Recovery

Sunrise, makai view. Makai means toward or by the sea; seaward.  Ma; directional particle, Kai means the ocean.

Five minutes later

Mauka, towards the mountains (uka inland or upland) 

A joke from Justin the barista at Java Kai. What do you call a surfer without a girlfriend? Homeless.

We are sore today and seriously lacking in energy. I blog, Dan surfs the internet. Dawn, from the canoe club, told me she has a blog and I enjoy reading about her adventures when she first got here. The stories are fun and I understand why people like to read my posts. She even includes a link for Luau Pig. Here is an interesting excerpt. 

"I like watching the birds here.  We have wintering Peeps (sandpipers) here now.  They just started showing up a couple of weeks ago with the trade winds.  What is so interesting is they winter here, but do not stay, and so there are many breed types.  I saw them in CC often but not the variety I’m seeing here.  It is a long flight for them.  Did you know we do not have seagulls?   Some do fly this far but they usually die after arrival as the environment is not what they need here.  I thought that was interesting.  On that subject; we do not have snakes either.  Whenever there is a snake sighting (stowaways from the airlines, etc.) it's a big deal.  There was one sighting I especially remember.  The news was reporting with an interview of two teens who were describing how they saw the snake in the road and, no kidding, demonstrating how they caught it in a trash can.  It was so funny watching this big long news affair and how the great hunters had caught them.  But it truly is a very important thing, even if I do laugh, because Guatemala has a real problem with the brown tree snake.  They have lost 35% of their bird population because of them.  There are direct flights from Guatemala to Honolulu so they search the planes from there and then again when they arrive.  Last year they found 10,000 stowaways.  Another thing we don't have is poison ivy, oak, and sumac.  I really like that as I just go tearing down the trails with no worry."

It's getting dark and my laptop is ready to die. I tear myself away from her blog to go make a salad for dinner. It's pretty cool, getting to know someone this way, tomorrow when I see her it will feel like we go way back!