shopping. film, Pai'a, Makena

Today I bought some really nice board shorts at Tropix. On our way back to the hotel we stopped in Kihei and got some fresh cocunut juice and apple bananas from a small store.

I hadn't known that the little brown coconuts you usually see in stores is actually just the middlemost part of the coconut. The majority of the bulk is the fibrous husk.



We also bought a little plush turtle for my mom.

From there, we met up with Daves mom, Sandy, Dylan and Dave at Big Beach and hung out, built sand castles, snorkeled and boogy boarded. After having fish tacos at the JAWZ taco truck parked near the Big Beach lot, we continued shopping. I got a shirt at the Pacific Whale foundation, and we looked around Pai'a at some of the stores. We were actually on a mission to find medium format film, which is pretty hard to find on Maui -- at least it was for me! We finally found some velvia 100F (I didnt notice that it was F -- arghhh) at the Lighthaus in Kahaluhi, which stopped the shakes and other withdrawal symptoms I was experiencing at having only 3 exposures of velvia film left.

We spent the rest of the day on the beach in front of our hotel



and then headed off to Mamas Fish house with Dave and Sandy where we had excellent crab cakes, ahi sashimi and macadamia nut encrusted mahi-mahi stuffed with crab and lobster. I could barely move after the meal.

Snorkeling Molokini and Lana'i

We had arranged for a snorkeling tour of Molokini and Lana'i today, so we got up early and headed out to Ma'alaea bay to the Pacific Whale Foundation. It was a calm day and the ride out to Molokini went fine for Chloe and me. I was a little worried since both of us are a little prone to seasickness.

We arrived at Molokini -- a submerged crater with abundant marine life and jumped in the water, taking in the colors of all the cool fish with unpronounceable names -- humuhumunukunukuyamalangadingdong anyone?



About twenty minutes into the swim, I started feeling a little queasy and headed back to the boat. I should explain that my experience on boats is generally not good. The last time I was on a boat for a full day was in junior high school, when my dad had the misguided idea to go out on a fishing boat at 5 in the morning to catch salmon. We both ended up being sick for the entire eight hour trip and I vowed never to do anything like that again. However, vows are easily forgotten after eighteen years, and it was time for a refresher course. In the time since then, I took skin diving class at UC berkeley and did fine until the swell picked up on a dive near Fort Ross, and the combination of the moving sea and the kelp waving slowly in opposite directions made me turn green and then throw up in the water. The good news was that whatever I had eaten for breakfast seemed to attract the fish. It was a miserable day which had started out with the humiliation of having to wear a womens wet suit because I was so skinny. I must have been a sorry sight -- a pale skinny teenage boy with boob flaps dragging himself out of the water on his stomach. Well, as I said I had clearly forgotten about both of these experiences, so what could be better than combining two activities which had each made me extremely sick in the past? They would probably cancel eachother out right? Well ... no. I sat very still on the boat, and kept my eyes fixed on Maui as the captain informed us that we would be heading out into the "open ocean" for the 25 mile crossing to Lana'i soon. As people filtered back on the boat, word spread that some jellyfish had stung a few people and we saw some of the nasty looking red welts.

Along the 25 mile crossing we saw some humpback whales and although I didn't see it myself, other people saw a few of them breach. I was concentrating on the horizon, however. A pod of bottle nosed dolphins were swimming with the whales, which was also cool to see.

Right as we entered the bay, a pod of spinner dolphins surrounded the boat, and we watched them surf around and jump out of the water.


By the time we got to the dive site I was feeling a lot better so I headed into the water with Chloe and we swam around for a while. I cut things short when I started feeling ill again, and clambered back onto the boat. Big swell started coming in a few minutes later and I began to feel very poorly indeed. Chloe came back on the boat around ten minutes later to find a slightly pale husband staring out at the horizon, a half eaten hamburgr on his lap, who was refusing to even talk. Finally the critical point came when I realized that I wasn't going to get out of this trip without throwing up , so I ran downstairs, elbowed my way into the bathroom, and didn't even manage to close the door before things got messy. It's probably in bad taste to go into much more detail but I'll just say two words: "Projectile" and "Vomit". Oh and also that I had eaten fruit for breakfast. I felt much better afterwards, but was faced with the daunting task of wiping down the now orange bathroom and cursing their low-flow toilet system. Despite it being messy and disgusting, I really felt worlds better afterwards and was fine on the 20 mile trip back to port. Right before maneuvering back into the slip we saw some huge sea turtles in the water. So there you have it -- no more boats or snorkeling for me!

From port, chloe and I headed out to Kite Beach to scope things out, but it was completely dead. Some locals filled us in on the intricacies of the launch. Over all it looks like a beautiful beach though.

On the way back to Kihei we stopped at Neil Pryde, and then Ichiban Okazuya. Ichiban is a humble storefront with really great fish plates.

We had the teriyaki Ahi with gobo root and talked to the chef for a while before heading back to the hotel to eat our fish on the beach.

xmas day

We hadn't really counted on everything being closed today, so our brief visits to Pai'a, Makawao and Kula were a bit dull. Since we were in the area though, we decided to head up to the Haleakala crater. After a whole lot of switchbacks, but hardly any traffic, our Cobalt made it to the visitor center. We were able to use our National Parks pass again to get in, and tried to figure out how much money it has saved us over the last year but could only really be sure of around $60 or so. We'll definitely be buying another one in January! When we got to the top


we saw that a few truckloads of horses had been driven up, but we weren't able to get past them in time, and ended up inhaling a pungent mixture of volcanic dust and horse turds as we walked down the Sliding Sands trail behind them. At least it made for some nice pictures


We walked about 3/4 of a mile down the trail, then turned around since we were starting to get hungry. After a brief stop at the true summit (10029 ft)



where we ran into some guys who were about to mountain bike down from Ulaula overlook, we headed back down the mountain. Unfortunately, the place thaat we wanted to eat at for lunch (Ichiban something or other) was closed, and the only place that we could find that was still open was a kind of nasty Chinese restaurant. By that point though we were much to hungry to care. I had forgotten to charge the GPS, so we were also a bit lost for a large part of the day.

The GPS -- a Garmin Nuvi given to us by my parents -- is really a fantastic tool for anyone who travels. It makes finding places very easy of course, but the interface is really a joy to use, and it has a lot of very useful extra features... for example, it can tell you where the nearest gas station/restaurant/hotel/interesting place is, it has a multilingual phrase book, a currency and unit converter and on and on. I'm really looking forward to using it on our next road trip.

Dave and Sandy had invited us over for Christmas dinner with Daves family, which was really nice, and something I hadn't really thought of when we booked this vacation. I didn't grow up in a religious family, and it's maybe a little strange that a jewish/japanese family makes a christmas dinner, but we would have missed it! It was great, and Chloe and I were both really thankful that they had invited us.

secret beach

We headed out past La Perouse bay and walked along the Hoapili trail through the lava beds.


where it was really hot. Along the way we saw whale spouts and at least two whales surfacing

heres a blow up:

which was really cool. I subsequently read in a National Geographic article that for every whale you see at the surface in that channel (a protected area for the whales), there are many, many more nearby but deeper underwater.

The path was a little hard on the feet, and ended up in a few rocky bays where people had taken their 4x4s on impressively bad roads and camped out. There really wasn't much in the way of nice beaches though, and Chloe and I settled on a narrow spit of lava and padded out over the lava stone and coral pebbles into the water to watch crabs scuttle around on the sides of the lava flow. We ate the turkey sandwiches that we had made and then started back on the trail. Shortly after the trail started, we noticed a path which led to a remote swathe of green which in turn led to what looked like a rocky cove, so we followed the trail down to the water. A beautiful sandy and secluded beach awaited us


which appeared to have been settled at some point, so we were careful to stay away from the old walls. The waves reflect off the lava peninsula at the right, so some very strange waves come through the cove, but it made for a cool and exciting (you always had to look around to make sure you weren't about to get clocked in the side of the head by an errant wave) swim. While I was relaxing and looking out over the water I saw a whale breach and then come crashing down into the water. We subsequently saw four more breaches, but only managed o catch the splash of one on film

I think most people have seen photos of whales breaching, but it is one of those experiences that is hard to convey in pictures or in print. They really are spectacular animals, and it made our chance "discovery" of the beach that much more special. The only time I had seen whales in the wild before was from the cliffs of torrey pines park in San Diego, and they were definitely not breaching!

We headed back to the hotel after we ran out of water and caught up with Dave and Sandy for a while, who had been in the area (Wailea) shopping.

woooooo hoooo maui!

Off to Maui today!! It was an easy flight in and thankfully we did not have to deal with the Southwest line at OAKland airport. It stretched out of the terminal and wrapped two complete lengths of terminal 2. ATA by contrast was an easy check in, and we arrived on time in Maui, got the rental car (a Chevy Cobalt -- HORRIBLE), checked into the hotel and grabbed an excellent dinner of Ono and Mahi-mahi fish and chips at Alexanders.

chocolate

Well, I'm a little behind in posting to the blog, and I won't have a chance to catch up until we get back from Maui in January, but in the mean time you might be interested in checking out this long but excellent article about the Noka chocolate company. My friend Jose sent it to me and I just finished reading it over lunch. It reveals that Noka are quite deceptive about how they actually make their chocolate. The fact that they are ridiculously overpriced is obvious, but I think some people would be surprised to learn that they essentially just buy French chocolate, melt it down, pour it into molds and mark it up 2500% (853/pound NOKA price, 34.3/pound RETAIL for a Bonnat bar -- wholesale would be much less).

Bonnat is based in Voiron and is a short train or car ride from Grenoble and it was in Grenoble that I first learned of single-origin chocolates. I have tasted at least five different varieties from both Valrhona (based near Lyon) and Bonnat and loved all of them.

lolo vists

Our friend from Grenoble, who is currently doing a postdoc at Yale came up to visit. We went up to Alta to try to find some snowkiting, but couldnt really find much, so we put lolo to work.


and then grabbed an xmas tree

lesson of the day

when using the urinal, make sure you are not holding your keys and wallet in one hand, or your wallet might fall into the urinal, landing on the "freshness puck".

happy boulders, Bodie

We spent the morning climbing at the Happy boulders



Where we started out on a sorta tall problem right near the slowdance cave, then on to Blood Sample, then on to Heavenly Path, then Chicken head and the Hulk (not sent) and Solarium, checked out the beautiful but way hard "Morning dove white", and ended up on some of the easy pocket climbs to the right of Action Figure. By noon we could barely touch the rock, let alone pull on holds because we had lost so much skin and were so tired from hauling ourselves up the volcanic tuff. After a dusty trudge back down the hill to our car, we ate some thanksgiving leftovers and hit the road.

We drove north past lake Crowley and Mono


and took the turnoff to Bodie, a gold ghost town which is now a state park. It was now brutally cold, but Bodie was beautiful. We were both surprised to see that some of the park staff actually live in some of the restored Bodie houses!

road trip!

Chloe and I left early (6:30 AM) for Bishop this morning. According to the recorded message on the Yosemite Park conditions number, Tioga pass was still open, so we decided to drive through the park rather than the typical northerly or southerly winter routes. It was slow going on 120, and I wish someone would explain to me why so many people tint their car windows; the only thing it seems to accomplish is to make it impossible to see beyond them. Are we supposed to be filled with awe and intrigue about what's going on inside? Grey Poupon, cocktail weenies and champagne, I presume?

Anyway, Tuolomne was spectacular as usual, but cold
.

It took us ~6 hours to get to the Peabody boulders from Berkeley, and we warmed up on the Buttermilk Stem

then went on to the "Get Carter" boulder and finally to the beekeper boulder in the Pollen Grains area

where we climbed until it got painfully cold and our muscles were too worn out to continue.

Unfortunately, "The Outdoorsman" is not $54 anymore. In fact, it's not called "The outdoorsman", but is now a "La Quinta inn" and costs $89 including breakfast and taxes. We had dinner at Las Palmas, where I had a really good Asada plate, then headed back to the hotel, thankful that we werent in the climbers campground that night.

Thanksgiving

We had thanksgiving with the parents, who cooked a great meal, and then went to see the new Bond movie -- Casino Royale. It was the best Bond in a long time, and Daniel Craig is a great 007. And that's even factoring in all the female tittering you have to put up with whenever he shows up on screen in a Speedo. My only complaint: not enough screen time for the Aston Martin DBS.

Bishop on Friday!

Chloe and I are going to Bishop on friday, hopefully by way of Tioga pass ... if it stays open!! The forecast looks good with light winds, and daytime temps in 50's. The nights are forecasted to get well below freezing, but shhhhh don't tell chloe (we'll be car camping).

rotenburo testing for realz

Today was the big day: testing off the rotenburo with non lukewarm water. The problem is simple: the water boiler design makes it so that you cannot empty the bath fully while it is still hot (or the heater gets damaged). This means that to fill the rotenburo, you need to fill the bath to the maximum, get it as hot as it will go, drain the top 1/3 so that the heater is still submerged, and repeat until the rotenburo is filled. The other complicating factors are that the stones in the rotenburo are really cold, and heat is lost through the thin hose walls. All of this means that you need HOT water, which is no problem with enough wood. We did several cycles of heating the water to ~125 degrees and then emptying it via the hose into the rotenburo.... and the tub not only held water, but the water was hot!

Doesn't that look inviting?! We made a small granite chair (lower right) for clothes etc.

Soaking in the rotenburo is everything I had hoped: gentle river noises, maples illuminated by soft indirect light -- what could be better

here is Chloe enjoying it


On the way back, we decided to go to Nevada city, where we walked around,

had a nice espresso

and looked around in the shops, and checked out this gigantic ore crushing machine


In sacramento, I met up with a guy who I had arranged to buy an Ozone snow kite. We talked for a while, and it turned out that he used to be a Mammut rep, and does a lot of backcountry boarding, so hopefully he will be able to hook me up with other split boarders this winter!