nothing while I was out diving, and she celebrated that by cleaning the house and doing laundry. 🙂 However, she’s also caught the illness that I had earlier in the week so now she feels like warmed up garbage. 🙁 I went out later at night to buy her NyQuil, which she guzzled and passed out. This morning she looks about how I felt earlier – not great, but also not “down for the count”.
Today we have a somewhat chill day planned. Back to Walmart for some staples, maybe head to a new beach nearby and try to put Ava in the water again. 🙂 I want to get her in the water one more time before we try something slightly more adventurous — going kayaking with her! We have a baby life jacket, but if we have to use it I’d rather know beforehand how she feels about being in the water. 🙂
Ava woke up at 1am local time last night. That hasn’t happened for many, many, many months and it was a little disturbing. She was awake for an hour, then fell asleep for another 4 hours. As has become our custom here, we hung out and played for 1.5 hours then put her down for a nap. She slept for an hour and 15, which was great!
We went out and did a little shopping. Miranda wanted to return something to the kids store, we needed a few groceries and I wanted some nasal spray for diving.
Oh yeah, I was supposed to go diving today, but I rebooked for tomorrow as I was still suffering from a cold. It was a weird e-mail chain – I asked to reboot yesterday morning, then said to ignore that e-mail yesterday evening, then when I woke at 1am because of Ava I got an e-mail asking if I wanted to rebook for Friday or Saturday. So at 1am I had to make a decision for the day, which wasn’t great, but I decided not to risk it. Feeling good tonight! Got the nasal spray anyway to make sure I stay feeling good!
We got more shave ice, because we were walking past it and the line-up was non-existent. It’s usually quite long!
She’s not actually eating the shave ice — to much sugar for us to be ok with that. 🙂
We went home, put Ava down and she slept for another hour and a quarter. Also unheard of.
At this point we thought she would be awake for the rest of the day – about 4 hours. But at 1.5 hours, after feeding and playing for a bit, she was getting real whiny. We decided to put her down…and she slept again! For another hour and a quarter!
After she woke, we piled into the car and drove to a beach a short drive away. That’s the downside of Hawaii – very little is walkable!
The waves were high, but there was a section that had a good protective reef that I got in to go snorkeling. I didn’t take any photos this time, but as I was swimming back in a big shadow appeared which gave me a start! As it resolved into a turtle, I followed him for a bit and then continued back to the beach.
Miranda and Ava were hanging out there, and didn’t really want to be there for long. The view was stunning, but very windy. I dried off, and picked up Ava and stood in the tides with her for a bit before we drove home.
Dinner tonight was Craig’s Special Curry, but with real tumeric. I’d never seen real tumeric before this trip!
First, here’s a video of a boxfish from a few days ago. It was on my camera when I copied photos from today over. 😛
Last time we were in Oahu I told Miranda that I wanted to hike one of them mountains we were always driving past. They are stunning looking, and right there. I found a site describing a few hikes and picked one that seemed reasonable. The “short version” of it was 3 miles round trip (I’m in the US, have to measure in miles) for about 900 feet of elevation gain. So steep, but not Grouse Grind steep.
Here’s the GPS tracker details. It took us 3 hours to go up and down. At the top (of our chosen route) we stopped to have a banana and feed Ava and met some people who were very taken with her. One of them was a surf photographer who was so taken with her, he absolutely had to have an impromptu photo session with her. We played with her to make her smile, carried her to places around the area he wanted to take a picture of her with. We’re hoping to see something come of it! He took a LOT of photos.
Here’s some photos!
Before we started, that’s the hill we’e climbing.
The hill is near the local recreational airport so we saw lots of planes going up and down, dropping skydivers out of them and this one – a plane towing a glider! We saw one glider do a series of acrobatic moves that were super impressive.
The trail head.
My passenger.
At the end, Ava was getting a lot whiny so I took off quickly down hill to get her to the car quicker so she could nap. On the way down, I realized she’d stopped whining behind me. I took a little hand mirror out of my pack (which came with the pack) and checked — slumped over. I asked a passing hiker to check to see if my baby was asleep and it was confirmed. She only had a 20 minute nap, which isn’t enough, but it’s nice to now she can sleep here!
She just woke up again, and I’m hoping to hit the water, but it’s not super hot out anymore so who knows what we’ll get up to!
We noted this morning that yesterday may have been our first day of non-terror scream sleeps from Ava. Progress!
Miranda also noted that a Wonder Weeks Leap started the day we landed. If you aren’t aware of Wonder Weeks, it’s a book that describes a series of progression stages that all babies go through, within a certain range of dates from their (proposed) birth date. Usually these Leaps are pretty terrible experiences for the parents, but they lead to new abilities for the baby. Apparently this Leap is about Ava discovering that she is a tiny, insignificant speck in a grand and cold universe. Also that mom can walk faster than her, and that she wants mom not to do that. Which could explain why we’re having more troubles here. But…there’s to many variables for us to make a conclusion!
We needed to make yesterday a bit of a shopping day to buy some groceries. Miranda wanted to go to Walmart, so we drove to Mililani. On the way, she decided she wanted to go to Carters, a baby clothing shop, which was “just past” Mililani. It was a little further, and it was a “premium outlet” shopping center, so we wandered around because Miranda loves these places.
Here’s a couple photos to break up this text:
That last one is from sweet potato at dinner. We bought a few purees to try out, and Ava enjoyed their consumption.
While she napped, I went snorkeling outside the apartment. The surf is quite high so you have to pick your spot carefully. There is a natural reef about 30m off the shore at our place, so it’s pretty safe, but I like looking at new things. I headed left. This was a bad idea – I got buffeted around quite a bit and eventually decided to swim back to shore and walk back to the apartment.
While I’m swimming, I’m always looking around. Sharp edges aren’t naturally occurring in this area, so one caught my eye.
I wondered if it was a piece of turtle shell or plastic or something. I swam down to investigate.
And bumbled straight into a complete turtle! He was hiding under a set of rocks, likely eating a tasty snack!
Here’s a couple more photos.
The visibility is pretty terrible because of the high surf, so I’m surprised the last photo worked out.
I’ve been sick for a few days with a small cold – a bit of a headache, sneezing, runny nose and stuffed up sinus’. That last part in particular is dangerous, since I’ve been a scuba diving tour tomorrow morning.
Pressure is difficult. As you go under the water, the pressure increases very very quickly – it doubles every 33 feet you go down. You notice this in the “air spaces” of your body. Most of them are flexible enough to go with the flow – they are open to other pressure spaces (like your digestive system – it’s open-ended), or your scuba mask (it’s connected to your nose, so you can blow into it). But there are 2 spaces you need to manage as a scuba diver – your inner ear, and your sinus’.
The inner ear is managed exactly as you would manage it in an airplane – you “clear your ears”. This becomes much more difficult, heading towards impossible, if you have a cold. The tubes that allow you to clear your eyes become inflamed so they don’t open as easily. In some cases, you may not be able to clear at all. I’ve tested this snorkeling yesterday, and it worked out ok.
The other space, the sinus is usually not a problem. They are usually connected to your breathing tubes, so just manage the pressure that way. But when you have a cold, they got blocked up and the blockage can create a non-manageable air space. So as you go down, you can’t “clear your sinus'”.
There are two ways of dealing with this – either don’t dive, or take medication. The “don’t dive” is difficult if you’ve booked and paid for a dive trip for a couple hundred bucks and can’t get a refund. The medication is difficult – it may not work, it may cause side-effects, or, and this is much much worse, it may work on the way down and stop working on the way up. That last one is a horror story waiting to happen.
I took the medication in Belize once. I can’t find an article saying that I did, but I’m pretty sure it was Belize. It worked out fine, despite sounding sketchy taking third-world sinus medication without know what the side effects will be. 😛
I’m feeling a bit better today, but still pretty plugged. I’m hoping my dive shop will just rebook me for another day. 🙂
We started the day trying to meet Miranda’s friend. We have data through Roam Mobility, which I think has been working quite well, but which cuts out at certain points on the island. For example, when you’re walking through Waimea Valley trying to find a friend. They had started hiking because we were ~15 minutes later than then, because of baby, and we were trying to coordinate. What did people do before cell phones???! I ask.
I’ve been to Waimea Valley before. It’s a nice walk along a paved path. For me, the real reason is the waterfall at the end. It’s somewhat cold, but right now no colder than the ocean. And it’s fresh water, with a nice deep pool. Swimming in fresh water is refreshing – you leave it and you feel better than when you entered. The ocean is nice, but I hate the sticky feeling of salt water (I swim it anyway :))
Here’s a video of me floating away from the waterfall
We went for a drive, attempting to put Ava to sleep. Also to find our favourite island BBQ, Uncle Bobos. We were successful at putting the baby to sleep, but Uncle Bobos was closed for renovations. Worse, we’d driven down this way the other day to give Ava a car nap, and had turned around on the opposite side of the street from Bobos. If only we’d turned around right instead of left…
We drove up the highway again towards home and stopped at the original North Shore Tacos. This was good, because I’ve been wanting to do a comparison of the standing restaurant versus the food truck. I’m happy to report that the food seems pretty much the same between the two locations. I’m also happy to report that I should always order the shrimp tacos, because they are amazing. The pork was a little dry – less dry in the restaurant, but I think just because of an accident of more sauce versus less sauce. The fish is excellent. But the shrimp, oh man, the shrimp is amazing.
Back up the road, Ava started whining in the car seat. Miranda got in the back to entertain her. We got home and shortly after put her down for a nap. I think that she wanted wanted to be able to move around and exercise a bit, because she was super active while also showing signs of needing to sleep. Just another thing to think about – has she gotten enough movement in, does she need to move more?
That “night” (we’re still on Vancouver time, waking at 5:30am and going to bed at 9pm, so dinner is at like 3-5pm) we went to Hale’iwa Joes for dinner. This place is #3 on TripAdvisor and we just can’t figure out why. We ordered a crab roll (basically a deep fried california roll), coconut shrimp and ceviche. The food was good enough, I wouldn’t rave about it though. The waitress was a weird. She was friendly, but had an odd manner of seeming to distance herself from any real interaction we tried to have. She didn’t once acknowledge Ava, despite us trying to have a conversation. At the end, we were getting up to pay at the front and she called out across the restaurant “Are you going to pay?” in a tone that was half trying to be friendly and half a little accusing.
The last time we were in this area and went to the restaurant we were disappointed in the food, so I think we’ll avoid this place in the future.
Ava continues to make friends across the island. She has this wide-eyed smile and she’s taken to staring at people as they pass by each other, so she’s hard to miss. Consequently, Miranda and I are making friends across the island as well. Miranda, I think, dislikes this, but has to go along with it – she has no choice, since we can’t really control Ava’s vision :P. I enjoy the random banter between strangers. So long as it ends in a timely manner…
This morning Miranda says she regrets not taking her computer. I’m super happy I brought mine!
We took today pretty easy. Ava had a solid sleep-in, then we played for a bit before putting her down for her first nap which was also good. Feeling good, we went out to the lawn area and read near the beach.
Then we packed up and drove into Hale’iwa for some lunch at Teddys Bigger Burgers. They aren’t kidding – their smallest burger, the “Big” is just about as big as any burger in Vancouver. I think Ava actually consumed avocado here, as Miranda was stripping it off of her burger and we saw it go in and not come out. We’re giving her people food at every meal Miranda and I eat, in the hopes that she realizes what it’s for, but so far it’s been in and, moments later, out. She even mushed the avocado around her mouth a bunch!
The glasses lasted for several minutes on her face before she took them off, experiment tested Dad. 🙂
We went home and put Ava down for another nap, which worked out nicely. Miranda had some stuff to do, and I wandered off to go snorkeling at a place nearby I wanted to check out. It’s at Hale’iwa Ali’i Beach Park, which is about a 10 minute walk from our place. There is apparently a trench there that the navy blasted into existence so they could hide a submarine in it! Now, it’s a common dive spot and I wanted to see what I could see with just my lungs.
It was a nice walk over to the beach, but when I got there, there were signs saying “No swimming” and “Strong currents” and if you looked, there were. There were also a ton of surfers in the water, so maybe “No swimming” means something different here? No snorkelers in the water plus signs saying no swimming, means I go elsewhere. I walked back along the beach towards our apartment and found the congregation of snorkelers hiding behind the protective barrier of a natural reef break and joined them. Didn’t see anything interesting, but it’s just nice to be in the water.
On my first trip to Hawaii I didn’t understand why someone would snorkel. It seemed like a poor-mans version of diving. And it is. But it reminds me a bit of why I love skating, and a bit of why I love soda water.
Soda water, because it is literally just water (plain) with a little something extra added (yay). You don’t need much extra, just a little extra, to turn plain into yay. You take swimming (meh, to me) and you add in a mask and the ability to breath while looking at your own personal aquarium and you get yay.
Skating, because it’s free and you don’t need someone’s permission or to buy a gym pass or wait for another person. It’s freeing. You just go outside and do it.
I got back home and started setting up for my next adventure – circus.
We were in Honolulu for trip #3 in 2014. Miranda’s friend was getting married and they had a stagette planned. I looked up things to do and found a circus community met in the park on Sundays. I had gone to meet up, stood awkwardly nearby for a bit, and then decided to go watch a movie instead.
At the time, my problem was that while I was doing some partner acrobatics, I wasn’t very skilled at it, and as I wrote at the time, trampolines don’t travel very well, so I didn’t know what I was going to do even if I had gone to meet them. This time, I have a lot of partner work under my belt, and know a lot of things, even if I can’t always do all of them.
I drove an hour from Hale’iwa to Honolulu and found parking. I wandered around the park for a bit and saw two people doing poi.
Poi is a funny story for me (which is not at all related to the overall story I’m telling), and it goes in a weird direction. I’m good at math. Lots of people in this world are bad at math, and they sometimes talk about how they are bad at it. I think that poi makes my brain feel the same way that math makes people who are bad at math feel. I walked around the park for a half hour, wanting to make sure that these were the people I was looking for. I steeled my courage and went to ask if they were a part of the circus community that met here. They said yes, and we started talking. 5 minutes later a pair of older acrobats arrived and we talked more.
An hour later, I’m still talking. I met a gay guy who had recently had knee surgery, and a mom who was looking for some “me time” in circus. I met a lady who claimed to be wanting to do acro, but then wandered off to do slackline. I checked the clock and thought that while this was nice, I was likely going to head off shortly and not come back.
Apparently one of the older acrobats had been trying to send people my way, which was very nice of him. Another lady came and asked about hand-to-hand, and I enthusiastically said yes, expecting her to wander off like the last one. Luckily for me, she was really awesome and we started talking about what each other had done and where we wanted to start. We did a couple tester moves and then set off for an hour or more doing handstand in hands and I walked her through a Russian Roll (or Barrel Roll) which she was happy to try, and then some of her partner friends arrived and they did some stuff and then it was time to go because the sun had gone down over the water.
Here’s two videos I took!
I checked my phone, and Miranda had been having a terrible night with Ava, which was doubly awful because we’d had such a good day with her. It had taken her a half hour to put her down, and had lots of screaming. I drove home and commiserated with her.
I may as well continue into the 5th a little bit. We had a bad night, Ava woke screaming at 4am and we pulled her out of bed and calmed her down and put her back for another hour and a half. I’m a little sick, with a sore throat and stuffy nose and watery eyes, and I feel like hot trash this morning. I took a Tylenol and am drinking tea and Ava’s asleep right now, and we have plans to meet up a friend of Miranda’s in an hour and a half. She’s staying at a nearby resort, completely coincidentally, so we’re going to go for a small hike nearby.
I can’t even remember what I wrote about yesterday, but it was a decent day. Miranda says Ava didn’t get much more sleep than the terrible day before, but she slept without screaming about it, so I count that as a win.
We went to Three Tables, here’s Ava in the water. 🙂
And some cool photos from my snorkeling. 😀
And later, we went just outside our apartment to the beach there to take her into the water for real.
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For dinner I made boneless pork ribs. I’ve never seen boneless ribs before, and it seems like a bit of a misnomer, but they baked up really nice and were delicious. 🙂