6/11/2013

Maui 2013

Day 13, Aloha, Maui













































Day 12, June 22, 2013 Maui east side and Hana

Lush vegetation



































Trail Ride O'heo Gulch, Haleakela National Park, Hana, Maui 
















Seven Pools, Haleakela National Park, Hana, Maui















Olu and Kaili















 Oheo Gulch, Haleakela, Hana, Maui




































Day 11, June 21, 2013, Olawalu, Maui, HI








































Day 10, June 20, 2013 10:30 AM HST Ho o kipa, Maui, HI














 
 10:47 AM  Ho o kipa, northshore, Maui















2:18 PM  Ho o kipa, northshore, Maui, HI















 Day 9, June 19, 2013 2:59 PM HST, Kite Beach, Kahului, HI















3:17 PM HST, Kite Beach, Kahului, HI















Day 8, June 18, 2013 7:30 AM HST, Kihei, HI



































6:00 PM  South Kihei



































6:55 PM HST Mokapu Beach, Kihei, HI



































Day 7, June 17, 2013 7:06 PM HST, Ulua Beach, Kihei, HI















Ulua Beach/Wailea















Day 6, June 16, 2013 4:40 PM HST, Kalepolepo Beach, Kihei, HI
Wind and Sand

















































Day 5, June 15, 2013 5:34 PM HST, Ahihi-Kinau Reserve La Perouse Bay,















Day 4, June 14, 2013 1:22 PM HST, Kamaole Beach, Kihei, HI















Day 3, June 13, 2013 7:07 PM HST, Kamaole Beach, Kihei, HI















Day 2, June 12, 2013 7:39 PM HST Maui Film Festival, Wailea, HI



































Day 1..June 11, 2013,  6:06 AM HST Kamole Beach Park, Kihei, HI













Some miscellaneous photos
























































































































6/01/2013

I need to be out of here!

Not that Iowa (it was my 50th state) or Nebraska is all that bad, weather wise, it's been a really weird 30 days since I've arrived.  It seems as if there's an electrical storm every other day.
















As I mentioned before, I flew in on the night of May 1 and was presented with a 3-4 inch snow storm that left even the most seasoned midwesterner baffled.  Driving to work the next morning, I encountered several vehicles off in the ditch or neutral ground mired in snow and mud and passed through small towns and saw people shoveling snow.  Aside from a VERY brief warm spell, it has been unseasonably cool and wet, to the dismay of farmers here.
















This weekend is no exception.  I put on a pair of shorts and t-shirt to head into downtown Omaha, only to turn around within seconds of leaving the hotel.  It was 57° at 11:00 AM with a brisk wind blowing.  It's been part of the spring systems that have caused deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma and Missouri.

Anyway, if I can manage another week, I'll be catching a flight out of here for my mother's family reunion next weekend then grabbing a flight the following Monday for a 2 week vacation on Maui.  While I need the vacation, I think Darlene has been looking forward to it with greater anticipation than I.
 

















 It will be good to see my old friend, Mr. Green Sea Turtle again offshore from Ulua Beach near Kihei.

5/25/2013

Meet Boudreaux II

The old 2005 Harley Softail was Boudreaux and I thought about just keeping the same name like B B King named every guitar Lucille but a motorcycle eventually develops it's own personality.  Eventually, it may get a new name, but for right now, it's still Boudreaux.  It's basically the same as Old Boudreaux but with a 103 cubic inch engine instead of the 88 ci and a six speed transmission instead of the five.

Old Boudreaux was getting to be a high mileage bike and made me nervous about any long distant run over a few hundred miles. 

A 2012 model with only 2,844 actual miles on it, it's  not even broken in yet.  I'm not too sure about the white sidewalls either.  Oh well, we shall see.

5/14/2013

Outrageous

The first of May, I blew into Omaha along with a late season snowstorm.  I think they have not seen a snow in May for 50 or 60 years but I managed to be here for it.
 
On my way up to Logan, Iowa, I counted a half dozen cars that had slid off the highway and were waiting on wreckers to pull them out.  On that day, our high in Logan was a brisk 33° with a light wind.  I'm sure the residents sighed a groan when they had to break out the snow shovels but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Ironically, two weeks later, it hit 103° with another light wind.  That's a 70° change in two weeks.

Incidentally, Iowa was my last state on my bucket list.  I now have visited all 50 states.  How about that?

4/23/2013

My Arizona Weekend

There won't be a lot of narrative on this.  Basically, I rose early Saturday morning and headed north taking a detour through Sedona, Flagstaff and to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

Sunday, I drove up through Page, Arizona across Lake Powell into Utah.

So, here's the pictures.  Click on them to enlarge.

Mountains near Sedona





















Mountain near Flagstaff













Overlook at Grand Canyon visitor's center












Deep and wide












Rugged












Colorado River runs through it












My camera could not capture the grandeur












Dangerously close to the edge










Lake Powell / Glen Canyon












South of Page, Arizona












Back to Phoenix

4/13/2013

Take me out to the ball game ...

Last weekend, while working in Richmond, Virginia, a couple of other employees/friends and I rode up to Baltimore to see the Orioles lose to the Minneapolis Twins 3 to 4.

This is the second professional game I have ever been to.  The first being in Saint Louis to see them and the Diamondbacks play.  There, we were up high in one of the boxes and felt somewhat detached from the game.  In Baltimore, it was an entirely different perspective, being down low near the third base.  I am told that the Baltimore stadium is the first stadium built in the retro fashion, instead  of a stadium that can be used for a variety of events.

I bought the peanuts but forgot the Crackerjacks.

 Swing and a miss!















Double play!















Base hit!

3/11/2013

Daytona Bike Week

Who knows what motivates people do things?   Logically, it was foolish, given the fact that early morning temperatures had been hitting in the 30° range.  Too, a decision was rendered from a conversation happening four days earlier that caused Gary (brother-in-law) and I to plan a last minute motorcycle trip  to Bike Week in Daytona, Florida.  Neither of us are big crowd people but the idea of a long ride was certainly intriguing.

Figuring hotels would be non-existent at that late date, we reserved some "Kabins" at a couple of KOA Kampgrounds.

So, with bikes packed up, we fired up on at sunrise Thursday morning, cut through the swamps and by the time we arrived at the Hammond, Louisiana exit, our hands were burning with cold.   After warming up with a cup of coffee, we continued on east into Mississippi where we stopped often for thawing and a nicotine break for Gary.  Each time we stopped, we would meet other riders headed to the same event.  At one stop, we met a guy whose enthusiasm for a week in Daytona was really overflowing.  We chatted with him a while and as we left, he handed us a business card with his name on it (bikers seem to be getting into business cards these days) and told if we wanted to party and hook up, to look for him.  He'd be wearing a furry white helmet with horns on it......oh yeah, I'll be looking (out) for him for sure.

The first day was somewhat uneventful and we arrived at our reserved KOA Kampground near Chattahoochee, Florida.  Certainly, not the Hilton but it beats having to throw up a tent then take it down and pack it back up if it's wet the next morning.

The next morning, we hit the road early again with temperatures still hardly any better in the early hours.  At a rest stop east of Tallahassee, we stopped for a break where Gary leaned up against his bike and it fell over.  Picking it up, we discovered he had broken a bolt on the right rear shock. It was absolutely nothing to do with maintenance error but just one of those times when road stress took it's toll.  His bike is much younger than mine with less road miles on it.

  We thought about riding on to a repair shop but the tire was rubbing the fender, so now he was immobile.  We had packed open end wrenches, socket sets, screwdrivers, Allen wrenches and even 8 point star sockets.  We had enough tools to overhaul a bike but we needed one thing......we needed a drill to remove the broken stub of the bolt.

Not knowing where any parts or hardware store was located, I began roaming the countryside until I located one in Monticello.  There, I bought a rechargeable drill and bargained with the store to charge it up for me while I went back to find Gary and determine what size bolt we would need.  I took the broken part out and headed back to the Ace Hardware where I retrieved the charged up drill and a couple of grade 8 bolts and some reverse drill bits.

Anyway, after getting back to Gary at the rest stop, where he drilled out the broken stud, we were on the road within 45 minutes and arrived in St. Augustine before dark.

Saturday morning we made the short ride down to Daytona.  As we expected, the road was full of bikes headed that way.  Arriving in Daytona, Main Street was already lined with bikes with no place to park unless we wanted to shell out $7 for the privilege.  We rode around a  couple of times before heading out to the interstate to Bruce Rossmeyer's Harley dealership, arguably the largest in the world.  It along with satellite stores selling anything from leather to Triumph Motorcycles covered acres. 

Back behind that, J & P Cycles has one of their only two brick and mortar stores.  To some, J & P is the holy of holies when it comes to motorcycle parts stores.  You could literally build your own bike from parts out of that store.  All this represented a bigger attraction than the downtown event. 


While Daytona Bike Week is not as wild and crazy as Sturgis, it does have it's sights and curiosities.  One major difference between the two is the type of biker they attract.  While Harley riders are the dominant group, Daytona pulls in the metric rider crowd, with Hondas, Yamahas and Kawasakis. 

It only took a day of these maddening crowds to make us consider
getting back home.  Originally, we had planned on taking two days but checking the weather conditions, we saw a line of thunderstorms and a cold front with it that made us think that a 13 hour ride was a doable thing.

With that in mind, we rode and rode and rode, arriving back home about 9:00 p.m. that night, tired and saddle sore from the experience.  I'm thinking around 680 miles that day.

We even forgot to buy a T-shirt.