GROUND HOG DAY

Aloha! It has been a little more than a week since my last post so I will try and get you caught up. Guess I will start by telling you that unlike most weeks Jackie and I only made it to the beach once! We have stayed busy though mainly here at the house. On Monday we mowed the lawn. That takes about 6 hours and after we are done all we want to do is sit and rest. It sure takes a lot longer to recover from a little bit of work than it did when we were younger! On Tuesday Alex had a bunch of his friends over to celebrate his 23rd birthday. They started cooking around 11 and continued through out most of the day and into the evening. We had so many new things to try. A couple of Alex's friends are chefs at the Princeville resort and they prepared some wonderful dishes. We ate and talked story well into the night. On Wednesday and Thursday the weather was a little rough...scattered wind and rain so we stayed in and did our usual tv watching as well as playing on the computer. On Friday Jackie and I decided that the sun wasn't going to shine on the north shore so we put on our swimsuits and headed to the south shore. It was great...just a little overcast but nice. We spent the majority of our time at Poipu sitting in our chairs and snacking on the apples and cheese we had brought with us. Jackie wanted to get wet but I was feeling just a little under the weather so I talked her into just sitting on the beach. From here we went to PK's and watched the surfers for awhile. There are some benches in front of the Beachouse restaurant and you can watch the surfers from there. This is about as close as you can get to where they surf with out getting wet! From here we headed home and thats when things went a little sour for us. It started to rain while we were going thru Kapa'a and the further we came north the harder it came down! By the time we reached home it was coming down in buckets! We got soaked in the short distance from our car to our door. We watched it rain for a bit and Jackie fixed us a nice supper. After we had eaten and got the dishes put away I got a craving for some ice cream. We didn't have any here at the house so figured we might as well drive into Princeville and get some. That was a mistake! We got almost to the Kalihiwai bridge and came upon a rock slide. I saw a car stopped in the opposite lane and there was a patrol car going to aid him so I had cut my speed way down to about 10 miles an hour. That wasn't slow enough...the rocks were all the way across the road! I hit a pretty good sized one with my left front tire. It was enough of an impact that we were airborne for a bit. I was totally amazed that we were able to continue after such an impact. We went about a quarter of a mile to where Anini road turns off and I told Jackie we had better turn off here where it is safe and check the car. All four tires were up and the fenders were still on so Jackie and I continued on to the store...thanking our lucky stars! We made it all the way into the parking lot before the tire went flat. We found a spot close by and it was next to a light pole so guess things could have been a lot worse. We got the tire changed and Jackie went into the store to get our ice cream and to warn everyone headed to Kilauea about the slide. We made it back as far as the Princeville airport before we came upon all the cars that were stopped waiting for the county to clear the road. They had 3 tow trucks towing the cars that didn't have as much luck as Jackie and I getting past the rocks. There were at least 5 cars that we could see that were disabled...some with quite a bit of damage. Saturday and Sunday were spent watching tv and recovering from Fridays ordeal. Monday we had the carpets cleaned in our room as well as Cory's so the day was spent taking everything out so they could clean then putting everything back. Not the most fun I have ever had but guess it could have been a lot worse. This morning Jackie and I took our car to Costco to get a new tire and the rest of the day was spent running errands in Lihue. I didn't like the way the pictures we took at the south shore turned out so I will try and post some of our pics from way back when.