Saturday was a busy day. We’d had 5 cords of wood delivered this week.. and it didn’t seem to be stacking itself. Diane, Kyle and I got a start on it..

Diane and our neighbor Crosby did the bulk of the work stacking for which Im truly thankful.

About  11:30 I loaded the CRV with a ton of stuff for the dump,

dropped that off, then picked  up a bunch of flame thrower parts from Chris… then headed to Nordic farm for a day of work on the
Fluffy the burning man bus. I’m working on the lights and flame.. but not going to burning man this year.. We have a ton of work yet to do.. it alternates between being really fun.. and really stressful.. I need to find a way to make my fun projects less stressful.

Anyway.. I love the people on this project and dont want to let them down.. were making super progress thanks to all the volunteers from friends, family and Beta  folk (who are also friends and family 🙂 .

I got home and found that our good friends Brad, Kasey and Charlotte in our pool. They had some great news ! Brad and Charlotte are engaged !>  We all went out to Stone Coral to celebrate

Brad was one of Sam’s best friends .. seeing hi find such a wonderful life partner to help him raise his son is magical for us !.

nite all, nite sam

-me

I was glad that today was a Friday.. I need a down day to relax from our vacation 🙂 .. one thing on the agenda today was that I went to a real barber to get some help taming my very unruly beard.. Rescue came in the form of Mike.. a friend and colleague of our friend Carole. MIke is a super nice guy who specializes in beard trims and techniques.  Mike helped  me learn some ways to trim my beard that avoided looking ‘too neat’ ..  It was so fun. it was like going to the barbershop with my dad over 50 years ago..

I headed to work.. but got home just in time for sunset.. Diane and I decided to take a quick hike uop bilton. We caught the sunset up on the tower..

Great way to end a week !

nite all, nite sam

-me

The trip back from Maui was long.. but fun.. I didn’t sleep much as I had a ton of things to catch up on for work and play.

It had been a wonderful vacation with Gabe, Sam, Diane .. and it was also nice to be heading home. I miss home whenever I’m away

Jen picked us up at the airport around 2PM .. we went  home, unpacked and I headed back in to work. After spending some  time at North Hanger  catching up with everyone (I missed them all so much !) . I headed over to D2 to see soem of the amazing metal and wood work that Beta Volunteers have done on our Fluffy Burning Man bus. THe metal work is amazing !

 

It was nice to be back !.. I headed home in time to take a walk with DIane .. it was raining a bit  .. which made for soem amazing rainbows over our house. It was a nice bridge between being in Hawaii and home..

We live in a beautiful place too !

nite all, nite sam

-me

We woke up this morning and began emptying our rental condo. That meant a very interesting breakfast of cheesecake, guacamole, cheese tortillas, ravioli, PB&J, candy, beer , matte  and fruit.. Not usual breakfast fare, but yummy.

We gathered all our stuff, emptied the fridge, took out the garbage and recyclables and started the wash.. I think we’re pretty model rental guests 🙂

We said goodbye to the condo then headed down the road to turn in our rental snorkel and beach stuff.. and grabbed a last Shave Ice at our favorite place

We had a few more stops before the airport.. Gabe and Sam had found a highly rated place that sold Poke out of the back of a Liquor store .. we had to try that..

we also bought some pineapple wine .. which was good.. but pretty acid. I’m about 2 weeks into no alcohol to see how that works   with my guts. (Its worked nicely) . .. but it felt good to have a slug of wine 🙂

We then headed to the Maui botanical garden.. a really low key place in wailuku.. used to be a zoo..  You could see Ida  mountain from there. it was great to walk around.. we were almost the only ones there.

On the way from there to the airport, I looked up one of my cousins.. Jake.. he and his wife have a Law firm in wailuku.. DIane and I knocked on the door .. and there he was..

We met him when he was one year old.. so this was new. We only stayed a few minutes.. but it was fun getting to know him. We exchanged contact info an promised to share some family history stuff.

 

From there it was only 15 min to the airport. We dropped Gabe and Sam off at the departures and said good bye. It has been so great being with them here..they are such great travel companions.  .. We’re seeing Gabe next week in Santa.. so it was a quick goodbye.

Diane and I dropped off the car and headed to our plane. Thanks to TSAPrev.. we got to our gate before Sam and Gabe got through security.. so we bought them a surprise pizza and dropped it off at their gate

 

We said goodbye again and headed to our gate.. The Kailua airport is a nice mix of indoor and outdoor.. so we sat outside and ate our pizza looking at Ioa.. A nice end to a great vacation..

Our flight left around 5.. and it was ‘only’ 8 hours to Chicago..

 

nite all, note sam

-me