New Blog

Our travels for 2011 are being chronicled on our new BLOG:

 Dan and Pat from Coast to Coast

Holiday travels

Well our holiday travels began this year with a 10 day western tour. The first five days were in San Francisco visiting Jason, Lindsey and Henry. The second five days were in Salt Lake City visiting Matt, Rachel and Isaac. It was great to see everyone, eat lots of turkey, play with the kids, and be back on the road. We flew from Traverse City this time, and had uneventful flights on all legs.

Thanksgiving itself consisted of Jason's specialty Turkey, with his special brine. This year he cooked it on the grill, and it came out fantastic. Henry was a lot of fun, he really enjoyed playing with us, showing us his stuff, and running around the house. Jason and Lindsey were great hosts. We feel very at home now in the Bay area, because we have spent extended periods of time there the last three winters. We do plan on returning in February, but not for as long this winter.

Next stop was Salt Lake City, for a low key visit with Matt, Rachel and Isaac. We got to spend a lot of time with Isaac, playing in the snow an introducing him to a computer web site Poisson Rouge, which he loved. He is at a great age to enjoy lots of things, including his Hanukah gifts.  There was several inches of beautiful powder snow in Salt Lake, so we had fun playing in it with Isaac.
And so it is now Christmas Eve and we are in Des Moines visiting Melisa. Adam is also here, staying with his mother, and Pat and I are house sitting for one of Melisa's friends (Hilary)  in a cool loft near downtown Des Moines. Melisa has decorated her house for Christmas and it is very cool. Gus is enjoying his visit with Hillary's dog Ella and Adam's dog Colette. It has started to snow so we will have a fresh coat of white on the ground. The agenda includes lunch today, a movie, gift opening at Melisa's and a Christmas Eve dinner back at our loft. Tomorrow is Christmas dinner at Melisa's. Stay tuned.

"In Memoriam" for the New Year

I write this on january 2nd, time to close this blog.   We'll start another for this next year.
For the most part, it's been a wonderful year, I feel so grateful for may things.   Had great Thanksgiving travels to Alameda and Salt Lake, and a great Xmas trip to Des Moines.   Will throw in some pictures of these trips.  When we were in Des Moines, we stayed at a friend of Melisa's loft, it was very cool!
Had fun in Chicago, but as we were leaving, we got the news that Floyd, Dan's dad, had died.   It was expected, he'd been on Hospice.  Still, hard to hear.   We are currently in Flint, awaiting the visitation today, and the funeral tomorrow.
On Facebook, a friend of mine added a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam."  I thought it spoke so well of the feelings of New Years Eve, the bittersweetness of it, and the hope of the New Year.
Here is part of it:


Alfred Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam"

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

The travel is about to resume

Well, it's about time to hit the road again. First trip will be back to Alameda and Salt Lake City. Total trip will be 10 days, and we will be seeing Pat's kids and their families. After that we will head to Des Moines to visit Melisa for a Christmas celebration with  a stop in Chicago to see Pat's brother and sister in law (Jim and Laura). Winter looks like we'll be out west from late January until early March, details are still being worked out, but we know we'll be in Marin county for a couple of weeks beginning Feb 15. We'll finish off this blog at the end of 2010 and start a new one for the new year. Let the travel begin.

Dan

Final week and back home

Well the trip from Maui to Oakland was uneventful. We checked into the Extended Stay, got the van and then the next day I went to get Gus in Santa Rosa. He had a great time staying with Aura, John, Roxie and Indie. He was happy to see us and settled right into the new routines.
Henry was excited to see us. The Extended Stay is bare bones but clean and spacious. They have good plumbing and that became important because some time on Friday I started with diarrhea. I don't know if it was a flu or something I ate but it hit me and hit me hard. I was out of commission the rest of the night. Pat went out to dinner with Jason and Lindsey, while Lindsey's dad watched Henry, and I stayed in the room. This went on all night and into the next couple of days. Because I was concerned about passing something on to Henry, we decided to leave Saturday night to get a head start to Salt Lake City.

I felt better, but not great. Pat drove and we made it to Reno OK. We did get a room at the Atlantis casino, which is one of two in Reno that allow dogs. We had stayed at the Grand Sierra in the past, but their prices were high this weekend. The Atlantis was a total disaster. The Motor Lodge should be condemned. The window wouldn't lock, the carpet was coming up, the headboard fell off and to top it all off the toilet quit working in the middle of the night. I was still using it every couple of hours, so it made for a very bad situation. It was too late to call housekeeping as we didn't want the bother and I was too sick to even get mad. The next day Pat took on the Casino and the end result was that they comped us that night plus gave us a free night in the main Casino, which was actually quite nice.

We then hit the road for Salt Lake City, arriving with no further incidents. We ate lunch at the Coffee Cup in Elko and arrived in SLC late afternoon. We spent the next day with Isaac. He was so excited to see us. We walked to the park (about one mile) and back, and then walked to the book store and back. In the evening we had dinner with Matt, Rachel and Isaac, and then went back to the motel. The next morning we got an early start and spent the rest of the day  in the car. We hit Lincoln Nebraska about midnight. This was a total of over 800 miles that day.
We then headed to Des Moines, where we spent the day and night with Melisa. It was great to hang out with her and catch up on her recent trip to England, and her upcoming group trip to South Africa with 11 students. She also is presenting this fall at conferences in Glasgow Scotland and Honolulu. Great opportunities for her. We left around nine AM and hit the last leg of the trip, which was 650 miles. We made it home about 9pm and had smooth sailing the entire way. It helped that the weather was clear and we took turns driving. It is great to be back in our own house. We had a wonderful three months but it is good to be home. Check out the slide show for our pictures of the trip.
Pat-not much to add, Dan pretty much encapsulated it all.   It's good to be back home--last night we drove through orchards of cherry blossoms, saw blooming trillium in the woods, and enjoyed the quiet and stillness.  Of course, we also have had noisy partying neighbors, tent caterpillars, etc.!   But we are back in the swing of our active social life, and it was good to see everyone again.
The best part of the trip was seeing the weekly changes in Henry, and being there for it.  We also saw a lot of Isaac, and really feel like we connected with him.   It was  a great trip.

Catching the Waves

We've been here almost a week now and we will be leaving tomorrow.  We haven't been keeping up the blog very well, mostly because we are both so extremely relaxed!  We keep laughing about that, because we weren't stressed out when we got here, but boy, this is terrific!

We have not done a whole lot, and that has been lovely.   We've seen the big sites, Hana and Haleakala last time, which were magnificent, but we didn't need to re-do them.   We're in a really good place.  It's Paula's condo (Lindsey's mom).   It's small, but right on the ocean, and a beautiful spot.   The lanai faces the ocean, of course, and we are spending a good deal of time on it, having morning coffee, reading in the late morning, afternoon and early evening.    We take a walk on the beach daily, watching the outrigger canoes, the windsurfers, and the people on the stand up surfers.   We have no desire to join in, it's so nice to view it!   That is so different for me, but it's so nice!

Link to Maui pictures:  http://gallery.me.com/pathaber#100320 

We've been out to dinner and lunch a few times.  went to the Lahaina Yacht Club on Paula's membership, where we had very good lobster.   Also went to Sensai, where the ahi tuna was fabulous!  It was seared and wrapped in a panko crust, in a sweet sauce.   Terrific, as was the lobster-crab ravioli and the demon shrimp.    Today we went to Mama's  Fish House for lunch.   We weren't going to because it's so expensive, but we had forgotten to spend our winnings from the horse races in Oakaland!   I don't even know the name of the fish we had, but it was wonderful!    I am so fussy with fish, normally, rarely order it.   But in Hawaii, it is so good, I know I can't go wrong. The restaurant names the person who caught the fish and where they caught it. Now that's sustainable.

We went to a Luau last night, it was really pretty lame.   The entertainment was very good, and we liked the firedancer and an acrobat the best.   The food was bad, and it was inside because it was raining.    I felt like one of the hoards.   But we hadn't been to one before, and it was representative of Hawaii, so it was a good thing to do.

In the morning, yesterday, we found a great snorkel beach, Ahihi-Kilua, or something like that.   I really loved it!   I am a very timid snorkeler, but I overcame my fear.   This was a difficult surf to enter, as it was mostly lava rocks with very shallow water and a high reef.    But I followed the young boy in front of me, who so nicely showed me the way, and it was wonderful.  I wish I could name all the fish we saw, I bought a card with them on it.   I realized how much I like snorkeling and I want to do it again.
I found myself thanking the fish for letting us visit their home as I was watching them.

Today, our last day, was rainy and windy, but Dan had read that there were high waves on the north shore, so we drove there in search of the high waves.   We stopped at the Iao Needle, where we had been before, but it's a beautiful spot.   We stayed in the car because of the rain.   Then,  we found the waves!!!! We found them at Hoopkai Point.   (I know these names are wrong, the Hawaiian names are so difficult)   They were incredible!    Oh, my gosh, as Isaac says!!!!
They were up to 15 ft. probably, but pounding and constant!   No surfers on these babies, there were red flags all over the place!   We did see two guys go out, way out, but we never saw them catch a wave.   The most beautiful thing of all was that the wave would begin, then it was like this beautiful turquoise color was churned up underneath, and as the wave toppled over, it would then be that blue!   I have never seen anything like this before.   I keep using !!!!! I know, and superlatives, but it's hard to explain the magnificance, the power and the beauty of this.
It's funny, there are things about Hawaii, Maui, that I don't love---it's not lush around Kihei, there are tourists all around, there isn't much true Hawaiian stuff where we are at.    The weather can be perfect, or it can be not so good---we've had a lot of wind, e.g., and some rain.   But, there is truly something magical about this place.    It ends up grabbing you.    Last trip, it was the sunset we saw at Haleakala, and "The Glory", if any of you know what that is.    This trip, for me, it was the snorkeling and the waves.
O.K. so I wrote the above, we cooked dinner, we ate out on the lanai, we're enjoying the night and the sky and the waves (gentle on this side of Maui) and I hear a weird chirping.   Dan says "o.k., look over your head and don't be scared."   O.K., so wouldn't YOU be scared?   I thought it was bat, jumped up and saw 2 lizards.   They don't normally frighten me, in fact, I like them, but NOT over my head!
That ended dinner for me.    We also had a bird fly in the condo because Dan didn't close the screen door all the way---it flew right out, Dan never saw it, so he's laughing at me about it.    NOT FUNNY!

We should be in a Comedy

This will be a funny post, I hope.   I am sitting here laughing at both of us because we do such funny, old couple things.    This is what our trip is like:

  I keep walking to the wrong rental car in any parking lot we are in, being totally unaware.

Dan keeps saying, "oh, you have to see this" the second I am sitting down to do something else, and he has walked over to the lanai, or the window or whatever.

He will tell me something, generally when I am doing something else, and then later, I will ask him about the very thing he just told me.   

We both cannot be in the small, galley kitchen at the same time---it is small, we are big, and we irritate each other.

We keep laughing because we feel incredibly relaxed, but we hadn't been doing anything stressful before!

We say we are needing relaxation from the rigors of retirement.

Anyway, we ARE relaxed and having a great time.

Today, we went snorkeling.  It was pretty good, we saw some very cool fish---big yellow ones, black and white, some grey ones, sea urchins, and a spiny red thing.   I also have to laugh because I am a total wimp with snorkeling---I have to practice the breathing before I do it, I need Dan to tell me exactly how and when to put on the equipment, and I have to hold his hand when we start.  I don't even know what I'm scared of, I think it's that I don't know where I will end up, and also, that I will swallow water or it will go up my nose.

Anyway, I did fine, and I really enjoyed it!

Oh, and I found a new anti-itch cream for my eczema---toothpaste!   I actually just rubbed a piece of pineapple on it and that also helped.   Dan is making pina coladas with fresh pineapple and bananas and coconut juice.    Maybe I will brush my teeth with it.
Later, after a good meal that we cooked ourselves, on the complex's grill, we watch t.v. and our new addiction---"Hawaii Five-O"!    This is actually an old show, if you don't know that, in fact, I never really watched it because I was in college for most of it.