cindy's world

Last Saturday (I know, I meant to post this earlier, but my last week was cRaZy), Mr. W and I went to dim sum with my maternal grandmother and my parents. While eating, my grandmother mentioned a grove of 150 cherry trees donated by a Japanese benefactor to a fairly local city park. The cherry blossoms should be blooming, she said. Off we all went after brunch to see the cherry blossoms.

Turned out the blossoms weren’t in full bloom yet; the trees were rather twiggy, but the early blooms were beautiful and incredibly fragrant. Thankfully, this was like the one day in 2 weeks when it didn’t rain.
3 generations of women:

my immediate family:

On our walk thru the park, my dad saw a low leaning tree and tried to hop on with his butt to sit on it. He missed and landed back on his feet. My mom laughed at him and I told him it’s too high to do that. So he turned to me and challenged me to walk onto the tree trunk from the base without using my hands. Which I did.

After I triumphantly turned around, I saw that they’d deliberately left me behind.

Envious at all my tree-climbing fun, Mr. W found one of his own.

And that was our day with blossoms. The end.

(as always, rest mouse pointer on photos for captions)

Saturday evening, after the whole dress ordeal, Dwaine and Andrae came by my house. Dwaine immediately spotted my camera sitting on the living room coffee table and proceeded to flip through the photos. There were photos of me in three separate wedding gowns that Vicky had taken a week ago the first time I was at David’s Bridal. “Is this the dress you got today?” Dwaine asked.
“One of them is.”
“I like the simple one.”
Could it be? A man’s seal of approval on the plain dress? “Which one?” I asked him, looking over his shoulder.
He navigated through a few photos. “That one,” he said, landing on the dress I’d bought hours ago. Yay!
Dwaine played with my camera a few minutes more and figured out how to set it up on timer, then propped the camera on my wet bar counter and told Andrae and I to stand for the picture. It took a few tries…

My, uh, collar bones look good?

this is the most effective one ^^

Finally, a decent shot, except that my static-pattern sweater makes me look ultra-wide. At least the men look good. (Then again, when don’t they?)

(as always, rest mouse pointers over photos for captions)

We grabbed a quick bite of pizza in Brea, then watched Will Smith’s movie I Am Legend. It was a toss-up between that or Sweeney Todd, but since I’d seen Legend and don’t care to see Sweeney, we let the gods of fate decide based on movie times. I was actually glad to see Legend with them again, because I caught a couple of things the second time that I didn’t the first and I always enjoy movie plotline and psychology discussions with witty funny brainiacs. We grabbed a drink and appetizer at nearby Taps Fishhouse & Brewery after the movie and talked the night away. And by that, I mean that I was home by 11:30 because we ARE in our 30s now. Heh.

Everytime I’m out with these guys, or either of them, I’m spoiled to the hilt. “Your money’s no good here,” they tell me, and paid for my pizza, movie, and drink. Doors are opened for me, in the short walks between parking, restaurants, and movie, they make a conscious effort to walk with me and/or on either side of me protectively. In the night chill walking back to the car, Andrae stripped off his wool coat and put it around my shoulders. =) I feel guilty that they treat me as one of the guys and yet don’t forget that I’m a girl. Good times.

A week without a post. I think that may be some sort of a record for me. Except for, wait…when I was on vacation and didn’t have internet access. That’s sort of what happened here, too. I went to Vegas for Thanksgiving and had the entire following week off for vacation. Since I didn’t have my own laptop with me, I haven’t been at work to use my work desktop, and I’ve stopped accessing this blog from Mr. W’s computer, you have this week-long gap. (The post in Vegas was written on Mr. W’s dad’s computer.)

We left for Vegas after work the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, got there wee early Thanksgiving morning, and our plan was to hang out there for 4 days and leave for Yosemite (where Mr. W has never been) on Sunday or Monday, hang out there for two days, and spend the rest of the week at home running errands, Christmas shopping and watching “Buffy” and “Angel” on DVD. But what actually happened was that after arriving to Vegas, we discovered that Mr. W’s gamer brother (as opposed to Rocker Brother who’s a guitarist in a band, and Chicago Brother whom I’ve never met cuz he’s in, duh, New York — I mean, Chicago) had the same week off work that we did. So Mr. W nixed the Yosemite plans and we instead hung out in Vegas with his family until Wednesday. That was great for me, as I was hacking and dying from my ailment and I think a few days in the very cold climate of Yosemite would’ve killed me.

Vegas: We walked the Strip, watched “The Mentalist” show, went to my first hockey game at The Orleans (totally thought about Flat Coke and Bat, the hockey freaks that they are), checked out the fairly-recently opened Hooters Casino (not impressive), hung out with Mr. W’s parents, played Wii and other games at Gamer Bro’s house, hung out with Gamer Bro and Wife, attended Rocker Bro’s band performance at a local restaurant bar. Ooh, I have a picture of that:

Sorry about the grainy photo; all I had was my cameraphone. I also got to see Mr. W and bros when they were little pesky children as Mr. W’s mom shared boxes of old family photos with me. It was only slightly disturbing to gloss over formal professional photos of Mr. W cuddling with his psycho ex #2 (the one after his kids’ mom) and her kids, if “slightly disturbing” means I want to reach back in time by reaching into those photos and squishing her obnoxious little head with my fingertips until her brain pops like a bubble of caviar, or that may be the monthly hormones talking. It is liberating to know he doesn’t read my blog anymore, tho. It is comforting to be able to write that I winced inside when his mom, showing me old photos of her other sons’ weddings while talking about preparing to make a separate album just of everyone’s wedding photos, said none of her kids had big weddings, except for Mr. W, who had two of them. Grrr.

Well, on to brighter things, like MY goddamned wedding. See next post.

Remember that wedding we went to that had the photo booth? Mr. W scanned in our two strips so here they are!

Strip #1 (left) are the goofing off photos where we did various expressions of suspicion, innocence (at least I was doing innocence; Mr. W was doing looking-at-yummy-wedding-cake or something), horror, and exhaustion.
Strip #2 (right) are the first photos we took where we were being all pre-alcohol behaved.

This is a post for the fellas, cuz I understand most men don’t want to read about my colposcopy today.

Sunday, Vanessa and I joined my coworker and 14 of her friends for a private burlesque lesson. The first thing the studio did was have us randomly and blindly draw “stripper names” prewritten on nametags, which we wore on ourselves as our alter ego for the hour. Vanessa was “Coco Whispers” and I was “Vixxxen Blue.” Is it just me or does my stripper self sound like she does porn?

The dance was very cute, complete with body rolls, hip rolls, lots of butts stuck in the air, and of course, the omnipresent furry boa.

Since the class cost us $20 apiece, I made sure to write down the choreography as soon as I got home. And being the dork, I went through the moves in my head while I was doing cardio at the gym yesterday after my colposcopy. Maybe that should be our “Blogger Girls’ Dance” that Flat Coke & Flies, Vanessa, Jordan and I have been talking about forever! Hmmm…

You can read Vanessa’s account of the class here.

Saturday was the Formula D drift racing finals.

Mr. W drove me and my parents to the Irwindale race track for that. Wandering around the booths and stuff beforehand with my parents, I grew concerned that my mom would find the loud music, cigarette smoke, and big crowd uncomfortable. She was a good sport, walking hand-in-hand with my dad, wondering what all the shocks, springs, car parts on display were.

I have concerns about the direction drifting is taking. It seemed to me that there were a lot of gang bangers there — more so than at a Nascar race function. It didn’t help that King Taco was a major sponsor; their publicity probably helped bring in a lot of the Mexican gangs from East LA. It was also unfortunate that they served beer. We had pretty cool seats on the grandstand, 3 rows up right in the center, but people started folding their flyers and advertisements they collected at the booths all day into paper airplanes, and trying to fly them down the stand and into the race track. There was a lot of drunken cheering whenever an airplane would squeeze through the large chain-link fence into the track, and drunken laughter whenever a plane would hit an unaware bystander on the head or neck as people tried to get to their seats. I was afraid to turn around and look into the stands for fear I may get an eye put out. I watched a college-age chick sitting directly in front of me get hit on the head by 4 paper airplanes, a beach ball, and a DVD. Her friend next to her got hit with a big pink inflated condom. I couldn’t believe security weren’t doing anything about that; paper on the tracks of a drift race could be some real hazards. I was even more dismayed when my dad threw an airplane, too. Twice. “It’s a strange disconcerting feeling when you realize you’re more mature than your parents,” I said to Mr. W. He thought it was funny. Childhood friend Vicky’s mom was sitting behind us, and at one point she picked up someone else’s paper airplane and handed it to my dad, saying, “Hey, help me throw this.” My dad eyed it skeptically. “This one isn’t going to fly right,” he said, and proceeded to re-fold it into an aerodynamic, ergodynamically engineered ad about some high-traction race tires. And threw it. And accidentally hit someone. GAH.

Anyway, the drift race itself started off disappointing; a few cars spun out and disqualified themselves, or they had technical problems, like one guy’s clutch went out and they couldn’t fix it in the 5-minute maximum time-out. But when it came down to the last 4 cars doing battle, now THAT was some cool stuff.

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My mom did have a headache from the noise and tire smoke and said it was going to be her first and last drift event, but it was very spiffy of her to come out with my dad for the experience.

See my first Formula D event w/photos here.

(Reminder: rest mouse pointers on photos for captions. Yes, you have to.)

Our flight didn’t leave until 11:15p and our rental car wasn’t due till 10p, so we got a late checkout (5p) at the hotel, had an authentic island “spam” (they call it Portuguese sausage now, probably cuz Spam is a brand name) breakfast at a cute place by the water and hit another famous tourist spot, Captain Cook’s Monument off the coast. First, one thing about the restaurant. It’s known for its gecko residents. Greg told us on Tuesday that the geckos have learned to recognize the jam packets, and will come up to the table to give the preserved fruit a lick. Of COURSE we had to go for that. A gecko stopped by fairly soon after we sat down, but Mr. W scared it with his big camera, and despite the jam we set out on the sill, we never saw another one there.

While I turned around to look for other geckos, I spotted this furry little guy behind the open doorway.

On to the monument. Captain Cook (or as Mr. W calls him, Captain Hook) is the “discoverer” of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. The reason “discoverer” is in quotes is because when Mr. W read the monument plaque to me, I said, “Wasn’t there already people on the island when he got there?” Anyway, the monument is a white vertical spike-looking thing set up where he first landed on the Big Island and near where he later “fell.” The reason why “fell” is in quotes is because it’s really the place where the Hawaiian natives took him out. As in, navigate to the bright light, Cap’n! Navigate toward the light.

In order to get to the monument, we either have to hike down a steep grade jungle-y mountainside for miles (ick, mosquitoes!) or kayak there from about 1-2 miles away. We opted to kayak, and rented a 2-man plastic kayak for $40 for the entire day. It was a beautiful watery trip, and the clear teal ocean was so full of life that I was afraid I’d hit a fish upside the head when my oar dipped in. We didn’t cause any fish this pain (that I know of), but my body did not escape the soreness. There just wasn’t enough blood in my deltoids and I had to take a few pauses and wait for sensation to return. Any guilt I may have had about not having any upper body workout for the past week was obliterated.

We “parked” our kayak (what’s the proper term for that? “dragged to rocky coast?”) near the monument and jumped into the warm water for some amazing snorkeling. The coral reef in that area is expansive and beautiful. Mr. W had purchased some 35mm underwater cameras and we both went thru our 27-some shots in less than half an hour. I even saw some ancient petroglyphs on a rock underwater but the photos didn’t come out too well.

There were many different fish, and I loved hearing the colorful parrotfish munch on the coral.

Whenever I’d drift by and hear the “chomp chomp” scraping sound, I’d look all around and try to find the coral munching fish. Man, fish are constantly eating down there! What a bunch of piggies.

Mr. W found it remarkable that he wanted out of the water before I did cuz he says usually whomever he snorkels with wants out way before he’s willing to get out. That day, once he said he wanted to go, I tried to swim over to the kayak and get out of the water, but I kept getting distracted by stuff like this.

A few times a huge swarm of hundreds of thousands of baby silvery fish swam up to me and they’d split to go around me, and rejoin behind me. At one point I had a cloud of silver swirling all around me and I kept spinning to see them all, sparkling in the sunlight like liquid mercury drops. Like a big spillover of silver stars. Like that one scene where the bad cop explodes into a million cold quicksilver droplets floating in the air in the Terminator 4-D show at Universal Studios. (graphic, huh?)

Wanna see that again but slower?

Our photos spent along with our energy, we rowed back toward the other bay where we were parked. For some reason, I turned around and looked behind me. And saw small triangular black fins sticking out of water in the bay we had just left. Spinner dolphins! We quickly turned the kayak around and rowed back so fast we passed other kayakers like they were standing still. There were probably 20+ dolphins in the school, and they were doing mating shows, smacking their tails against the water surface, leaping into the air in teams. One dolphin demonstarted why they’re called spinner dolphins. He leapt high into the air and spiraled the entire arc until he hit water again, like how a football spins if thrown correctly. But faster. And he jumped back out and did it again as the onlookers cheered and clapped. And a third consecutive jump. Mr. W hurriedly put on his mask, snorkel and fins and jumped in the water and got to swim with the dolphins. He said they swam deliberately slowly underwater around him to wait for him, a whole family with a baby. After he got back on the kayak I tried to do the same but at this point, the dolphins were at a different spot and the water had poor visibility so I could only see them if I had my head out of the water and could spot their fins. I only saw them in the water when 4 or 5 swam in a downward arc about 10 feet underneath me. We cursed the moments we used up all our films on stupid fish.

After getting out and returning the kayak, we hit up Costco and dropped our film off for 1-hour processing, and went back to the hotel to clean up, pack and check out. Our swimsuits and towels were too wet and sticky with ocean saline to pack, so I did a load of laundry at the hotel’s outdoor facility while I chatted with an Oklahoma woman on vacation there who saw my UCLA travel wallet and had to comment that her husband’s also a Bruin. She loaned me her laundry detergent so that I didn’t have to buy a box, and I gave her the remaining half bottle of our dark Maui rum since she was staying another day past us, and she told me about her family as we played with cute little geckos. Small brown furry ferrets or meerkats or mongoose or something frolicked on the lawn, too.

Then we had a nice seafood dinner (well, I had a fresh-caught ono wrap while Mr. W had a bleu cheese burger) back in Kailua-Kona town in an outdoor patio overlooking the ocean, walking distance from our hotel, walked through town visiting some more shops, and then went to return the car (a great experience, the streets and directions were perfectly labeled street-side and visible despite the late hour, and the Hertz return guy came out to us and checked the car, then took instant payment right there and printed the receipt from a portable hand-held machine he had in his hand, we never had to go in) and shuttled over to the airport. Where I slept waiting for the flight to come in (about 2 hours) and slept immediately on the plane through all of the 4+ hour flight home.

(Reminder: half the story is in my photo captions. Sort of.)

We’d planned to drive to Volcano National Park, but the sudden rain in that area, the long 2.5 hour drive it would’ve been, the fact that other wedding people that went there said they didn’t see anything interesting as the lava flow had changed direction to somewhere inaccessible, turned us off. We had a chat with a friendly souvenir shop salesclerk Duane who was born and raised on the island and he recommended his favorite snorkeling and dive spot 20 minutes away, so off we went with our gear and swimsuits (after stopping by WalMart again to buy an underwater disposable camera). The highly-touted Kealakekua Beach not only had ample parking (a rare find on the Big Island), tons of great fine salt-and-pepper uncrowded sandy beach to hang out on, and fish everywhere, but also yielded three yellow turtles chomping away on some rock moss a few feet away from the shoreline. I literally stood thigh-high in beach waves looking down at them, as they washed to and fro with the surf. Occasionally a yellow and black spotted fin would flip out of the water, and sometimes it’d be the back end of the shell with a pointy tail. More often it was a little yellow head with round black eyes that would pop out, take a gulp of air and blink at us, then disappear again.

A local who kayaked out to sea had his black dog run excitedly up to the water to greet him when he returned, and as I was nearby, the dog dropped what I thought was a tennis ball in front of me and crouched down low with a whimper. I picked up what turned out to be a small tennis ball colored furry coconut she’d found on the beach somewhere, and played catch with her for awhile. I had a great time deepening my strange tan (seriously white ass) and Mr. W worked on his sunburn.

We drove by a Kona coffee mill on the way back and decided to go in for the tour and watched the coffee processing methods.

Ever seen a coffee plant before it’s reduced to coffee beans? The berry that houses the bean is called a “cherry.” 100 pounds of cherries yields 20 pounds of coffee beans.

The raw coffee beans (called “parchment”) are poured into this big roasting machine.

While the beans are roasting, they have to be guarded very carefully because within seconds it’d audibly crack once, and then again, and at the 3rd crack, the beans are constantly checked to get to just the right darkness, then released into this spinning thing to be turned and turned. I don’t know what the spinning thing does or what it’s called cuz my attention span gave out at this point and I’d wandered off.

After the beans spin for a few minutes, they’re packaged and ready for grinding.

A lot of the mills buy outside cherries around the area, too.

Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world behind oil (as in crude oil for gasoline).

While at the mill, we looked at the plantation’s back lot and saw, beyond the coffee plants, was another lava tube!

Mr. W sprayed me down with DEET insect repellant and we went off to explore.

This tube was short, only 100 feet or so, but we got pictures this time! Apparently all lava tubes are drippy drippy, tho.

After we exited we saw some pretty things I’d like to share.

This one is for my girl Jordan:

After that we came back to town, walked to a new favorite beachside diner and had fresh opa fish as I made a new silver tabby friend and fed the tiny skinny thing half the grilled fish from my fish tacos. This is the first vacation I can remember where I wasn’t ready and itching to go home after 3 days, although on the 3rd nite I did have a nightmare that something was wrong with Dodo and that it was my fault for neglecting him. Mr. W said it’s a sign we should retire here. Tomorrow night’s the flight home.

(Regular readers know to rest their mouse pointers on photos for captions.)

The new Mr. and Mrs. “Wilco” had made it very clear to their wedding guests that this is not their honeymoon and they do not need time alone and to please not avoid them. On that same vein, Christi made lunch reservations for about twenty of us at a pretty famous (as far as famous goes in an island village) Asian fusion restaurant called Bamboo at historic smalltown Hawi, at the top northernmost tip of the island.

On the drive north, I prepared to take an in-context photo of the “Better Together” roadside graffiti, and as we rounded the corner, I started snapping away and saw…the molestation of the sign.

The sign was all the talk when we met up with the wedding people. Mr. W and I were able to chat with and get to know the other wedding guests a little better at this lunch, as well as trade stories about everyone’s Hawaii experiences thus far. Not just tourist stories and the couple’s behind-the-scenes wedding stories (such as how Mike really DID want to play cheesy wedding games but was vetoed), but for example, another wedding guest couple got engaged the day before the wedding in Hawaii, at what turned out to be one of the worst marriage proposals ever (girl’s opinion). It went something like this: guy pops the question on the beach, pops open the ring box, and both pairs of eyes pop as they see the box is empty. Girl thinks it’s a tasteless not-funny joke, but was wrong about it being a joke; guy panics and goes back to the room to see if it’d maybe fallen out there while girl sits on the sand guarding the same spot in case ring had popped out there. Luckily, they find the ring, buried inside the sand, and don’t know how that could’ve happened. He puts the ring on her finger when she accepts the proposal, but it only fits as far down as to the top of the first knuckle. Turns out he’d remembered her ring size wrong and was off by two whole sizes. Girl, we heard, had to go back to her room to recover from the proposal.

After lunch, half of us stayed and explored the town, had ice cream…

…took photos, and we all decided to go to Lookout Point, where the street ends and you’re supposed to be able to look over the water and see Maui or Kauai or something.

Turned out that Lookout Point wasn’t only a lookout, it was also a steep hike zigzagging down the mountainside to a black sand beach.

Since everyone drove separately, we all got there at separate times but Mr. W and I were lucky enough to run into the newlyweds.

Mike and Christi made it down the trail fairly quickly, snapping photos with their intimidating large-lensed cameras as they went.

Mr. W and I went much more slowly, as he painstakingly took incredible care in setting up each of his shots of every insect, fungus, shrub, skyline, rock and dirt clod.

We’d lost Mike and Christi for about 15 minutes when my right foot slipped and SNAP! the top of my slipper-style sandal disconnected from the base. There was no way I could make it down the rocky pathway with one shoe, so Mr. W decided (to my disappointment) to turn back and hike back up the hill to the car. I left Mike a message on his cell phone and Mr. W and I drove to what was described by the tourbook as arguably the best beach on the island, Hapuna Beach, within walking distance of Mike and Christi’s wedding site.

Mike and Christi surprised us by showing up there minutes after we’d gotten there, and the four of us took photos of the sunset and each other, Mike and Christi with their professional expensive cameras with the lens more expensive than the Hawaii trip, Mr. W with his slightly-less-professional partial-SLR camera, me with my trusty cameraphone (laugh if you want, but I was the only one who was able to instantly send watery sunset photos to my mom in California and Jordan in Florida, so there).

While there, I had a phone conversation with my mom, who called me to ask what the hell I was sending to her phone as she didn’t know how to open the images, and she informed us it was the autumn Chinese Moon Festival that night, so we all took pictures of the huge full moon, too.

“None of you or your friends know that it’s tonight?” my mom asked in surprise. The three of us white-washed Asian kids plus the one white dude looked blankly at each other. *blink* In that phone conversation, my parents also offered to buy me the Alexandrite ring. I protested it, said it was too extravagant and unnecessary, fought off their offers to gift it as an engagement present or a wedding present, until my mom hit the logic chord. I should take her credit card information and purchase the ring on the Island, she reasoned, so that I could have it in-hand instead of having to wait for them to mail something so expensive to me after purchasing it, and what if they swap out the stone and mail me a fake? I didn’t think the last part would happen, but the first part made sense. I promised to pay them back for the loan, but she insisted it wouldn’t be a loan.

Christi was excited for me when I told her about the ring and they followed us back to Kailua-Kona town, where we were all going to meet for dinner anyway, and came into the jewelry store with us. I’d called our sales guy, Ron, to tell him I’d be coming for the ring that night and he’d offered to hold the store open as late as we needed to get back into town as a favor, but luckily we got there well before closing. The ring was instantly resized (turned out what I’d thought was a good fit wasn’t good enough for either Ron or the owner of the store, both of whom thought it should be sized from a 7 down to a 5.75 to be perfectly secure on my right middle finger, and they were right) as Ron ran my parents’ credit card information through the machine…and it came back “declined.” What the heck. My parents have responsible credit habits and never carry a balance. He ran it again. Declined. I called my parents at home and heard myself whining to them. They were understandably concerned, too, especially since it turned out they’d misheard the price of the ring and thought I’d told them it was $1000, but gave me another card to try, and that one came back “Call Credit Center.” Turned out that for purchases over $4000, some credit card companies require a physical confirmation of the legitimacy of the purchase, which is a pretty good thing, I suppose. The second card was eventually approved, and I was given my ring. YAY!!! Along with another free CD of songs composed by Ron (Mike and Christi got one, too) and a free bottle of cabernet sauvignon. I am so paying my parents back, tho.

The four of us met up with Greg and Cheryl and some other people of the wedding party who could not make it to lunch and had a nice dinner in town. The large round table had a white butcher block papercloth along with a bunch of crayons for us to draw with, so Greg snatched a red crayon and wrote in big block letters in the center of the table “JUST MARRIED” with arrows pointing toward Christi and Mike. I drew some hearts around the words in gray crayon, and two more arrows pointing toward Cheryl and Greg. The latter two protested they weren’t “just” married, they were married a month ago, so they weren’t truly newlyweds. “Oldlyweds,” Cheryl called themselves. I said it was new enough, so Greg clarified his table label with a different color crayon by writing “9/22” by Mike/Christi’ arrows, and “8/11” by his own arrows. Then he drew two more arrows pointing toward me and Mr. W and labeled those arrows “9 years later.” Not to be outdone, the other half of the table, 3 young unwed and unengaged friends, grabbed their own crayon and wrote “SINGLE” with three arrows pointing at themselves. I suggested they write phone numbers for their numbers, but no takers. Right when we were about to hand over the check, the restaurant, along with that entire side of town, lost electricity. We found ourselves sitting in darkness until suddenly, there was a click and everyone laughed as one member of the party put a small but very bright flashlight pointing up on the table. Talk about prepared! And then Mike emerged with another flashlight. “You guys are so funny!” I said. Another guest joked, “I thought you were going to use a whole different word aside from funny.” It was a bit geeky of them, but luckily so. We paid our bill, the “true” newlyweds dropped us off at our hotel (which was probably the first building we came to that was unaffected by the blackout, which turned out was due to a traffic accident), and we called it a night.

After an early-morning snorkeling trip to a new and nearby spot (again, amazing snorkeling conditions and this particular snorkeling visit is momentous as it marks my first snorkeling experience where I was not physically uncomfortable with seasickness, cold, boredom from lack of visibility, and/or jellyfish stings), we got back to the hotel, cleaned up and drove to Hilo. The drive to the eastern part of the island was long, about 2 hours’ worth each way, and surprisingly rural. (Rest mouse pointers over photos for captions.)

Following his guidebook (yes, WHILE driving and reading lots of Braille on the road), Mr. W drove us to multiple picturesque spots, including a few waterfalls.

The same hike takes us to Akaka Falls and then to Kahuna Falls.

Where there are water and jungle and tourists, however, there are ravenous mosquitoes. I’d thought I was prepared with newly purchased Avon SkinSoSoft mosquito repellant/sunscreen/moisturizer, but apparently, these wild jungle mosquitoes don’t get turned off by a little lotion. Instantly I was bitten multiple times on my legs, instantly the areas swelled and itched like mad, causing me to stop waiting around for Mr. W to take photos of every flower, tree, moss chunk, distant vine and waterfall, and instead to return to the car. At the parking area, while I waited half an hour for Mr. W to return, I paced so that mosquitoes would not continue to land on me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blonde woman (clearly a tourist, not a native) walking toward me. I thought she was walking to the restrooms behind me, but instead, she approached me directly and said, “Excuse me. Can we trade tops?” I didn’t understand her immediately. Trade tops? Tops of what? She continued, “Your top’s really cute.” I smiled at the compliment and thanked her. She continued to stand in front of me, smiling nicely, and said, “So is that a no to trading tops? I like it, it looks great on you.” What the hell, was she serious? Who the hell trades shirts with strangers? I looked at her teal knit tanktop. She was still standing in front of me, smiling, as if waiting for an answer. Possible responses were racing through my head, like Thanks, it’s Nike; or I don’t think my top would fit you. I kind of laughed and said, “Thanks, but I don’t make a habit of taking my top off in public.” She smiled again and finally walked away, saying as she left, “Okay. You look great in it.” One of the most bizarre encounters I’ve ever had with a stranger.

Driving to our next spot, we pulled off the road whenever something looked interesting or pretty to us, like these bays, where we saw people swimming, hanging out with their families, and swimming with turtles.

The guidebook mentioned a pretty Japanese water garden nearby, so of course we had to stop by and see.

Next we drove to a lava tube, which is a long cavernous tunnel formed by hot flowing lava underground. A portion of the lava tube had collapsed, which formed an opening to the tubes.

Going left from the opening just led us to a cave about 30 feet deep.

Going to the tube on the right led us to the longer part of the tube, which goes in 2.5 miles! If we were to walk the entire length, the other side of the tube opens out onto someone’s private property, we hear.

But we didn’t trek the entire 2.5 miles. It was pitch black in there, with hair-like tree roots hanging overhead, dripping water. The top of the tunnel had areas of shiny silvery lichen, and the sides were smooth with hardened lava. The bottom had rocky craggy stones that were broken off pieces of hardened lava, and pretty unstable to walk on. Mr. W had only bought one flashlight, which proved very difficult for two people to use. The person in front had the light and left the person behind in darkness, unable to see what he/she was stepping on. Also, the tube was not an even size, sometimes squeezing into a tunnel opening that I had to squat and almost crawl through, other times opening into a huge room with cathedral ceilings. Sometimes the floor gave way into a deep wide walkable crevice as the lava stream had apparently flowed both above and below some ground and hardened in the middle. We didn’t get in very far when we realized the one flashlight is not going to work. Luckily, right behind us was a tourgroup and the tourguide, after giving her group the history of this lava tube, started chatting with us while giving her people 10 minutes to wander around the openings. Upon finding out that we didn’t have enough light power, she loaned us one of her flashlights and told us, as she took her group back up the narrow stairs to street level, to simply leave it hidden behind the cement stairs and she’ll pick up the flashlight tomorrow when she brings another group here. Hawaiians are SO kind, we’ve been finding all week. The “spirit of aloha” is very strong on the islands.

We went back to the car so I can change into my hiking shoes and Mr. W could get fresh batteries for his camera, then we went into the long cave maybe half a mile deep or more, which is how I was able to bring you the written description above. A written account is all you’re going to get cuz Mr. W realized he’d put in dead batteries into his camera after we were already fairly deep into the caves, so you’re not gonna have photos of deep inside from us. Oh, and water drips on you the entire time. At one point when Mr. W went on ahead, I waited for his light beam to disappear around a bend and I turned off my flashlight. Completely in perfect darkness where I could not even tell by sight if my eyelids were open, I waited for my auditory sense to sharpen. I heard in stereo surround sound the different droplets of water hit all around me, all sounding different as they hit different levels and types of surfaces, like a watery xylophone being played. Pretty cool stuff.

We found the King Kamehameha statue in this park where people were playing soccer. Rather than photograph the soccer players, I found this more interesting:

…And here’s the king.

Wait. Isn’t he the guy on the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts boxes? Let’s take another look.

On the long drive back to Kona around the coastline, we stopped at a convenience store and I bought real, effective, chemical mosquito repellant in a metal aerosol can, with active ingredient the poisonous DEET, not that weak-ass enviro-friendly lotion crap.