Applications Needed

Another weekend in Honolulu endlessly wandering up and down the streets waiting with mainland visitors and Japanese tourists at street corners waiting for the lights to change, I walked along the sidewalk by the beach looking for a reason to snap a picture.

I had already found a really nice looking chopper outside a restaurant on Kuhio street and quickly snapped a shot while trying not to appear too "touristy". The hog was probably a rental but still was an attention grabber and thought of Boudreau covered up in the garage back home in 30 something degree weather.

As I arrived at the beach, I thought about maybe taking pictures of the homeless guy digging through the trash or possibly of some other social statement of life's injustices and even maybe the ever present chess players at the covered picnic tables but nothing really got my attention until I looked out across the beach.

You know, some of us do NOT have much room to talk (I'm including myself here) when it comes to physiques but for crying out loud, we DO have some idea of what's appropriate and what's not. Well, here it is. There are just some things you ought to have to fill out an application for and this is one of them. Hey, even charge a fee or license ($ 200 at least) to wear one of those things and an extra hundred bucks if your gut covers it up. What's fair is fair!

Speedo

That's just wrong on so many different levels.

Whale of a Weekend on Maui !

What a weekend! Friday afternoon, I changed into shorts and Crocs at the office and headed for the airport for a quick flight to Maui.

After a night on my friends, Don & Rachel's couch, we boarded their boat, the Maui Diamond II and headed out for Molokini Crater. It was a slow ride, watching out for and seeing whale spouts at a distance.

Arriving and mooring at the extinct volcano, we did a couple of dives with divemaster Kat and a Canadian man and his two teenage sons. Kat knows her stuff and was the first to spot things like octopus, white tip reef sharks, eels and many indigenous species of fish. Just two weeks before, Darlene had been with me out here and am sorry she was not able to witness this with me.

On the way back, we stopped a few times hoping to spot a whale up close. On the third stop, we found a mother whale, her escort and a two ton bouncing bundle of joy calf. We were all just blown away as the trio came closer and closer to the 40 foot boat. I'm sure they could have flipped us if they had wanted to but swam under us then circled the boat several times driving us all wild with our cameras. After entertaining us for probably 20 minutes, they moved on. We had been out quite a while so Captain Don brought us back in to Maalaea Harbor.

That afternoon, a few of us went on for the third dive of the day out near mile marker 14 west bound toward Lahaina. We dropped anchor into 40 foot water and soon found Manta rays all over us. At one point someone said they counted 10 in sight swimming around and over us, banking like stealth fighter planes. The largest had to have had a wing span of 10 to 12 feet across. The were almost as amazing as the whales.

I believe this had to be the most memorable dive day I've ever been on. I spent Sunday relaxing and watching people in the middle of enjoying their 3 day weekend.