It's Been a Little Quiet

I apologize for being a little absent here for the past week. I've been scheduled to work five days in a row at the restaurant, which has been unusually busy for me. Typically I work 2 days, then have a day or two off before coming back in to work another 2 days. This has allowed me to roam a little bit more, snap lots of photos and take time to share it all with you.

Tomorrow is my "Friday," and I'm looking forward to the break. I don't have anything planned except for going on a long bike ride...

...on my brand new bike!

When I first moved to Maui I was able to borrow a friend's Electra Beach Cruiser for two weeks before I had to buy my own mode of transportation. I ended up buying a shoddily made mountain bike from a guy who practically welds random bike pieces together. It was a fine enough ride for short distances in town, but it was definitely not fast or light enough to take out of my neighborhood, Lahaina.

After a lot of griping about the bad bike and pining for a good bike, I decided to do some research to find the best bike for me. No mountain bike, no road racing bike, something in between...and what do you know, people make "hybrid" bikes that combine the best of both worlds, and these bikes are typically marketed towards commuters like me!

I went to West Maui Bicycles yesterday with my friend from work and bought a 2 month old Giant Seek 2. It's a great bike, and I have had a blast zooming on short trips around town. I feel like a little kid. On my zippy ride home last night from the restaurant, I couldn't help but think, "Damn, I'm fast! Fast as lightning!" This is absolute hyperbole, but it's amazing what a difference I can feel from upgrading to a vastly superior brand name bike from something that was welded together in someone's backyard and then spray painted orange.

I even got a rack for the back of my bike so I can haul around goodies...like groceries, or fresh fruits and veggies from the Farmer's Market in Honokowai, or a beach bag for when I bike to new beaches!

I promise to post photos of my fancy new bike soon. I'm sure you are all breathless with anticipation.

Please be assured that I haven't just been working full steam for the past week, I've been getting in some leisurely reading in as well. You saw my previous book list, and now I picked up something new from the library: Neil Gaiman's collection of short fiction called "Fragile Things." I read through his introduction to the book last night, and I had to share with you this long-ish excerpt:

As I write this now, it occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.

Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas--abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken--and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.

Neil Gaiman has certainly created stories that have lasting power, and I highly recommend you find and read his very scary, very chilling version of "Snow White" titled "Snow. Glass. Apples." You will not be sorry. I promise.