Maui, Hawaii

Well, obviously we’ve been busy here or I would have found a little more time to write in here before the end of our trip.

Let’s start with the most important things first… I miss my kids! While we’ve been here both Amanda and I think about how much fun they would have playing on the beach, snorkeling, or whatever. This trip was definitely fun for us and good to do alone, but I’m looking forward to spending some time with my children.

Second, we completed our race. It was a 15k (9.3 miles). Amanda did it in 1:41:23 which is under an 11 minute mile… a good time for her. I did it in 1:25:23 which was a 9:10 mile… really fast for me. The course was slightly downhill, which I think helped. The funny thing is Amanda had a really hard time with the heat. Of course, she didn’t follow my lead and try to acclimate when running on the treadmill. During my training I turned up the house heat a notch, had the humidifier on full, and didn’t use our treadmill fan. During the run I felt pretty good. Amanda said she was dying by mile 2 so I think my efforts paid off a bit. The night of the run we went to a luau and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Some of the other highlights from our trip…

We took a day trip over to Molokai. It was a fun trip, although the boat ride was a little rough and Amanda got pretty sea sick. On the way back several people on the boat were getting sick as the seas were typical, but pretty big. We did see a whale breach just a short distance from us, so that helped distract people for a little while. While on Molokai we rented bikes from Phillip. Nice guy; I guess his wife went to Service High and skied cross country in the ’92 Olympics (Silver medal). She still skies out at Kincaid a lot and does a lot of training in Hawaii.

Anyway, Amanda and I rode around the west side of the island, about 20 miles out and 20 back. It was a long ride for my butt – it is still a bit sore – but a very relaxing and pleasant ride. The weather was very pleasant for our entire ride.

We spent another day at Haleakala (http://www.nps.gov/hale/) and did a hike into one of the craters. Again, we lucked out on the weather as the clouds that seem to have been there for our entire trip moved out for the day. The park is a very unique and cool place.

Today is Saturday and we are on our last days. An old college roommate of mine lives on Oahu and is flying over today for lunch. We’ll spend the afternoon with him and his wife, whom I’ve never met, so I’m looking forward to that. Tomorrow we’ll probably take the road to Hana and then out to the airport. We spent yesterday snorkeling and lying on the beach. We saw whales about 50 yards offshore – it was amazing. A baby whale was breaching and playing around his mom and put on an amazing show for us.

Like Amanda said, this is paradise, but this isn’t reality. I miss my kids but am still wrestling with the fact that vacation will end, I’ll have to get my mind back in work gear, and the daily chores will start again. There’s some comfort in that, some longing that the vacation would continue.