“Of all the timezones, God loves Hawaii the most.”
I rolled over this morning expecting it to be long past 4am because I had woken up so many times that I was sure I had overslept our 6:30 wake up alarm.
Looking over Lester’s body to the clock I had to giggle. “4am.”
He said, “Ready to get up?” He was awake too and ready to start our day.
Yesterday we did a shore dive outside the resort we are staying at. We wanted to test out the underwater camera and the ‘water resistant’ box we got to put the electronic key to the car in so we can beach dive in other places. The camera housing held up wonderfully. The water resistant box is not waterproof.
There is this large military ship/boat docked out by our resort. It’s a really good distance away, but I was sure we could swim out to it. I had forgotten how heavy scuba gear is when you have to haul it down to a beach, put it on, swim to the dive spot, drop down and dive for 20 minutes, swim back and then haul it all back up…soaking wet with noodles for arms and legs.
I did really well on the way out there. When the dive was over I looked back at the shoreline that looked about 20 miles away. In my head I little conversation that went just like this; “Fuuuuuuuckkkk meeeee. I did NOT think this all the way through. Okay, Kristine we are going to just swim and keep swimming and aim for the middle of the resort. I got this.”
That little pep talk got me about half way there and that’s when I realized I wasn’t using my legs when I was swimming. I was doing this little kid kicking and had resorted to dog paddling. It was time to pep talk myself again, “Oh knock this shit off Kristine and kick your goddammn legs! “ I took off again and with little doubts of being able to make it slipping in and having to squash them down we made it back to the beach. A huge wave came and I let it pick me up and I walked right up on the beach. It wasn’t the image I had in my head the whole time I was swimming back in. The scene in my head involved me crawling up, spitting salt water, crying and grabbing my cramping legs.
Nope. It was yet another moment where I realized I am so much stronger than I give myself credit for. I’m physically stronger than I thought I was.
Lester and I went over to our friend’s house and helped him fix his boat and then afterward he took me up to Lahaina where we walked around and went into all these shops. I found Alyx’s necklace I told her I would get her. This was my strategy to make sure Alyx loved it; pick what my sister Kathy would love and Alyx will love it.
With Marina, I knew what she wanted, but I had no idea what design she would want. After a few days of pricing every single hippy bag I could find I finally found a place that was reasonable and I took a picture and texted it to her to ask her what design she liked. She picked the one I would have NEVER picked for her. Two of the 4 girls are taken care of and now I just need to find Kara and Shea their gifts and since Lester likes to shop, I won’t need to panic and do last minute airport shopping.
Today we are doing a double boat dive to work on the reef. I’ve never done this before, but we are putting on all our gear then putting a whole other gear set together and then taking it down with us. When we run out of air we just take off our gear and move over into the other gear. This will make it so we don’t have to resurface and change tanks.
Depending on how tired we are after working on the reef, Lester said he will take me to the 7 sacred pools and down the road to Hana. I am almost TOO excited about this.
I was talking to Marina and Alyx back at home and they said it’s freezing and off and on raining. The woman at the hot tub last night mentioned post vacation depression. Thinking about going back already is sad. It’s days away, but I want to make sure I don’t miss a moment and memory.
It’s only Tuesday and I since my day is starting out at 4am, I have hours to go make those memories!!