Sunday, September 27 -- Maui Report

I'll try to do this on a day-by-day basis. First of all, we were unable to get on the flights to LAX on Monday, September 14, as originally planned -- all the flights were sold out and NO non-revenue passengers were seated. Based on that information, Larry and golf thought their best chance was to get to the airport very early (do we HAVE to get up at 4:30 a.m.???) on Tuesday, September 15, and catch the first flight to LAX, if we could get on it. We were able to get on that early flight (and flying over Arizona, golf got this shot of the crater that is east of Flagstaff -- looks more like the moon than the good ole US of A . . . .) (as usual, click on any picture for a larger version of it)


but unfortunately, the one daily flight from LAX to Maui (OGG) didn't leave LAX until 5:15 p.m. in the afternoon. So we were able to get on the early flight to LAX, but then we had an eight-hour layover in LAX!!! Fortunately, we were able to "piggy-back" on the wireless internet from the Continental President's Club on Concourse 6, so at least golf and Larry had the internet to play with while they waited out the eight hours. But this makes for a really LOOOOOOONG day, by the time they got to Kahului, Maui, at roughly 5:10 p.m., Hawaii time, which made it 11:10 p.m. to golf and Larry's body time, and since they had been up since 4:30 a.m., well, they figured it was close to 21 hours without sleep by the time they got to their condo in Kihei and got settled in and ready to retire for this first night in Paradise. So here's the condo at the Kihei Bay Surf (the next morning) and me out on the railing of the porch there (not much of a view of the tennis courts, but there was a nice plumeria tree right there).

So . . . . bright and early Wednesday morning, September 16, golf and Larry went exploring south of where they were staying. First, they found the condo to which they would move on Thursday, Maui Hill (more pictures of the inside of this condo later).
Basically, we explored down the coast from Kihei down past Wailea and Makena all the way to the Ahihi-Kinau Reserve (underwater reserve for spinner dolphins, etc.), the land of which is mostly piles of lava rock.
You'll note golf got a picture of me sitting beside little rocks that tourists stack up and leave everywhere. This stacking of rocks, which you will see all over all of the Hawaiian Islands, is done by tourists because they think it means something. It doesn't.
Anyway, we were stopping at several of the beaches along this route to check out where to snorkel the next day -- stopped at Keawakapu, Mokapu, Ulua, Wailea, Polo, Makena, Big Beach, and Little Beach. By the way, golf didn't think to put on sunblock since they really weren't stopping and staying anywhere for any length of time, but the combination of all the stops and walks resulted in a bit of a "red neck" for golf, though not a bad burn. By about 3 p.m., they were already fading, so they stopped in Kihei and ate an early dinner at Oceans, then headed back to the little condo, had a margarita, went across the street from the condo to watch the sunset at Kalepolepo Beach, and then crashed for the evening.

Thursday, September 16: They couldn't check into the Maui Hill until 3 p.m., so they figured a good way to spend the time waiting was -- to go snorkeling!! After breakfast at Denny's, we headed for Ulua Beach first, as it is highly recommended for snorkeling.

Above, that's Larry on the beach at Ulua, and in the picture below, I'm waiting on the beach towels for them to return from their venture into the water at Ulua.

Now, below are pictures that we did not take (because Larry wouldn't let golf get the underwater adapter pack for her camera), but they were THRILLED to see a manta ray coming RIGHT AT THEM at Ulua Beach!! They later found out that it is pretty rare to see one of these, so golf searched the internet for pictures so you could see what they saw (well, sort of).

The one they saw coming right toward them was about five feet wide. They later saw another one that was further away, but it appeared smaller. So this turned out to be a rather unusual snorkel venture with a very special "sighting"!!

However, they were highly disappointed not to see any yellow tang, which previously had been so prolific they were almost boring. Where have they all gone?? They didn't see any Moorish Idols either. They found this very odd after their previous snorkeling on Maui and the Big Island. The rays made up for the lack of yellow tang spotting, but that same lack seemed to indicate something bad happening in the waters around Hawaii.

So after this snorkeling excursion, they headed back to the first condo, cleaned up, packed up, and headed to check in at the Maui Hill. There they discovered that the unit assigned to them had been, by mistake, given to someone else with a similar name, and they were assigned a different (and we think better) unit. It was certainly more conveniently located -- in just about the first building after the entrance, so it was very convenient for ingress and egress, plus it had a view toward the ocean (though you really couldn't see the ocean due to all the vegetation, but at least it wasn't facing the back of the complex, as the one they should have gotten was). Here I am sitting on the nose of the whale at the entrance sign (hey, this photo op was Larry's idea!!)

And here's our HUGE condo unit, #49, where they had free internet (but not wireless, they had to plug in the DSL cable, no big deal). The only slightly disappointing feature of this very large unit was the fact that it had only a queensize bed instead of a king bed. Pretty unusual, in their condo-swapping experience. Almost every good size condo has a king bed, if not one in each bedroom (e.g., the condo they have in Hilton Head has two king beds, one in each bedroom, and the two-bedroom condo where they stayed the first time on the Big Island, Mauna Loa, had a king bed in each bedroom; and where they stayed the second time on the Big Island in a one-bedroom had a king bed).

Okay, this is enough for tonight. golf is doing the typing for me and she's ready to stop for the evening since she has to get up early to go to work tomorrow :-( even though she went into the office for four hours today (Sunday) to get a head-start on what was waiting for her after nearly two weeks out of the office. I'll try to finish up more over the next few days. Stay tuned, folks!

Sunday, September 13 -- Prepping for Maui

We are packing for Maui!!! We were scheduled to go out Monday, September 14, but remember golf and Larry are flying standby and all those annoying business travelers have already booked up (actually OVERbooked!) ALL the flights from ATL-LAX on Monday morning. So golf and Larry have decided to leave Tuesday instead, when available seats seem (at least right now) to be more attainable. In the meantime, they continue to pack their one-carryon-each and the golf bags. Here I am in Larry's bag -- however, do note that the fabric with the palm trees showing behind me is one of golf's dresses wrapped around her snorkel mask -- typical female, she ran out of room in her bag.

Here I am in golf's bag -- along with Virgie, whose curiosity was cat-typical about what was going on while golf was allowing me to crawl into the bag.

Here is golf's golf bag, all packed up. I think it is not a good idea to plan for this mode of transportation for myself.

Can I stow away here?

Or here?

Probably not . . . . I think I'll settle for being stashed in golf's tote bag.

Virgie! Will ya cut it out? golf is trying to get a picture of MOI!

Yes, it is her tote bag from St. Thomas . . . .

Okay, Virg, it's all yours . . . . You stay here and hog the camera. I'll go to Maui -- ha!

August 29-30 Weekend in St. Thomas.

If you want to be technical, this probably could not qualify as a "weekend" in St. Thomas, as we arrived at 2 p.m. on Saturday and departed at 3 p.m. on Sunday. But we had fun while we were there! And golf was the ONLY non-revenue (employee travel pass) passenger to get on the flight from Atlanta to St. Thomas -- and in first class. Whew!

First, golf picked up our rental car -- a dinky little Toyota Yaris. The rental agent said she would love this little car because she's little -- well, she might have if (1) she'd been able to figure out how to open the hatchback, (2) it had had power windows and locks, and (3) it hadn't smelled like kitty pee. But it served its purpose and it did have air conditioning -- the weather was hot and humid while she was there.

Traffic was very crowded going though Charlotte Amalie. Maybe the cruise ship in port contributed to this (but how? Those people aren't driving cars! ??), but she was able to get to Hwy. 38 East and headed cross-island toward her condo at Sapphire Beach (where we stayed in June with her friend, Kathy). Of course, K-Mart was on the way, so she stopped and got five cartons of Mores for Larry and five Cartons of Marlboros for herself. Remember the cost of these at K-Mart in STT (airport-speak for St. Thomas) is $17.99 per carton (when Larry has made the same-day runs to STT to get them at the duty-free shop at the airport [because he didn't have time between arrival and same-day departure to get to K-Mart], the cartons at the airport are $26.95, which is a $10 savings [at least!] over Atlanta prices--but still $10 more than they are at K-Mart!) and she had coupons from Marlboro for $4 off per carton, so she was able to get her Marlboros at $13.99/carton. Unbelievable in terms of current U.S. prices! She also got a couple of litres of Bailey's Irish Cream and a litre of Lunazul tequila, which she and Larry think is better than Jose Cuervo, though slightly more expensive at $16.99/litre where JC is $14.99. But they can't find Lunazul in the U.S. She was delighted to return to her car and find it had not been broken into, even though the two bags she had brought were right out in the open on the back seat (remember she couldn't figure out how to open the hatch!). No problem for her after that stop in getting to Sapphire Village -- even the same gate guard as when she and Kathy were there. BUT the SV office isn't open on weekends! AAGGH!! How does she find out which unit she has and how to get in? The gate guard sent her down to the reception desk at Sapphire Beach Resort, and they did have her check-in information. And, would you believe, her unit was in the same building where we had stayed in June, so she knew exactly where to go! Two thumbs up for that.

While she was getting settled in, Kathy just happened to call her on her cell phone! golf was able to report on the differences in her current unit and the one in which we had stayed in June. E.g., this one had NO beach towels (the June one had about six), but this one had a hair dryer (June didn't), and a TV with satellite (in June, it was promised by the owner that it was supposed to be installed the day they moved in, or the next day -- and it never was), but golf wasn't planning on watching much TV anyway. Other comparisons: Kathy and golf were able to get an internet connection while on the balcony in June, golf could not pick up any wireless internet on this balcony and had to break down and pay $9.95 for 24 hours' worth of internet, but she needed it to communicate with Larry (at work that evening and at home Sunday morning) and to check availability for her return non-rev flight.

In the meantime, golf had realized she has nothing to eat or drink. She had been so lucky at K-Mart in getting the clerk to take her $4 coupons on the cartons of cigarettes, she'd forgotten to add Diet Cokes to her purchase. But she wasn't about to go back to K-Mart and fight the crowds that had been there, so she got back in the car and headed to the Food Market on the east end of the island past Red Hook. There she got a nice New York strip steak for dinner, some English muffins and butter for breakfast, but the only caffeine-free Diet Coke the store had was a 12-pack of cans. golf figured she probably wouldn't drink all 12 cans in less than 24 hours, but the 12-pack was $4.99, and a couple of big soda drinks at a fast-food joint would have been nearly that, so she decided she'd just get the 12-pack and leave whatever was left for the cleaning folks.

She got back to the condo around 5:00 and realized we needed a photo op while she still had good daylight. So I graciously agreed to pose for a few shots.




All this taken care of, golf still really wanted to go snorkeling, though STT gets dark by about 6:45. But she wanted to snorkel as much as she could while she was there, so she donned her swimsuit and headed down to Sapphire Beach, where she was able to snorkel for about 20 minutes before it started getting a little too twilight-y and she thought it was safer to head back to the condo.

Well, there she got involved in internet stuff, had a margarita (which got her pretty loopy on an empty stomach), and at that point wasn't hungry enough to broil the steak she had bought! So she had enough presence of mind to stick it in the freezer so she could at least take it home starting in frozen form (along with 3/4 of the butter, 1/4 of which she kept out for her English muffins for Sunday morning).

Oh, yes, I need to explain how she planned to get all this liquid back to the U.S.: She brought a virtually empty piece of luggage, filled with empty plastic liquor flasks and a huge clothes-packing "baggie" that she inflated to "fill" the empty bag. So she packed all ten cartons of cigarettes in this to-be-checked bag, along with filling the flasks with the two litres of Bailey's and the one litre of Lunazul. Gotta give her credit -- she can plan! And incidentally speaking of which, golf likes a really FLAT pillow and pillows at condos are always too thick for her -- so she had kept the little pillow given to passengers on the aircraft on the way down, so she had little flat pillow to sleep on that night!

I didn't have a problem . . . .

Because golf had crashed and burned by about 10 p.m. on Saturday night, she didn't have a problem getting up early on Sunday morning. She had to check out by 11 a.m., so she wanted to get in a snorkel before she had to clean up and pack everything for the return. And she did enjoy her snorkel!! She never found the squid she saw in June, but she did have a disposable underwater camera with her and got pictures of schools of tang, some butterfly fish, and, she thinks, a queen emperor fish. Can't post the pictures yet, as she had to send the film off for developing (boy, does she want an underwater case for her new Sony W220, but the underwater case costs more than she paid for the camera! She still has to figure out how she can get that case prior to the Sept. 14 trip to Maui . . . . .), and she's not sure how good the pictures will be -- the last time she took underwater pictures with one of these cameras, well, the pictures were very good. But hope springs eternal . . . . and all that.

I watched while she packed everything she could into the bag to be checked -- the flasks of booze, 10 cartons of cigarettes, the snorkel gear, and anything else she could fit in the bag. Larry had sent her an email to stop by K-Mart on her way to the airport and get more cigarettes. I need to explain here that golf needed to get enough cigarettes to, in essence, generate enough savings over what would be spent in Georgia for cigarettes and booze to pay for her trip (condo, rental car, internet, etc.) to STT to get these things and still have a little "profit" to justify the trip. To cut to the chase on that subject, totaling what she spent, the cigarettes and booze at home would have cost $140 more than she spent while in STT in accommodations, rental car, cigarettes, and booze. So it was for the most part, a successful foray, AND she got to have fun snorkeling!!

So that's enough for this report. I know you're getting tired of hearing about all their "coffin nails." But just to end with a little "hah"! Here's her "loot."

Friday, August 21, 2009 -- More Venus News

golf hasn't posted because she was bummed that Venus disappeared in a storm Sunday night, just after Larry had found her and golf got pictures of her and her gorgeous web. But then on Thursday, August 20, Larry found Venus in the tomato garden close to where Ariadne had been most of the summer. At first, Larry and golf weren't sure it was the same spider (and golf was dreading coming up with a name for another spider), but golf checked with her Argiope expert (Jerry Cates of http://www.bugsinthenews.com/); and with the pictures she sent to him, he confirmed (1) that it would be fairly unusual to have three different Argiopes in their gardens in one summer and (2) the spider in the lily garden, pictured with the web on August 16, is the same spider pictured yesterday in the tomato garden. He assured her of this by pointing out that Venus has unusual coloring on the second left leg, which should be yellow/gold for half the length of the leg and it is not. Click on the pictures below to enlarge them and see the markings as pointed out by the arrows. Then compare the coloring with Ariadne's leg. First picture below is Venus in her new location.

Here is a picture of Ariadne after she laid her eggs and just before she disappeared, with an arrow pointing to her second left leg, and you can see how it is gold for half the length of the leg (the entire first "segment" [?] of her leg):


Now here are the two pictures of Venus, with her new location on the left and the first location on the right, with arrows pointing to her second left leg, so you can see (1) how it is different from Ariadne's and (2) how it is the same in both pictures so it IS the same spider.


So golf is currently a happy camper, now that she has a new spider to track. She's hoping that Venus will also make an egg sac (and hoping she and Larry can find it!) to see what it looks like compared to Ariadne's, as Ariadne's egg sac is an unusual shape and placement for an Argiope aurantia. So we need to see what Venus creates. In the meantime, we hope to watch her increase in size and she fills up with eggs.

In the meantime, I haven't been going anywhere interesting, so this is all you get. golf may go back to St. Thomas next weekend to make a "cigarette and booze run." The next trip should be Maui, starting September 15. Yippee!!

Sunday, August 16 P.S.

Well, an argiope expert and golf have determined that the pictures we've posted recently are NOT Ariadne. This is a different spider. golf has named her Venus Lubentia (Roman goddess of gardens). So apparently Ariadne is R.I.P., but at least golf has a new spider buddy to entertain her. Yes, apparently, she is easily entertained . . . .

Comparison pictures shown below (click to see enlarged pictures). Now my little voice tells me we just might have a new egg sac to look forward to. Ariadne's was an unusual shape for an argiope aurantia, so we'll wait and see what Venus produces. It will be interesting to see if our garden lends itself to distorting spiders' instincts so they build egg sacs that are the wrong shape for the spiders' species.

Sunday, August 16 -- more Ariadne

Okay, I know you're probably not interested in the daily activities of a spider, but we're having fun tracking it. So put up with it, or don't check in with us until September 15 when we go to Maui.


It rained pretty hard yesterday evening and apparently wiped out Ariadne's web. But you gotta admire her stubbornness and hard work in continuing to re-establish her home. Here's what I found this morning; and when I first moved in close for the pictures, she started pumping the web like crazy, making it rock back and forth. So cute -- though I think she was trying to look tough -- didn't work ;-). Then she ran up to the top, and she tore the web on the way -- now that surprised me, that she damaged her own web so much. Hmmm, I wonder if that is indicative of anything, e.g., she's still building but the strands are weaker?
Above, Ariadne after running up to the top and tearing her web. Note the dew you can see on the web.

Just at the top, will try to get a more focused picture later.
Below, the right upper side of the web.

The lower left side of the web below:

The stabilizer in the middle -- a double zigzag this time:

Lower center shown below:

We would really love to see her DOING all this building, but since she does it at night, we'll probably never see that. Even if we put a spotlight on her, she'd probably freeze and not do anything while the light is on her. May try tonight and see. But then there are a lot of mosquitoes out there . . . . so . . . . maybe not.

Saturday, August 15 -- Ariadne Update

Now we're trying not to get all excited here, but Ariadne seems to be doing much better. She built a very detailed and extensive web overnight! golf couldn't get really good pictures because there was a breeze and the web kept moving. She'll try to get better pictures later. But if you look closely, you can see the strands of the web. I don't know that she is supposed to be THIS industrious after depositing her eggs.