Hawaii trip RR

Hey there,

Well as mentioned, we are back. I now have this unknown thing on my finger, not sure what it is. It wasn't there before, now it's there. When I ask Lisa about it, she asks me if I can take it off, to which my reply is no. She says, "Good! Make sure it stays there." All kidding aside though the trip went really well, we had a great time, got hitched, saw many things, experienced even more, and hopefully will be back. I have a date with Haleakala Crater to keep. I have our pictures up on a link under the blog/pictures column.

Sooo we got there Saturday the 20th. It gets dark there quick around 6pmish so we rented our car and found our way pretty easily away from the airport(Kahului) on Maui to our little hotel room at the best western in Kihei. There are no big cities on Maui just towns with roads where the speed limit is usually 45 mph or around 70 km p/h. I actually enjoyed the slow speeds, it actually makes a difference to take away lots of the road race, hustle and bustle of a big city like Calgary. I think we may have checked in around 8pm which feels like midnight. Cause it is dark and cause heck it's midnight back home so I think we walked out to the beach for a lil midnight stroll. The sand is soooo amazing, it's soo fine, not like the gravelly sand we have here in Canada. Then we went to bed and woke up fairly early, again cause of the time change.

Sunday we had to ourselves, we went for Breakfast at Dennys right near by. Yes some pleasantries of home, although when I ordered ice tea I forgot it would be the regular American no sugar kind. In Hawaii I kept forgetting that this is a state cause of the natives as well as the 3rd world appearance. It's not that poor or anything, just looks 3rd worldish at times, I can't really explain it. Anyways I had to keep reminding myself that we were in the US. We right aways noticed that people were friendlier and the stress level is generally lower like I mentioned with the driving slower, etc. Hmmmm I don't think we did anything structured Sunday we basically just came back to the hotel after a bit of shopping and hung out on the beach. The temp was pretty much 30 the whole time we were there, although I never checked. I went for a swim, noticed there was a bouy up a lil south of us and swam to it. No sooner had I gotten there and a swimming race started on the beach. So they swam directly out to the bouy(maybe 400m out?) then along parallel to the beach south. I asked one of the kyakers how far they were going. 1.7 was the answer, "1.7 kms? oh right 1.7 miles, hee hee" Stupid Canadian. ha ha. They figured I was taking a head start, but no I'm just watching. I got out of the way and watched as they came by, maybe 100-200 of them. The leader already had maybe a 10 meter lead. He looked to be flying!! Hawaiian's love to swim uh. Later on I noticed driving by a pool, you know how we have a couple lanes roped off for lap swimming in our pools? Well this one had two 25yard pools, both ALL roped off for lap swimming. You could def. tell that swimming is taken more seriously here. The biking not so much, I only saw a couple TT bikes, most people cruise around on the cruiser type bikes often with out helmets. I went for a run on the beach barefoot, I think I did this 3 times in the week that we were there. It was amazing running barefoot for a lil over 2 miles (there and back type thing along our beach). We also got some groceries sunday too, ummmm oh yeah the night we got there we went to a restarant on the beach called Sarentos. Wow it was kinda pricey, we pretty much grabbed the cheapest things on the menu and only one drink each and it was 80 bucks.

Monday was our first structured day(structured meaning a scheduled item). We had to meet with someone to finalize our marriage license. At first we went to the wrong house, called them several times, then figured out we had the wrong house number. When we got to the correct house there was a bit of a line so we had to wait. Fill out some papers, have a bit of an interview and pay the lady. I find it amusing that twice now we've seen on forums the line that asks our relation?? Like how am I related to Lisa, brother, sister, cousin?? Yikes, luckily we put NONE, ha ha. Think we did some shopping, and back to the beach we go. Then we planned to go to this steak house that we had heard about. Someone we sat beside us who wouldn't stop talking about stuff to do in Maui told us about the place. I just wrote all she said off, you know in one ear out the other. Like how are we ever supposed to find the places you're talking about??? However with a small Island like Maui and a fiance that remembers tiny details Lisa was able to find the restaurant through Google maps. We drove there pretty easily, it was in Makawao(another lil town) but it was closed on monday. Booooooo, we were starving at that point. So ummmm where did we go. I can't remember, oh right we went to Iao Needle park. You'll see that in the pictures, it's the tall pinnacle looking thing. Apparently it's really historical, the natives used it to retreat to in wars since it was easy to defend and they could see their enemies coming from a long ways off. Why can't we all get along??

Sorry for forgetting what went where I'm recalling the memories a week after the fact, kinda hard for me. At least I remember the important one right? Tuesday, our wedding day. Lisa needed some time in our cosey lil room for her hair. She had hired a local to come do her hair up, put some flowers in as you will see in the pics. I went to the beach, heh heh perfect start to a wedding day, a swim and a run barefoot on the beach. I got back and Lisa had her hair mostly done. I readied myself and hit our first and only snag of the week/day. My pants.... I had bought my suit from Moores. Now I'm not the suit wearing type, this was my first official suit that I had bought. I hadn't tryed them on since they hemmed them. But they had them for like a month to ready them, then I went in for a final fitting, it was a 15 minute deal where we waited while they just did the finishing touches. How the F$%# could they swap my pants with some short fat guy? At first I thought we'll just make shift tailor them to work, but with a 46 inch waist there is just no way, plus they didn't even come past my ankles. Arg, so for a bit here I was stressed, I probably went through every emotion in the matter of a few minutes. Anger, depression, pity, more Anger, more Anger, helplessness. Lisa handled it well, she was calmer then me, what the.... it's supposed to be the girl who's supposed to freak about the smallest thing. Ummm this wasn't exactly small. Anyways our pastor was already at the hotel waiting for us. We finally went to him explained the situation. He also was calm saying somthing like, "Friend, if that's the worst of your problems on your wedding day you are doing GREAT!!" He was so calm and took us to a suit/wedding dress store(where we had been before to check about getting lisa's dress steamed, but it was too expensive so we didn't) so I walked into this store where we had refused their services just the day before. I can't remember feeling so lame, so embarrassed, so stupid(for not trying on my pants before we left). It was the same lady too, and yes she remembered me, but was also super nice. She also agreed with the pastor don't sweat it we'll just rent you some pants and you can be on your way. She quickly measured me up and gave me the pants that immediatly fit no adjustments needed. Wowzers that was a relief, ok off the wedding. We were lucky that there was a bit of cloud cover, so I found it hot in the suit, but bareable actually. Well the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, you can basically see how it went, we had the ceremony on the beach, had the bubbly(with out alc. in it they're really strict about alc. on the beach), cake and took off to a resort to take the pictures by the water falls. The pastor took the pics and we picked the cd up from him later on in the week after he had edited some and deleted the bad ones, although most of them turned out really well as you can see. Then back to the hotel for a bit then off to a dinner cruise. You can see more pics of us on the dinner cruise. The meal was delicious, we ordered chicken, although Lisa started getting sea sick so she couldn't eat much of it. :( Towards the end she was feeling quite aweful and we were happy to get back onto shore. We hung out in that town a little more (Lahaina) and drove home, man it gets dark quick, although like already mentioned it works well with our time difference. So much so that when we came back home it wasn't that bad getting back into our mountain time again since we kept going to bed early out there.

Wednesday, ahhhh the wedding is over. Not that I stress that much, Lisa almost gets annoyed how relaxed I am about stuff like that. Although the pants ordeal had me pretty stressed. I remember driving to the wedding in the car, just getting over the pants thing. She and I were still a bit stressed and she mentioned that, "We're supposed to be happy on our wedding day", I replied with "We will don't worry" and we both burst out laughing. You had to be there, it was hilarious, anyways we put the whole pants thing behind us and went forward and had a blast. Wednesday we decided to do the Haleakala crater. Sooo we got up at like 2:30 am, who of you can say you did that the night after your wedding!!! We had to get up that early to make the long drive up the mountain and get there before the sun rises. You wouldn't believe how popular it is. Trust me the pictures don't do it justice. The sunrise up there at 10,000 ft it is amazing!!! and cold too!! I was like one of the only ones still wearing shorts and sandels. The drive was scary doing at night cause the roads are narrow and most of it has no guards rails so you don't know how much of a drop off it is. We even saw a fire from up there while we drove, I hope it was just a sugar cane field. We made the mistake of packing no food, only juices and water. So the juice had to fill us up, good thing we weren't riding it!!! Although I do want to come back and ride it. It's 35 miles from the foot of the mountain, if you rode from the ocean it'd be more climbing then that. A buddy from work here has done it(he's quite the cyclist) and says the grade is really tough at times too. I guess I'd have to rent a bike out here(Maui, not my work office). We finally made it out to the steak house too that the local on the plane had raved about. It was delicious.

Thursday we went for a helecopter ride, in the morning also. Aughhhh I didn't get to sleep in much, good thing I woke up naturally early cause of the time change. We found Air Maui ok, right near the airport, go figure! I don't know how long the flight was, anyways we flew north along the north eastern part of the island and across the water to another more remote island. There we saw plenty of cliffs, swimming holes, fish ponds(they build ponds to allow fish to swim in during high tide, then catch them during low tide, brilliant!!) more cliffs and water falls. You can see them on the pics, nothing more to say about this. Not sure what else we did, I think we drove to Lahaina for dinner. One of the other tourists had told us about a really good burger place named "Cool Cat" so we went there and true to his word, it was awesome! In Lahaina they have a tree that takes up nearly a whole city block. The center trunk is huge with dif. parts splitting off in dif. directions and the trunks go to other trunks going into the ground that are all connected. It is amazing and I have some pics of this, but it's hard to picture really with out being there.

Friday we went kyaking/snorkling. We met the guide at like 7:30? Another non-sleeping in day, aughhh. Oh well we got going after he had given us some instruction. Lisa and I got going and seemed to work ok(you have to work together in a 2 person kyak). It seemed to always pull to one side, was it Lisa pulling more on one side or the ocean swells/waves? Anyways we got to our spot and got set up. Lisa doesn't swim well so she kept her life jacket on and jumped in too. At first she kept her hand on the kyak and just looked down, but with some instruction and confidence she could let go and paddle around often holding on to my hand. It was amazing and we both enjoyed it thoroghly. We got to see lots of turtles while kyaking none snorkling.... yet. Later on Lisa started getting sick again so we had to call it short a bit. That was a downer for Lisa, she felt so bad for having to go back. Oh well we decided to rent our own snorkle gear. Some of the good diving I could reach by swimming from shore. So we hung out at the beach for the rest of the day, maybe went to Denny's again. We also spent plenty of our evenings lying on the beach. It's soooo cool to be able to do that, the fine soft sand under your feet, temp perfect for lying in shorts, shirt optional(for me that is).

Saturday we had breakfast at Denny's again and rented the snorkling gear. Oh wait we rented the gear the day before so we could go in the morning. Today I think was the only day we slept past 9 am. That was kinda nice, then we went to the same beach where we had started with the kyaks the day before. We had got Lisa a floaty vest so she could float and I pulled her out to some deeper water, although not too far. She was fine as long as I was near by and we had a ball following all the fishies around and I had bought a water proof disposible camera and took some pics. Most of the fish didn't turn out, but later on I went to some deeper water further off and got some really nice shots of some turtles. These creatures are amazing!! They live to over a hundred years old and it's very clear why. Their only real preditor is sharks and I think that must be rare. They really aren't bothered by humans, I hear some people will grab a hold of their shells and ride them. I thought I could just hang out and take pics with out grabbing them. I did however push one a lil as he was coming up for air beside me. The one I saw under the shell looking thing looked to be 4-5 ft. long. and I hear they weigh nearly 800 pnds, yikes!! I could probably outrun one, and it didn't look like they could swim that fast, or maybe they didn't care to. They could probably snap my arm in two with their powerful jaws, but they didn't seem to mind sharing their coral reefs with me. I think we bonded. :)

Oh well that was pretty much it, we left at like 8:50 for L.A. flew through the night and arrived in Calgary at around 11am including a couple hours stop over in L.A. Loved the trip and would like to go back. The next day Lisa was napping and suddenly she rolled over and burst out laughing, she was about to ask if I'd like to go lay on the beach. ha ha so that's been the ongoing joke since we've been back. We ask if the other wants to go, then we start to cry. There were properties out there for 400k, hmmmmm we just need to get the U.S. to let us stay and of course jobs.... minor details. ha ha, anyways I should get some work done here. Cheers,

Darryl