Paradise Found

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. We've hit upon the best way to enjoy the island. =o)

[Side note: Our household goods finally arrived a week ago Wednesday, so we FINALLY have all of our stuff... including the BIKES!]

Today was the first day C and I had to go on a long, leisurely and unhurried ride. We left home, heading north to Haleiwa. We stopped at the boat launch there for the first modeling session (My bike is the yellow/black one, and C's is all black):

Next stop was near Sunset Beach. There looked to be some sort of surfing competition going on because there were a lot of people walking that way, a big event-type tent on the beach... but there weren't any waves! And I didn't see any television cameras or anything... so we went just past that and ended up here:

The last couple of stops, I don't know exactly where we were. We were on the Windward side of the island, looking out at the Kahana Bay area.

Oh, well the gratuitous coconuts shot was coming.... you had to know that. You just didn't know when..........

It was a great ride! We went about 100 miles (I think the odometer said 97). Saw a lot of great local places that I'd like to return to in the future! I really wanted to find The Hukilau Cafe (the restaurant from the movie "50 First Dates" with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore), but I didn't see it. I saw the Hukilau Surf Shop and the Hukilau Beach... but not the Cafe.

Lots of beach/coast line riding, some mountain and tunnel riding, and then we ended up on the Hawaii Interstate to buzz home.

C and I are going to see our first movie since arriving here, too. We're going to see "Saw 2"! Can't wait. =o)

Well we've been hearing surf reports on the radio, and they all are giving the high surf advisories! Since we only live a few minutes from the North Shore, we drove over to see what the fuss was!

We know that the BIG waves are in December, but if they're talking about high surf... there must be something good!

This sign is now stuck out in the sand as you walk onto the beach:

hehe I know I looked like a total tourist taking this picture, but that's ok. All in the name of photojournalism and this travel diary.

The Pipeline still has the seriously steep beach!!

Between the really soft, squishy sand and the steep incline, my legs got tired walking around!

I'm a sucker for crashing wave and gorgeous, turquoise water pictures...

I don't know any of those surfers, but had fun taking pictures of them.

Thought I'd show you what the sand is like here! I can't really describe how different it feels to walk on and lay on than the sand in South Carolina, but this is so much cooler! The sand is really just beaten down little rocks! They don't stick to you as badly as in SC... it brushes off really easily.

And when you leave the Bonzai Pipeline set of beaches.... you see THIS guy!

So the waves weren't absolutely huge yet, but they were bigger than we'd seen before... plus a trip to the ocean is never wasted, right?
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I haven't been doing a good job of showing you all the rainbows, either. This one is from yesterday, as I was coming home from a lunch get-together with 16 other military wives here on the island... (more on that in a second).

This rainbow was so WIDE... and it came down directly on top of the guard shack of our housing entrance! LOL

I am a member of a message board online for Hawaii military wives, and they have one "official" get-together every month, and yesterday was October's. We met up at Chili's restaurant, and there were 16 or 17 of us. It was fun meeting them... a bunch of ladies whom I've only chatted with on a message forum.

We also bought living room furniture yesterday... a sofa and loveseat. I didn't get any tables yet because I wanted to see what would look best and what we had room for in this little living room. Pictures will follow once I get an area rug purchased, delivered and put down.

OMG!! The dog is snoring! Never heard him do that before. LOL!!!!!!

Today we were tourists again! It was such a nice, sunny day... perfect for going thru the world's largest field maze at Dole! At least Guiness World Book of Records said it was, in 2001. The gift shop at this place was amazing!! It was like a Cracker Barrel restaurant shop, only ALL relating to pineapples! Loads of t-shirts, postcards, quilts, food stuffs, playing cards, posters, back scratchers and massagers, etc!

Here's a map of the place... the red square is the shop/restaurant. And the field maze off to the right. It's made of 8 foot hedges, except for the middle sections are made from lower bushes, and they're in the shape of a pineapple.

There are 6 hidden stations that you have to find... you can try and race thru the maze and beat the record time, or you can be leisurely and do it at your own pace. Which is what we did... I was busy taking pictures of everything! So we took 31 minutes to do it.

I took 48 pictures at Dole, and am posting 14 of them up here. The rest will get uploaded to my Yahoo Photo Album. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bikergirl_brazen/my_photos

MACKIE: I told Elizabeth that you wanted more pictures of her, so she let me take as many as I wanted today! Just for you.

Here we are at the beginning of the maze.

After the maze, we went on to the gardens. The first things you see are little pineapple plots... they have MANY different varieties of pineapples growing here! One of my favorites were cool red ones like this:

This next one's especially for Grandma Sylvia! On this sign post are lots of locations, but Beijing is at the top! Only 5,062 miles to Beijing! And 8 miles to the North Shore. hehe

Two pineapple heads!

After all the things we did around the Plantation, we went back inside and got PINEAPPLE ice cream! N got his in a waffle cone, and E & C got theirs in bowls with fresh pineapple topping!

And for the final picture today... this is the view from the lanai (porch) where we sat and ate our ice cream. Sooooooooooo relaxing sitting in the cool breeze!!

That title sounds way more exotic than it really is. "Poi" is the Hawaiian word for "mixed". So he's a mutt. A Border Collie mix... tho they didn't know what the mix is. We found him at the Hawaiian Humane Society last week... so Monday will be a week that he's been with us.

The Humane Society named him Kane, so we went along with that. They guesstimated that he's around 6 months old. He's a nice, gentle, quiet little guy with tons of energy. He loves to play! Our neighbor is a 7 month old Rottweiler, and the two get along really well, thankfully. We take them for walks to a big empty field and turn them loose.

I have to start this off with my extreme difficulty in saying SHAVE ICE. I can't help but say it past tense and blurt out SHAVED ice. I'm trying... hate to sound more like a tourist than kama'aina (a local resident), but I'm working on it.

Anyway, this shave ice is like none I've ever had before. The closest thing I can compare it to is the shaved ice you might find at a county fair, maybe. Where they use an ice cream scoop and put a bunch of chunked up ice into the paper cup and drown it in the fruit flavored syrups. This IS like that, but the ice they use is extremely thin and it melts in your mouth!! There's no need to chew up the little chunks of ice because there aren't any. Very good, indeed. But what makes this even more different is that there's ICE CREAM under that stuff!! I don't know what all flavors there were to choose from, but there's at least vanilla and chocolate.

So Nikolas got us a rainbow shave ice w/ vanilla ice cream. And boy was it GOOD. In fact, I liked it better than he did! So now I've been to Matsumodo's and bought the t-shirt.

There's The Boy right after getting the wonderful stuff. And you can see one of the 50 t-shirt choices in the window above him.

I know, I look rough... long day of pool, sun, beach and driving fast with the window down. C said I looked just fine tho!! I won't believe THAT again! LOL

And I installed more plants and flowers and stuff to my front patio to make it homier and more inviting. Here's the before pic, and the NOW pic:

I am still looking for just the right TIKI guy to sit out there with me. He'll sit up against the house, to the right of the blue door, sort of in front of that silver electrical outlet. The right one has eluded me so far... but soon!

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One last note......... for the few people reading this who've known me long enough to care..... I got back in the pool today for the first time in 17 YEARS. I've been building up to this for a while... bought a cap and goggles first, and then finally a Speedo on ebay (because I saw that a new one in a store is $65!!!!!!!!!!!) So the suit arrived today, and I had no more excuses.

I can't believe it's been so long. That suit just doesn't look the same. LMAO Anyway, I wasn't able to do much. When I swam competitively, we'd have to do a 500 (yards) of something, and then another 500 of something else for the WARM up. Uh huh. Today? I managed to swim 300 yards before my arms gave out.

I wasn't really breathing hard - not winded or anything, but I had to stop because my ARMS were jello! I felt pretty pathetic, but I'll keep on going. There's a gym right there too, so I can get back to lifting, as well.