I Want to Ride My Bicycle

I want to ride my bike, I want to ride my bicyle, I want to ride it where I like!!

I couldn't help but channel Queen's "Bicycle Race" on my bike ride this morning. The song is a joyful anthem, and how could I feel anything less on my awesome new bike?

This my Giant Seek 2. I love it. I love it so much I want to write it love letters and attach them to the spokes of my awesome road tires.

I did a short bike ride yesterday to grab breakfast from Cane & Taro in Whaler's Village, so I decided to go for a bit longer of a ride today in the opposite direction.

I went south on the highway towards Olowalu.

Halfway out, I got flagged down by my roommate, Joy, who was out surfing. I swung in to say hi, chug some water and flew back out on the highway.

About 5.4 miles out, I stopped at this roadside stand for a breakfast smoothie before heading back home.

At the juice stand, I ran into two women who also parked their bikes here for a break. They are from New Mexico, but are currently living in Portland for work. What a small world!

After slurping down my strawberry banana smoothie (yeah, I know, not a very tropical or Hawaiian choice--just call me a plain Jane), I hopped back on my bike and pedaled home. An eleven mile bike ride is not a bad way to start the morning!

I am off to grab lunch at Amigo's for some surprisingly authentic Mexican food.

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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.

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Speaking Humpback

I went whale watching with the fantastic crew on the Spirit of Lahaina, and we were absolutely mobbed by Humpback Whales yesterday. It was fantastic!

I have to include a little Finding Nemo clip of Dory "speaking whale."

The first whale sighting was a mama and baby traveling together. The baby was having a blast breaching out of the water. Look at how white his belly is!

Then we were ambushed by a pair of larger adult whales. One of them took off for waters unknown, but this guy stuck with us.

He was so curious! He kept "spy hopping" or sticking his out of the water to get a better look at us.

And then he came right up to the boat. The white rounded edge in the photo below is the bow of the boat I was riding.

Lots more spy hops from this big fella:

Full-grown Humpback Whales are about the size of a school bus.

He was having so much fun with us! He kept swimming around and under our boat making us run from side to side so we could keep watching him. He also rolled over and laid on is back.

Look how close he got to us! He flicked his tail up out of the water, and if any one of us were brave enough, we could have touched him!

Here he is lifting his pectoral fin out of the water. It's almost as if he is waving hello!

Every year, Humpbacks migrate from their feeding grounds in Alaska to the warmer waters of Hawaii to breed and give birth. While in Hawaii, the grown Humpbacks don't eat since the warmer waters here are sparse on their meal of choice: krill.

The only whales eating in Hawaii are the babies (or calves) since they are still drinking their mothers' milk.

The baby whales always travel with their mother, and the mother will often stay very close to her calf--often touching it with their flippers (possibly a sign of affection) as they swim.

It seems that every time I blog about whale watching, I'm always saying "best whale watch ever!" It's amazing that every time I go out, I manage to see them so close and capture some great whale behavior on camera.

This last trip out was definitely the BEST whale watch yet. The whales are here through April, so I hope you don't get tired of whale photos because there are more to come!

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I am a Major Book Junkie

...also known as so many books, so little time!

I got a little overzealous at the bookstore and library, and now I have a small tower of books on my bedside table that I desperately want to rip into, but I have learned the hard way that I have a difficult time reading multiple books at the same time.

I think this was something I learned in college when at any given time I was reading 4 to 5 different texts for my classes as well as trying to read my own leisure book. Needless to say, I got a little confused.

If you are interested, this is what is on my nightstand:

I am a couple hundred pages into this book. I haven't been totally swept up into the story yet, but I feel like this is one of those books that is totally going to blindside me with some crazy imaginative twists.

I am taking a quick break from it as I am currently devouring:

David Cullen's "Columbine" is a riveting, meticulously researched account of the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. I remember when this happened, but I also remember all the initial accounts and theories of what happened inside the school and what led these two students to murder their fellow classmates. A lot of the information we first heard regarding this incident was false. David Cullen's well-researched book is eye-opening. It is by no means an easy read, but it's definitely worth trying.

I saw this at the library and had to pick it up. It makes me think of the German Fairy Tales class I took at Lewis & Clark College.

Maybe with a little inspiration I'll get the spark to write something that goes further than just posting on the blog.

I haven't read any Lamott yet, and this one sounds like a doozy.

I've been thinking a lot of about how and what I eat, and I have even considered the possibility of going vegan over time. Before I make any major changes to my lifestyle, I figured I would do some more research. I have only heard good things about Nestle's hefty book. I'll let you know what I think.

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Poached Perfection!

I decided to forgo my morning run to mimic the Eggs Benedict I got at Longhi's yesterday. As I was boiling water for my poached eggs, I chopped up a quarter onion, de-stemmed about 3 small fistfuls of fresh spinach and got out my jar of chopped garlic.

I sauteed the onion, followed by spinach and then dropped in some garlic as the spinach wilted. I topped it with salt and pepper.

I poached my eggs one-at-a-time in almost simmering hot water that had a splash of white vinegar in it.

When the eggs were done, I let them drain on a paper towel before putting them on top of my sauteed spinach. Voila! Perfectly poached eggs for breakfast!

I tried to take photographic evidence but the shots came out blurry. You will just have to trust me when I say that it was delicious, and I will continue to repeat the experience until I go through my entire carton of eggs. Or until I get sick of eating poached eggs. Will such a thing ever happen? Stay tuned! Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

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Breakfast at Longhi's

I have always been captivated by the decadent breakfast menu at Longhi's on Front Street in Lahaina, and after one of my coworkers told me that their Eggs Benedict is the best on the island I had to go try it for myself.

Nicole and I each got their Eggs Benedict. She went traditional with ham and I got mine done Florentine style: poached eggs served on a bed of wilted spinach.

Both dishes were served on thick slabs of perfectly toasted French bread. The eggs were perfectly poached and invoked poaching envy (I have been attempting to poach eggs at home for the past 2 weeks now with uneven but mild success).

I got my Hollandaise sauce on the side and used it as more of a dipping sauce as needed. Our breakfast was so good and inspiring that I am going to have to try making it at home!

It was so good, that I didn't leave a single speck of it uneaten.

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Vanity Project

Joy, my roommate who is also a rockin' photographer, helped me film a special project (of which you'll hear more of much, much later).

We began in our backyard where I was bombarded my mosquitoes. We took photographic evidence of some bites (see back and above elbow):

We fled the backyard and headed to the beach. After we were done filming, I gave Joy my camera and told her to try catching me at my most photogenic.

My fearless and talented photographer, Joy:

She did her best with a testy and challenging subject. I only post this ridiculous collection of portraits because I have realized that there are not very many photos of me on this blog, and I don't want you to forget what I look like!

That's my frowny face. I guess I was upset about all the bug bites.

A pretty nice sandcastle at the 505 Beach!

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More Whale Soup

Before we get started, I wanted to edit this post to add that you can view any of these photos in mega-size simply by clicking on the photo. Then hit the "back" button your browser to get back to my blog.

The captain and crew of the Spirit of Lahaina very nicely allowed me to come aboard for another whale watch today.

While we were out on the water Kelly, one of the great crew members on board, and I talked about how amazing our last trip together was. If you don't remember, we were practically held hostage by a pod of whales that were playing around and under our boat.

Kelly and I hoped for more good action today, and we were not disappointed. At the end of our trip, Kelly told me that the whales must know I'm out there since I've always had good luck when I'm aboard.

Just call me the Whale Whisperer!

I LOVE this photo. You can get a better idea of scale on how huge these Humpback Whales are. The arm on the left side of the photo belongs to a customer on board. You can see how close the whales came to the boat, and how massive they are!

It's not uncommon to come across quite a few baby whales traveling with their mothers. One pod we came across today was of a baby whale, its mother and a few males (an escort and some possible suitors). The baby whale was resting on its mother's back while she kept it close to the surface.

A little tail action.

Whales are curious too! This adult humpback whale is "spy hopping," where it is lifting its head out of the water so it can get a good look at us.

Some more tail. General rule of thumb: when the tail goes up, the whale is going down! When you see the fluke (or whale tail), the whale is beginning its descent into the ocean.

The Trilogy catamaran was our whale watching buddy today. We were often following each other to get to the whales.

This pod cruised right past them. I love how excited everyone is on their boat!

You can see the humpback in the back has a great deal of its head out of the water.

A little more tail action.

And more spy hopping.

At about this point the whales had just dove down, and the Trilogy and our boat were anxiously waiting for them to reappear. I was on the lower deck, and Kelly (who was on the upper deck) and I began talking about our great experience we had two weeks ago. As we were talking, a humpback whale leapt out the water in a full, fantastic breach (this is where they are literally throwing themselves out of the water into the sky). We both were able to see the whale leap out of the water and come thundering back into the ocean with gallons of spray. Unfortunately, neither of us caught it on camera. But it was crazy amazing. The whale was less than a hundred feet away from us. This was the second close proximity breach we saw on today's trip but neither of us have photos of either event.

That's the thing with trying to photograph whales. It's all about luck.

One last little tail before we turned home.

The video above was footage from the very end of our whale watching trip today. All the whales are diving down, so we got to see plenty of tail. My favorite part of the video is listening to everyone on the boat cheering the whales on. Whales have great hearing and they are curious. The more noise (whistling, playing whale calls and even blowing a conch shell as they do on board the Spirit of Lahaina) you make, the more likely they will come on over to check you out.

I can't wait for my next trip out to see the whales! A huge thank you to the captain and crew of the Spirit of Lahaina. You guys are fantastic!

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