Scuba Diving Kauai

One of my favorite adventures on Kauai was scuba diving.  We decided to do our scuba dive at Tunnels Beach.  It's famous for a a barrier reef with tunnels that go through it.  That sounded fun and exciting, so how could I pass it up?

We had to be at Tunnels Beach at 8 AM on Wednesday.  It turns out Tunnels Beach is really hard to find.  There are no signs for it at all.  There is a little road that goes to the beach, but it isn't marked, and it's not anywhere near where Google says the entrance to the beach is. We eventually pulled up to that little road and I walked down it.  I found the people we were Scuba diving with, and they told us to park at Haena Beach which was a quarter mile down the road.

Robyn was stressing out (like she does) but we got there and got suited up without any problems.  They gave us wetsuits and put all the gear on us.  We got in the water and had to swim out to where we actually began the dive.  It took us a a minute to get back into the groove of how to move with all the gear and everything.  But once I was back in the water, everything went super smooth and it was great.

We saw some really cool things while diving.  Here are a few of them.

Swimming underneath a turtle

A sleeping turtle

Seeing an eel

Swimming through a tunnel

We did a two tank dive, which means you do one dive and then come back and get another tank to go out for more.  In between dives, they gave us snacks and our dive masters acted as sherpas, hauling the empty tanks from where we left them in the water and replacing them with full tanks, so that we could put them on in the water and not have to haul them down ourselves.

It turns out I breathe way more than Robyn.  Near the end of our first dive, I told the dive master I was down to 200 PSI in my tank, so he told me to go to the surface.  At that point, I took the regulator out of my mouth and put in the snorkel.  I snorkeled directly above Robyn.  She didn't see me go up, so she continued to follow the group.  She said she was a little concerned that she couldn't find me, but she trusted that the dive master was taking care of me. She didn't realize that I was snorkeling directly above her.  I just continued to follow her until she was ready to surface.  I never lost sight of my dive buddy, even if she didn't know where I was.

All in all, it was super fun.  It was a little more work than a boat dive, because we had to swim out from the shore, but it was still really cool.  We had planned to snorkel at Tunnels Beach after our dive was over, but we were much more tired than we had anticipated, and we realized we wouldn't see anything snorkeling that we hadn't already seen diving.

So instead of snorkeling after diving, we went back to the condo and took a nap.

Naps are a great part of Hawaii too.

Crabbing

There's something you should know.  Crabbing is pretty much the coolest thing ever.  Although, you should also know that the crabbing I did was nothing like Deadliest Catch.  It was not remotely deadly, and I really liked it that way.

We went to Taft Beach, which is just a couple miles from where we were staying in Lincoln City.  That's the official place to go crabbing.  The beach drops off pretty quickly, so you can cast into pretty deep water fairly easily.  (I'm sure there are other reasons why this beach is great, but that's the main reason that I was able to observe.  I also observed that I was able to catch a bunch of them, so there's that too.)

A friend of mine had loaned me the trap, so I took it to the beach and just did my thing.  There was a nice family who had been there crabbing all day and a couple teenage kids took me under their wing and taught me how to work the magic.

The trap is basically a net with a hook in the middle.   You put a piece of chicken (I used chicken legs) on the hook and you cast out the net.  It opens up on the sea floor and then when you pull it in the net closes up and catches anything that might be chowing down.  When you pull it out of the water, your job is to shout for joy at all the crabs you bring in.

It's not too difficult, but there was a little bit of a learning curve as far as figuring out how to aim your cast, figuring out how long to wait before pulling it in, and things like that.

The first time I cast it out, I pulled in one tiny precious cute little crab.  Naturally, I took a selfie with it.

At first, I was so excited that there was anything in the net, that I took a picture with everything I got.

As time went on, I either get better at it (what I like to believe) or just got more lucky (a very real possibility).  I brought in some pretty big hauls.  Like this one below.

Here's a video of me bringing in some goodness.

You'll notice that Robyn told me to throw them back after I pulled them in.  You are only allowed to keep males that are really big.  (There's a certain size they have to meet, but I don't remember what it was exactly.)  As my teenage friends were training me, one of the things they asked me was if I had a bucket.  I told them I was just there for fun and wasn't planning on keeping anything.  But I told them if I caught anything that was legal, I would give it to them.

It took me a good 90 minutes of casting the net, but I finally caught a Goliath sized one that was a full inch bigger than it needed to be.  I got a picture with it and then gave it to my little friends.

They were super excited about it.  They had been there all day (we got there in the afternoon) and they only had 2 so far.  Mine was bigger than the 2 they already had.

After I gave them the big one, they made even more effort to give pointers to other newbies.  I think they realized that helping others be successful was a good investment.  (But I should note, that they helped me out before there was any promise of reward.)

But don't worry.  Lest you think that I missed out on great seafood by not cooking up the crab that I caught, we went to Mo's which overlooks Taft Beach.  We had delicious seafood and we didn't even have to cook it.

Robyn wasn't very into the crabbing, but she was much more into eating amazing clam chowder while we looked out at the beach.

That's the last of my writing about Lincoln City.  But don't worry, there's more to come about the rest of our Oregon vacation.

Road Tripping to Lincoln City

Robyn and I recently got back from a fabulous road trip to Oregon.  It was quite the adventure, and we had a fabulous time.  Over the next few posts, I will chronicle some of the highlights of our trip.

The first destination on our trip was Lincoln City.  Fun fact: Lincoln City, Oregon is really far away from Lehi, Utah.  It took us about 14 hours of driving to get there.   I actually really enjoy road trips.  I love the time alone with Robyn.  I love just putting it on cruise control and watching the world go by.

And, of course I love sing-along time.

Robyn prepared a packet of fun for the road.  She had such things as Mad Libs, the license plate game, a list of get to know you questions and other madness.  I should note, we rocked the license plate game.  We saw the license plates of 45 states (including both Alaska and Hawaii), but we also did some extra credit and got 4 Canadian provinces.  With our extra credit included we have 49/50 which is 98%, a solid A.

I told Robyn we should drive to the east coast to pick up the last few we needed.

I mentioned above that I really do enjoy road trips.  However, the 14 hours to get out there was just a little much.  (We did it over 2 days.  We drove to Twin Falls, Idaho after work on Friday, but that was still 10 hours on Saturday.)  When we pulled in to Lincoln City, I told Robyn that I was done driving for life.  I made her drive the 1 mile from our condo to go out to eat.  Luckily, I was over my hatred of driving by the next day so I was able to drive again.

Once the road trip part was over, it was time for the fun to begin.  Lincoln City is such a chill place.  Our condo was right on the beach, so we loved to just sit and look at the crashing waves.  We opened the windows so the breeze could come in, and it was amazing.

This was one of our favorite things.  It's like a picnic on the beach without the sand.

Of course, we loved relaxing in the condo, but I clearly wasn't going to be that close to the ocean and not get wet.  One of my favorite things on this trip was waking up early while Robyn was still sleeping and going on walks along the beach to discover all the various forms of life.

I learned this is called a moon jellyfish.

There were some tide pools not far away.  I liked to walk over to them and see what I could see.

A starfish chillaxing

An open shell where a mussel once lived.

Lest you think that Robyn didn't enjoy the ocean either, she did come to the tide pools with me once as well, it was just later in the day after she was done sleeping.

Just hanging out with a whole bunch of mussels.

I even got her to touch the ocean once.

Lincoln City was even amazing at night.  As the sun started to get low in the sky, campfires started popping up on the beach near our condo.  Naturally, we had to participate at least once.  We just gathered drift wood on the beach, and we didn't have a ton of it so our fire didn't last long, but I feel we got enough of the experience.

I make this cute little baby fire look good.

Robyn makes it look even better.

I think one of my favorite things was watching the sunset over the ocean.

 One night, Robyn captured the moon and venus shining in the sky during the sunset.

As you can see, Lincoln City was pretty fantastic.  But probably the coolest thing in Lincoln City was when I went crabbing.  So stay tuned for the next post when I tell you about that.

Goodbye to the Lake House

I've written a number of times about our various trips to Bear Lake.  It's been an oft visited place made possible by some good friends of ours.  These friends own a house there and have been gracious enough to let us take a number of fantastic trips where we've stayed there.  (Even as recent as just a few weeks ago.)

Recently, they made the decision to sell the Lake House.  Of course, since it makes sense for them to sell it, then obviously I wanted it to sell for their sake.  However, there was a small part of me that secretly hoped that it would stay on the market forever.

About a week ago we received word that the selfish part of me was going to have to be disappointed because the house had sold.  However, we did get the chance to have one last hurrah this past weekend with a few other couples.

We had a great time, even if I had to cry inside as we said goodbye to a house filled with happy memories.

But here are some of the fun things we did.

We flitted and floated in tubes.  Of course, naturally we didn't get any pictures of us floating in the tubes.

But we did get one of me on the shore with it stuck on my belly.

And we got one of Robyn looking so cute as she stands in the tube in a foot of water.

Despite the lack of photographic evidence, you'll have to trust me that we did do some floating.  Although, I'll admit that it wasn't very long because the water was pretty cold since it's still early in the season.

Due to the cold, we spent a lot longer in the kayaks because they were more up out of the water.  Robyn was possibly the cutest kayaker that ever lived.  (I personally interviewed everyone that has ever sat in a kayak and I have verified Robyn was the cutest of them all.)  Look at this cute kayaking video below.  (You probably didn't even think that kayaking could be cute before, did you?)

Do you want to see her kayaking in an animation?  Of course you do!

She's cute no matter what media you view her in.

I wasn't nearly as cute, so I'll just include a picture of me.

Probably the best part of kayaking was when I tried to take a video of Robyn and got off balance and nearly capsized.  Here is an excellent point of view video of what it's like to fail at kayaking.

It's been a tradition since I was a small child that you always swim, float, or whatever transportation you choose, to get to the buoy.  Naturally, we kayaked out there.  Look how precious Jared and Lindsi were.

Of course, there was excitement back on the shore as well.

Robyn made sure to steal a small child for a while.  An important part of every vacation.

Robyn also found a fellow teacher so she could talk about boring teacher stuff.  

Alas, eventually our day had to come to an end.  We returned to the house, cleaned it up one last time, and said our goodbyes.  I made Robyn give the house a hug so that we could take a goodbye picture.

Look at that sad face.

All in all, it was a great weekend.  We're super glad we got to have a last hurrah there.  I'm sad in my heart that it won't happen again, but I'm glad for the Stevensons that they were able to sell it.

P.S. Have you seen Google stories?  This is a story that Google made for me to illustrate the weekend.  I added the captions, but everything else was all Google.  Not a bad little feature, am I right?

Pi Day 2014

As you know, Robyn and I celebrate pi day every year.  What's that you say?  You don't know about pi day?  That's terribly embarrassing.  Do you know what pi is?   You don't?!?!?!? Do you at least know what pie is?  Okay, good.  If you didn't know what that was, I was just going to have to ask you to leave.

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.  It is approximately 3.14.  March 14th (3/14) is pi day.  How do you think we celebrate pi day?  With pie, of course.

This year was a very successful event.  We had lots of delicious pie and I ate way more than  I should.  I was rewarded this morning with the scale explaining that today is a fat day.

Here are a few highlights of our pi day extravaganza.

This is just a small portion of all the pies we had.  The bottom left was the first place winner.

Robyn put this cute mobile on our door.  She's fancy like that.

One of the most important parts of our pi day celebration is the judging of the pies.  We always bring in culinary experts to judge the taste of the pies.  These experts are people who use words like "earthy" or "nutty".  You know, words that normal people can't define in relation to food.  This year's expert judges were my friend Dave and my friend Melissa.  I didn't actually hear them use any fancy food words, but they were probably thinking them.

Robyn and I provide prizes for the winners that are selected by the judges.

Mike came in third place with a delicious sugar free apple pie and was rewarded with autographed pictures of Robyn and I.  Lest you think this is a lame prize, remember that these are pictures from a year ago when we were fatter.  We'll never be that fat again, so those are only going up in value.

Dann came in second with a bacon pie.  It was a recipe he made up that was similar to quiche.  It was pretty fantastic.  He was rewarded with a tiny pie tin for making cute little baby pies.

And the big winner was....  (drum roll)

Megan got first place with her caramel apple pie.  She got a $15 Amazon gift card.  Can you figure out why it's funny?  The picture has pie and pi because she won first pies.  (That was Robyn's doing.  She's clever.)

It was an excellent evening, eating way more than I should and catching up with old friends.  If you weren't there, don't worry, I used my fancy new GoPro to make a time lapse of all the goings on in our kitchen during the event.  So it's just like you were there.

I know you totally feel like you were there, but next year you should come, because no matter how realistic the video may seem, it can't really portray how delicious the pie tasted.

Two Weeks with a GoPro

I have a new toy.  If you haven't figured out that I like gadgets, you probably better just keep that to yourself, because it should be very obvious, and if anyone finds out you'll be really embarrassed.

So now that we're on the same page about my love for gadgets I can tell you about my new toy.

So the deal is, I wanted a camera to take diving with me.  (Since I'm now scuba certified.)  I have a waterproof camera, but it only goes to 30 feet.  Clearly, I'm going to be diving deeper than that.

I did some research and found that there are some really super fancy schmancy dive cameras out there for gobs and gobs of money.  But I also found that I could get a GoPro for $300, and it can go as deep as 100 feet.  So there are nicer cameras that are better for diving, but none of them for as cheap as the GoPro.

So I made the purchase.  But it turns out that the GoPro has lots of super fun features in addition to being able to go deep underwater.  I haven't had a chance to take it diving yet, but I've made sure to try out some of the features.

I tried out the time lapse feature.  I wanted to get a sunset, but there were too many clouds.  It turned out the clouds were pretty cool too.

I bought the chest mount so that I could wear it.  It's an awesome fashion accessory.

Since I've become a biker, I decided to wear it out biking.  However, it turns out that at first I had the mount connected incorrectly so it was kind of pointed downward.  I thought it looked like it was pointed down, but at first  I thought maybe it was supposed to because the wide angle lense would compensate for it.  FYI, if it looks like it's taping your legs, then it is taping your legs.  I got excellent video like this with my first try:

"I hope it's not taking video of the ground.  It kind of seems like it is."

Good news: I tried the bike riding again and was able to wear it correctly.  Most of the video consists of me breathing really hard, but it is fun to look back and see exactly what I saw as a biker.

Of course, another important feature of the GoPro is that it has an iPhone app that allows you to see what the camera is seeing through your phone. This clearly means that my niece and nephew take awkward extreme closeups of noses and tongues.

The remote control app also works really well while wearing it.  I wore the chest mount and had my finger on the button on the phone.  Then I pushed it when Robyn started laughing.  I was able to capture this preciousness.

The moral of the story is, the GoPro is super fantastically cool.  You should get one.  I'll let you know how good it is for diving eventually, but until then I'll be geeking out about all the other features.

A Clovis Christmas

This year Robyn and I spent Christmas week with her parents in Clovis, California.  It was a great week.  We had loads of fun.  We went on a few adventures, had lots of relaxation, and lots of family time.

I'm just going to warn you now, I started writing this and it got really long.  I won't be offended if you don't read all the way to the end.  Just know it was a fabulous week.  Here are a few highlights.

The Nativity
Robyn's family has a tradition of acting out the Christmas story on Christmas Eve.  Her Dad reads it from the Bible and we all get to play various characters.  We're a dramatic bunch, and I feel this picture captures some of the drama that goes into this family room production.

Teanca was an excellent angel that made everyone sore afraid.

Stollen
I don't know how to describe what stollen is.  It's German.  It's delicious.  That's all I know.  Here's a Wiki if you need to know more. Robyn took lessons from her Oma and she made us some stollen.  I told her she needs to make it every month so she doesn't forget how.

She's the cutest little stollen maker.

And look at that deliciousness.

The Interpretive Dance
Out of the entire week, there were 3 1/2 minutes that shined like a jewel as the greatest 3 1/2 minutes of the entire trip.  Robyn's Dad read "The Night Before Christmas" while Robyn and Teanca performed an interpretive dance.

It was the greatest thing ever.  Despite that, Robyn is embarrassed about it.  (She's embarrassed that no one else can even approach her awesomeness.) So I'm not sharing the video, but here is an animated gif made from some of the highlights.  Hopefully that won't embarrass her too much.

We're bikers
I wasn't doing my normal exercise routine, but we tried to get out and do something every day to exercise.  We even did some biking.  Despite the pain in the buttocks region, it was a lot of fun and after our ride I told Robyn I want to buy a bike, so we can do more at home.  She agreed and said we totally should when there is no snow at our house.  Woot!

We're totally bikers.  We biked to the John R. Wright station, named after Robyn's Dad.  It was 9.2 miles round trip.  Not a bad little ride.

Angry Birds
Have you ever played Angry Birds on your phone? Have you ever wished you could catapult birds at piggies in real life? We got a fabulous gift for Christmas. Take a look at this.

The moment we've all dreamed of is here.

The piggy death star.  Destroy it before it destroys you.

It was just as fun as it sounds.  Here's a video of us taking it on its maiden voyage.

The Zoo
We took one day and went to the zoo in Fresno.  I've loved the zoo since I was a little kid.  What can I say?  I love animals.

I FED A GIRAFFE!  I totally got to pet them as well.

Will was not nearly as excited about feeding giraffes as I was.  In his defense, their tongues were as long as his whole body.

The goat let me pet him, but when I tried to take a selfie with him he ran away.

Also, this happened.

Sometimes Teanca poses with statues.  It's how she rolls.

Woodward Park
We took a couple hours to explore Fresno's Woodward Park.  I want a ginormous park like that.  Good thing they're building a new park right by my house.

Robyn said she didn't remember a fountain being in this park, but we found one anyway.

There were these weird structures all over the park.  I assumed they were built by an ancient civilization.  Robyn said they were exercise equipment so people could do circuit training outside in the park.  I like the ancient civilization theory.

There were millions of ducks and geese.

In California, they haven't invented urinals yet.  Instead they use troughs.

Yosemite
Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  It's only 2 hours from Clovis, so I convinced Robyn to take a day trip with me.  It was totally worth it.  We did the Mirror Lake hike this time around.

The trail was really pretty.  I loved the bits of snow and ice amid the beautiful trees.

Just looking up at the mountains.

Mirror Lake isn't much of a lake.  In the winter it's basically a stagnant river.  The word on the street is that in the spring there's much more water.  Robyn looks really cute standing in what would be the bottom of the lake at a different time of year.

It looked like a stairway to heaven.  I climbed it.  It was just a stairway to some rocks.

Sometimes I'm a tree hugger.

There's no scale in this picture but this crow was ginormous.  It followed us for a half mile because I was eating a cookie.  It reminded me of the movie "The Birds".  It would just fly and sit somewhere near us until we got more than 30 feet away and then it would fly somewhere in front of us again.  It was creepy and awesome.

Robyn is cute among ginormous trees.

I loved seeing the mountains and trees reflected in the water.

You can't go to Yosemite without taking at least one picture of half dome.

Christmas Morning
Of course, Christmas morning is always a highlight.  I think the best part of Christmas morning was that my 18 month old nephew decreed that I was his official assistant to open his presents.  I think it was because I had him help me open one of my presents.  After that, he just kept bringing me presents and I let him rip them open.

Eventually, he brought me a present that wasn't addressed to him.  I made him take it to his Dad, who it was addressed to.  That act of betrayal lost his trust, and he didn't bring me any more presents.

The Christmas tree before we opened anything.

Megan and Will frolicking in the wrapping paper.  Sometimes the paper is better than the presents.

Of course, the best thing was just being together with family. We had lots of laughs and lots of good times. That's what Christmas is all about.