September2001 Part 3
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September2001 Part 3
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| 09/21/01: "...if your going to San Francisco..." Today is our day to explore more of San Fran. We had breakfast at "The New Yorker." You could tell we're in California. They have very weird food combo, even for breakfast. Well fueled, we had enough energy to conquer the friggin' HUGE hills of San Fran. We first went, huffing and puffing, up Lombard Street, you know, the curviest street in the world. Then took the cable car to Union Square area so that we could shop and I could get my hair cut. Having short hair requires a person to get it trimmed every couple of weeks. So we shopped and stuff, then ate and headed towards Fisherman's Wharf via cable car again. One thing to look out for, when you are standing and holding on to the Cable car on the outer edges, don't wear a backpack. Glenn got hooked on a car's side-view mirror as we were passing it. Thank god that it didn't drag him off the cable car. We jumped over to the Wharf, made reservations at The Crabhouse on Pier 39 (Fisherman's Wharf). Then we roamed around checking out the views, the shops, the people, and the video games. You could rent out these little three wheeled cars, but we couldn't find where to rent them out. You could cruise around all up and down the Wharf area. It was too cool. You could see ALCATRAZ in the background, and tons of different types of seals and sea lions lounging by the wharf. One interesting thing was some guy built his dream boat, which is a tropical island. Now it is a restaurant that is docked out in the water. Check out the pic we took of it, it's the one with palm trees and what looks like a light house. It's floating in the middle of the water. Neato. So, we went to eat probably the best crab we ever had. Very good, yummmmm. So hungry. The Crabhouse is known for their secret garlic sauce. Then we decided to walk home through the neighborhoods and see into people's apartments. Nice. We got home and Glenn proceeded to work on the website while I watched some TV and then sleep.
09/22/01 We didn't sleep very well knowing that there may be another terrorist strike and it may be somewhere in California. I had nightmares about acts of terrorism. I (Monika) woke up really early and picked up some coffee at the local gas station. Then I proceeded to work on the website while Glenn was sleeping. You just don't realize how much time goes into typing and editing the pix. When Glenn woke up we were packing up to leave for Chula Vista CA (near San Diego) to visit Glenn's Aunt Ming and Uncle Dan. While we were packing, we were watching the only thing on TV: 90210. How appropriate! The drive is about 7 hours long if we take Hwy 5, if we take the scenic route, Hwy 1, it would take longer. So, Glenn's at the helm while I work on the website. I've been working on it for 8 hours straight and we're dying over here. The trip was uneventful, if not boring. The views were hilly, but brown and barren. We hit some traffic in L.A. (we weren't surprised.) Mile 4586: Chula Vista, California Whew!! Finally after to many hours of driving, we made to my relatives home. We had used the GPS and computer to perform real time tracking and guiding for us to get to there home. Things were going well. We were using Street Atlas 8.0 combined with a Garmin eTrex Legend. It was pretty neat since the setup would give us about 2 minutes warning when we needed to turn and then how long it was to the next intersection. The only problem we ran into was that Street Atlas had the numbering of the block incorrect; instead of making a right, it told us to make a left. It was the correct street but it had the wrong numbering of the block. Overall, it was a pretty neat setup. It was good to get you into the area, but for true street navigation I would suggest picking up specific city mapping software. Street Atlas is really good, but it seemed that some things were a bit outdated. Uncle Dan, Auntie Ming, and there daughters Sara and Katherine were excellent hosts and made us feel immediately at home. It was nice to have a home cooked meal after many miles of eating meals out of a box or fast foods. So after some great conversation and an excellent meal, we went to sleep in a comfortable bed. 09/23/01: Well, the morning didn't start off too well. The Scooby had a slow leak in the driver's side rear tire. It didn't look too bad, so we figured well put more air in and have it repaired later in the day. We toured around La Jolla Cove and checked the beach area and a well-know sea cave. There is a protected beach that was now closed off due to the fact that sea lions now called it home. Here are some pix of the area: Another thing that La Jolla Cove is know for is La Jolla Cave. This sea cave has an access point to it from; the local land owners turned it into an attraction around 1902 and it's been a hot local attraction since then. There is a narrow and somewhat long staircase that lead to a large sea cave about 20 feet in diameter.
We then drove off to Cabrillo National Historical Site. It's on the to top of a hill right next to the U.S Naval Station. There are beautiful 360 degree views of the Pacific Ocean, San Diego, and of a naval air base. I pointed out to Monika an A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog) an air to ground attacker that was coming in for a landing; pretty cool. And we checked out the local lighthouse that was turned into a historical site. We returned home to find sadly that the tire on the Scooby was completely flat. So after an excellent dinner, I proceeded to change to the spare "doughnut". Two problems came up: 1) the Subaru OEM tire wrench CANNOT remove the lug nuts of the wheel all by itself. The 8 inch wrench just didn't provide enough torque. So using an old metal broom handle, I was able to crank them off with ease. 2) now with the lug nuts off, the next problem was that none of us could get the wheel off. Uncle Dan and I tried a 2x4 and a hammer and smacked the wheel several times; all for not. I hadn't rotated the tires in about 8000 miles and combined with all the driving and dirt; that sucker wasn't going anywhere. So thanks to a pump from the next door neighbor, I pumped it up for the night since it was now late and places were closed so that it would lay on the rim. We also took alot of the things out of the car to lessen the load on the car. The next day I'd go to a local shop to get that stubborn wheel off and the tire replaced. 09/24/01: Glenn, the Tire, and Casa de Pico (sounds like a movie ehh?)
Remember the bear that we saw at Many Glacier in Glacier National Park but we had a problem with the digital? Well, we took pix of the prints from the 35mm and here you go.....see, it's for real!! This fella' was about 9 feet tall standing. These were taken with a 200mm zoom and we were sitting about 70 feet away. In the morning Monika and I went to the local tire shop that my Uncle recommended and we got that bad boy fixed. After that, much of the day was spent looking over bills, budget, web site updating, and the important part of getting our flight to Hawaii!!! Let me tell ya and Monika now knew this: voice-recognition stuff for customers; heck, in general, who need to plan flights - S...U...C...K...S. How many times does one have to say "September 26th" for the software to realize you're not saying "September 25th"?!?! It took some time but we finally got our flight worked out. Thanks again to Lechuga (Letti) for giving us companion passes, otherwise Hawaii would be out of the question. That night we were taken out to an Mexican restaurant in Old Town San Diego. A cool place that has tried to preserve the look and feel of San Diego around the 1800's. We went to Casa de Pico where the food was excellent and the margaritas were a'flowen!!!! Thanks to the Uncle Dan, Aunt Ming, and their daughters Sara and Katherine for letting stay over and showing us around San Diego proper. Below our pix of us and of the relatives at Casa de Pico. There daughters Katherine is in maroon and Sara is in pink. By the way good luck Sara on Friday; she's a candidate for Freshman class president at Bonita Vista High School. 09/25/01: The calm before Kuai, Hawaii.... As a form of thanks, Monika and I spent the afternoon prepping dinner for them. We had brushetta to start off with. The main course was my savory salmon with herb cream sauce, steam asparagus, and wild rice. For dessert, Monika made her infamous honey mousse over fresh berries. Dinner was a hit!!! Don't worry Uncle Dan, I'll give you the recipe!! So, I'm now finishing up the web site and we're packing for Hawaii!!! We leave tomorrow morning and should be in Kuai by 8:30pm their time. We're bringing the laptop and hopefully we'll be able to upload while we're there; otherwise we might load pictures up on the Yahoo photo site. We'll be back in San Diego on October 7th. Take Care you all!!!
09/26/01: San Diego Airport, Los Angeles International, Lihue International Airport....Oh My!! Thanks to my Aunt Ming for driving Monika and I to the airport!! We had a 9:30am flight and we had gotten there at 7am; let me tell you, man was there ever a line to the ticket counter. It resembled the line to a new ride at Great America on a Saturday July 4th....in other words a 2-2.5 hour wait in line. While I struggled with a compass in an attempt to find the end of the line, Monika asked an airline personnel if folks with companion passes can go right to the gate since we had no bags to check-in. The stars were in our favor today since we were good to go straight to the gate and check-in there. Security didn't seem to be too much heightened, but as always, I set off the metal detector while going to the terminal. For those folks that don't know; it's not a visit to the airport if Glenn doesn't set off the detector and has too go through the "wand" test. Turns out it was my shoes that set off the alarm; they said it may have been a metal shank or the metal eyelets that set it off. Hmmm...makes you wonder if Maxwell Smart (from Get Smart...a '60s spy spoof series) with his telephone shoe could get away with it, and if others could stick anything else in their shoe and get away with it. We hopped from San Diego to Los Angeles International and once we got there, we had seven hours to kill. Too much fun let me tell you, I got a nap in and Monika picked up a book to read. A strange incident occurred as I was napping, Monika and I had put our bags in one of those coin storage lockers so that we didn't have to lug all of our luggage around. Well, next thing you know Monika hears walkie-talkie noise and looks up to see several military personal bearing 9mm's and and a dog sniffing around our bags that were somehow now on the floor. I woke up as she walked over to see what was up. The surprised looks from the military folks came from either the disbelief that someone was actually asking "what's wrong, these are our bags" or from the fact that a beautiful woman (...*wink*...) was talking to them. Once the head security guard realized she was serious, he attempted some small humor by asking, "Do you have a bomb in these bags?" Monika replied with her trademark smile and sparkling eyes, "No, unless you consider a computer a bomb." The fact that the explosive sniffing dog had now left the bags alone; sauntered back a few feet to sit crooked as most dogs do and then proceeded to wag his tail begging for a scruffle on the head seemed to ease all the guards. It turned out that all of the temporary storage lockers we're being shut down until further noticed and that all bags currently within them were to be taken out and brought to some unknown area; our guess was, to be checked for explosives. With that I walked over to help Monika with our bags which Security let us take and took the time to admire the Shepard-mix explosives dog and the 9mm pistols holstered onto each guard's leg. And, we calmly walked back to our chairs to continue reading. *Has anyone ever noticed that just odd things occur when your with Monika????* Well now with all the fun we had, it was time for us to board the plane and get to our First-Class seats. Yup, leather seats, tons of leg room and an actual menu to select dinner from. Monika and I got the BBQ ribs with a coconut Hawaiian flare (we didn't care for the Mahi-Mahi or chicken) and the salad with a wasabi dressing, red wine and a sundae for dessert. Talk about a different world from Coach-class!!! Also it turned out that I was one of three to guess the closest time we would reach the midway point between mainland US and Hawaii (approx. 2h17m35?s); and was awarded a bottle of sparkling wine--things were beginning to look up.
Here's a picture of our sexy minivan that we rented for the week. 09/27/01: Poipu Crater, Kauai, HI
We did the essentials today: plan some fun, play on the beach, and bought groceries for the next several days. The snorkeling was alright at Poipu Beach, I think we all had more fun getting beaten up by the crashing waves. After our suits filled up with sand, and we had our fill of watching the Monk Seal that recently gave birth to a pup, we decided to grab some grub at Breneckes Restaurant. It was decent food, but way over priced. Come on, $11.25 for a burger?!? So with full tummies and sandy swimsuits, we went in search of a grocery store. We stopped by a mall area, and ended up seeing some hula dancers. They were great. We got some good information on where to shop for groceries, and took off to Star Market near Lihue. The store had an eclectic variety of Asian (Filipino, Japanese) Hawaiian, and Mexican foods. Glenn was in 7th heaven when he saw that they even sold pre-made Halo halo ( a Filipino dessert of mixed fruit, shaved ice, and milk.) We went home to shower up and make dinner. Getting the sand off was a bit tricky, and the typical Polish dinner (pork cutlet, mashed potatoes, corn) was fantastic. We were all still overtired, so we headed to bed afterwards. NOTE: We writing this stuff up about a 2 weeks after to fact (ie: it's Oct. 11th near midnight), so some details may be sketchy at best. We'll do our best and the photos we have should help knock our memory loose. 9/28/2001 A word on the condo we rented. It is a 2 bedroom with Sofa sleeper, 2 bath, full kitchen, lanai (back deck), washer and drier, and stuff. It was located in a crater , hence the name "Poipu Crater", a couple of hundred yards away from the beach. It had a pool, tennis courts, ping-pong table , and grilling area. The whole area was surrounded by flowers and blossoming trees and bushes. Verrraaaa Nice!!! A local person was astonished that we were able to rent out the condos in that area b/c it is very residential and private. We found it through the internet, and the price was right. It actually was one of the cheapest places we found. I believe the managing company for those condos was called "Paradise Suites". [If I'm wrong, Laura/Brian, tell us.} We all woke up early, Lourdes already picked fresh flowers off the trees and placed them in cups in each room, and we had a light meal of cereal. We loaded up into our rental Chrysler Minivan and headed towards the Seasport Diver's Dive Shop. We got everything prepped up for our afternoon dives except for one big issue. One person out of the group needed a doctor's release in order to dive. So while we were waiting for the doc to fax the release over, we went to the Embassy Sheridan Pool to have Laura and Brian practice. We took some neat pix of them underwater learning how to remove their masks and stuff with Roxanne, the dive instructor. Both Laura and Brian took to diving in a pool really well. See for yourselves.......
Afterwards we went home for a quick snack before we hit the 2 afternoon dives. Notice I said snack and not lunch, you really don't want to eat anything too big before getting on a rocky boat. Otherwise you'll be feeding the fish your lunch. Unfortunately, the doctor wouldn't sign on the release and our newby divers couldn't go diving. So we postponed the dives until tomorrow morning. I (Monika) wasn't feeling to good b/c like the dummy tourists we are, we got burnt playing in the water yesterday. We were out for no more than an hour or two, and it was raining most of the time, and we had sunscreen on (well...not me) but we all still managed to get burned. I don't handle intense sun very well and all I wanted to do was take a nap.
We all had to wake up early to make it to our early morning dives. Lourdes had nightmares of sharks attacking her. I think she was a bit apprehensive about doing a deep dive for the first time. So Dad and Mom, I mean Brian and Lara, dropped us off at the dive shop and they continued on to see Spouting Horn and snorkeling at some beach (I forgot the name of it). They will come back to pick us up around 11:30 am when we returned. In the dive shop, everyone got suits except me b/c the water was warm and I feel freer without a suit on in the water. Later I regretted not getting the suit. A van took us to our boat, and away we went. Everyone started to feel a bit queasy with the waves. But we got into the water for our first 90 foot dive before lunch was lost. Lourdes must have been psychic b/c we did see sharks. We saw 3 white tip reef sharks, and one of them was pregnant. The sharks were only a foot in front of us, circling around. Lourdes was hiding behind a rock ready to cripple someone so if the shark attacks it would go after the crippled person and she could run away. Heeheee! Interestingly, no one felt apprehensive or scared. It was beautiful and natural to watch them circling around their home. We were lucky to see them in the front of the cave. Usually they are recessed deep into the shelf cave and only the brave would crawl into it to try and get a glimpse of the SHARK! The reef life was different than what we were used to seeing in the Caribbean. The reef was made up of lava tubes amongst other things. We saw an indigenous Boar Fish which had whiskers, and the Hawaii State Fish "The Reef Trigger" Fish. To type the Hawaiian name would crash and burn the system, it's too long! It was soon time to do our 15 foot, 5 minute decompression stop. There was a buoy attached to the rope at 15 feet. We hung onto the rope and the buoy had some stinging coral and barnacles on it. I got scuffed up pretty good on my arm. To this day I still have scabs and a rash on my arm. Here are some pix. We got onto the boat and everyone was hanging over the edge of the boat fighting waves of nausea until we arrived at our second site. We went down and things got a little difficult for Lourdes. She was the last to come down, and Glenn and I were before her. So we were on the bottom waiting for her to come down. Unfortunately, Lourdes got caught/entangled on a lead line so she couldn't go down. One of the boat crew helped take the rope of Lourdes, but in her struggle she lost one of her fins. She descended with one fin, trying to get to the other. The current was strong enough to make it difficult for her to put it back on. Meanwhile, as Glenn and I were waiting for Lourdes, the dive master started taking the group through some lava arches and tubes. I'm asking Glenn where Lourdes is, and he didn't know either. I started to quickly swim around looking for her, and found her in the arms of another diver. Just Kidding, she was being helped by the videographer, Seth. Seth, you are our knight in waterlogged armor. Finally, the dive master noticed that 3 people out of his group were MIA, and he came looking for us. Since we were separated from the other group, he took the 3 of us through a lava tube. It was dark, and a tight fit. I barely made it through, at one point I had to exhale and squeeze through and I still banged around with my tank. Luck was with us in seeing unusual creatures today, the dive master, Andrew is his name, found a pretty big octopus. In order to coerce him to come out of hiding, he applied something metallic to his body like the tip of a knife or spoon. No he did not hurt him, octopus does not like metal so they'll swim out of their tiny hiding hole to avoid metal. They are such smart creatures that they know knives could cut people so they'll grab the knife with one tentacle and grab your hand with another and try to bring the two together. The octopus was so red with anger and it was spitting out a lot of ink. But the instructor helped the octopus calm down and he passed it around for us to touch. It was sooooo Cool! On the video, which we had to buy, you could see Glenn holding him/her. We also saw the poisonous scorpion fish, lots of coral, and lots of colorful fish. Oh yeah, and lots of turtles. They were so huge and cute. You could see them going up for air. Lourdes was having a ball seeing all these creatures. There was one turtle that was curious about her, too. If you don't believe us, it's all on tape. Or at least check out some of these pix; sorry but we forgot our dive camera for the second trip. If we can get to a VCR, we can try to get some pix of the octopus up here. We finally made it back to shore, Glenn losing some of his lunch along the way, and started to unload the boat and get into the van. Besides the turtle, Lourdes had another creature curious about her...the captain of the boat. Brian and Laura made it to the dive shop at the same time we did. They sat through the video preview with us, and Laura was getting tempted to try a dive. If there were manta rays she would have been the first one in the water, just try and stop her. We went to grab some lunch at "Tom Kats" (good food, cheaper prices) and decide how to spend our afternoon. Glenn was feeling terrible from the seasickness and just wanted to sleep it off. Brian and Laura took us to the beach they were just at to do some awesome snorkeling. We saw a really cool black and white spotted eel. Laura and Brian were very good at picking them out. I tried to take some pictures, but he was about 15 feet down and it's kind of hard to dive down and take a pic. We were all ready to go home after about a couple of hours. Lourdes was checking out the surfers, I think we could have persuaded her to take lessons. Maybe she wasn't interested in the surfing but in the way the men look, wink wink. One thing we forgot to mention was that Brian and Laura got an underwater digital camera that not only took pix but also 15 sec movie clips. Tonight is Brian and Laura's turn to cook. They prepared a family recipe of marinated steak, baked potato, and mixed veggies. As Brian was grilling the steak, he played Glenn on the ping-pong table while Lourdes read by the pool and Laura and I played Gin Rummy. Another great dinner. We are gaining weight instead of losing. We spent the evening talking and stuff. We all were enjoying each other's company. Sometimes it is difficult to plan trips with a lot of people, but we were a good match. 09/30/01 We spent the morning trying to figure out the rest of the week. We had to be careful when we could go diving and flying and stuff. So we planned to go to Waimea Canyon today, and a helicopter ride on Monday, diving and a luau on Tuesday, ATV on Wednesday and a road trip to the North part of the island (Tunnels Beach) on Thursday. Lourdes was very good about calling places up and finding out info. We got almost everything booked, we forgot to book the ATV, but we weren't worried b/c tourism was down due to the terrorist attack. The drive to the Canyon was beautiful. The soil is a deep rich red/brown color. It stained everything around red too. We saw them use the dirt to stain shirts " Red Dirt Shirts". We came back to buy some of these shirts later on. We drove up the canyon wall, going up to about 3000 feet. We stopped along the way to see some views, and made it to the end of the road. Laura, Lourdes, Glenn, and I decided to hike a 2 mile round-trip path to a scenic overlook. The path was very muddy and slippery. We were all waiting to see Laura mudslide down the mountain. The path was a mile long on top of the ridgeline. The views were breathtaking. On one side you see the valleys of the NaPali coastline going towards the ocean, and on the other a Jurassic Park Jungle. We didn't make it to the end. The clouds came in and we couldn't see the view so we decided to go back b/c there was much to do still.
Our dinner tonight was BBQ ribs with left over rice and corn. MMmmmmmmm.
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