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.