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One Year Two Kids 090320 Final book Flipbook PDF
One Year Two Kids 090320 Final book
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One Year, Two Kids, 800 Square Feet The Adventures of a Small Family Living on the Big Island of Hawaii
Copyright © 2020 by Julie Ziemelis Material written by Julie Ziemelis in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, 2005-2006 Photo credit: Julie and Eric Ziemelis Material compiled and co-edited by Lisa Pegg Additional editing by Andria Dutcher, Karen Rose, Mark Gross and Kristin Westland Spotify Playlist Created by Caylin Ziemelis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author and the publisher.
First Edition - September 2020 This book is set in 12-point Garamond Pro Published by: Ziemelis Communications, LLC https://www.julieziemelis.com/ Printed in the United States of America
Foreword There is a quote, misattributed to my favorite writer and fellow adventurer, Mark Twain, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” I kept this quote in calligraphy; with an ink drawing of a sailboat, on my desk for years, waiting for the time my family could live it. And live it, we have! The genesis of this book came from a compiled collection of my “Talk Story” emails that were sent to our family and friends while we lived in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, from August 2005 through July of 2006. These emails came back to me one Christmas as a present in 2015, as a compilation, thanks to my friend Lisa Pegg. My emails are a “travelogue/mommy blog of adventures in a new culture in a new land” journal. They are a snapshot of island life and the struggles and triumphs of what happens when you decide to move your family and place them in a new community 2500 miles from home in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
My writing has evolved over the course of lo these many years and I did not set out to win a Pulitzer Prize when I created these emails, so there you go. The book is also a chance to offer insights and wisdom. After each chapter, I reflect on what happened then to where I am now. After spending 15 years on Hawaii Island, we are still thrilled to call it home, even after moving on and off the island three times. While we originally had planned on living in Hawaii for only 365 days, what happened during that year changed the path of our future and our lives forever. That’s what can happen when you throw off the bowlines...and do something about a nagging feeling that life can be something more.
The Family Z: A background There are four "players" in this true-life drama. Eric Ziemelis is the husband and father, who at the time was an artist and custom furniture designer and maker. Wife and mother Julie Ziemelis was the communications director for a large real estate trade organization and driven public relations professional. First-born Caylin Ziemelis was a bold and energetic little girl, and baby Devin was too young to know his
parents had embarked on a wild adventure that would forever change their lives. Years later we sometimes wonder if moving to the Big Island was the right choice for our children. We think the answer is "yes." " Why did we decide to move to Kailua-Kona? We never considered moving to Hawaii until we had a three year old and a new infant in the fall of 2004 in our home in Los Gatos, CA. We were opening and reading holiday newsletters from our friends and families who had children older than ours. We got a sneak peek into how our life with children was going to progress over the next 15 years with school, sports, music lessons, only traveling during school vacations and not being able to move for fear of uprooting our children from everything they knew. We felt if we didn’t do something crazy at that point, we wouldn’t do it until our late 50’s. (Who needs that kind of regret in their lives?) We were convinced that by the time Devin graduated from high school, we would be too old and tired to move away from Silicon Valley (Cue the laugh track now that I am 55!). When it came time for my maternity leave to end in December 2004, and for my son to go to daycare full-time, I made the decision to quit my job and become a consultant, so I could spend more time with my children. The good news was I took on projects in the mortgage and real estate space, and within six months, it provided me with the down payment for a condo in Kailua-Kona. However, the only thing we could afford at the time was a one-bedroom/one bath condo as a hot housing market was making prices increase steadily and available homes for sale shrink. We visited Kona for the first time in April 2005 and made an offer on one of the only condos on the market in our price range. Inventory of available homes for sale was so tight due to the market that we only had five condos to consider.
After looking at what was available, we found a duplex style condo in Keauhou Resort, a condo complex on five acres surrounded by a golf course about six miles south of Kailua Village. We basically had to “see the bones” of this condo, as it had seen better days when it was built in the late 1970’s. We looked forward to the challenge of renovating the outdated condo during the year we were there, and selling it when we were done. The equity would help pay for the time we were spending on the island with the increased value we would profit from once it was sold. (That was the plan, anyway.) We went home, giddy with the knowledge that our Christmas newsletter to our families would say, “We live in Hawaii!!” And yes, that was before Facebook and Instagram, where we could have put our feet in the condo complex pool with the caption above our heads that read, “ALOHA! #HappyHomeowners”. I digress. We had a long escrow process, which had us moving into our condo in August. For the next few months we prepared our immediate family for departure, found a yearlong renter for our home, put all of our belongings in the garage and an outside storage shed, and bought hockey bags to hold everything we would need for a year. Were we too optimistic about how all this would go down with no prior knowledge of moving to Hawaii? The good news is there were no blog posts or YouTube videos providing warnings, so we went without trepidation. The bad news is there were no blog posts or YouTube videos warning us. So, grab a glass of something tasty--perhaps a MaiTai and if you have the red plastic monkey, he can come, too, and let’s have some fun. You may, or may not, be inspired to go on a life changing adventure, too.
CHAPTER GUIDE The Beginning or It Seemed Like a Good Idea at The Time Email 1-July 30-August 8, 2005
Discovering the Wonders of the Big Island of Hawaii Email 2 - August 9 – August 22, 2005
Oh, You Pesky Pests! Email 3 - August 23-Sept 7, 2005
A Dolphin Tale
Email 4 - September 5 – September 26, 2005
Iron(Wo)man
Email 5 - September 27-October 24, 2005
Tradition!!! Email 6 - October 25th –November 4th, 2005
“Courage is found in all sorts of places” – JR Tolkien Email 7 - November 6-November 30, 2005
Breath of God
Email 8 - December 1-December 21, 2005
The First Hawaii Holiday Season Email 9 - December 22-January 15, 2006
A Whale of Tale To Tell ya
Email 10 - January 16-February 10, 2006
All You Need is…Chocolate
Email 11 - February 11 - March 16, 2006
"A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" Bonus Email: March 27 - April 1
These Running Shoes Are Made for Walking Email 12 - April 2 - May 11, 2005
Adventures in Babysitting
Email 13 - May 11-June 21, 2006
Saying Aloha to Our Time in Hawaii Email 14 - July 1-July 31, 2006
The Last Insight Acknowledgements About the Author Connect with Julie
Eric and Devin on the beach at the Keauhou Surf and Racquet Club August 2005
The Beginning or It Seemed Like a Good Idea at The Time Email 1-July 30-August 8, 2005
Hello family and friends! So, you want to see what happens when you take a normal American family, uproot them from a comfortable existence in a cute 1200 sq. ft. home with lots of loving neighbors, friends and a few family members, and put them on a tropical island alone? Well, sit right back and experience the new reality show of the Z’s family adventures! Glass half full or empty? There are two different ways to look at what has happened to us thus far, the glass half full and the glass half empty. The empty glass is a more compelling and interesting story, but it would not be fair to our adventure not to include the full glass, too. So, you will get both as we progress on this adventure.
The Adventure Starts The limousine picked us up from Eric’s father’s house on Friday, July 30th, after a long, hard day of moving everything out of the house. Thanks go to Lisa, our tenant, and work friends, for coming over and giving us a hand in moving. The limo driver, who showed up an hour late due to a dispatch mistake, handled the fact that we had 350 lbs. of luggage pretty well. After filling every nook and cranny with luggage and ourselves, we headed up to Oakland. Caylin had a ball jumping around the limo while cushioned by the bags of luggage. Around Fremont, part of the East Bay of Northern California, I discovered I had left my purse at the in-laws, which of course held my driver’s license and all my credit cards. We called OJ, Eric’s father and had him meet us in Milpitas, a smaller town south of Fremont, to deliver the purse. That little incident put more time in the limo to consider where we would be in 24 hours. We were moving to Hawaii. After we got another last hug in, we continued our journey up towards the Oakland airport. The next morning, after a restful sleep (which is a relatively new concept since Devin, at 11 months, is still not sleeping through the night) we got all of our luggage back together again (three hockey bags, two suitcases and six carry-ons) and caught the airport shuttle just in time. The airport shuttle dropped us 500 feet from the front door of the airport with no way of having the sky caps give us a hand, which is why I paid to stay at the Hilton in the first place. After finding a skycap that could be bribed to come down into the drop off area, he was kind enough to only charge us $2 a bag. All in all, our luggage ended up costing us about $100 to transport in tips. It worked out in the long run, as I look back now, because if we had shipped our things, they would be headed to Oahu to the wrong address and would have had to have been shipped back to Hawaii Island (but that’s something you will learn about soon).
Continuing on with a few highlights of our trip to the Big Island: the plane was delayed an hour and during the onboard shuffle, we lost one of our carry-ons (girls, you’d appreciate this: I had 7 MAC lipsticks in there to last me for the year!). Once on board, after entertaining our kids for three hours in the airport, we had a five-hour journey without the help of our Benadryl, which was in the lost, carry on. Parents out there, you know what that means, and let me tell you, entertaining a little boy who just learned how to walk in a three seat area was a joy, but it actually prepared me for what was about to come (sound of horror music rises in the background). As for a positive memory to share, we did not slip off the end of the runway upon landing and burst into flames like a recent airline did. Flying into the airport reminded me of when I got my first view of Kailua Kona. I was shocked that the airport was located on a black lava field and seemingly most of everything else was lava, too. I thought to myself, “Where are the palm trees and hotels with white sandy beaches?! What the hell!?” I felt that our idea of choosing the most affordable island to buy a home on may be biting me in the butt at this point. But, as we drove south, we found the paradise we had hoped for. Arriving in Kona Back to the Kona airport four months later. The travel fatigue had set in when we arrived, so Eric and I forgot the name of the car company we reserved a car through. Eric spent almost an hour trying to find the SUV we reserved to no avail. Meanwhile, I was getting my first taste of taking care of the two kids alone. Imagine that I’ve got a mound of luggage sitting curbside, outside, in the middle of the day, waiting for Eric to pick us up. Devin is dripping sweat (88 degrees and 80% humidity), 3-year-old Caylin has to go to the bathroom and I am stuck there wondering what to do. I finally made the decision to let her go by herself (which, upon looking back now, I realize that she has had to grow up pretty quickly, and that parents on Hawaii Island do not have the same level of fear over child abduction they have in California.)
After an hour of waiting for Eric, I finally bummed $1.75 from a nice lady to get a bottle of water from a vending machine to save my children from dehydration. When Eric came back, he told me that he had given up on finding an available SUV and decided to have a taxi van take us to the Keauhou Surf and Racquet Club, where our Realtor had a temporary place for us to stay. Fantastic, we thought, save a few hundred dollars by not renting the SUV for three days. So, again, we paid per bag to have the guy put our lives into the vehicle. Now, this is where a sense of humor about the situation was needed. The Keauhou Surf and Racquet Club The Keauhou Surf and Racquet Club. Sounds pretty chi-chi, huh? A large pool, a close walk to the ocean, manicured landscaping, and a quick walk to the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Hotel. Let me expound just a bit here. The ocean is within about a 200-foot walk down a little private path. When you come out of the path, you are on a black sand/pebble beach that leads to an ocean with a temperature of about 78-80 degrees. White plastic chairs that people have left there to watch the nightly Kona sunset are scattered on the beach and sea turtles are in the tide pools eating the algae. We have been delighted to see Hawaiian outrigger canoe teams zoom past every evening, a red glowing ball of the sun dip into the ocean at about 6:55 pm and the craziest little black crabs running and springing into the tide pools in the morning. The world seems like a pretty good place when you stand on this beach and watch the day end or start. It’s at twilight and early morning when you get a break from the heat and can really enjoy the ocean and beaches.
Julie and Caylin in front of the Keauhou Surf & Racquet Club
Each day I have been running at 6:30 in the morning and stretching on this beach. I then go up to the main drag (Ali’i Drive), run down past Kahalu’u Bay/snorkel beach, turn around and walk back to the Outrigger. There I grab a newspaper, a cup of Kona coffee and sit on a bench looking out over the ocean and watch the tourists who wish they had one more day here before departing. I realize then, after killing myself for the past seven months to get here, that the day is good and attitude is important. BECAUSE… The condo we have been placed at (our holding cell) until the condo we purchased is free of the tenant, is 600 square feet. I don’t know if you can grasp the concept of having one bedroom, one bathroom, a small kitchen and a living room to put 350 lbs. of luggage, one three year old, one toddling infant, a small business, two adults and a bunch of contempt for the situation. The view of this vacation condo is of the parking lot and the place is on the market to sell. Let me remind you again, that the daytime temps here are 88 degrees and 80% humidity. The condo likes to keep trying to attain the outside temperature and humidity level. We are in a constant battle with a ceiling fan, a floor fan and a window air conditioning unit to keep the place around 76 degrees. As my cousin, Tom, who took me
on a six-mile hike near Yosemite at the Hetch Hetchy Dam, can attest (and now, of course, my husband), when I am on an adventure and the temperature goes above 80 degrees, the griping becomes like a nagging mosquito. The one that gets in your tent with you and keeps zinging past your ear until you start slapping yourself. I came out to have some fun on this island and now I cannot enjoy it fully due to my inability to get used to the heat. There, I said it. It’s like therapy. I can almost stop whining about it. You may be wondering what happened to the van we shipped over here. Well, that leads me to the second part of this story. We spent the rest of our first day here without a vehicle, food, or phone. Eric walked a half-mile to a phone to arrange for a rental car the next day so we could drive to the other side of the island to retrieve our car at a dock in Hilo. We ended up having a very nice appetizer dinner at 5 pm in the bar at the Keauhou Outrigger called the Verandah Lounge. The bar area looks over a little shallow lagoon where you can see turtles, bright yellow and black angelfish, called Idol Moorish fish and moray eels. The Mai Tai was one of the best I have had, and I sure needed it after our first day. Did I mention the little plastic monkeys and pink parasols with dainty little flowers? Getting Our Van in Hilo - We Discover A New Holiday We woke up at 5 am (which we did for five days in a row until we all got used to the time change) and left for Hilo by 7 am to get to the dock and turn around to drop off the car by 1 to save a day on the rental car. We drove through a desert, a wind tunnel, and a tropical forest in the 90 miles it took us to reach Hilo. We arrived at the dock at 9:30 to a deserted office and loading area. We had asked ourselves on the way over, “Are there any holidays or special events that could be happening on August 1st that we should have considered?”
Well, we did not know about Bloody Monday. It’s a Hawaii-only union holiday and memorializes the Hilo massacre, also known as Bloody Monday, a local labor dispute which occurred on August 1, 1938, in Hilo, when over 70 police officers attempted to disband 200 unarmed peaceful protesters during a protest, injuring 50 of the demonstrators with buckshot and bayonets. Although the protest ended badly that day, it set up the future of the labor unions on Hawaii Island. The foreman at the Matson shipyard saw us wandering around and told us about the holiday. He said he put it on the Internet and told the receptionists to let people know. Hmmm, our luck was still running the same course. Eric had a brilliant idea to not go back to Kona and to just stay in Hilo for the day and night and be there in the morning to get our vehicle. The three-hour drive with the kids convinced us that the inconvenience of not having a change of clothes, enough diapers and formula, and having to rent a hotel room, was worth it. We toured around Hilo and even found a cool tropical area called Akaka Falls. I would highly recommend this park to anyone coming to visit. The falls were spectacular and were crashing about a quarter of a mile from the trail. The falls had to be over 1000 feet tall. The rain forest was blessedly cool and it rained on us a bit, but with the temperature around 79, it was sheer heaven. We ended up renting a motel room at the Seaside Inn with a view of the harbor and our balcony overlooked a huge Koi pond that delighted the kids for most of our time there. We ate at a popular restaurant in Hilo, Pesto’s, where I had one of the best lunches EVER - Lobster and coconut crusted mahi mahi over a bed of mango cream linguini. Yum! We bought a few necessities and made a mini-adventure within an adventure out of the whole thing. We got our van the next morning and dropped the rental car off with only a $40 charge.
Kailua vs. Kailua-Kona I mentioned near the beginning of this tale that we were glad we did not ship most of our belongings to our new address. We found out the lending documents, where I had copied our new address from had not only the wrong address, but the wrong island, too. There is a Kailua, Oahu. So, we had to call the post office in both Los Gatos and Oahu to get things re-routed to our condo address which is not going to do us a lot of good since we can not even get into our new home. This leads me to: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CONDO WE PURCHASED? Let me get to that now, as we are learning “how to stay positive on an adventure” mode. As many of you are aware, we found the condo in Keauhou (about six miles south of the downtown Kailua Village) in April and made an offer on it. The offer was accepted and we entered into a long escrow process since we did not want to move to the island until mid-summer. (December would have been better!). We did not get the real escrow process going until June 1. The mortgage rates started rising, our lender grabbed a company that was still using great rates, they got swamped, and our loan started dragging… and dragging. We ended up not getting the loan closed until July 28th. We did not know it, but the tenant had not been notified of our intent to have him vacate on August 1. We are not too sure whose fault this was, as neither agent would take responsibility for it. Our contract said we wanted the home free of tenants and - like a bad cockroach problem - we ended up with a problem we could not get rid of easily. We thought we would get to Kona, stay in the temporary condo, and then figure out how to handle getting the tenant removed. Well, we got nowhere the first few days, so we decided to push the issue and visit the tenant ourselves.
Acting Like Californians We brought the kids for good measure to use as a sympathy ploy. The tenant, a single guy in his late fifties, was not too thrilled to have us interrupt his televised baseball program to ask him to uproot himself and find a new place to stay - a place that the Realtors were offering. At first, he absolutely refused to budge on leaving. Funny thing was, he said that the house was terrific, good air flow, a nice view, and best of all, he had made friends with the groundskeepers on the golf course who were letting him play for free every night after 6 pm when the course closed. Why would he want to give that up? Well, we told him about our little dream of buying the condo, fixing it up, and living for only a year on the island. He relented after about 30 minutes of pressure. The next day, we decided to go to the listing agent, introduce ourselves, and see if she could get the condo she had available to move into, ready for him. Well, the reception was not only quite icy, but also downright rude. She accused us of meddling with the tenant, and that his company, who was actually paying the rent, were the responsible party to deal with this issue. She said they had to be dealt with delicately, and she had already FAXED them about this problem. We pushed the fact we were in a 600 sq. ft. hot house with two kids and needed movement on the problem. She said she would call them again for us. And, by the way, the place she could have relocated the tenant to was no longer available. Now, for all you legal eagles out there, in California we have a great thing called a purchase contract that pretty much stands up in a court of law. The general consensus we are getting from this whole mess is this: If we had a bunch of money, we could have hired a real estate attorney a few weeks ago to help “unblock” this problem. However, for us to get legal counsel at this point, it will cost us a few thousand dollars and even more headache, stress, anger, etc., than we are already going through. Now, get this, the listing agent called the tenant and told him he did not have to move.
So, when Eric went up there today to talk to the obstinate tenant, (Monday the 8th) he said he was not moving anywhere. In fact, he did not want Eric to start working on the lanai, either. (This is something that I told him we would start to do if he did not wish to move, as we were the owners of the property and needed to get started on the renovation asap.) Eric, being a more patient person that I am, said the tenant had rights under the law, and he would abide by his wishes. I was pretty incensed, so I called the local board of Realtors to see what my options were for going after the listing agent. Well, the local professional standards person told me it was our BUYERS agent that should be standing up for us and we had a right to bring a grievance against HIM. At this point, Eric and I decided to just back down. Our buyer’s agent arranged for our stay at this condo at no charge and he let Eric’s parents stay there, during their vacation at the beginning of July for free as well, as a consolation for not being able to stay at our house during their visit. We did not feel like turning on him and going for blood. So, he offered us two choices: Move to an ocean front, two bedroom condo until the 25th and pay the $1600 rental fee (which is what we are making from the tenant clinging on to our house) or stay where we were for free. Well, since I do not have a job and do not see a very good prospect of getting one soon, we decided to suck it up, stay here for a few weeks and move into our home at the end of August. I feel like I am being a bit bent on this one, but we really don’t see other options besides getting a lawyer involved. So, when I wrote that things were a bit whacked over here with our condo, you can see what I mean. Thoughts on Hawaii Life On other aspects of what life has been like since we arrived here, let me say a few things. First of all, there is the Hawaii that tourists see and experience while visiting, and there is real life. We went to a church on Sunday and were surprised to see everyone was Caucasian. We have noticed that Hawaiians and whites don’t often
attend the same church. We were seeing a cultural divide we didn't know existed from our time here as tourists. As we spoke to more people who came here from other states (mostly California) we are getting more of a feel for what is the norm here. Schools that allow only Hawaiian children, businesses that hire only Hawaiians, areas that are not exactly welcoming of non-Hawaiians. For instance, we found this to be the case at a playground I found for Caylin up the hill in a cooler area of town. She kept calling to the other kids to play with her and everyone ignored her. She was the only white kid there. Coming from the Bay Area, this is a new experience for our family. Hawaiians who work in the tourist industry have been extremely friendly and when we have asked directions from Hawaiians on the street, they have helped us with a smile on their face. It is going to be an interesting year here observing the underlying culture and how we do or do not fit in. One thing that is interesting here is that there is no one dominant culture. It is the true “mixed plate” of ethnicities, with different cultures coming over at different times based on the needs of the island, including workers for the sugar cane industry. We put Caylin on the waiting list for a preschool that is called The University of the Nations. It has a Christian background and it’s a beautiful preschool sitting on a college campus. We go forth now, trying to enjoy the things to do here, with two small children in tow. We keep out of the sun from 10 am-4 pm, which puts me in our condo entertaining two children most of the day while Eric works on the computer either at home or at the shopping center where there is a Wi-Fi connection. He goes up once a day to log in so he can upload and download email messages. So, he brings the messages home to me, where I ravenously scan to see if someone wrote to me! I do not have access to the internet directly, so no
web browsing, no instant feedback from emails and sadly, no checking in on the San Jose Mercury News to find out news from home. Stay at Home Mom. What!? Taking care of the kid’s full time has been a shock to the system. It’s not like I can go meet my friends for a play date or stroll all afternoon shopping at a mall. I am now taking the kids to the pool every morning so they can get some swim time in and we try to get in the pool after dinner too. We watch the sunset from the beach or the pool almost every night. I have found they sell Sutter Home chardonnay for about $5.50 a bottle; the cheapest they have here (I think my mother’s friends understand the segue from children to drinking very well). I miss Trader Joe’s and Two Buck Chuck, but the grocery store is pretty good and we have had shark, marlin, and ahi for dinner. We had mahi mahi and ono, as well. When our friends and family come to visit, I will treat them to a few good fish dishes we are learning to create, and take them over to the Outrigger for drinks at sunset where the cool ocean air comes in and you can listen to live Hawaiian music. I will share with you our adventures at the Sheraton Keauhou next time I write and let you know about the travails of getting a life together in a foreign land and some of the more touristy things we are planning on doing since we don’t have a home to renovate for the time being. I hope to get up the coast to the mega resorts at Waikoloa where I hear they have fantastic white sand beaches, and to snorkel in Kealakekua Bay where the best array of marine life is found here in the islands. Keep a prayer for us while you are either rooting for us or envying us, or both. I hope you will continue to read my upcoming editions and will write to us and keep us company. Love to all! Julie and the Z’s
Julie and Caylin enjoy drinks at the Verandah Lounge
2020 Insights Wisdom with Age When you live on the island for any length of time, you can sense entitlement a mile off from someone who is visiting. In this first chapter, my entitlement is evident, and it’s rather cringe worthy! It’s amazing watching OTHER people come with their entitled behavior of expecting things to show up for them the way they do on the mainland. I definitely have heard my share of people whine about the heat, humidity, cockroaches, and other things that are an “inconvenient” aspect of tropical life in Hawaii! I can see where people reading these emails may have thought, “Good lord. Really? You moved to an island! Get a grip!” I have now learned to breathe through uncomfortable situations, find patience and be grateful for more things and critical of less. Maybe that is age, but it helps if you remember it as a goal in life! New Tech Can you imagine planning your entire move without the help of Google Maps or “How to Move to Hawaii” blogs and videos from anyone who had ever done it before? Yeah. Very few people were writing blogs in 2005 and even fewer were writing anything about the Big Island of Hawaii! So, we came pretty much blind to the process of buying a home and moving to Kailua Kona. This is one of the reasons I created my
365Kona.com blog, my Facebook groups and wrote two books. Resources are a valuable commodity! After a few misadventures and unmet expectations to live on Hawaii Island with absolutely no help whatsoever, I wanted to save others from the same fate. Can you imagine if someone had told us in 2005, “In the future, you can jump on something called a social network and meet people who have gone through this process before and they are willing to share their experiences with you for free in real time. AND you can also access a website to see everything on an interactive map so you can get a lay of the land AND you can walk around and have access to all of this from a mobile phone.” I would have thought they had binge watched too many hours of Star Trek, The Next Generation and may have had a few too many Mai Tai’s at the Kona Inn. Think about that...it was only 15 years ago. Local Culture In terms of local culture, when I mentioned that Hawaiians live separate lives to many of us “haoles” in Kailua-Kona, it still exists if you don’t look for ways to mingle. Many Hawaiians AND other locals, consider the “downtown core” of Kona a tourist area, so the year that we spent mostly in Keauhou and downtown Kona? We were in the “tourist zone”. The Hawaiians ARE integrated into the community and my children have made many good Hawaiian friends at the various schools they have attended. We have worked on soccer and volleyball fundraisers with an eclectic mix of nationalities, including Hawaiian, here in Kona. One thing I have learned since moving here is to tone down my big California personality and listen more than talk when I am with a group of Hawaiians. I am still in the learning phase and one of my dear friends is a Hawaiian healer who provides insight into the culture for me. Learning about concepts around kuleana, being pono, taking care of the ‘aina, and the history of the culture is key to understanding how to live here successfully on a different level to when you just come to visit. When I first arrived, like many who come from the mainland, I was more
intent on focusing what was happening to my life, than looking around and learning about the life that was here before I arrived. Place Names The importance to the Hawaiian culture of using Hawaiian place names cannot be underestimated. In my emails, I used many location names that were created as slang by tour guides and books to make it easier for people who could not pronounce the names in the Hawaiian language. Many people will refer to Kailua-Kona as just Kona. According to an online Hawaiian word dictionary, http://wehewehe.org, the word “Kona” means “Pleasant or good weather; also, the name of the rain accompanying a south wind.” It also refers to a name of a division of an island belonging to several islands, as Hawaii, Oahu, Kauai and Molokai, mostly on the west or southwest sides of the islands. Each island has a “Kona” side. Kailua means "two seas" or "two currents", a contraction of the words kai (meaning "sea" or "sea water") and ‘elua (meaning "two"); it is so named because of the two lagoons in the district or the two currents, which run through Kailua Bay. By putting the two words together, Kailua-Kona, the actual place name of this specific town on Hawaii Island is created. During my time here, I have worked to share the correct place names with people who follow my blog so “Two-Step” is corrected to Hōnaunau Bay and “Snorkel Bay” is corrected to Kahalu’u Bay. (meaning “diving place”) according to ulukau.org. (Fantastic site to get pronunciation and meaning of place names!) By knowing and using the proper place names, we show respect to the culture and get to know more about the history of the place. The Outrigger Hotel
If you know Keauhou, next to Kahalu’u Beach Park was the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort hotel. The hotel was closed in October 2012 and we were there the last night it was open. We spent many evenings there at the Verandah Lounge looking out over the lagoon in front of the hotel. To the left of the hotel was a large mound of lava rocks when we were there in 2005. In 2007, those “rocks” were used to reconstruct the heiau that once stood there. It was the beginning of a cultural restoration project that continues to this day, years after the hotel was finally torn down in 2017. There is a plan for a major renaissance of that whole area. The redevelopment goal is to “make things pono, or right, to solve the mistakes of the past to move ahead. We want to make sure that any and all future development is culturally correct”, the President of Kamehameha Caylin on the outside lanai of the Outrigger Hotel above the Investment Corp stated in a national lagoon. travel magazine. I have written on my website about the energies of Keauhou and that the area is very historic and thousands of Hawaiians used to live there. Although I am sad that the hotel is no longer standing as it was a place for many community celebrations, I know it is in the best interest of the mana of the land and I look forward to see Hawaiian stewardship of the space.
The Family at the Polul’u Valley overlook
Discovering the Wonders of the Big Island of Hawaii Email 2 - August 9 – August 22, 2005 When last we left you, we were stewing over our new home and literally stewing in our rented one. I think after Eric read my five page missive, I mean email, that he had a better insight into how I was feeling about the world we have found ourselves in and wanted to change my perception so I would have better things to tell you in a more positive light. One of Eric’s best friends wrote us a response email: “From all of the misguided and unorganized events, to Julie's realization that she has to take care of two children full-time until she can escape to a full-time job, the heat, the humidity, the condo debacle, the little known Hawaiian holiday and a rented SUV that is as elusive as a two dollar bottle of wine, all I can say is you must have the patience of a saint to endure it all and keep persevering”. Here is what another person had to say, “All I can say to you two is “Oh, My God!” As always, a reality from hell makes such a great story! Julie, file these "journal entries" away, and you have all the bones of a great book -- I AM SERIOUS! “
There are always two ways of looking at things and I will admit I wrote from a woman’s point of view and oddly enough, most of the people on this distribution list are women. In my ongoing tale, I will put Eric’s take on some of these “debacles” and you can see through the eyes of a calm, forgiving and good natured soul. My take is, of course, a bit more sarcastic and in tones one would use over a glass of wine with an old friend who has heard some pretty oddball stories from me already and needs that extra kick of a “get this!” element. Eric’s aunt said the story was a bit unsettling thus far, so I want to assure everyone that we are in no way thinking of abandoning the island and coming home before our 365 days are up. We are on day 20 now, and like the contestants on “Survivor”, we have found the well, the fishing line and are getting closer to the “merge”. We hope to move into our home by next Friday and FINALLY start living the life we had envisioned for ourselves. I will admit, however, that after attending our first church service and asking God for help and insight, I got a clear message that suggested, “Calm down, enjoy the island and see what is in store for you”. I also realized that carrying around the anger toward the Realtors was just not letting me enjoy the things I came here to see and experience. So, Eric and I decided to just explore the area and start doing comparison-shopping for the things we needed for our new home. One of the first things we did was go out and get some cotton sheets to replace the 100% polyester hell we were sleeping on. We also got some hangers and unpacked a lot of our clothes and basically moved in and made the place more like home. We bought a new PlayYard for Devin to sleep in and Caylin is already at home sleeping on the pull out sofa every night. I am happy to report that last night, the 18th, was the first night we slept without fans and air conditioning on! Yippee! The rainy season is upon us and with it has come a break from the heat. I took my first hot shower yesterday. Just like I would never have believed
it if someone told me I would go a whole year without sleeping through the night, I would not have thought that I would go almost three weeks not taking a hot shower because it was too hot to do so. I have heard that the Bay Area has gone through some hot days, as well, but it never dips below 75 degrees at night here. I will move away from the heat, humidity and sun finally as it is not such an obstacle anymore (or maybe I am just starting to get used to it). Let me tell you about a few cool things we have discovered in the past 10 days. Sheraton Keauhou Resort Right down the street from our new home is the newly renovated Sheraton Keauhou Resort on Keauhou Bay. Abandoned for years, the Sheraton spent $40 million on the renovation and it just got a design award from the Building Industry Association in Hawaii. We strolled through the property and were amazed at two elements to the fun of this resort in particular.
Beautiful pool at the Sheraton Keauhou Resort
One of the elements is the swimming pools, which sit on a tri-level structure and you get down to each pool by riding water slides and “lava
tube” tunnels. Have you ever seen something that screams fun and you immediately think, “Yes, I need to do that!?”. We found out that if you have friends or family staying at the resort that they can invite friends to join them in enjoying the amenities. Second, are the VERY tropically inspired open-air public spaces that could have been the living room areas of a very wealthy mansion owner. Teak lounge furniture with soft pillows in covered lanai’s looking out forever onto the ocean. You can sit in the sun or in the shade and seriously, just lounge. I ordered myself a $8 Tropical Hynotiq. Another YUMMY taste sensation. I sat in the late afternoon sun, cocktail in one hand, laying back on the couch with my eyes closed absorbing the sun against my face thinking, ”Heaven”. Eric, my dear sweet husband, was watching Caylin perform on the stage and letting Devin toddle around a bit while I soaked in this moment in glory. Funny how sun and cocktails can do that for a person. Spiritual rejuvenation The Waikoloa Hilton Resort. This mega-resort is a 30-minute drive north of Kona. You pass miles of desolate black lava fields to get there and all of a sudden you see a green oasis of palm trees and golf courses. For my real estate friends, a one bedroom condo there starts at $650K. Most of the houses are in the $2-4 million dollar range. There are a few swanky resorts in this area including the Hilton Waikoloa and we were drawn to the Hilton due to the Dolphin Quest AND I had heard stories about the opulence of the property. We started off with a low-key lunch in the Kings Shopping Center (75,000 sq. ft. of shopping, girls!) We wandered over to the ever-present real estate office and met a cool Realtor who gave us the scoop on the local real estate market. You can find so much about an area by talking to the local agents. Waikoloa is a planned development and although very
tropical oasis looking, it lacks the character of Kona and the small Hawaiian villages that resemble more of what you would consider “Hawaii living.” I WILL say that, with wide-open land to develop and a ton of investment money, you can do amazing things in the middle of a lava field! We entered the lobby of the resort and found out where all the families with teenagers were staying. They were offering free POG cocktails (Passion, orange, guava virgin drinks) and they had two live parrots saying “Aloha” to the guests. A tram was picking up guests next to a moat that had shuttle boats taking guests around, as well. We rode both, with the kids, for free to see the property and it was pretty fun watching Caylin on a “boat” and “train” just having the time of her life. The whole hotel has an Asian aesthetic with Asian art all over the property. We got off the tram and headed towards the dolphin pools and were greeted at the bottom of a grand staircase heading down to a tropical lagoon that we literally could walk off the staircase into the water. A massive waterfall was cascading into the lagoon and we could see hundreds of tourists in canoes, paddleboats, and personal water floatation devices cavorting about. The path took us to the area behind the waterfall so we could stand behind it and hear the roaring of the water. Caylin was literally screaming with delight. The lagoon was fed by the ocean, because you could see green sea turtles swimming around and a variety of tropical fish. The lagoon loops around to the Dolphin Quest area. I was so happy to see eight or nine dolphins zooming under the water at the open-air viewing area. In fact, two came right up to where we were standing on this little bridge and popped out and looked at us. Caylin was beside herself. What beautiful creatures. I can’t wait to try and find them out in the ocean near our home on a snorkel cruise. I refuse to pay the almost $200 fee they charge at the Hilton to spend a half hour in the water with the dolphins to pet their stomachs and have them swim under you when you have a mask on.
However, I DID pay $9 for a margarita to sit and watch the tourists have their time in the water with the trainers and the dolphins. This was definitely a superb moment to share with my family (just to let you know, we spoke to a few people about the Hilton since our visit and found that the food prices there are astronomical since there are very little options for food in the vicinity). The hotel prices start around $250 a night for a garden view room and go up to $375 for a standard view room. You can pay $80 for a visitors day pass on the property and use all the amenities including their water slides and pools, which we did not see. I say, stay at a condo (like ours!), drive down there for the day, enjoy and get back to a reasonably priced meal in town afterwards! Kahalu’u Beach (Snorkel beach). Back to our neck of the woods in Keauhou, this is the most well known and most accessible snorkel beach on the island. We got new snorkel gear down at the local Wal-Mart and headed into the water to see the local variety of marine life. The bay has snorkelers out in the water from sunup to sundown. We have been there three times and each time we have seen a group of Hawaiian green sea turtles feeding upon the rocks, oblivious to the tourists who hover around gasping, pointing and taking pictures (Ok, I DID take a cute pic of one of the turtles up on the sand and had Caylin pose next to it.) With two small children it is VERY difficult to snorkel for any length of time and I am bound and determined to take a charter boat out for a snorkeling adventure, just Eric and I. The fish are everywhere and there are quite a variety of them. There are rocky reefs in this bay area and you have the current just push you around to take a look. I was a foot away from three turtles trying to eat algae from the rocks while the small waves kept moving them backward and forward. Kind of reminded me of a moving buffet opportunity. I really have grown to love the turtles here. They are just about everywhere I have seen where a beach is located. You see a fin go up and then a little head and then the movement of their shells as they fly through the water. I took a really cool digital picture of one when we were at Magic Sands beach last week.
Finding a New Church A few of you were entertained with our search for a church. We visited the Ecumenical Church of Light on Sunday. To prepare you, we wanted to find a place to go where we did not have the heavy hand of religion pushing us. We found this church in the local newspaper, West Hawaii Today with a list of all the churches in town and were intrigued by the fact that it said it was spiritual and even had a psychic reading at the end. Many of you know that a psychic told us in the fall of 2003 that our next house would have a view of the ocean. Another psychic also told us that our children were “very special” and would need to be nurtured by a school that valued their special artistic gifts. Well, we called to find out where this church was located and when the woman started saying which mailboxes to look for, I knew this was going to be a different type of church. The woman who gave us directions actually walked up to the top of the very steep driveway to greet us and show us the way. Well, the church is actually a three-car garage with the doors removed and chairs set up inside. The view is from 1200 feet looking out over the ocean. The church sits on a property owned by a follower of the church and a few of the attendees live on the property. Caylin was thrilled to see a cow and two goats there, as well. You might be having some weird thoughts about this place, but what was great about it was the people. We were the youngest ones there and the only ones with children. Most of the attendees were artists with a few psychics thrown in for good measure. There was lots of singing, a choir, meditation, a guest speaker and a psychic who got up at the end to give messages. Odd for a Catholic girl like me, but Eric is not a believer in dogma and wanted to find a church he felt comfortable in. Hey, it feels good to just have a group of people to talk to at this point! So, the woman who gave the psychic message, Carol, picked us first. She said that the message she was receiving to share with us was that we
needed to lean on each other during this adventure and that we were not alone, that many people were supporting us with thought and prayer back home. She said that the kids were special and we were raising them in an environment that would help them grow and find their special talents. It was quite interesting to have her share that information in front of about 40 people who did not even know us. It was even more interesting how quickly Caylin and Carol got together to feed the animals after the service and how happy Caylin was to make a new friend even when there was not a jumpy house or other children to play with like there was at the Christian church we attended last week. We also met a man who told us that his son went to the Waldorf School, which we had actually heard about when we went with Eric’s dad to the Whole Life Expo in San Francisco. The representative for the school was sitting behind a table at the show and literally ran around the table to give me the literature for the school and said that I should consider a Waldorf education as it was geared toward children like mine. A few of you know that I found a very good psychic at this show who told us that our kids were Indigo children and would blossom at a school like Waldorf, which supported and nurtured children who were artistic and “aware”. The gentleman at the church said the Kailua Kona Waldorf School had just had its open house, but we could go up and see what it was like and inquire about space availability for Caylin. The school is about 6 miles from our house in a little town in South Kona. Discovering Kona Pacific We are still on the waiting list for the University of Nations, so we decided to test our fate and go up to the school and see if there were any openings. As you can guess, because there are no coincidences, there is space at Kona Pacific for Caylin. The school is a lot like the church. It sits on the side of the volcano surrounded by 40 acres of an organic farm. The
classrooms are actually individual cabins and all the teaching materials in each classroom are organic, handmade toys and instruments. The school is almost like a co-op where they expect parents to put volunteer hours into the school. At home, I would have said “No way! My time is more important than money.” Well, now it seems like a great idea since I am not working and I would love to meet some new friends. To illustrate how special this school is, the parents help the teacher paint the classrooms to reflect the mood of the kids in each environment. The teachers we met were older women who looked like inhabitants of Santa Cruz, with long flowing floral skirts, long hair, and a natural look. However, with the lack of makeup and hair color, they were also open souls who were very earthy and friendly. The head director told us that kids could not wear media images on their clothing to school and that the kids helped to prepare a different organically grown item for snack time every day. They stress artistic development and social development above the normal rote education pattern. We feel that Caylin will grow and learn a lot from this nurturing environment and will give her another world to look at beyond Disney princesses and Barbie. She will only go three days a week to start, so it will also be tempered with our normal day-to-day life, as well. So, we are continuing down a path that seems to be leading us by signposts and signals and see where it takes us. We have decided to go back to the church again this Sunday and take it from there. Island Life Musing Thoughts on island life in general here in Hawaii? The Kamehameha schools, a Hawaiian only school system, is still fighting the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that they can not discriminate against other races by allowing only Hawaiian born children into their schools. The letters to the editors in the Honolulu Advertiser and West Hawaii Times show the anger that the Hawaiians feel towards the courts for trying to take away their only nationalistic opportunity for their children.
In today’s paper, an older man who fought in WWII said that the Hawaiians asked to be a state and the U.S. DID NOT take the land from the Hawaiians by declaring it part of the US. He told them to adhere to the rules of the country and to stop yelling at the tourists and Haoles (whites), as it was these groups who had brought economic prosperity to the residents on the islands. Another letter basically called the school system racist for not letting whites and other nationalities into the schools. Again, we have not been completely discriminated against, but the people who seem to mind us most are the older locals. When we say we bought a condo to people we meet we get two kinds of responses: The “Good for you! Welcome to Hawaii!” and the “Traffic is terrible, housing is too expensive and this place is not the same as it used to be”. (They might as well have also said, “Damn Californians” while they were at it). We have heard that change really started about 10 years ago, but it has gotten a lot more dramatic in the past three years. The “old timers” say you used to be able to ride a donkey down the road to the grocery store when there was only one traffic light in town (only twenty years ago!). The newer residents say that only two years ago the town finally bulldozed an abandoned Japanese hotel that turned into a de facto homeless shelter for the past 15 years located right next to the place where we are staying called the Kona Lagoon. So, as the town grows, it’s looking better, too, as properties get renovated or removed! My mom says the only thing in life you can count on is change. Well, change happens and you either move with it or get run over by it. Realities of Growth in Kona I wanted to put something in here that I found in the local paper recently. I think it highlights what is going on here: “Pristine marine ecosystems, booming agriculture, mild weather and aloha spirit are attracting an increasing number of folks to Kona. With the influx of new residents, the county is running to meet the needs of a growing population. Unfortunately, development continues to outpace the island’s infant infrastructure. This urbanization of Kona worries many
long-time residents. Behind the scenes they are struggling to keep Kona a place, which cares for and respects natural and cultural resources. “ It will be interesting to see what continues to happen in this rapidly expanding old fishing town. We hear of people moving to the other side of the island to get away from what Kona town is becoming, but the new developments and a recent hike in sales taxes (to 4 ½ percent) will continue to help expand the roads and make this a thriving resort town. This is the exact reason why we purchased now. Sounds a lot like the population explosion in the Bay Area, too! Have to say that almost everyone we meet seems to have roots in the Bay Area. We went to the Design and Expo show last weekend to get some comparison shopping done for flooring, cabinets, an awning, and other renovation necessities. The presidents and owners of the companies were manning the booths and we got a chance to speak with many of them who had come over from Northern California and were doing quite well in this expanding housing environment. I told someone the other day that Kona is just another neighborhood of Santa Clara County with as many transplants we have met.
Julie and Devin at the Kalanikai Restaurant at Kahalu’u Bay on a Mom Day.
Mom’s Day I have not found “a job” yet and I am not looking too hard right now as I have either worked or been on maternity leave since 1982. I am enjoying taking Caylin to the library, where I got my first library card since I was in college. We take
out about 15 books at a time and have gotten DVDs there, too. After I run in the morning, Eric and I take the kids swimming in the pool, then I take them on a little field trip of the town when Eric is working, and then Eric and I run errands with them to scope out furniture and things we will need for the house. We then have dinner and we go swimming again. It’s a great family life and I am cherishing every moment of it. Eric’s Perspective Eric wants to say a few things: Out of the 20 days we have been here, we have watched the sun set into the ocean about 12 times. We swim a lot! Regular Internet service should be a right, not an option. Since there is not much that happens here, the news is weak. There was a big fire here, the school system is being sued for being racist and a meth dealer was busted. It is beyond quiet here. Hot, sticky and quiet. We have not used a blanket in three weeks and just started putting a sheet over us. The mosquitoes are a quiet terror. That’s about it. I leave you with another long tale about our continuing adventures, told. I named this update at the beginning, Talking Story. Talking story is what the Hawaiians say for conversing, not just storytelling. They say, “Hey, come over here and talk story” to their friends. So, my updates will be renamed “Talking Story”. So we sign off and when we write again we will be actually living in our condo! Wish us well!
2020 Insights: Anti-Development and Realities of Growth in Kona One of the things I said in this email was “With enough money and land you can build amazing things!” Looking back now, I can see why people told me to take my California attitude and go back to California. Development is not always a great thing and my attitude then was, “if there is open land in a lava field, why not build something useful”. The Hawaiians have railed against this attitude for years and now and I can see why. People come to the Big Island for the open space and to get a feeling of what a place looks and feels like that has not been overdeveloped. No, there is not a turn out with a convenience market every five miles on the long stretches of road through lava fields, cane fields and ranch land around the island. You need to plan ahead with bathroom pit stops and food. But it allows you to see the natural beauty of the island in all of its wild open spaces. I see what is happening now with overdevelopment on the other islands and of the population growth on the mainland. Our island will be a valuable bastion of breathing room in the future. I know it. This statement was in West Hawaii Today in 2005-” This urbanization of Kona worries many long-time residents. Behind the scenes they are struggling to keep Kona a place which cares for and respects natural and cultural resources.” This sentiment is playing out loud and clear right
now during the pandemic and the “re-imagining” of tourism in Hawaii right now. With the degradation of our coral reefs and marine environment along with the need for cultural education, we are at a crossroads of change right now on all the islands. 2020 will be a defining year. Dolphins at Waikoloa Hilton As overjoyed as we were when we first experienced the captive Bottlenose dolphins in the pools at the resort, we now have a greater sensitivity to the captivity issue. After watching the Hawaiian Spinner dolphins play and feed freely in the ocean, I would much rather experience them in their natural environment. Education Choices For my daughter, looking back now that she just graduated her senior year in high school, I believe we made a good decision about placing her at the Kona Pacific Public Charter School. As we have found out, she has a learning disability that most likely would have had her hating school if it had been a competitive push to the end with testing and stress. The school allowed her natural artistic talent to blossom and gave her a strong foundation. As parents, we make life defining choices and decisions about our children and their education and we do so with, what we hope, are their best interests in mind. My advice to anyone is to use your intuition and listen to your children. They actually know what is best if we allow them to trust their own built in guidance system! We were fortunate to have gotten some intuitive guidance that we listened to and did a reassuring gut check on. As the school evolved into a Waldorf inspired charter school that had to meet the requirements from the Department of Education, we realized how lucky we were to have had that little country farm life year at the school in Kealakekua in 2005.
Oh, You Pesky Pests! Email 3 - August 23-Sept 7, 2005 Aloha and Howzit! (An expression used here along with the shaka sign). I started my Talk Story with our thoughts on the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina disaster, but Eric said it was depressing and he said people like to read these updates and be entertained. So, I WILL tell you that although you will hear our travails of moving into our new condo and how bad the first few days were, I can’t complain too much when compared to what a half million people are going through right now in Louisiana. Our thoughts and prayers and some of our finances are with the people of the Gulf Coast now. Ok, so where did I leave off? Well, let’s start with the condo. The tenant left at 8 pm on Thursday night August 25th and we were in here checking things out at 8:30 pm that night. What a shock! The tenant did not even try to clean the place when he left and he must have NEVER cleaned while he was here (the listing agent on the place ended up giving us $150 to have the place cleaned professionally or do it ourselves). The Fixer Condo Imagine this: A dozen geckos living in the house over the course of many years pooping down the walls, the windows and into the edges of the white wall to wall carpeting. Dead two-inch cockroaches behind the furniture alongside gecko skeletons. Cabinets and countertops with years of built up cooking grease. Kitchen chairs that had black arms from people’s constant use mixed in with grease, grime and dead skin cells.
The ceiling fans, which had started their lives as white, were now dripping with dust and more grime, making them ghostly gray. A live wasp’s nest on the ceiling right outside the door. To say DISGUSTING can barely tap into the mess we found here. Now add the “artistic” touches of the previous owners and tenants of silk plants left to gather dust and more gecko poop, knick knacks with Ross price tags still on them on top of the cabinets with more accumulated grease, paintings still encased in plastic coverings with gecko poop running down the fronts, and a whole host of kitchen utensils gathered in drawers that have not been cleaned out in years. It was a nice break when we went back to our rented condo at the Surf and Racquet Club that we had shamelessly lambasted over the last few weeks. The rental condo now had a new quality to it, that’s for sure! (Perspective, friends.) On Saturday, we ended up spending most of the day gathering all of “grandma’s” knick knacks, dishes, utensils, bedding, towels, and other Devin helps Eric with condo renovation filth encrusted and smelly things and taking them down to a thrift store here in town. (Ok, the truly gross stuff we chucked, but the guy at the thrift store was beside himself to get some of this stuff, which proves one person’s trash is another person’s treasures.) We were dismayed to find that the bed in this condo is a full size and not a queen! Eric and I have never slept so close in our married lives as we do
now and we are searching for a queen bed to replace it. The pull out sofa bed where Caylin sleeps is a travesty, as well. The mattress has been crushed by years of use and I don’t know how any adult could sleep on it. The closet smells to high heaven and I put fragrance oil in bowls and left them in there to help diminish the stench (you may think I am over exaggerating, but I can tell you, I AM NOT!). After a full day of cleaning the place out, we still felt we could not sleep in here that night, so we went back to our clean little place at the Surf and Racquet Club (did I tell you how much I just ended up loving that hot little hell hole?). Hawaiian Blessing of the Condo On Sunday, we went to church and prayed for patience in our renovation process. Gwen, one of the women in the congregation (or I should say group as there are less than 25 people who attend this church) suggested that we have the place blessed before we move in to remove the negative energy that was left by the tenant and the bad real estate transaction. So, we agreed and she and another woman who we have become friends with, Carol, came over in the afternoon. They were pretty amazed at the way the guy could live here for five months in this filth, too. They brought a huge bouquet of Birds of Paradise and ferns they had picked near the church and it really added a lively touch to a place used to silk plants. Gwen did a wonderful blessing that incorporated the Hawaiian tradition of asking Pele to bless us as we borrowed her land, that we would be good stewards and asked a variety of saints to help us find happiness and good health here. She placed ti leaves at the entrances of the house, and placed dishes of salt in various places around the house and we all held hands and asked the house to clean itself so I would not have to… ok, I am kidding there. We DID ask God for help in dealing with what will be some trying times as we rip up the floors, replace the deck, tear out the kitchen and bathrooms and go back and forth on deciding on paint colors.
Around the time Gwen was doing the end phases of the blessing, a huge rainstorm hit. The streets started to flood, so she and Carol left and we were left to continue trying to clean the place up. Then the power went out. We took this as a sign, left the new place, ordered pizza and ate it in the old place with lights and television. Now, at this point, our entire load of luggage was in the van. We had to make a decision to unpack in the old place or go and suck it up in the new place with no power. We decided to make a leap of faith and return to our Keauhou condo and set up house. We lit candles and unpacked enough of our clothes to put everyone to bed. Now, with all the rain, and being at a higher elevation, it was actually cold and we needed to sleep with blankets! (Good thing we did not throw those out, too!).
School Starts in Hawaii The next day was Caylin’s first day at school at 8:15 am. She was supposed to have a variety of items they had asked the parents to bring along with their students, including a proof of a TB test, immunization records and such. Yeah right. As parents were showing up with the children’s lunch baskets all decorated (because you can not have lunch pails there with media images, all children have to have baskets and their food wrapped in cloth napkins), I was lucky enough to have had enough food in the fridge to give Caylin lunch at all.
Caylin at Kona Pacific Waldorf School 2005
So, Eric and I, during the next few days went and bought new furniture for the living room and
bedroom. We also had to purchase dishes; because we threw them all away and then realized we had nothing to eat off of! We got a great deal at Ross for Ralph Lauren towels and really nice glasses and dishes. Eric put up three new ceiling fans with lights to help with the heat reduction in here. Attack of the Flying Cockroaches The first night with the fans and lights will forever be known as the “Flying Cockroach Incident” You may have heard about the gigantic cockroaches on the Hawaiian Islands. We found a few of their dead bodies in our house and hoped that we would not have to encounter a live one. We did not know that they were attracted to light. Well, the reason why we have an extended family of geckos living with us, as well as the now demolished wasp nest, is because the condo screens were deteriorated. That happens in an ocean air environment over many years. After sunset last Wednesday, we were watching TV when I heard a flapping of wings sound right before I got hit in the head by one of these cockroaches. I could not help but scream. Of course, Caylin, who loves drama as much as the next person started to scream, too. So, Eric valiantly started hitting the offending insect with a towel. Now, ladies and gentlemen, these buggers are three inches long and when they fly, they resemble small birds. They also don’t respond to getting hit, being smashed or crushed like most insects. They are the Freddie’s and Jason’s of the bug world. Eric had the bug actually upside down in a death like condition and when he came back to the body to clean it up with a paper towel, it flipped over and started running again. It was then we spotted two more on the wall. This was all kinds of funny with Eric batting them out of the air with a broom and sucking them up with a handheld shop vac until we saw them swarming in through the broken screens in the bedroom and above the front door.
From 7:30-10:30 pm we were invaded with these “B-52 bombers” as the locals call them. The neighbors must have thought we were getting murdered. With Caylin screaming, she woke the baby who started screaming and I was doing my best not to yell even when one flew by and hit me in the head and landed on my pillow on the bed. We were exhausted after killing and sucking up about 15 of the putrid little creatures. We stuffed socks into the broken screens and put beach towels over the windows and finally turned out the lights to stem the flow of the assault. We connected the fact that we had turned on the lights of the fans and that’s when the attack came on. They like lights. Who knew? Secure the Perimeter! The next day, Eric vowed to “secure the perimeter”. We cut out the trees that were growing in the “atrium” in our bedroom whose branches had pushed the screens out of the windows and broken them. He made new screens for the rest of the house and we declared the combat zone secure. The next night we only fought one cockroach that we figured had managed to get in the night before and laid low during the day. We found out the next day that the tenant had refused the last two fumigation treatments on the house and they are probably living under the house. Yuck. So, they are smoking them out this Wednesday. Thank god. More Adventures of Discovering Hawaii So, let me tell you a few good trips we have had to add some adventure to the horror story, as well.
Discovering Kealakekua Bay for the first time, October 2005
On Tuesday the 31st, we hired a thirteen-year-old girl to come with us to drop off Caylin at school and headed down to Kealakekua Bay (Captain Cook’s Bay), which is supposed to be the prime area for snorkeling. She watched Devin while Eric and I finally got to snorkel together. We dropped into crystal clear warm water and immediately saw a wide range of tropical fish. I would have been content to just float over one of the reefs watching the little fishies flitting in and out of the coral. Eric wanted to get out into the bay, so we kicked and swam about an eighth of a mile out. When we first started, the fish were a few inches long and the water was about 10 feet deep. Out there, the fish were about 8 inches long and it was about 30 feet deep. We heard the sound of other snorkelers nearby yelling about something, so we swam quickly over to where they were. I looked down into the water and saw about two dozen silvery fish about six inches long go swimming past. Then, I looked straight ahead and saw a dark wall of fish headed our way. It was a fish ball. The Fish Ball Fish balls are made up of thousands of fish swimming together to stay protected from predators. These are different from just schools of fish because they swim in a vortex like manner. Both Eric and I dived down to the middle and it was WEIRD and exhilarating to be in blackness created
by fish. Swimming alongside the fish ball were about seven two-foot-long parrotfish. They were turquoise, yellow and red and just beautiful. It was then that Eric felt seasick from the heavy motion of the sea and needed to head to shore. I wanted to stay with the fish and swam out further to follow them. I remembered from the Discovery Channel that large predators usually follow fish balls. Just as I was thinking about this, I looked to my right and saw a five-foot silver barracuda! AAAAAAAAAH! I decided that being alone out there with that many teeth that close was not a good idea and followed Eric into shore. We compared stories with the other snorkelers who were out there with us and one guy said he’d been diving for years and had never seen a barracuda that big. That afternoon we also visited the City of Refuge (which has a very long and unpronounceable Hawaiian name); it’s a great Hawaiian cultural experience with historic temples and tiki gods. We spoke to some of the tourists that said the snorkeling from this spot was phenomenal, so we vowed to come back with friends and Caylin in the near future. Discovering Hapuna Beach On another tourism note, we finally discovered Hapuna Beach State Park on Saturday. It’s about 45 minutes north of here and has the softest, whitest sand I have seen on the island. And the beach is huge. The waves were breaking between 3 and 5 feet, so we had a great time playing in the waves with the kids and swimming around out there. The water temp is about 85 degrees, so it’s always great, morning, noon and night.
Waipi’o Valley We also drove to the end of one of the highways, where it dead ends into Waipi’o Valley, which does not have roads, electricity or running water. Taro farmers live down there and we hear they don’t like tourists much. The view was stunning. There must have been a lava ledge that sheared off because it’s hundreds of feet of a cliff that drops into the ocean. I will send a picture of this when I get it developed onto a CD. It’s the classic Hawaii tourism shot of blue, blue ocean, velvet green mountains and crashing white waves against the black rocks. Mom Moment Back to the family real quick: Caylin is enrolled in the Kona Pacific School in Kealakekua (say THAT five times fast) She really thrives on the day to day schedule the school offers and it gives us time to do the renovations needed in the condo. We have already been doing co-op duty. We spent the last Saturday in August helping to prepare the school to open. Eric helped build the framework for a new classroom and I got to clean screens, scrub the playground equipment and dash between watching Caylin and Devin. Eric has also lent his artistic ability to help design and build the front gate of the preschool classroom building. The teacher has put me on cleaning-the-classroom detail, bringing fresh flowers for the classroom and doing the laundry for the class in October. I am also going to help
them plan a few parent socials and help with their annual fundraiser, the Chocolate Festival. So, we have a little community we are a part of now with the school and another with the church. Devin’s first birthday and Caylin’s 4th are ten days apart and will be shared with the new friends we are making. It won’t be a jumpy house in the backyard with a BBQ for 50, like we had for Caylin’s first birthday, but it will include cake, a few modest gifts and probably a drink or two for the mom and dad. Newbie Insights on Culture A few of you have expressed interest in the Hawaiian culture as we continue to uncover the underbelly of the inhabitants of this island. Remember when I said that in the churches we have seen, there seems to be a lack of Hawaiian participants? Well, Eric and I finally got to go out on a date about two weeks ago and had dinner and drinks at Huggo’s On the Rocks. This place is great. It’s half as expensive as most of the restaurants here and besides being able to dig your feet into the sand, sip margaritas under the open sky and catch a beautiful sunset; there was a live hula show within two feet of our table. We had a chance to speak to the teenagers who were dancing in the show when we ran into them among the shops near the restaurant later that night. We asked them where the Hawaiians worshipped and I was a little amazed to find out that they attend the LDS church. Latter Day Saints. Mormons! Who knew? There is a huge temple here and I thought it was just a historical structure. The kids asked us to come to the next service, but as much I would like to learn more about the culture, I don’t think Mormonism is where we are headed. We asked them about the schools and what they thought and they were pretty straightforward. The parents who have the money to send their kids to private school do so. The public schools are left to the Hawaiian and other local families that make up the lower paid tourism workforce. (Classic case of division of the haves and have nots.) This is another reason why the public school scores here are among the lowest in the
nation. There are also a lot of drugs in the schools. Meth is the main problem here. We don't see much of this in Keauhou, at all. Foreshadowing of a book? Ok, so I want to get this thing wrapped up and sent off as I am getting emails from friends wondering when the next installment will be sent off. I am thrilled that many of you are passing this adventure on to others. Who knows? Perhaps I will condense it for a book in the future! Eric’s additions to the fun: I bought our appliances at Lowe’s yesterday and asked them about their one-day delivery time. The woman said they were delayed and could not deliver until the 8th. I figured, no big deal, a few days. And then she said, “October 8th!” This is sure Hawaii! I have finally gotten a desk and set up my office at our home. I have highspeed Internet access, WIFI, an Internet based phone, a new printer and I am good to go! Julie drives Caylin to school with Devin every morning so I can design during the first part of the day and then work on the house later in the afternoon. My goal is to finish the kitchen, then tear out and replace the deck on the lanai. Another quick note: handheld shop vacs can hold a lot of huge cockroaches. 2020 Insights Hawaiian Place Names Going back to place names, that “very long and unpronounceable name” of City of Refuge is Pu'uhonua O’ Honaunau. Over the years I have delved deeper into a variety of Hawaiian place names. Calling a place by the name the Hawaiians have given it originally is important as a culturally sensitive aspect of life here. I was a classic example of a mainlander where I would barely try to pronounce the Hawaiian names. I have found that if you understand the meaning of the word and break it down into bite-sized pieces, you can pronounce the names better.
For Pu’uhonua O’Honaunau- Pu’u means “hill” or “mound of dirt” and “Honua” is a place of safety. O’Honaunau is literally “of Honaunau” pronounced, “Ho Now Now” which is the land division in this area and the bay. This is a very sacred area to the Hawaiians and if you are sensitive to energies, you may feel something special here. If you had told me back in 2005 that I would be discussing Hawaiian place names and the energies of sacred spaces in Hawai’i, I may not have believed you, but understanding the Hawaiian language, the culture and the mana of the land has increased my deep appreciation for this island. If you come to visit or live here, please do a bit of research to dig deeper into the past. The knowledge allows you to have a greater understanding of Hawaii. On the story about the appliances, I think that Lowes and Home Depot are still making customers wait a VERY long time to deliver anything! Which shows that in some ways, our island has not changed TOO much! The Barracuda Going back to that day of swimming in the fish ball and seeing the barracuda. We just happened to see one of that size while snorkeling in early summer 2020! One of the best things about living in Hawaii, is that you encounter opportunities for awe and amazement when you choose to go out into the ocean to snorkel or dive. I realize that when you spend so much time in a place enjoying it with your soul, you want to protect it. I have been a staunch advocate for visitor education around reef protection by not using chemical sunscreens and not standing on the coral. I have been able to educate hundreds, if not thousands, of people through my 365Kona Facebook page and blog in providing education that has been widely shared. If you love it, you take care of it. I am blessed to have the platform to help the island.
Meth Issue When we first arrived, crystal methamphetamine was being cooked and made on the island and its roll down effect was crime. People no longer make it here, but, in a quick search of meth on the island, an article came up from 2019 calling it still a pernicious issue. No one likes to discuss the underbelly of community problems, but I think people who read my emails and continue to read my blog posts and watch our videos think Hawaii is pure paradise. Well, we also have our issues, but it seems that we see more people getting stoned than doing ice. Me? I just like to have a glass of wine and stay out of trouble.
Julie throwing off the bowlines as she works on a charter boat
A Dolphin Tale Email 4 - September 5 – September 26, 2005 I am starting this episode with an Eric story. When Eric has been chatting to his friends about life here, he has a few stories that he has been telling over and over again and like a good fish story, some of them keep getting bigger and better in each retelling. Let me tell you one of his favorites: The Cat and the Wild Turkey Mustafa, our white cat, made it over to Hawaii two weeks ago (more on this later) and found out, like we did, that some things are just bigger over here. We walked out of the front of our condo to find a wild turkey in the middle of the road! Mustafa was down in the bushes crouched and ready to pounce. We did not think he would actually attack a wild turkey, but got our video camera out just in case. He circled the bird a few times and I finally put the video away and went to take Caylin to school.
What happened next was an “Eric story”. Eric says that the cat stalked the female turkey from behind (I say female, to let you know it was a plain brown one that stood about three feet high). The turkey was eating nonchalantly when Mustafa jumped on her tail feathers and tried to bite her. The turkey wheeled around and opened her five-foot wingspan. At this point, Mustafa realized that he made a mistake (We’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy!). He did not run and nor did the offended foul. Ms. Turkey went back to eating, leaving a stupefied cat there to ponder his next move. Mustafa ended up leaving to stare at the doves instead. In the telling of this story, I noticed the height of the turkey and her wingspan were increasing and the reaction of the cat to turkey was getting more comical. I thought I would share this one with everyone before you hear that we have five-foot turkeys over here with 10-foot wingspans! So, Aloha everyone! Wow! It’s been a crazy few weeks over here. We have had some visitors, I have found a new career opportunity, Eric has done so much on the renovations and we have celebrated two birthdays! First, I have to tell you about a dolphin charter company I found before I came to Kona. The website discussed the spirituality of Kona and the dolphins that swim in her waters. I had heard that the Big Island was a very spiritual place and the website did a great job detailing some of the reasons why. Well, I was at our church two weeks ago and met a woman named Barbara. She mentioned that she owned a boat and went out with tourists to swim with the dolphins. I ended up connecting the fact that it was HER company and her website that I had seen before I had moved here. She also shared with me that two of her crewmembers had recently left the island.
Well, I explained to her my love of boats, dolphins and adventure and she invited me to come out the next day on her boat as she was having a blessing of the vessel and was just going to go out for a few hours without paying passengers. I was so thrilled to have this opportunity! I had a chance to meet Danny Akaka, the son of a Hawaiian Senator who is spearheading the Akaka Bill to give the Hawaiian people sovereignty, much like the Native Americans. He did a blessing for Barbara’s boat (after waiting a year to have him do the blessing!) and it resembled the blessing we had on our home, complete with ti leaves. He had Barbara hang the ti leaves from the bow of her boat, and he threw fresh coconut milk on the outside of the boat while chanting Hawaiian blessings. After he performed the blessing, Barbara, and I and another new member of the church came with us to take the boat out. So, we cruised around for about 30 minutes in three-foot high waves. As we were turning around to head back to shore, the ti leaves blew off the bow of the boat. Capt. Barb, who was driving, asked us if either one of us would mind jumping off the boat and retrieving the lost leaves. Well, the other guest was about 50 and did not know how to swim. Thinking that perhaps I could impress Nancy and get a job as a crew person, I volunteered, stripped down to my bathing suit and leaped from the back of the boat into 200 feet of open ocean without a floatation device. In my rush to get the leaves, I also jumped in with my sunglasses on my face. So, I scrambled to get those and started swimming with one fist around the glasses and an open hand. I got the ti leaves just as they started separating. As I was grabbing this way and that for the leaves, I started thinking about sharks. I remember a story about a downed Navy ship in the Hawaiian waters and a few hundred seamen got attacked by tiger sharks while waiting for rescue. It’s those kinds of thoughts that can make you panic like thinking about ghosts in a dark hallway. So, I was swimming with two fists as fast as I can back to the boat and thinking at any moment I am going to lose my leg to a mouthful of teeth.
Well, those three-foot swells had also made the boat drift further away. Thank god I have been swimming laps in the condo pool since I arrived and the running sure has helped, too, because if this had happened when I first got here, I don’t know what I would have done! I learned a lot about courage at this point. It took me a few more minutes to get back to the boat, and I was not going to start squealing like a little girl either. There is a blessed feeling you get when you put two feet down on a solid boat after thinking about a shark attack. So, Capt. Barb took us to a little bay near a beach that is almost inaccessible to tourists trying to walk in called Makalewena. She dropped the anchor and we stayed there for a while enjoying the super blue water. Barbara, who had coconut prepared for this outing, pushed three straws into the nut and we all took turns drinking fresh coconut milk. It was about here that both I and the other guest started feeling those three-foot swells. I normally do not get seasick, but when the offer of snorkeling came around, I declined politely (reminding both ladies that my visiting friends were waiting for me to get back!) This is where I found out that this was not just a pleasure cruise, but a work out, as well. Capt. Barbara asked me to haul the anchor back into the boat. Girls, if you ever want to step outside your zone of a computer and an office, try working on a boat. I hauled that anchor up 28 feet with my bare hands. And when it came time to get back to shore, everyone was expected to help land and clean the boat, too. I tied the boat to the dock, winched the boat out of the water and scrubbed the dang thing! Barbara was impressed with my enthusiasm and offered me a chance to crew in the future. Making good on her promise, I was called into service on the boat the next Monday and got to be the only crew person, besides Capt. Barb, to take six tourists out to find and swim with dolphins (ok, two crew people called in sick and Barbara called me in desperation. Normally, you need
to have CPR training, and some modicum of knowing how to save drowning people before going out with them, but hey, this is the Big Island.) So, here I was on my maiden dolphin discovery voyage! Each person has to pay about $150 a person to go out and do this tour, and here I was making money to do it! I kept trying to high-five myself, but had to stop to help people get around the boat, get fitted with snorkel gear and serve sandwiches and drinks. The funny part was when we all jumped out to do some snorkeling after we had seen a pod of dolphins too close to the harbor to swim with them. We were hoping they would come over to us if we were in the water. So, everyone got their gear on and then Barbara asked me where my gear was. Hmmmm-I had forgotten about that part. So, she let me use an extra pair of fins (a size too small!) and a mask and snorkel. Then she says, “Oh, Julie, you will need to swim down 10 feet with a rope to tie us to an underwater floating buoy” I kept asking myself if I was on an episode of “Candid Camera Survivor”?). Thank god another dive boat got there before we did and offered to tie us to their boat! So, after looking like some professional snorkel trainer and telling the tourists how to put their masks on and such, I jumped in and my snorkel came off the mask and I could not figure out how to put it back together. UGH! Capt. Barb had to come over and do it for me and fit the strap on my head. She is really forgiving, thank goodness. SO, we snorkel around for a bit (saw a 10 foot eel, I swear!) and we ended up getting back on the boat to find the dolphins. We did not have to go far and ended up jumping out in about 60 feet of water. I was so glad we had a practice session because six people went off in six different directions and I was responsible for them all. The dolphins started swimming about 20 feet below us and it was amazing. The water was unbelievably blue and clear, and when I looked
down I could see pairs of dolphins come into view. Everyone was yelling and pointing excitedly in all directions as the Spinner dolphins leapt out of the water and did flips and spins about 100 feet from us. It truly was one of the best moments in my life. Then all of a sudden they disappeared. Capt. Barb called for us to come back to follow the pod and I herded everyone back to the boat. We found them again in about 200 feet of water. We all jumped out again, but this time one of the women was acting a lot more sullen. I saw over to her and asked her what was wrong. She said she was having a panic attack not being able to see anything underneath us but water and started thinking about sharks. I told her (because I honestly have heard this) that the sharks are more afraid of the people out there and they do not attack swimmers. I must have a very convincing face because she snapped out of it and was able to start swimming again. And, having gone through basically the same experience myself less than a week prior, I used the courage I found in myself to help her deal with it, too. Capt. Barb had told us not to touch the dolphins and to not chase them. Well, I looked down and found that if I kept swimming in the same path, a dolphin was on the same trajectory to come up near me. I could have reached out and touched this magnificent creature. I saw all the scars on his sides and the beautiful metallic grey markings on his body. Then we were looking down and saw three dolphins cavorting about and then two of them started mating right there below us! Capt. Barb said that humans, monkeys and dolphins are the only creatures on earth that have sex for the pleasure of it. Watching that from about 20 feet away was like taking part in a Discovery Channel episode! And the other part of the adventure was just floating in the water looking down into the nothingness of the ocean waiting for something to appear. The water is the most ethereal shade of blue, and the sunbeams were shining down as far as you could see. I was floating there in the beams thinking that this is what the road to heaven must look like. It was such a spiritual feeling.
I do truly hope that you, my friends and family, will come out and experience this. It’s something that I have never seen on an aquatic show or in a photograph or had anyone explain it to me. Even when you see shafts of light through the clouds, it’s not the same, because when you are floating, the spears of white light come up out of the deep blue and surround you, shimmering and glowing. Take my word for it, experience it. So, when we returned to the dock, I was feeling like a pro getting the boat back to the ramp and such. One of the tourists gave me a $20 tip and said I had done an excellent job out there! Barbara said they all said good things about me and she was very impressed (I DID wait tables for five years, so I DO have SOME customer relations experience, but it was really cool to have a new job in a new environment and do something that was truly amazing that I was getting paid for. Yippee!) Capt. Barb and I discussed me being a future back up crew person for her when she gets into a pickle and I told her I could help her with marketing, PR and business development, too. So, we are off tomorrow to meet with the concierges at the resorts to tell them about her charter company and develop an incentive plan for them to recommend the trip to the tourists. I am also going to contact the Hawaii Visitors Bureau about getting her more exposure. Barbara has offered, as part of my compensation, I can bring my friends out to swim with the dolphins when they visit! I have expended three pages on this one topic. Hope you have some patience left for some other interesting events that have happened in the past two weeks. Getting Our Cat to Kona Our friends Julian and Penny came out to visit and they also brought our cat, Mustafa, with them! They went beyond the call of duty and flew with the cat from SFO to Oahu where the cat had to be left in quarantine for 10 days. They planned part of their trip around the cat’s schedule!
After his quarantine time was up, they picked him up and flew with him over to Kona. To say our cat was shell shocked by all this is an understatement. Eric’s father and step mom had kept the cat for us from July 28th until September 1st when OJ met Julian and his wife at SFO at 7 a.m. to switch custody. Their time with us was extremely fun as we got to show them some of the best things Kona has to offer. We only had two days with them so the itinerary we kept was chock full of things to do. Here is a sample:
Julie and the kids enjoying a beverage at Huggo’s on the Rocks
Huggo’s on the Rocks We had to take our friends for feet in the sand, dinner, drinks, live entertainment and a blazing sun set into the ocean. Mai Tais here are FANTASTIC. Caylin became part of the show as she started doing her own version of the hula in front of the stage at the restaurant. She was roundly applauded for her artistic flair!
Mantas at the Sheraton After dinner, we headed to the Sheraton Keauhou to see Manta Rays. The hotel shines lights into the ocean from the deck and the light attracts plankton, which in turn attracts Manta Rays. Well, we stood there for a few minutes watching the two boats with snorkelers swimming around with little lamps on their heads. This would be a very fun thing to do if you can keep your nerve swimming in the dark with these large animals all around you! As we were watching, an eight-foot manta ray appeared out of the dark water and into the light. It was like watching a scary movie, because these things look like gigantic floating bats. It kept flapping its wings underwater and had a huge gaping mouth to scoop up the plankton. This is a free thing to do here and they come every night. FairWinds Catamaran We got on board at 9 a.m. and sailed/cruised to Kealakekua Bay (Capt. Cook’s Bay). This was such a fun adventure, too! You can perch yourself on the bow of the boat and look down into the frothing water and see the island from the ocean. The Kealakekua Bay is CRYSTAL CLEAR and is a marine sanctuary with sea life teeming everywhere. The boat has a 15foot diving platform and a water slide that ends at about 8 feet above the water! The slide was so much fun to go on headfirst! I am glad I am doing this at 40, because I don’t know if I would be at the top of that slide headed face first into a bay in ten years. The snorkeling was divine, with professionals in the water explaining what you were looking at. I was so busy enjoying the day, I barely took any pictures! We drank margaritas on the way back to Keauhou and got to see excellent video images of some of the sea life that we did not get to personally see. The videographer was very talented. He looks like that comedian Carrot Top, has the personality of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, and is as knowledgeable as Jacques Cousteau. His name is Bryce Groark and has been approached by the Discovery Channel. As part of the video entertainment, he dove down to 150 feet, took his mouthpiece out and videotaped himself letting two shrimp climb into his
mouth to clean his teeth to show everyone how the shrimp climb into the mouths of appreciative fish. It took Bryce 50 days in a row of doing this until the shrimp finally felt comfortable enough to enter his mouth. We got some pictures with him in case he becomes famous. He deserves it after seeing that performance! After the Fair Winds, we took a break, got cleaned up and then regrouped to have drinks at the Verandah Lounge of the Outrigger. I showed our guests the turtles and fish that inhabit the lagoon of the hotel. We then headed to Jameson’s By the Sea near Magic Sands Beach. This is one of the finest restaurants in the area with the benefit of receiving fresh fish right off the boat from the fishermen in Kailua Kona. We sat out near the sea wall and enjoyed watching the body boarders battling the waves at Magic Sands. Eric ordered a $38 mahi mahi dish that was almost as tasty as that fish dish I had in Hilo! We all had fresh fish and enjoyed great conversation, a beautiful sunset, some tasty chardonnay and a light ocean mist when the waves hit the walls. We then strolled through downtown Kona. Since our friends REALLY enjoy Mai Tai’s, we ended up at a bar, Pancho’s and Lefty’s overlooking Alii Drive, a la Mardi Gras, and drank and people watched for a while. The next morning we took them to the City of Refuge (the place with the really long Hawaiian name: Pu'uhonua O Honaunau) and walked with them as they toured the grounds. Hawaiian culture comes alive here with history and the ability to see how canoes, paddles and heiau were crafted and created. Across Honaunau Bay, our friends used our snorkel gear and swam out of a place called Two Step. They found themselves swimming with a pod of Hawaiian Spinner dolphins (this is before I had my dolphin adventure, and I had to stop the devil on my shoulder from being too envious over this)! They both said it was one of the best experiences they have ever had and were thrilled with everything we showed them while they were here.
Ongoing Kitchen Renovation The kitchen has been totally ripped out and we have new cabinets, new appliances and – my favorite part – a new bar/island! Eric and I found a wood warehouse and found this beautiful piece of Monkey Pod (a local tree). It is two and a half inches thick and just gorgeous now that Eric has sanded and polished it. We created the bar out of real bamboo supports, too! This will be a great place to entertain our guests! We have repainted the walls a toasted coconut in the living room and kitchen, and with new lights the place really glows golden. It is really feeling like home now and we are finding our rhythm and enjoying the experience.
Caylin under the banner I had designed for the club
Kona Newcomers Club We have some friends now and are making new ones. I am starting a Kona Newcomers Club and have publicized it by going on a community cable channel with my friend Lisa. I put a notice in the local paper, too. I will let you know how THAT little endeavor goes after our first meeting on October 8th. I am hoping to use it as a place to meet some other cool folks, find people to do group events, market the dolphin charter boat to, and perhaps promote my entrepreneurial endeavors, too.
DIY Renovation Eric has been doing a great job at finding good deals like unfinished granite for our countertops that he can grind and finish by hand, and a slab of travertine for the bathroom that he got at a discount because it was a broken piece. The beauty of being an experienced sculptor and woodworker! We just found out today that contractors are being paid about $300 an hour here! This place would cost a fortune if we had had a professional crew come in and do the renovations.
Devin celebrates his first birthday at the Ecumenical Church
Birthdays for the Kids The kids are both a year older from the last time I wrote. I made a cake for each of them by hand (I don’t have a mixer here, so I literally hand made it!). Each of them got a special celebration at our church with rounds of Happy Birthday sung in English and German (where many of the members hail from). We had a beachside BBQ for Caylin last night with about 8 people and she said it was the best party she had ever had. Made me rethink those parties for dozens of people at our house where I barely got to talk to everyone because I was so busy trying to keep the party going.
She had another celebration today at her school where the teacher helped her bake a cake for her class in the classroom! How many preschools do that?! The kids all made hand drawn placemats for her and the teacher made her a little angel doll out of colored wool. She got to wear a rainbow silk cape and a satin crown all day, too! Real paradigm shift from Los Gatos, that’s for sure. So, I will wrap it up as it is getting long and late at the same time.
2020 Insights Famous Cinematographer First of all, I have to say having met Bryce Groark (and getting a photo with him) and now seeing what happened to him is pretty amazing! He ended up becoming an Emmy winner! “The Kona, Hawaii, local is on the short list of cameramen on call to Discovery Channel and National Geographic to document pelagic traffic spanning from oceanic white tip sharks to humpback whales. He was part of the documentary team that produced “Mission Blue”, where Groark was nominated for a 2015 Emmy in cinematography for his work.” You will find in this book that I point out some of the people I met, and you will see that many went on to do amazing things in their line of work. We have met some of the most interesting, talented and welltraveled people on this island! Kona Newcomers Club Now that I have over 1800 people on Facebook in my Kona Newbies group, my friends can see where the idea actually began! When I first tried to start the newcomers group, there were no social platforms, only the newspaper. Needless to say, the effort did not go very far or very fast. I think we had six of us who met at Kahalu’u Beach Park. I hold beach bbq’s and fun activities for the group now and get about 25 people who are pretty damn happy to have a chance to meet new people who share a
common bond of just getting to the island. I have watched some amazing friendships form and many of these Newbies have volunteered for the public events and festivals I have put on in Kona over the years. I have been able to advocate in this group for chemical free sunscreen, ocean safety and environmental conservation, cultural history, and helpful news regarding volcanic eruptions, hurricane preparation, etc. Additionally, hundreds of people use the group as a moving to Kona forum with questions about pets, freight, schools, jobs, housing and events being answered by myself and others in the group who give back to the community by helping others along the way as I had helped them. This group always makes me feel like the island put me in the right place at the right time to help the right people move here. Quarantine in Honolulu I re-read that section about leaving our cat at the airport while our friends enjoyed their vacation in Oahu and thought, “How barbaric.” Can you imagine leaving a cat in a cage for ten days before you can take it home to be able to love on it? Our cat was pretty traumatized by the whole ordeal. The state now has made it MUCH easier to bring pets to Hawaii by allowing the quarantine time to be spent on the mainland and pets can now fly direct to Kona and be checked out by a local vet and then away you and your beloved animal go. Our cat ended up running away when he saw Eric’s dad arrive to visit. We think maybe the cat saw him and thought that he was going to have to go through it all again! Loneliness Started To Sneak In During this time, I started to realize how much I had taken my friends and local community for granted. I had invited 50 people to my daughter’s first birthday and Devin had seven almost strangers at his. Over that year I was lonely enough that I never forgot the feeling and it was another reason why I created the Kona Newbies and wrote about the issue in my “How to Move to Kona” book. My girlfriends in San Jose and I met for drinks and dinner, weddings, baby showers, birthdays and anniversaries. It would take years for me to make those kinds of
friendships in Kona. Unless you move frequently, the deep bonds of relationships you have are a gift. I had the opportunity to learn that again when we moved to Lake Tahoe in 2016. That was THE loneliest and most depressing year; right in the middle of one of the most beautiful places I have lived! Friends and family are so important to a full and happy life. Being here this summer without being able to leave or welcome visiting friends has once again shown me the power of connection. An island is only so fun as the people who help you enjoy it. For the first time in human history, ALL of us have experienced being physically cut off from our support network with the shelter-in-place experience of COVID-19 this year. You have inkling to what it was like to be here and have to rely on yourself and your family to get you through. I think having Zoom and FaceTime would have alleviated some of my loneliness and if they had had a Kona Mom’s Group like they have now, I could have leaned on other moms. Living in a retirement resort community without any other families around, was just tough. It's STILL tough! I was lucky to have made most of my friends from the parents of my children’s classmates. Two or three of those women are still in my friendship circle and I cherish them. Years of being part of the joys and sorrows of each others lives is a gift I don't think I realized until now in my 50’s.
IRON(WO)MAN Email 5 - September 27-October 24, 2005 Aaaaah, the sound of a crying, teething baby, the coughing of a child getting over the flu and a husband trying to manage two children so I can type this to all of you. These are now the days of our lives. Where are swaying palm trees, the crashing waves and the little pink parasols in a tasty cocktail? I think I am feeling a bit overwhelmed since the last 12 days have been so difficult to get through, hence the lack of an updated story.
Well, let’s not go to what has happened in the past week and a half just yet. That’s part of the “Glass Is Half Empty” coming back again. Let’s go to where you think this story should be as seen from the eyes of a visitor. As part of my job with the dolphin charter company, I have created a marketing presentation folder with pictures and FAQ’s about the tour. I have taken the booklets and brochures to the Mauna Lani, Mauna Kea and the Fairmont Orchid. All these resorts are 5 star properties and again, it was nice to be getting paid to visit and explore these gems of the Kohala Coast. The Kohala Coast The Kohala Coast is about a 45-minute drive north from our house. The area seems to be sunnier more often than Kona, but it’s a lot windier, too, as it sits facing Maui and that channel between the two islands is like a wind tunnel. The resorts in this area all have huge open lobby areas that the wind can blow freely through, and it’s wonderful to come in and feel 80 degree wind through your hair and see the view of the ocean right in front of you in a sweeping vista. The beaches around this area have fine white powder sand (which blasts you in the face on a very windy day, as I am told). This area is right above Waikoloa, which is situated between a 20-mile long lava field and 30 miles of open ranch land. If you stay at these resorts, it’s a long haul to Kona and to grocery stores or any type of discount shopping. The real estate in this area is beautiful and expensive and they have made no provisions for schools, hospitals or affordable units. I see where land use concerns can crop up when developers have free reign on open land. I digress. The Mauna Lani Resort sits between a championship golf course and the ocean. Caylin got the biggest thrill from the fishponds at this resort. Lots of koi and tropical fish and even one with sharks in it! This resort was the top of the line when it was built, but it lacks all the bells and whistles of the Waikoloa Hilton (Which suits the well heeled visitors just fine, I am
sure, since screaming children and preening teenagers were lacking at this location). The northernmost resort is the Mauna Kea, which has the best beach on the island. The view from the terrace of the restaurant reminded me of a view from a resort near Big Sur in California called La Ventana. It’s up on a hill overlooking the beach and a fifty-mile view of the open ocean. After we checked out the property, we hiked down to the beach and were stunned at how uncrowded and gorgeous it was. The kids had a great time playing with us in the gentle waves and making a little pond for the waves to fill in the sand. There is limited parking for non guests at this resort, which helps keep out the crowds, and any locals who might have taken the long road to get there in the first place! The Fairmont Orchid sits on lushly landscaped grounds, but the beach was not that great. The concierges and doormen at this property, however, were some of the friendliest staff people I have met yet at any property. I promised the entire concierge staff a charter boat to swim with the dolphins and hope to do this before the holidays. While I am on the topic of cool resorts, we went back to the Sheraton Keauhou Bay, when our Los Gatos tenant and friend, Lisa Pegg came to visit a week and a half ago. When we first visited, we did not see the rest of the pool area. We have now discovered that the Sheraton boasts the largest pool in Hawaii. Besides a 30 foot “lava tube” water slide, they also have a sandy bottom children’s pool, a 15 ft. cascading waterfall into the pool, a flowing river that leads to a mini lava shoot and a water feature that squirts out at different intervals to the squealing delight of the small children who were caught once or twice in the face or back with jets of water. Thanks to Lisa, we were able to skip the $90 a day fee for use of the pool and slide! This leads me to some of the “Glass Not Full AT ALL” experiences that have befallen us of late.
Devin had to go into the pediatrician for his one-year Well Baby shots. We brought him in the middle of the day. For all those new moms out there, this is a cautionary tale that I hope you will remember. The outcome: Schedule well baby appointments first thing in the morning. Devin Gets Croup Story The room was full of sick kids and we had to wait over forty minutes to see the pediatrician. If you remember from my last story, Devin picked up a case of Roseola from this same waiting room. Well, I tried to keep him away from the shared toy area, but after sitting there for quite awhile he ended up near a little girl his age. I asked the mom why she was there and she said because her daughter had a persistent cough. AAAH! I discovered right there that I am a germ snob. I whisked my child away and once I got into the examining room, I had the whole family wash their hands thoroughly. Well, not good enough, because five days later Devin came down with the croup. (Barking cough accompanied by closing of the air passages) This coincided with Lisa’s visit to see us and spending two nights in our house with us! Poor Lisa (and our family!) was up most of the night for these two nights with Devin crying, whooping and barking and not able to breathe. He would wake up and couldn’t catch his breath and scare himself into what sounded like an asthmatic attack. After two days of thinking he was going to be able to get over this without seeing a doctor, I ended up bringing him to another family doctor that I had recently seen for a referral. He suggested putting the baby in the shower room and let him inhale steam. (This is a fantastic suggestion for those of you who have bathrooms that can be enclosed, which ours can’t since it has slats of open glass on the entire back wall!). We opted for drugs and he felt immensely better by the third night. By this time, Lisa had packed her bags and headed to the Sheraton to spend the rest of her vacation with her family who had come in to for the IRONMAN Triathlon on October 15th (Lisa was such a great guest that
she took me to lunch sans kids at Huggos on the Rocks and treated me to lunch and a great big beautiful tropical cocktail replete with a parasol!) I hope she is feeling ok at this point, because Devin’s croup turned into a nasty flu for Eric and a cold for Caylin. Eric ended up in bed for five days with a fever and Caylin has been home from school since last Thursday. To top all this misery off, I had surgery on my lip to get rid of a lesion that I have been battling for ten years, which had started to grow rapidly after I burned my face on the boat. Facial Surgery I ended up at a Facial Surgery Center getting a chunk of my upper lip cut off and sewn back together with six stitches from the bottom of my nostril to my lip. To say this was not an attractive look for me is an understatement! Good news was that the biopsy showed it was not cancerous, but was a rare skin disease called hyperkeratosis. So, I was nursing a huge fat lip and could not swim or shower for days. I was swallowing the pain pills with some wine, which I had to drink out of a straw. So, between medicating my children, my husband and myself, I also took on managing the needs of my sick family, our house and still got out to see a portion of the Iron Man race. IRONMAN World Championship Race The IRONMAN is an annual draw to Kona for the crazy athletes who swim two miles, bike 112 miles and then run a full 26-mile marathon within the cut off time of 17 hours. We started seeing the athletes train about two weeks before the race. The excitement of the event really started on the Wednesday before the big Saturday race. The Parade of Nations was held in downtown Kona for all the athletes who came from about 50 participating nations. We were right there waving and applauding the athletes as they carried the flags from their countries down the street. It felt like a smaller version of the opening of
the Olympics. We even saw the woman who would eventually win the IRONMAN (and take one of the two $110,000 prizes!) go right by us. On the day of the event, Eric dragged himself out of bed in time to catch the last few dozen people leaving the water and getting onto their bikes at the transition area. (The event started at 6:45 am.) We saw a few men in their early seventies do this and someone who had Lou Gehrig’s disease. We caught a portion of the bike race at the top of a hill and after resting at home for a few hours; we went to the turnaround area for the marathon and cheered the athletes from the side of the road. I was just awed by the physical endurance of these people. We spoke to a few bystanders who were waiting for their sons, brothers, fathers, or wives to come running past and we cheered their family members on like we knew them. One guy broke from the race to hug each of his supporters on the sidelines. One poor guy had his leg muscles seize up on him and he had to start limping down the course. Out of 1800 people who started the race, only two people did not finish it. Lisa’s stepfather had his legs seize up on the last leg of the bike ride and ended up walking the entire 26 miles to finish the race. His wife came out and walked with him in the dark to the finish line. I cannot describe the feeling of inspiration and stick-to-itiveness this story and others like him created in not just Eric and I, but so many people who watched them train and compete. It was a great event to be so close to, especially with someone we knew in the race. If you ever think you want to visit the Big Island, do not come during the IRONMAN unless you are here to see the race. The amount of tourists here was amazing. They acted like a blood clot to the roads in the area and many residents voiced their opinions of this in the local newspapers and while standing in line at the grocery store. People sure love the money that the tourists bring to the area, but don’t like having their lives interrupted by them!
I guess the people who live in Santa Cruz think the same way when a million people leave Santa Clara County to seek relief from the valley heat and head over the hill to the ocean. Since we were lying low anyway and Caylin’s school is the opposite direction from town, I did not have too much of a problem besides almost hitting a few overly confident bicyclists. Kitchen Renovation On the renovation front, Eric got all the granite counter tops into the kitchen. He broke two saws on the job trying to cut the stone himself, but finally got a saw big enough to do the job (We have a full tool shop now on the floor of our bedroom). He even “bullnosed” a portion of the granite himself and when you see the finished work, you will be amazed that he did it all by himself. He tore out the disgusting stained white carpeting and laid bamboo laminate flooring in the living room and kitchen. The living area now looks warm and inviting and so much bigger and more open now. Eric is a hard working star and has put so much sweat equity into this project. We also finished painting the living room and kitchen with the toasted coconut color. It felt great to welcome Lisa into our house and let her see the changes because she was with us in April when we first toured the property. We also hosted another set of visiting friends last Friday and served them cocktails and appetizers on our new bar! I am back and open for hosting events at my house! Just to tell you a funny story about my luck again...a coworker from my days at American Home Mortgage, Kelly and her friend, Matt came out to visit. I took them down to the same snorkeling place as our friends Julian and Penny. (Two Step at Honaunau Bay is the name) If you remember that experience, they took our snorkel gear and ended up swimming with dolphins and did not come back to share the gear because they were having such a great time. Well, Eric and I took Lisa there and we had a great time snorkeling together and saw beautiful fish, but no dolphins.
When Kelly and Matt were there, they had their diving gear with them and I did not go into the water due to my lip surgery. So, of course, a pod of about 40 dolphins comes into the area! They had just come out of the water to head home with me because Eric was still sick and was watching the kids so I could take them down there. Well, I could not in good faith make them leave without swimming with the dolphins, so I encouraged them to get back in the water and they had a fabulous time being right in the middle of the Spinner dolphins and their babies (And for Eric’s friends, I ended up driving myself home while they swam so I could relieve him of child care duties!). I cannot wait for another friend or family member to come out to Two Step and finally let me be able to share in this great experience, too! I only had one shot to write this update to you since the family is finally feeling better and sleeping soundly now. I will send some photos along and hope that everyone is doing well and enjoying the coming of Halloween. Our friend Karen is sending the kids Halloween costumes for us as a gift and I cannot wait to see them! She got Devin a pirate outfit and Caylin will be Tinkerbell. We will be going to the All Hallows Eve event at Caylin’s school on Saturday night where they decorate the school and have stories, treats and a flashlight adventure through the woods for the students and families. It will be a thoroughly different experience for us this year. I will miss carving pumpkins with our neighbor Sheila and her two daughters, and trick or treating with our other neighbors. Caylin says she wants to go home a bit more now when she starts talking about Halloween. We are enjoying the new experience of Hawaii this year, but really look forward to our REAL life back in Los Gatos next year when we can celebrate the holidays and seasons with our loved ones and friends. You are all missed very much. For those worried about the lack of space for Caylin, my mom gave Caylin the gift of her own space for her birthday! She has a pink silk canopy that we installed for her in the corner of the lanai. She has her
princess stuff out there and goes to play there when she wants to do her own thing without Devin or us. We were in there today playing Queen and Princess of the Geckos and we were both wearing capes and crowns. It’s been a very special place for her. Enjoy and Happy Halloween to all! Please send us pictures of your little ones in costumes. Caylin would love to see her family and friends all dressed up. Mahalo for being out there for us! Aloha! Julie and family 2020 Insights IRONMAN First of all, IRONMAN. This year will mark the first time in its 43-year history that the IRONMAN World Championship will not be held. Each year, as we volunteer to serve water, pass out bananas and orange slices, try and connect a bottle of Gatorade into the hand of a cyclist going 30 miles an hour or feed exhausted volunteers, we hear residents in Kailua-Kona wish they would take the race elsewhere. Well, here we are. The race brings in millions of dollars to the IRONMAN Foundation, which then grants it to many non-profit organizations around West Hawaii. I have been telling my Kona Newbies group to get into the spirit and volunteer for the race for almost a decade now. When IRONMAN hosts its Mahalo Party, 5,000 volunteers show up and it’s the party of the town.
A Guest Turned Resident Our tenant in Los Gatos, Lisa Pegg, who came out to Kona with us in April 2005 to help watch our children, and then came out to visit us during IRONMAN in October 2005, ended up moving to Kona and buying a home in 2014! She is still here in Kona and will be one of the first people to get a copy of this book, since it was Lisa who took all of these emails and made them into a compilation that she gave me several
years ago with hopes they would one day see publication. I still don’t think she has ever forgotten those nights with Devin so sick in our condo! The Mauna Lani Resort The Mauna Lani resort had just finished an 18-month shut down with a 100 million dollar renovation and opened its doors as the Mauna Lani, Auberge Resorts Collection in early 2020. Six weeks later it had to close due to the pandemic. All the resorts on the Kohala Coast are shuttered until the tourists can come back. Another point in time is marked right now. I hope many of you will read this book when the world is somehow back to “normal”.
Tradition!!! Email 6 - October 25th –November 4th, 2005 We have now passed our three-month mark since we first came to live on this island of adventure and personal challenges! We bought Caylin a purple pair of these funky shoes called Crocs yesterday. People wear them just like they do sneakers at home. They are made of a squishy Styrofoam material and easily slip on and off and are closed toed. The locals I have met have sworn by them. I know I am now closer to being a “local” for buying a pair of these instead of another pair of sandals for Caylin. I have still not jumped into a pair myself, so let’s see how “local” I end up at the end of this little adventure. Another sign that we are finally becoming locals, too, is that we can now discuss the weather patterns, real estate trends, infrastructure problems, school scores, future construction developments, and where to go to get any type of food, furniture, and a good cup of coffee with a view! It’s nice to finally feel comfortable here, but we are still short on new friends. We only have the people we know at church, including Barbara, the woman who I now work for at a dolphin charter company, Lisa and Pat, who we
met at the Surf and Racquet Club when we first moved here, and Robert and Kathy, whose son, Cannon, is a classmate of Caylin’s. It makes for a limited babysitting pool and a circle of people to do things with. I guess I should just count myself lucky that we have people who we have developed friendships with! I now have some compassion for people I have met looking for new friends in the Bay Area and I just did not have time to create new relationships. I hope to be a better friend to my old friends when I return home. One of the reasons I left the Bay Area was to find out how different life could be outside of the Valley and to see what kind of things I had been taking for granted. My friends, the seasons, holiday traditions and a good hiking/biking/rollerblade trail are a few! One of the things I knew I would miss, but not as much as I did, was Halloween! Every year for the past three years, we have gone to Half Moon Bay to find the perfect pumpkin at a pumpkin patch. (Due to the high rainfall here, they do not have pumpkin patches on the island!) The week before Halloween, we would get together with our neighbor Sheila and her family and carve pumpkins. I would also help put together a fundraiser for the real estate industry called the Pumpkin Auction, which raises over $10,000 each year to help feed the hungry. Then we would trick or treat with the families in our neighborhood who had little girls Caylin’s age and they would all dress up like princesses. This year was wholly a different experience. We invited Robert and Kathy over with their kids to carve pumpkins, have a pasta dinner and then go up to Caylin’s school for All Hallows Eve. I usually have a glass or two of wine when I carve pumpkins. This helps to deal with the inevitable wrestling of sharp cutting tools away from small children, the distribution of pumpkin seeds on the floor, and general festivity of having other adults around to share in the moment. Well, I had to put on Caylin’s make up for her Tinkerbell outfit before we went out….I think, if you see the photos, I may have been a bit heavy handed on the blue eye shadow and pink lipstick. Now, I can either say
this was caused by two glasses of Chardonnay, or putting together a pumpkin carving event, then a dinner for eight, then getting two kids ready for a costumed evening in the woods and the stress was too much. Either way, I apologize ahead of time to Caylin when she sees the photos in later years! A “Only in Hawaii” Forest Adventure All Hallows Eve at the Kona Pacific School was quite an adventure, and definitely a “never in Silicon Valley” event! The theme this year was Arabian Nights and they had a tour through the woods of different scenes from stories from the book. They had 250 people attend this annual event that included children from preschool to eighth grade dressed up in costumes and running in all directions. The school raised money by hosting such games as “The Magic Carpet Ride”, which was comprised of older students swinging people in a hammock for a dollar and a “Race Through The Arabian Sands” game where children raced each other to fill a pail of water with a Dixie cup over a 100-yard course. Caylin competed in this and won! I was screaming for her like it was the Olympics. The fun continued as a character who played Scheherazade, the teller of the Arabian tales, took groups of 12 up into the forest and walked a quarter mile path. The guests were treated to a mini theatrical production of Arabian Nights tales such as Aladdin and Sinbad. These were accompanied by belly dancers, students playing instruments and a trail lit by jack o’lanterns (this event would be considered too much of a fire hazard, personal injury liability and lack of an attendance draw due to no horror, that it would not have happened in California!). Walking in the dark, we had to really watch tripping on tree roots, hitting our heads on low hanging branches and sliding on the steep hill, but it was such a COOL and real experience. At the end, they put the kids on a large tarp as a magic carpet ride and drug it down the grassy hill about 200 feet! Kids were spilling out onto the slope, laughing and
getting dirty and being found by their parents at the bottom of the hill to then enjoy a cup of apple cider before going home.
Halloween in Hawaii The actual night of Halloween, we heard about a “treasure trove” neighborhood that families from the school were taking their kids to trick or treat. Since we are the only family with small children in Keauhou Resort, we could not go trick or treating around our own home, so we decided to follow the crowds and see how Hawaiians do up Halloween. While preparing for the night, Devin and Caylin decided that there was no way they were going to have make up applied again, so they wore their costumes, but sadly for my photo ops, would not let me have my artistic way with their faces again! For my costume, I was going to hot glue tropical foliage to a white sarong and go as a Hawaiian Jungle, but once again got waylaid and ended up only in the sarong.
We have never had to go to a different neighborhood to trick or treat, so this was an experience to drive 15 minutes down the road and come upon a street lined with hundreds of cars and trucks! The Pines is a gated community of homes that look a lot like a normal California housing tract. The streets in the community were closed to traffic and the kids could run to the houses without fear of being hit by a car. Caylin found some older girls from the school who took her in under their wings (lots of witches!) and she RAN with them as they attacked trick or treating with gusto. I loved the fact that I was wearing a summery costume outdoors, on Halloween, at night and it was still warm! The residents had set up spectator seating in their driveways to watch the hundreds of children swarm the area. It was such a fun night to see Caylin stretch her independence and feel like she was in a pretty safe place to do it. We really got a chance to appreciate these special type of generous neighborhoods which draw children from apartment complexes, rural areas or other “non-trick or treating friendly” environments, (like us living in a retirement/vacation community!), to give the kids a chance to trick or treat in a “normal” neighborhood. Another seasonal thing that I have taken for granted is the ritual of putting away the summer clothing and pulling out the soft downy sweatshirts and other fall attire. I am still wearing the same clothes I came here with three months ago. Also, during the fall, you eat a little more because your body is getting itself ready for the winter. Well, when you wear a bikini just about every day, those extra pounds don’t get hidden underneath those fall sweaters. Also, ladies, you know this one. During the summer, you have the extra work of shaving, making your toenails look great for open toed shoes, and putting on sunscreen every day. Well, there is no break from those duties here. None. I did not even think about that when I came here. Of course,
most of you are saying, “Shut up and enjoy your 80 degree days while I sit here and fend off the fall chill”. I know, I know. So, this week is the Annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival. Last Friday, we tried to go to the Lantern Parade in downtown Kona to kick off the Festival and ended up forfeiting the opportunity when we drove around for 30 minutes looking for parking and were unsuccessful! We know to plan a little earlier next time and that Kona is not such a small town! Discovering Holualoa On Saturday, we went up the hill (the Hawaiian words to describe towards the mountain “mauka” and towards the ocean, “makai” are common) to a little town called Holualoa where they were hosting a coffee tasting and art stroll in their tiny downtown as another part of the 11-day festival. Most of the buildings in this little speck of a mountain/farming community town are art galleries and cafes. Like a good art and wine festival, coffee growers were out at tables encouraging visitors to sample their coffee and learn more about the growing and harvesting process. With your cup of 100% Kona coffee sample, you could then wander through the galleries and see a wide selection of paintings, jewelry, handcrafted wooden pieces and my personal favorite, photography. At one of the larger galleries, we met and had a long talk with a photographer, Bryan Lowry, who specializes in lava flows and nighttime Hawaiian scenery photography. His artwork is outstanding! Go to www.lavapix.com and see his beautiful artwork. He has been shooting scenery of the Big Island for 15 years and finds places no one else visits to shoot pictures that are stunning. He invited Eric and I to go with him up to the Volcanoes National Park lava flow in the middle of the night to catch sunrise and see the glowing lava fields. He said he would show us where the molten lava spews out into the ocean in a hissing fury. Will keep you posted on this “mother of all photo opportunities”! Speaking of the Festival, I hope to go to the Coffee Cupping Championship tomorrow and see the finals where experts judge which
coffee is the best. The organizers encourage the public to drink samples of all the coffee entries and I hope to find a gem to share with you all. If nothing else, I can let you know who won, and provide the website so you can order some if you would like! As a treat for those who visit us, I purchased a few pounds of coffee from my favorite tasting table in Holualoa and will gladly share this with you! Coffee Factoid A factoid you may not have known about coffee: For every pound of freshly picked coffee beans (or cherries as they are called) only 20% makes it to your coffee cup. That means when Juan Valdez is up there picking 5 lbs. of coffee beans, only 1 lb. will end up in the market. I can see why coffee can be pricey. And speaking of pricey! We recently saw one of the local organic coffee farms, Mountain Thunder, featured on the show “Dirtiest Jobs” on PBS. They hand fertilize each plant with donkey poop. The coffee goes for $29 a pound! I am going to find this coffee farm and take our visiting in-laws during the holidays to sample this coffee to see how good it must be to cost that much! Who knew donkey poo could make a distinctive cup of coffee? Coffee As A Compliment To The Hawaii Lifestyle I am now almost as excited about finding a terrific cup of coffee as I was about finding a memorable Mai Tai when I first arrived here, as it seems I have more time to enjoy a good cup of joe on my morning run/walks vs. a sunset cocktail. Thus, I am expanding my coffee/viewing pleasure beyond the Outrigger and have pushed my reach to the Keauhou Sheraton (about a mile from here). I wish you could see the incredible view they have from an out of the way lobby area that I discovered. They provide guests three choices of free newspapers, a cafe to get a REALLY strong cup of 100% Kona coffee for $3.25 and a soft lounge chair that looks over the bay and the green mountainside. You feel like you are sitting on your own personal lanai at this $300 a night hotel. Sitting there, sipping coffee, watching the boats leave the bay, reading my paper and enjoying some alone time is simply heaven.
Keauhou Bay Knowing I plan on making this a Friday morning treat to myself gets me through some hectic days when I am chasing Devin and preventing my son from falling down stairs, grabbing Eric’s power tools, and throwing our cell phone, car keys and fan controller over the side of the lanai and under the house! And speaking of the house, Eric has finished the washroom area with a new maple cabinet; a raised porcelain bowl, limestone countertop and a cool little artistic touch of the limestone creating a mountain landscape. The fixtures all have a dark patina and it looks very classy. We were so excited to show off the work that has been completed thus far, that we invited six people from church, including Gwen and Carol who helped bless the mess when we first moved in, over for dinner on Sunday night. We were able to use the bar area for wine tasting and appetizers and used the plastic outdoor table to expand the table in the house to accommodate all for a sit down dinner. This was a good trial run for when our family comes to visit during the holidays!
This week, Eric finished demolishing the pony wall in our bedroom that used to separate the indoor garden area from our bedroom. He put down the plywood today and instantly created a new 50 sq. ft. area for us to expand our bedroom into. I painted the walls today and we will tear up the carpeting tomorrow and install the hardwood flooring. I am excited about sharing the finished photos of this in my next update letter. Feeding the Fish At Kahalu’u Bay One last story to share with you. We were out enjoying ourselves alone for our 6th wedding anniversary about two weeks ago and decided to go snorkeling locally at Kahalu’u Bay -“Snorkel Beach”, which is down the street from our house. We met a guy who moved here about a year ago and he invited us to go with him out a bit further than we normally go to feed the fish. (I noticed the Do Not Feed The Fish sign much later) When Eric and I have been to this bay before, we have seen a wide variety of tropical fish in relatively shallow water. Tourists who have never snorkeled or cannot swim come to this bay so they can safely enjoy the marine life. The fish are about the size of your palm. Well, by following this fish feeder, we ended up coming upon a school of fish that were about a foot and half across! He handed me some deli turkey meat and I was swarmed! I have been bitten by fish before in Maui and I was a bit scared to be doing this, but the best thing was that I reached out and actually petted them. I wish I could tell you what kind of fish they were. They were black is about all I remember. Angelfish also joined them, dog faced puffer fish and parrotfish. He was also feeding them tortilla chips, which I can imagine, are not the best things for them. He had them eating out of his hand, but admitted later that a puffer fish bit his entire thumb a few days prior. I have learned that caution is best around here and did not try to lure them too close to me. I would love to have our guests experience this “fishy feeding frenzy”. The next time, I will be sure to have an underwater camera with me.
Ok, once again, it is late at night and with Devin just getting over a cold and dealing with three molars and an incisor coming in at the same time, sleep is a precious commodity around here. He has been trying to kill himself lately. He fell down the front steps a few days ago and scraped the skin off the bridge of his nose and just tonight, as he was reaching for the computer for the umpteenth time, he fell flat on his face on the hardwood floor. I think God granted little boys with rubber skulls to get them to adulthood. He scared me but good when he fell in the pool the other day, and hardly batted an eyelash when I pulled him up from about two feet down. Thank goodness Caylin has been taking swim classes and can swim underwater and across the pool well enough that I can concentrate a bit more on Devin when I have them both at the pool. We are swimming daily with them, mostly in the evening after 5 pm. The senior residents of Keauhou Resort who have come to spend the winter here claim the pool area from 4-5 pm. Our 70-year-old next-door neighbors moved in 10 days ago and I know we are driving them to drink with the amount of noise we generate! The kids are up by 6:30 am and seem to cry and yell the most right before bedtime at 9 pm. It’s like living in an apartment complex at that point and I really miss our house in Los Gatos. At least at home, everyone’s kids scream and yell and it just becomes the background noise of the neighborhood! Well, I am wrapping this up and will be dreaming about savoring a tasty cup of coffee on the veranda of the Outrigger tomorrow and the Sheraton on Friday. On Saturday, we will hopefully finish the bedroom and head out to the white sand of Hapuna Beach with our friends. It’s a pretty good life and I thank God every day for it. I hope November finds you ready to prepare for the holidays and know that we miss you, our friends and family. Blessings to you all!
2020 Insights Feeding the fish Lord. I can’t believe that we watched that guy do that. To prevent folks from feeding our reef denizens, there are now Reef Teach volunteers at Kahalu’u Bay, along with even more signage about taking care of marine life, which obviously includes not feeding the fish and not touching the sea turtles. Now that I work to educate visitors on respecting the ocean and ‘aina, I can see how naiveté plays a role in some of the gasp-worthy antics that happen in Hawaii. Many people believe that if they are the only ones doing something, it’s ok. But they don’t realize that hundreds, if not thousands, of people do it, too, which has caused the decline of Kahalu’u Bay over the years as people were stepping on the coral, feeding fish, wearing chemical sunscreen and such. If there were a soapbox, I would be standing on it to remind people to see and not touch and be an interloper not an agitator in nature. Condo Issues I realize now, in my 50’s, that having two small children living next door to you in your vacation condo is clearly, not ideal! The couple, bless their patient souls, ended up selling us their condo in 2007 when a heart condition made it impossible to come and stay for a few months out of the year as they had been doing for a decade. Health care on this island has been a vexing issue with being able to comfortably, and safely, retire here. Staying healthy and being active is our best bet at being able to live here as long as we can. And that Keauhou Resort condo? Lost to a short sale. But that is for another story... The Kona Coffee Cultural Festival Now in its 50th year, that festival is the oldest food festival in Hawaii. The various aspects of the festival educate the visitors to the farmers and Kona’s famous crop and provide many side benefits to the whole community such as a talent show, pageant, art shows, design competitions, and food pairings. As I sit here now, with COVID-19 making the leaders of the state decide how they want to re-imagine
tourism, these types of events are key to expand awareness and appreciation of the island and its gifts. Free Time As A Mom If you are a mom reading this and having a wistful laugh about me salivating at the concept of free time, you know how I was feeling! I was off running in the morning without the now well-known term of “selfcare”! You need to find time for yourself and you need to fight for it. Being able to just take the time I needed most days saved my sanity and my relationship with my husband. I realize even more now with the shelter in place experience we all have had to endure, how important it is to talk to friends, care for your own soul and body in order to have enough energy and space in your head to help your loved ones. Being on an island and away from my friends prepared me for what is happening now in 2020. It created the well for resiliency.
The Z Family at Kua Bay November 2005
“Courage is found in all sorts of places” – JR Tolkien Email 7 - November 6-November 30, 2005 Aloha! I am writing this as I am just recovering from having a terrible bout with the flu over the past five days. I am now a true believer in flu shots and will get one every year if possible. The pain and agony of the past few days has given me new compassion for people who say they are out with the flu for a week. The whole family had 100-degree fevers on the Friday after Thanksgiving and Eric and I had to figure out who was sicker so the other person could get up and take care of the kids. Thank goodness the kids got over it pretty quick. Both Eric and I lost five pounds and although it was caused by sickness, I have not been this thin since I was in high school! Eric has a bit more appreciation for his wife
after being in charge and alone for a few days. Since we live in a small house, I could beg for drinks and food from my bed and he was never far from reach! The focus of this update letter is courage. Courage to do things you have never attempted. I had a chat with a good friend the other day and she was saying how she admired us for taking the leap of faith by moving to Hawaii. It DID take a few ounces of courage and we keep finding new and interesting opportunities to help us reach even further into the courage well. Here are a few things that have happened in the past few weeks that have shown we are reaching beyond our safe boundaries. 1. Four weeks ago, I entered a bi-athlon and swam in open water for a 1/3 of a mile and then ran two miles through downtown Kona. I completed the race in about 40 minutes. That was my first swim race, so I was a bit unprepared for a few hundred people kicking and splashing all around me, as well as how far the buoys seemed to get to the turn around point. I ended up with quite a bit of seawater in my stomach. I swam and ran in my jog bra and put my running shorts over my bathing suit bottoms to run in. I can see why there is a merchandising line for bi and tri athletes. The inside of my thighs were so chaffed from running in wet shorts, I walked bow legged for a day. Completing this race was such a triumph because I have been terrified of swimming in open water without a floatation device or a boat to race back to, due to an almost near death experience in a freezing lake near Lake Tahoe in 1991. I finished at 102nd in a field of about 200 people. 2. We were asked to attend a Multi Faith Service the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to support the choir from our church as they sang, as part of a program to bring all the churches together for a food drive. So, we show up a few minutes before our group is to go on and find that only three people could make it due to everyone having the flu. They asked me if I could go up and sing with them! So, without having practiced and in front of about
400 people, I found myself on a stage in front of a microphone singing “We Are The World”! Caylin was up there with me twirling around in her holiday dress, so she took a lot of the pressure off of me. Eric got off the hook sitting in the pews with Devin! 3. During a trip out with a family of 12 on Thanksgiving for my job at the dolphin charter company I work for, we went out on a Zodiac, which is a huge inflatable raft with two outboard motors. You have to hang on to a rope on the side of the boat to prevent yourself from flying out. Well, we had come to a pod of dolphins that were leaping out of the water and performing flips and spins in front of us. As the boat was slowing to let everyone out, an excited grandma on the trip (she was 72 and out there with us!) let her mask and snorkel fall into the water. My boss said, “Don’t let that sink!” So, thankfully, I had just put my mask on and was able to dive into the ocean from the side of the boat and spied the sinking equipment. I can dive down about ten feet and feel pretty good. After that, my ears start to hurt and I start worrying about coming back up. Well, I went after that sinking gear, which was about 13 feet down by then, and grabbed it just as I was about to say, “This is not worth it”. Turning back up, and looking at how far that boat was up at the surface, especially without fins on, was another one of those moments where I say, “Mom, don’t read this, it will only make you mad”. When I surfaced, I got a rousing cheer from the group, a $20 tip from the grandpa, and a “Well done!” from my boss. It also showed me that I could go farther down than I thought I could and would perhaps like to take up scuba diving some day! 4. My last brave thing to do was actually my most painful. Devin was up at Caylin’s school and the school is built on a hillside with lava rocks poking out from the side. Devin and I were on a flat area on a rather steep hill overlooking the parking lot. I was
distracted looking at a bonfire pit that was still there from the All Hallows Eve event. Next thing I know, I see Devin toddling for the side of the hill. I envisioned him falling all the way down the hill and into the parking lot, hitting his face on the lava outcroppings and really hurting himself. I started to chase after him and he picked up the pace and headed down the hill. I was terrified and I sprinted to catch him fearing that I would be too late as he went head over heels down the hill. To stop him, I threw myself at him and went head first down the hill and slid to the parking lot on my stomach. I was able to push him down to a sitting position and he ended up coming out of it fine. I ended up landing on a piece of lava right below the kneecap, as well as scraping the skin on my leg and the palm of my right hand. Caylin’s teacher came out of her classroom, which is right above the parking lot, and I called for her to help me. She came down and helped me as I just sat there and cried. We both thought that the wound was worse than it was because it had swollen up so quickly. The school administrator ended up driving me and the kids home in our van and I stayed on the couch with a butterfly bandage and a bag of frozen peas on my leg for a few hours. A big bruise and a medium gash taught me that I would sacrifice myself for the safety of my son any day and that is the most courageous thing I can do. Ok, back to the happy stuff. I DID go to the Kona Coffee Cupping Competition, which is a judged, blind tasting. The entries are also offered to the public and I had a chance to taste about five different entries before Devin decided he’d had enough. If I had stayed, I probably would have gotten a lethal caffeine buzz because all the entries were so good! One of my surprises came when I saw the judges actually spitting out the coffee. I spoke to a judge afterwards and he said that even after spitting out all the coffee, he and the other judges were zinged out from the caffeine that still got into their bloodstreams!
The list of winners is as follows: First place, Rancho Aloha, second, Long Mountain Kona and third place was Aikane Kona Coffee. Sadly, these are pretty small farms because I cannot seem to find a place to purchase their coffee! However, I DID discover Kona Coffee and Tea and they have excellent coffee, so look for Christmas gifts! Another new adventure we have taken on is the Outreach and Branding for Caylin’s school, Kona Pacific Waldorf School. They are in need of more students to keep the school going strong, but suffer from a case of, “Who the heck are they?” So, we got a group of volunteers together to walk in the Grand Finale Parade of the Kona Coffee Festival and won third place! This was my first time in a parade, which may not sound very exciting to most people, but for me, Queen of Having Fun in Public, this was great! Eric used to be in a band at his school playing trumpet, so he has done this before. Caylin walked the full two-mile route running to pick up candy from the street or passing out informational fliers to families along the parade route and Devin slept most of the way in his stroller. It was fun and helped rally the troops at the school to get out and show people what Waldorf education is. For those of you, who still don’t quite understand what Caylin’s school is about, here is a clip I got from the school’s website: “The common thread woven through all lessons at the Kona Pacific Waldorf School, whether math, science, language or social studies, is the element of the artistic perspective. Children can weave imagination into every subject and build a solid foundation for creative and inspired work throughout their lives.”
Julie and Caylin and Devin at the Mauna Lani to decorate trees.
Tree Decorating Contest at The Mauna Lani I am spearheading a tree decorating competition at the Mauna Lani Resort for the school. Top prize is $3000, second prize is $2000 and third is $1000. I want to win, but I will settle for second or third, too! We picked out an 8 ft. tree last night with another volunteer who donated the $125 cost for it (TREES ARE EXPENSIVE HERE!). For the ornaments for the tree, I am using pictures I have taken of the students while they are playing instruments, creating artistic designs for math and other photos showing the way Kona Pacific is different from other schools. We will be using multi colored silks for the tree skirt (they use these for imaginative play in the preschool). Getting into my hidden craftiness, I cut down a bamboo stalk today that I am cutting into segments, drilling holes into them and spray painting gold to emulate flutes! The parents and teachers made about 80 ornaments from natural materials that we will use, too. It should be a very creative tree! The judging is December 21st. The tree wins if guests
and members of the community vote for it, so I am also drumming up parent support to go up there and vote! Next stop, PTA president! Renovation Time Eric pulled all of the carpeting out of the rest of the house and laid bamboo flooring. We tore all the wood off of the lanai today, too. The planter box that has been in there for 35 years with semi alive ferns was rotting and we found a prosperous community of ants living in there, as well. We also found out where quite a few cockroaches called home, too. We are extending the deck out and will end up with 200 sq. feet of space, which is a quarter of our whole living area! So speaking of things on this island that last forever, let me tell you about someone we met at Thanksgiving. We ended up spending our first Hawaiian Thanksgiving with my boss, Capt. Barb at her house (You’re thinking, “Why? The woman sent you down to the depths for a $30 mask and snorkel!) The Power of Pele My boss invited about 8 people for the holiday dinner and it was nice to chat with other adults and sit at a table that reminded me of my mom’s house with china and silver. One of the guests was a clairvoyant and she said that the Big Island was a very spiritual place and that the legend was true that if you take lava from the island, bad luck will follow you. She said that the Volcanoes National Park rangers get hundreds of pounds of returned lava every year from people who, after experiencing several strokes of bad luck after returning home, figured out that Madam Pele was angry with them! Another guest piped in with a few “true life” stories and I have heard this warning from others before. She also said that the “kahunas” or spiritual elders practice a healing ritual called Lomi Lomi that they teach to very few white people and it has never been written down, so you must be able to speak fluent Hawaiian to learn it. She is a certified practitioner. It would be interesting to try this type of healing massage.
Weather Musings I just have to say something about the weather recently. I have found it utterly amazing that for four months each and every morning has been perfectly sunny, blue skies, and very warm. FOUR MONTHS. So, I complained about it the other day to someone. Lo and behold, it was raining this morning and the ocean was the choppiest I have ever seen. In fact, I was jogging by Snorkel Beach and the waves were hitting the sea wall and shooting water up onto the roof of the picnic tables! I spoke to a park maintenance guy and he said that from now until March or April we could expect this type of weather and ocean conditions. He said that after some of the particularly larger storms, they have to remove boulders that get thrown up 30 feet onto the sand and lodge underneath the palm trees. I was kind of happy that I would finally get a noticeable change in the weather around here, but also kind of sad that the days of watching people snorkel out there first thing in the morning in calm water, were over for months. This also means that if I go out with the dolphin charter to work during the next few months, it’s going to be even choppier than it was on Thanksgiving when one of the guests got seasick. The park maintenance guy said there are some breaks in the storms that tromp across the Pacific towards the mainland and we would still get some great days, and I plan on taking full advantage of those opportunities to finally try kayaking and get some more snorkeling in at Two Step. I am also hoping for some calm days for my friend Karen, who will be here in three weeks so she can do some ocean activities and my inlaws and parents who will be treated to a dolphin adventure on January 2nd. We have been going to a cool new beach and playing in the waves with the kids two weeks in a row and I am now worried that the ocean conditions may be too dangerous now to go down there. I have attached a pic of us at this beach during sunset. It is a beautiful white sand beach about 20 minutes north of here called Kua Bay.
The Waves This may sound corny, but I just have to try and explain my view of the waves around here lately. It’s like the ocean is breathing and it is sucking a big breath in before unleashing its spewing breath towards the beaches. Unlike the waves in Santa Cruz, near our home, in which you can see them rolling in from the open ocean, here, it’s rather calm even a few hundred feet from shore, and then, like a giant water monster it roars up to become an instant 5-8 foot wave. You could just sit around watching the waves come in, the surfers who ride them and be amazed at the color spectrum of how the water changes in the wave to various shades of blue. It’s a wonderful part of why we wanted to live near an ocean and we look forward to the intense storms that will bring waves that wash all the way up onto the main road way. Whooohooo! Thanksgiving Poem As I am about to sign off, I want to let you know that I have included quite a bit of photos this time and I apologize ahead of time if this mail takes awhile to download! Family pic of us at Thanksgiving, some around and about photos and some of the ones I discussed here. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving Day holiday and weekend! I found a good Thanksgiving saying and wanted to share it with you because it makes me think of my life here and how thankful I am to be here with my family. Also for all of you, who tune in to our doings here and keep giving us encouragement. “There are only three things that count in life: Something to do. Something to look forward to, and that third blessing is, someone to share it with.” Aloha!
2020 Insights: The Courage Raising small children on a lava field takes more courage than I gave myself credit for. Oddly enough, years later, Devin would trip and fall almost in the SAME EXACT spot that I was saving him from that day and go face first into the lava receiving a gash in the center of his forehead. A doctor friend of mine, whose son is friends with my son, was there at the time, called me to say, “First of all, your son does not need stitches, I put a butterfly bandage on his head”. Welcome to living on an island. Did we talk about resiliency? The Lava YES, there seems to be something to the story of taking lava from the island! In the decades since I wrote this, I have personally seen bundles shipped back to the island that have arrived at the Kona Kohala Chamber of Commerce. They arrive at the post office, too! The lava leaving and then returning to the island reminds me of a movie called “The Iron Giant” when all of the giant’s pieces were called back to him when he exploded. It would be a fun campfire discussion about the lava protesting its taking from the island, and then causing distasteful issues to the person who spirited away the lava from its home on Hawaii Island and then gleefully being shipped home. As a personal story, Eric created a coffee table out of a slab of red and black pahoehoe lava that someone in Hawaiian Ocean View Estates had excavated and was selling. He had it in a gallery for a few months and then someone bought it. Eric recently saw the table on Craigslist and found out the owner had decided to move off the island. The owner did NOT want to take that table with him and invoke any bad energy. Eric bought it back and now it sits happily in our living room. For those of you who follow my work, I DO believe there is a special energy, or mana, that runs through everything on this island. Stay here
and listen long enough, and you will hear the stories and feel the energy, too! The Waves I did not understand the island topography then. Don’t forget there was no Google Earth at that point and you could not visually see that the island, from the air, shows you that the lava flows into the ocean past the shoreline and then drops into a deep trench. Waves come up suddenly on the island seemingly from out of nowhere because they come from the open ocean and hit the ledge of the land and form into waves. You learn much about geology, meteorology, oceanography, climatology and marine science here just by experiencing day-to-day life. Island life opens your eyes and mind to the wonders of nature and science AND if you use your na’au (Hawaiian meaning for the guts, intestines, and the word is also used to mean instinct, a person’s gut-level feelings and intuition) you will feel an even deeper connection to the Earth than just understanding the science of nature.
Family Z dressed for the holidays in Kona
Breath of God Email 8 - December 1-December 21, 2005 Aloha and almost Merry Christmas! I want to give you a bit of a quick update as I know many of you will be leaving for the holidays, not that my life here is so newsworthy that it must get attention before you head off to your holiday gatherings, but there are a few of you who are reading this letter like a continuing soap opera, and I don’t want to leave you hanging! Since I last wrote, my days of wave watching, infant chasing and coffee swilling continue, but there have been a few new twists to our lives.
Julie in the torn out back wall of the bedroom in the condo
Over Volunteering, Anyone? I have gotten more involved with Caylin’s school since I volunteered to spearhead the outreach event by decorating the Christmas tree for a competition of local non-profits for a $3000 grand prize. I was under the initial assumption that you created a tree and people voted for your tree one vote at a time. Since then, I have learned that if someone wants to stuff the ballot box with money, they can do that. The tree that Eric and I helped to create is a great outreach opportunity for the school, but my gusto to win has been dampened a bit knowing that moneyed individuals from the different organizations can just dump a couple of hundred dollars into their favorite charity’s tree and have a pretty good chance of winning. Of course, me being a pretty competitive kind of person, devised a flier asking the parents to donate a few bucks and I would hand deliver their donations to the Mauna Lani. Then I put a notice in the school newsletter about it.
Then I asked for money outright, the last day of school this past Friday. I ended up with about $30. Not completely a successful fundraising effort, but I did my best. All this energy however has given me a new status at the school. I was asked to sit on the Chocolate Festival committee to help with sponsorship and marketing, and to volunteer my time on the Parents Circle to oversee the school administrator’s use of the school funds. I am usually the most gung ho person when it comes to these types of opportunities, but I am hesitating a bit since I came here to enjoy the island and my children and not get over involved and stressed out again. A spiritual friend of mine said to listen to what my heart says and that will be the right answer. She counseled me today on pulling back some of my energy and bringing it inward for reflection. “For the questions you have, all you have to do is ask the question and be quiet long enough to hear the answer”. So, I will see how that plays out, as well. In the meantime, the Christmas tree judging is tomorrow, Wednesday, and I am going up there with a good thought in my heart and hope somehow we will win one of the top prizes (I think I told you before that Eric and I and three other volunteers spent three hours decorating our tree and I ended up driving the 40 miles back there the following day to add the last touches to the tree). I will share with you a note that I sent to one of my friends when I came home after going up there alone with the kids: “I had the most hectic day today with the kids. I had to take them both to a resort by myself to put the finishing touches on a tree I helped decorate for Caylin's school. Devin would not stay in his stroller, he was putting his arms in the koi pond terrorizing the fish, Caylin was trying to rearrange the ornaments on the tree, Devin started kicking and screaming in the lobby of this five star hotel when I pulled him away from the water, while Caylin is taking cookies off the tables set up for the volunteers of the non profits. She gave Devin a chocolate chip cookie,
which he promptly smeared on his face and hands and then plastered it onto my clothes. The best part was when I had to change his diaper in the back of the van. He rolled off the diaper cloth, onto the floor of the van, which was covered in pine needles from the tree and got the needles stuck to his privates. Meanwhile, the wind was blowing up my skirt as I was bent over the van, giving the valet people a free show. This was the heart of frustration with two children.” And no story is complete unless I give you the update of how my son tried to mutilate himself this month. Some of you may have gotten the Christmas cards with a family picture of us with Santa. If you look closely, you will see a cut across Devin’s face from his nose to his chin. This injury was caused by him rolling off of our bed. He hit the corner of the nightstand, along with two drawers and the floor with his face. We were very lucky this did not end up as a hospital visitation event, but I am growing more certain that you will be reading about an emergency room visit before we leave Hawaii. I am sorry to say that I do not have a boating/ocean adventure story for you this time. I have been helping the owner of the dolphin charter company with some marketing, but she has not needed my help on the boat for a while. Whale watching season has begun and I look forward to going out with her when our in-laws arrive next week. We will be taking Caylin out on the water with us and it would be fantastic if everyone had a chance to swim with the dolphins AND see the Humpback whales breaching, too! I just hope the weather works with my hopes and aspirations. The high surf has been awesome to watch on shore recently, but it has made a few trip cancellations necessary, as well. I do not want to re-enact the Perfect Storm and be on the boat as we climb up the face of a wave. I have my adventure days, but that is something I want to avoid. Ziemelis Adventure Story Speaking of adventure, Eric and I took the kids down to a new spot we have found called “The End of the World”. It’s a historic battleground
site at the end of Alli Drive and it’s all lava. The land ends in 20-foot cliffs to the ocean. The waves were so high today that they were crashing on the cliffs and sending spray up thirty feet into the air. We took our video camera with us to record this spectacle. Well, at the Sheraton Resort, the waves were crashing on the cliffs there, too, but they had roped off all the good access points to avoid people getting splashed (and carried out into the ocean, too!). While Eric and I were standing there last week, the waves were crashing into the hotel property hard enough to shake the building and send water onto the viewing platform area that we saw the Manta Rays from a few months ago. I was yelling along with some other tourists when the water came up and over the railings and came within a few feet of where we were standing. It is sooooo awesome to experience this powerful force from the ocean! “End Of The World” Well, at “The End of the World”, there are no such safeguards as caution cones and ropes in place. You can be as stupid as you want to be! The first time we went there, we saw teenagers jumping off the cliffs into the ocean and then scaling the rock face to do it again. Well, I wanted to get closer to the action today. I gauged where the waves and the spray were hitting on the rocks and got pretty close. I got a good face full of sea mist (which is quite invigorating, I must say!) but still no real spray. So, I moved up pretty close to the edge (but there were still a lot of rocks, so I could not be sucked out, mom) and Eric rolled film. Well, a wave that was probably 10 feet tall hit the rocks and sent a pretty good amount of spray my way, but I thought I would try for one more. Well, I was too close to the wall of rocks to see the next wave coming, so all of a sudden, I heard a BOOM and a wall of water came up and over the rocks right on top of me! I am not kidding when I say that it sprayed up at least three stories. I have it all on film. You see me as a small speck being swallowed by a wall of white water. I got pretty wet, but since it was spray, I did not get actually hit by the wave, so my mom can know that I am not THAT stupid, but it was
definitely a jolt! You can hear Caylin screaming in the foreground and me screaming in the background. The best part was that even at 8 in the morning, it was in the high 70’s, so being wet was not as bad as if it had been on the coast of Oregon near my mom’s house (Of course, I would not have willingly let myself get hit by a wave there either, as my mom reads this and says, “Thank God!”). Our friend Karen arrived today from Los Gatos and I am going to take her out there tomorrow so she can experience these monster waves, too. I will not encourage nor discourage the opportunity I had today to get up close and personal to our local seawater, but it will be fun to see what she wants to do! The Renovation Continues Another big event for us lately has been the completion of the deck/lanai! Eric used a hard wood called Epay and stained it and it looks absolutely beautiful! We now have 200 sq. ft. of entertaining room out there! He spent a full week on this project. We put up our three-foot Charlie Brown Christmas tree out there and bought new teak furniture to complete it. I bought a chaise lounge with a cute little table to hold drinks and I am in seventh heaven! All I need now is a boxed CD set of Jimmy Buffet and my dream is complete! You can lie down and stare up into a blue sky through a veil of palm fronds. And now that the surf is so rough, you can hear the roar of the ocean from our lanai. By standing up, you can just about see the sun sink into the ocean at night. Paradise has been found right in our own home thanks to the handiwork of my wonderful husband! Party Time! We had a rollicking good party at our house on Sunday night with our friends from the church and Lisa and Pat, the neighbors we had at the Surf and Racquet Club. They said great things about the renovations, since a few of the guests had seen the place before we started work on it. I bought some nice varietals of red wine, along with different types of chocolates and offered a red wine and chocolate pairing for dessert. They literally ate it up!
I forgot to do my White Elephant game which has been a hit in years past at my holiday parties, but with Caylin and Devin in the picture now, I had to keep it a bit more simple. While I was pouring wine and chatting up some of the women in the kitchen, Eric was showing off his power tools, the floor joists, his welding machine and his next renovation projects to the male guests. We crack each other up that at our parties, we never talk to one another during the course of the party and just float at different points of the room entertaining guests. Then at the end, we compare notes and fill each other in on conversations we have had throughout the evening. I think that’s what we did at our own wedding, too! Back to the island for a moment: I want to share with you the meaning of Aloha. As you know it is commonly used as a greeting or welcome, but it does NOT mean goodbye, as the Hawaiians never thought of that term, as there was no end to a relationship, only a “till we meet again” in this life or the next. (A hui hou). Here is the way Aloha is defined in a Hawaiian dictionary: alo, 1. sharing 2. in the present oha, joyous affection, joy ha, life energy, life, breath When the Hawaiians greet one another, they press their foreheads together to capture the “breath of life” and share Aloha. I will write a bit more about that next time, but right now I want to share with you a bit of a letter that Mark Twain wrote to his friends when he visited Kona in 1886. Mark Twain...Letters from Hawaii, 1886 "The Refuge for the Weary"
"We landed at Kailua (Kona), a little collection of native grass houses reposing under coconut trees - the sleepiest, quietest, Sunday-est looking place you can imagine. Ye weary ones that are sick of the labor and care, and the bewildered turmoil of the great world, and sigh for a land where ye may fold your tired hands and slumber your lives peacefully away, pack up your carpet sacks and go to Kailua! A week there ought to cure the saddest of you all." Morning Routine I am meeting Karen tomorrow morning at 6:30 so I can show her what I do just about every day now. I have found a back road that loops through a jungle on the way to the Sheraton, which serves as a great jogging trail. I then do some stretches on an area at the hotel near the water that looks out over the bay, then I go to the little café there, say good morning to the employees who know me now, get some TERRIFIC Kona coffee, grab a paper, then sit on the lobby lanai alone watching the sun rise over the top of Mt. Hualalai. As I catch up on the local and national news, I peek up every now and then and watch the sun creep up to touch the top of the waves as they crash against the rocks across Keauhou Bay (This is one of the most peaceful places I have ever been and it gets me out of bed so fast in the morning that Eric thinks I have found a new nirvana in running or something!). I hope that many of you who are reading this will come out to visit us and get away from your lives for a bit and see the tranquility of the island. My mom is coming out in February and I cannot wait to show her what we have discovered here. She can give me a personal talking to about all the crazy things I have done here, but I welcome giving her a huge hug, as this will be my first Christmas away from her in my life. I will enjoy another 83-degree day here with no rain in the forecast and think myself lucky for being here. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Mele Kalikimaka and hope to get your Christmas cards and updates, too! Aloha! Julie
2020 Insights Inner Guidance The advice and insights of my friends at that time are very interesting to read now, 15 years later. “For the questions you have, all you have to do is ask the question and be quiet long enough to hear the answer”. I think I also heard this in “Kung Fu Panda”. Oh, but this is the truth! Intuition is so important in hearing the answers you seek! I was so “go go go” that it has taken a very long time to just sit and listen. That was part of the journey of living here, I am sure. I don’t think I really understood this advice until my late 40’s and really, only now, do I say it’s the absolute best way to find an answer..I believe they call it “inner guidance”. My Sons’ Mishaps I made a joke about my son having issues after he fell off the bed and scraped his face on the furniture on the way to the floor. He almost drowned twice that year and he was only wearing a diaper the day his foot got wrapped up in the seatbelt when he was getting out of our van and landed face first on the hot asphalt in front of our house. Each time these things would happen, I would be wracked with guilt! The credit I give to mothers with small children is beyond immense! Trying to watch two children, do what you have to do to lead a normal life and making sure your toddler is in your sight at all times is almost impossible. Devin is a lucky kid to have made it past this time in his life! The Growing Love of the Island I can tell by reading this portion of the book that I was finally settling in and enjoying the things around me. I also was picking up my love of sharing information I was learning about the land, culture and language of Hawaii. Just recently, I found out how the town Hilo got its name from Kamehameha 1 admiring the handiwork of a servant and had to share it with everyone on Facebook. (Hilo means to twist!) The passing down of knowledge is part of the Hawaiian, and really any indigenous, culture. My first blog post on my 365Kona.com site was the story of a message I got right after I arrived here in 2010. I was standing
at the top of the hill above a famous battle site in Keauhou and heard, “Tell my story”. I remember saying to myself, “Tell your story? I don’t know enough to share it!” Since then I have been gathering information slowly, but surely and hope to do even more with intent. The more I know, the more fully I can understand and respect the whole Hawaii experience and then share it with others, so they, too, can appreciate and take care of all that we have here.
On the lanai of the condo Christmas Day
The First Hawaii Holiday Season Email 9 - December 22-January 15, 2006 Happy New Year and 2006! WHOA! What a holiday season! I hope you all survived Christmas and the ensuing vacation time with your families. I remember when I found out that Caylin was going to be out of school during the holidays for three weeks, I wondered what I was going to do with her during all that time. From the moment she got out of school on December 16th until she went back on January 6th, our schedule was full with entertaining friends and family. The fun started the weekend of December 17th when we hosted a holiday party for the members of our church and our old neighbors. To create a “hook” for the party, I held a red wine and chocolate pairing. A friend of ours at church who just got back from Europe gave us German
and Belgian chocolate. I found some Ghiradelli and Hershey chocolates here in town and paired them with Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Shiraz. For my friends out there who know how much I love wine tasting, this was a mini-party within a party! Everyone who partook loved it and I plan on doing more of these “chocolate events” in the future. The other “hook”, of course, was the completion of our lanai! Everyone had a chance to see it all decorated with pine boughs and white lights. Eric spent about 40 hours on this project and it is beautiful and provides NEW SPACE! Yea! The only problem is that since we are in a bit of a drought right now, the sap coming off of the palm trees is causing a sticky goo to gather on the new furniture and railings. Who knew that palm trees shed sap in the wintertime? So, we are now extending the awning fully over the deck, which actually is good to cut the sun off of the area, too. Entertaining Guests On December 20th, our good friend Karen from Los Gatos came with her mom for a five-day visit. Karen, for a variety of reasons, had not done much traveling in her past and came to the Big Island with a child-like wonder. She had never snorkeled or done much hiking or had much experience with boating, either. Her whole demeanor was, “Let’s Do It!” Eric and I have made a new friend here, Mike, who invited us out on his boat for a cruise to Kealakekua Bay for snorkeling. The boat ride to Kealakekua Bay provided us with some firsts. It was Karen’s first snorkeling attempt, and it was Eric, Devin and Caylin’s first time on a fishing boat. On our way out to the bay, we spotted our first humpback whale of the season and on the way back we saw a pod of dolphins, which was a first for Karen, Eric and the kids. The snorkeling was great and Karen took to it like a fish to water! She was sooooooo happy and excited to experience the abundant marine life
and get past the first time jitters of jumping into the ocean. Caylin even went snorkeling, too and was not afraid of the water being over 30 feet deep when she got in. Devin was less thrilled with the experience however, and cried most of the way to our destination. He only stopped crying when the whole thing became too much for him and he fell asleep! Mike was having a great time going at full throttle along some pretty choppy waves and we were thrown around a bit. On the way back to the harbor, one of Mike’s engines died and we had to cruise at half speed to Keauhou Bay to fix the problem. At that point, Eric, who was on verge of motion sickness, and the kids who just did not want to sit on a boat much longer, walked home from there. The problem was soon fixed and Mike took Karen and I straight out onto the open ocean in hopes of finding a spouting whale. Karen and I sat in the front of the boat grinning like idiots while we were flying across the waves without a care in the world. Although we did not find whales, we had a tremendous time just riding free on the water and enjoyed sharing the experience with a good friend. Hosting the Fun During Karen’s stay, she also had a chance to share in our great excitement of watching the monster waves crashing at “The End of the World”. In fact, we got close enough to get a really good soaking when a HUGE wave came up and slammed the rocks we were standing behind. To get a better vantage point of the incoming waves, we walked on a rough lava trail for about a half-mile. Karen was a great sport, even though I know she was nervous and tired from this little trek across the crusty and uneven lava cliffs. We shared a few cocktails, sunsets, good meals and great conversation. We also had a fun Christmas Eve dinner with Mike, then a midnight service at our church.
Christmas Morning Can you imagine waking up to a perfect 70-degree morning and realizing it’s Christmas?! The kids opened their stockings out on our lanai at 7 am surrounded by Norfolk pine boughs on the railings and the warm sun on their faces. This was my first non-freezing Christmas morning! Karen and her mom also joined us for Christmas morning, where we made breakfast for everyone and then opened presents on the lanai. There is nothing quite like wearing shorts and a t-shirt outside on Christmas morning while opening presents with your kids. We kept toasting ourselves with our Kona coffee to how great it was to be sitting in 78-degree weather on Christmas morning! Caylin did well for herself, thanks to some very generous gifts from Karen, my sister Delorie and checks from my mom and aunt. A new Cinderella bike created some very high pitched squeals, as did some assorted princess toys. A screaming-indelight four year old is quite a treat for a parent who stayed up until 2 am the night before getting all the presents out under the tree! Karen left that afternoon and it was a very sad farewell. We are encouraging her to move to the island and start a life here, but she will be the final deciding factor in the end. She really enjoyed walking over to the Sheraton with me in the morning, drinking coffee, watching the sun come up over Mt. Hualalai and seeing the boats leave the harbor from the second floor lounge at the resort. It was great to share it with her.
The tropically inspired Christmas family photo for 2005
Christmas Dinner I had my first Christmas dinner EVER at a restaurant! I missed my mom’s traditional turkey dinner at her house with her fancy china plates, crystal glassware, silver serving dishes and candle sticks, and the antique mahogany dining table that seats 16. If I was not going to eat pumpkin pie at my mom’s, I figured I wanted to at least do it up by going to the Sheraton for a swanky buffet. We all wore matching red Hawaiian print outfits for a family picture in front of the tree in the lobby at the hotel. I had to fight with Caylin for over an hour to get her to wear the dress for this photo. Eric was not completely thrilled with all of us in matching tropical wear either, but I really wanted to do this so we would have it for our family photo album. After wrangling the family in front of the tree for a photo, we met Capt. Barb and her friends for dinner near the waterfall in an open lobby area where large parties were set. Her friends were not thrilled with the noise from the live band or the waterfall and we had to switch tables to the back of the room, which did not provide Devin or Caylin much to keep them entertained. I will never
take children to a buffet again in my life. I did not consider the effort it would take to get up and serve ourselves with children in tow. Devin would not stay in his seat during dinner and although I paid over $40 for my meal, I ended up eating very little and walked around a lot trying to keep him happy so the other guests could enjoy their dinner. By the time I left, I was exhausted and Eric and I vowed not to repeat that experience again. I look forward to next year in Oregon for Christmas, Mom! The next visitors who arrived a mere two days later, were Eric’s dad, OJ and his step mom, Baiba. We greeted them at the airport where we learned that OJ had the flu and felt terrible! We escorted them to the conference center at our church up on the mountain where they were staying in a beautiful room with a view of the ocean. My father and step mom, who arrived a day later, also stayed there. We had the chance to show OJ and Baiba our condo and they were VERY thrilled at the renovation results after they visited here in July when the obstinate tenant was still holding court over a cockroach den. Baiba brought gifts of fashion for Caylin and I and it was FANTASTIC to get some new clothes to add to my tired wardrobe! The next day, OJ slept on our couch most of the day trying to recover from the flu. Sadly, he never shook it the entire week he was here. Baiba and I spent the whole day with Caylin shopping. We got back in time to prepare for my father’s arrival. We met my dad and step mom, Pat, at the gate and brought them directly to our house for a group dinner of chicken and pasta. Like most blended family gatherings during the holidays, a fine line of patience and drama usually ensues. It was no different for us. Let me start with the fact that for our first dinner together, I made a separate plate for everyone due to a variety of dietary restrictions and eating preferences. During the in-laws visit I was a referee, chef, event planner, photographer, personal shopper, tour guide, chauffeur, and loving daughter and daughter-in-law. I was bestowed with the title of
“Most Patient While Under Stress” from both sides of the family and somehow survived the ordeal. The best part of the whole visit was the fact that the Grandpa’s and the Grandma’s had a chance to see the children, experience them for a whole week and see how vibrant and sweet they are. They also had a chance to meet the friends we have made here, see the school and the church we call our new community, and see and taste what we have found here.
Z Family at Thurston Lava Tube
First Visit to Volcanoes National Park One of the best things we did was take a trip to Volcano and see Volcanoes National Park. We had lunch at the Volcano House, which is right off the parking lot from the road we came in on after we entered the
park. I thought we would see a big lava field with some basic information about the volcano posted. What we got was a HUGE plate glass window in the dining area looking out over the Halemaumau caldera! When I say the caldera, I mean the entire area that was blown apart during the eruption of the volcano that created a mountain. You will have to see the picture I am going to attach to understand what I mean. I thought we would have to drive up to 7,000 feet to actually view the interior of the volcano, but this was IT at only 4,200 feet, which did not even seem a big deal on the drive there because the ascent was so gradual. We went for a drive around the whole caldera down the Chain of Craters Road, seeing steaming lava vents, the USGS visitor center explaining in relief, videos and narratives information about the volcano and the many eruptions it has had over the past century. We went hundreds of feet into the caldera and when we finally stopped at the final point, it was like walking on a moonscape. Very cool and a trip I would highly suggest if you visit the Big Island. The walk out to see the actual lava flowing was two hours and beyond what my dad and stepmom were up to doing. I also have to tell you that we had an amazing dining experience on New Years Eve at Jameson’s at Magic Sands beach. I received a fantastic gift from Capt. Barb of watching the children on New Years Eve so we could go out for dinner. We had a FANTASTIC table on the side of the restaurant (made possible by my event planning skills of calling the restaurant a few weeks prior to get reservations), and had a view of the waves crashing on the beach and rolling in from the ocean. The wave surge was huge that day and there were eight and ten-foot swells rolling in and crashing within a few feet of our table sending ocean mist all around us. The sun was setting as we hoisted Mai Tais and toasted OJ for his birthday and to us all for New Year’s. My dad and OJ were both wearing Aloha shirts we had purchased for them for their birthdays and everyone was in great spirits (This dinner completely made up for our dismal Christmas outing at the Sheraton).
Chef Amy Another strange thing that happened during their visit was a new nextdoor neighbor that moved in the first night OJ and Baiba arrived. Her name is Chef Amy and she is a single woman who is as quirky as she is sweet and wanting to be part of our family. She created quite a few laughs as she came into our house to greet everyone, especially doting on the men in the group and sharing her chef stories with everyone. She is a personal chef to a very wealthy family staying here. She flirted continuously with my father and he was quite smitten with her attention. As I have told some friends, she is such a huge personality that she could be a famous reality show contestant. She loves that our house is full of interesting people AND people that she can cook for! We Play Tour Guides for the In-Laws So, we saw some new parts of the island while playing consummate hosts and we drove over 1000 miles during the course of the week! Just so you have an idea of how busy the week was during the in-law visit, here is the list of our activities which I created for my dad who needed some reminding how busy his week was with us and how many times he had a chance to celebrate his birthday! Friday December 30- Went to see high surf at the “End of the World”. Sheraton to see Manta Rays. Saturday December 31- Coffee Shack with Z family with a view of the hillside and the bay. City of Refuge to see a historical Hawaiian site. Jamison’s for New Years Eve dinner. Surf was high and the sunset was gorgeous. Sunday January 1- Julie and Eric cook breakfast for the gang at the Ecumenical Center. Gwen Ross leads the group in a healing meditation
session. Dinner at Outrigger and enjoy sunset from Verandah restaurant. Complimentary Hula show. Pat gets a lei and pic with hula dancers. Monday January 2- Lunch at Volcano House restaurant with view of Kilauea Volcano Caldera. Drive around caldera and visit the USGS building for more information. Drive the rest of the way around the island for a scenic tour. Dinner at King Shops in Waikoloa. Kids miraculously don’t start to break down until the last 30 minutes of a day that started at 10 am and ended at 8 pm. Tuesday January 3-Swimming with dolphins. Past neighbor and good friend Lisa hosts a birthday party for Dad at her house on the beach. Eric lights fireworks to the delight of the guests. Dad gets his second birthday dinner! Wednesday January 4- Group goes to Hilton Waikoloa to see the resort and the Dolphin Quest area. Dinner at Drysdales at Keauhou Shopping center. Thursday January 5- Natural Energy Lab for a tour. Dad and Pat check into Manago Hotel in Captain Cook. Friday January 6- Grandparents see kids school in South Kona. Julie and Pat make four different kinds of starches for mango chicken dinner. Continue to watch “Blue Hawaii”. Family goes to Sheraton to see Manta Rays. Still no show on ray’s part. Dad and Pat say farewell to Z family and Eric drives to the airport to help at the gate.
Hawaii Life-The Noni Fruit No letter is complete without learning a little more about Hawaii or its culture. So, I have to let you know about the Noni plant! While the in-laws were here, we had two opportunities to learn about the Noni plant. Eric and I have been calling it the Ugly Fruit tree, as the “fruit” from the tree is misshapen and when you see it on the ground, you can tell it just is not appetizing. Well, when we were visiting the City of Refuge, Caylin bent down to pick up some of the rotting fruit of the ugly tree. A tour operator screamed at her not to pick it up with her bare hands. He came over and told us about the Noni tree and its miraculous fruit. First of all, he picked up the fruit with a leaf. He warned us that if you pick up the fruit with your bare hands, you will spend hours getting the smell off your skin. How bad is the smell from the Noni fruit? He let us all have a whiff. I seriously almost threw up from smelling it. Caylin took a sniff and won’t come near the plant again. He said the Hawaiians for generations have used the fruit as a salve to cure skin infections (and god help anyone who
had to be around someone using this stuff!). Another way to use it was let it ferment. Then they would press out the juice and drink it to cure or help treat a variety of maladies like arthritis, high blood pressure, fatigue, depression and so on. We had another run in with the Noni when OJ, who was not able to come with us to the City of Refuge, (Pu’uhonua O’Honaunau) tried to pick up some Noni fruit from the ground at the church. Once again, a knowing soul screamed, “Don’t touch that fruit with your bare hands!” Again, someone came over and picked it up with a leaf and let the unknowing tourist get a big whiff of the fruit. This ritual should be videotaped and used for some hilarious footage on a TV show. The reaction is so visceral and graphic; it’s rather entertaining in the same realm as watching someone slipping on black ice when everyone around knows the area is a danger spot. This kind gentleman again noted the restorative effects of the Noni juice and its byproducts, but warned us against the fetid smell if it ends up on your hands! Well, Eric and I went to the newly opened Kona MarketPlace this past weekend, and lo and behold they were selling the Noni juice in a 32ounce bottle for $20. Although I was worried about the taste, the hype surrounding this juice was too much to pass up. I also purchased some Noni lotion, which, according to the Hawaiian woman selling the product, would cure any and all itchy skin, especially if it was a bite from a mosquito. Well, after MANY bites we have gotten here, I decided to give it a try. Ok, the bottle of Noni sat in our refrigerator for a few days as we tried to summon up the courage to down an ounce without vomiting. I finally decided to give it a try. It was absolutely revolting, even after holding my nose and diluting it with iced tea! I have taken it every day for the past few days and am waiting for Nirvana to hit. I don’t have many of the maladies that Noni cures, but the Hawaiian woman DID say it helped with fatigue, which is a staple in my life with Devin. I DID get up today at 5:45 and went for a 6:30 run and still feel pretty good, so I guess it may be working. I will give
you an update and if you want, I can ship some to you or you can buy it at Costco, I am told. The lotion? I had a terrible rash on my face recently and one good dousing of that lotion took the itch and sting out immediately. For $5, I will continue using that product. Hey, the Hawaiians have lived here a very long time and I figure if Noni helped them survive here, I will give it a shot, too! (West Hawaii Today, the local newspaper, just did an in depth story on the Noni plant this week, too, and said it is being used to help cancer patients!). Eric’s Update: We are down to the bathroom to finalize the renovation project. We are considering doing our own mosaic with broken tiles and/or glass and creating a completely one-of-a-kind bathroom wall. We are “breaking ground” on this project next week, and after many ideas of how it will turn out, it still is a work of progress in the designer’s head. We discovered a new beach that is great for kids, swimming and a view. It’s at the Hualalai Four Seasons Resort. They have their own lagoon stocked with eagle rays, tons of tropical fish and all easily viewed from the side or as a snorkeler. The beach has deep white soft sand and the kids loved the bay, which is protected from the waves by a natural water break. Looking forward to sharing this find with our incoming guests! More Guests! Speaking of incoming guests, we are expecting our friend, Carole, who expertly handled our loan for this home, to come next weekend. She is excited about swimming with the dolphins and I hope we can do this with her. The dolphins were jumping all around the boat when my family took the tour, but they were in the harbor area in choppy waters and we were unable to get into the water with them. Hope we have a better experience with Carole!
Hope you are getting through the middle of winter and will drop us a note to let us know what you are up to, as we relish news from the mainland! Love to all! Julie and the Z’s! Mele Kalikimaka from the Z family!!!
Caylin showing off the tropical pareos
2020 Insight The Chocolate Tasting In 2011, I really wanted to transform the Kona Chocolate Festival into something bigger. I decided to gather some friends together to create a non-profit, the Kona Cacao Association and create the Big Island Chocolate Festival. There is something alluring about bringing fun people together to enjoy gourmet chocolate and drink wine! You could say the genesis of this idea happened at that party. Since then, the Festival has gone on to raise thousands of dollars for non-profit organizations (including Kona Pacific) and more than 600 guests attend to nosh on gourmet offerings at beautiful Kohala Coast resorts from the top chefs on the island.
So, hosting a little multi-national chocolate tasting with some wine pairing in my house in 2005 was just a glimpse of how much I loved putting the two together to entertain and delight people! My Parents It is bittersweet to read this now that both my father and stepmother have passed away. We were very fortunate to share this experience with them in Hawaii. My mom, who came to visit soon after, also passed away. I hold onto the memories of them all sharing laughs with us and hugging my children. I barely remember how stressed out I was during that week, but what I DO remember is how each one of them felt very proud that they had a kid that had managed to live in Hawaii. For THAT, I am glad that we took that huge leap of courage and faith and made it happen. Island Itinerary: If you ever visit this island (which I am sure you probably have if you are reading this book!) the itinerary that I put together for my father is such a classic tourist schedule! You can follow it and have the experience of really seeing this island. Unpredictable Events Happen Where we took my parents to view the Halemau’mau crater is no longer there. We stood upon a wooden deck structure that tumbled into the caldera sometime around 2008 when an active vent opened up at the crater. The entire caldera exploded and subsided during the 2018 eruption completing changing the landscape of the area. That is the essence of what we have discovered on this island. Life is ALWAYS changing. From the eruption, to hurricanes, dengue fever, earthquakes and a pandemic, the one thing everyone on this island deals with is change. It makes you stand with the kind of sea legs needed for standing on a boat in the ocean. You have to be able to bounce at the knees. When things hit you often enough, those bouncy knees get pretty darn good at the calm seas and the six-foot swells.
I am on boat behind that whale!
A Whale of Tale to Tell Ya Email 10 - January 16-February 10, 2006 Aloha! It has been a crazy and guest filled month since I last wrote! I want to tell you so much about my whale experiences, our trip to a lava field, and my new membership with the Keauhou Canoe Club! However, I guess I should do this chronologically to make the most sense out of it. I WILL say that the weather has turned cooler here and the daytime highs are “only” in the 78-80 degree range with nighttime lows in the high sixties. This has taught me about relative temps. I was literally shivering miserably after a dip in the ocean the other day. Eric and I both wear sweatshirts around the house in the evening and I wear long sleeved t-shirts almost every day. I meet people from Canada, the Dakotas and Michigan at tour spots and they are sweating and soaking up the sun. It is a very odd experience and I am glad we are going back to the Bay Area in July at the peak of summer so we don’t have to bounce out of this weather in the middle of winter! Devin has not worn socks since last spring and the poor kid is not going to know what to do with a jacket when he has to wear one in the fall
when he is 2! I did check the weather in San Jose today and they are enjoying 73-degree weather right now, too. Good thing or I would be getting the usual, “shut up while we are hunkering down next to our living room fireplaces!” Ahh, the roar of a fire…. have not felt that since last year. Caylin insists on wearing sleeveless dresses to school even though her school is at 1500 feet and it stays pretty chilly there all day long. She sleeps outside the covers, as does Devin, every night, as well. Kids are in for a rude awakening when we return and the house temp is 65, down from 77 right now. Whales Ok, back to the adventure side of things. Well, our friends Carole and Mile came from San Jose to visit for a week. The first day after they arrived, I had them booked with the dolphin excursion company I work with. I crewed the boat and also played PR host to the Guest Services Manager for the Hualalai Residential Resort, which boasts multi million dollar homes about 5 miles north of the Kona airport. These are the kinds of clients my boss likes to see on her boat and it was a good marketing coup for me to meet with her and invite her aboard. We saw a pod of dolphins near where the cruise ship was docked in the Kona harbor, but were unable to swim with them because they were basically in the shipping lane for the harbor and it was unsafe to get out there. I was bummed for Carole and Mile because I wanted them to have that experience. However, we were more than rewarded by our whale watching endeavors. We saw a spouting whale about a mile out to sea and went out to investigate. We ended up near three whales that surprised us by surfacing only about 40 feet from the boat! Mile was beside himself taking photographs. The sounds of the whales exhaling so close to us were amazing. I kept willing them to breach (jump out of the water) and Capt. Barb assured me that they were female whales and that only males typically breach. No matter, we ended up seeing them dive straight down exposing their flukes in a scene right out of a whale documentary. It was fantastic and it happened about four or five times while we were out
there with two different pods of whales. Carole, Mile and the guest relation’s manager were thrilled with the experience and I was so happy to have been able to share this with them. Everyone had a grin plastered onto their faces when Capt. Barb was zooming over the water with the sun glistening like diamonds on the blue water. We took a group tour to Volcano National Park again with Mile and Carole, but they drove their car and we had the kids in our van. This worked out really well as we followed them on a leisurely pace to the sights along the way. We got to finally go to the black sand beach at Punalu’u. Turtles were sunning themselves at the shore break and the contrast of the trees and blue water against the black sand was stunning. Poor Caylin learned the hard way that the black sand is quite hot when she threw her sandals off and ran across the beach! I bought a great discounted sweatshirt there and was thankful for it at our next stop. We went to the Volcano Winery, which is in a meadow that overlooks Mauna Loa. Mauna Loa is about 14,000 feet high and had snow on it. The wind was coming off of it and blowing down the valley so that it was about 60 degrees at the winery. Quite chilly from the 82 degrees at the black sand beach only about 15 minutes away. It was great to get all snuggly in a new fleece lined sweatshirt again! The things you take for granted. We all tasted the very sweet wine at the winery and I even secured a donation from them for the Kona Chocolate Festival that I am helping to organize. Our next stop was the Visitor Center at Volcanoes National Park. We got the daily news report about the lava flow from here and the ranger giving out the information told a group of us to make sure we were down at the parking area by 4:45 pm to have time to hike in for a good view. Well, he told that to about 100 people, because we ended up having to walk a half-mile next to parked cars just to get to the start of the road to the trail to the lava fields! We got to the visitors center by 1:00, so we had a chance to tour the Thurston Lava Tube and the caldera before heading down for the hike.
The Thurston Lava Tube was created out of swirling lava that left a tunnel about 15 feet high and 10 feet across, 1/8 of a mile under the earth. Walking down to the entrance was like stepping back into the prehistoric era. Huge dripping ferns were everywhere and the forest they created was so thick that you could not see anything but the ferns for as far back as you could see. The Lava Tube entrance had dense vegetation hanging around the edges of its cavernous maw and looked like something from a movie set. The interior, with yellow lights running along the rocky ceiling punctuating the damp darkness was dripping wet with puddles everywhere due to a recent heavy rainstorm. Caylin had brought an umbrella and my new sweatshirt had a hood, but the rest of the group got pretty soggy during the short hike through the tunnel. It was a very cool thing to do and I suggest it to anyone visiting the park. We then drove on the Chain of Craters road, stopping every now and then so Mile could get out and take pictures. You just can’t capture the expanse of nothing but lava as far as you can see. It is truly unbelievable. Checking Out an Active Lava Flow We got to the parking area at the bottom of the Chain of Craters Road at 4:45 and were shocked to realize that there is not a parking lot there, but a road that lets you park single file. We donned jeans and sweaters and packed up our snacks and water, but we realized we had forgotten our flashlight! Mile and Carole told us to go ahead and they would catch up with us on the lava field with their flashlight before it got dark. HA! You know my luck on this island! We walked over a mile with Devin in a backpack and Caylin gamely scurrying beside us. The coolest thing was where the road ended because the lava had swallowed it up. The encrusted lava looked like it had slowly oozed right onto the road and froze there. From there, reflectors out onto the lava field marked the trail. As the sun started to set, you could see the lava trails glowing from the top of the volcano down the sides of the mountain like a distant forest fire. We ended up on a little hill with a bunch of other tourists and could see about a mile or so away the glow of lava as it hit the ocean and a huge plume of steam coming up.
Someone said that it was made up of a large portion of hydrochloric acid and not to get too close to the plume as it would burn your lungs and eyes. Since we had the kids and still no flashlight as the sun was ebbing away, we decided we had gone far enough. A camera would not have quite caught the view as the light dwindled and the glowing lava shimmered in the distance. It is definitely a vision that is best caught in person and I hope to show you or at least guide you in the right direction if you come to visit us. Lava Viewing Area At the visitors viewing area we waited for Carole and Mile until a few minutes after sunset and decided if we waited much longer the light would fade to the point we would have a hard time making our way back to the road. We found them on the way back, but the kids were done at that point and we did not want to go back to the tourist viewing area. So we slowly picked our way along the lava using the last bit of daylight to get us back. Eric went to get the car from the top of the parking area, as I was walking in my socks by this point, since I had chosen the wrong shoes to go on this adventure with. By the time he came back, Carole and Mile arrived and we were able to drive them to their car as Carole had some difficulty with the walk, as well. It was a very long day and we decided to drive the 90 miles home instead of staying the night in Hilo as they had planned to do. We did ok with this idea until about 30 minutes from home and Devin woke up screaming in his seat. This nerve-wracking situation ended when I finally begged Eric to stop at a McDonalds so he could get out of the car and snap out of it. If they offered alcoholic beverages at Mickie D’s, I would have ordered one after 20 minutes of wailing. I am so glad we do not travel long distances often with Devin. I am sure he will get better before we drive the five hours to Tahoe when we get home. For the moms out there, I am sure you probably have suffered the same thing at some point. Ugh. We got home at 10:30 pm and since they had both slept in the car for a few hours, they sprung to life and did not
go to bed till midnight. The trips to Volcano with the kids will be done sparingly.
Julie’s mom comes to see her grandkids
My Mom Visits The Tuesday before Mom arrived, I had a chance to crew the dolphin boat again. This time I was hired to specifically help one woman who had suffered an aneurysm, which had left her partially paralyzed. She came with an equally disabled friend who decided not to get into the water. It was great to see two women who were really nervous and timid about the boat at the beginning of the trip turn into such happy and easy-going people half way through the journey. The woman I helped even managed to climb around to the bow of the boat to listen to the Captain’s lecture about the dolphins and the whales. We were able to drop into the water
twice with the dolphins and even though this woman had to swim using a floatation device (a noodle), she was able to see the dolphins swim right under us. I pulled her into a dolphin stream as the pod was headed north around us and we saw a mom and her baby about 10 feet away from us. She was just over the moon with the experience. I told her about another cool facet of swimming with the dolphins was just the wonder of floating in two hundred feet of blue water with the sun streaming through the water. I told her how I thought it looked like the path to heaven and she agreed with me. She said she had seen near death and if that was what the end looked like, it was a path she was not afraid to go down. I feel the same way. As the two women were beaming with delight as they sat in the sun and just enjoyed the view of the island from the boat, we came upon a mom whale with her escort and baby! I did my usual round of willing for them to breach and Capt. Barb assured everyone that it was two females and that we would not see a breach. I said that maybe the baby was a male and he might jump. Everyone laughed. And then he did! Right in front of us! Five times in a row! Everyone was clapping and screaming and for some reason, I just know that baby whale loved the attention. The Captain said the baby was probably only a few weeks old, but it had to be at least 25 feet long. A photographer in another boat nearby caught the best picture of the whale breaching fully in the air with our boat right behind it. I hope to get this image to send to you before I send this update out. He just kept launching himself in the air until I said, “I wonder where the mom is at”? And then, just after I said that, a huge black back came up right near us!! Her back was as big as the top of a school bus. She spouted and the little guy just got right beside her. When they dove down to continue their bonding and we turned to leave, it was like leaving a puppy dog at the store. Since then, we have seen some beautiful breaching whales from the shore, but at least a quarter mile away. I still hope to see an adult male breach for me while I am out on the boat before the season is over. They are
amazing creatures and I just can't get enough of being near them. I wish I could get into the water with them, but knowing my luck, I’d end up being smacked with a tail! I guess I should count myself lucky that I have had the chance to swim near the dolphins as much as I have while here. I am still waiting for that magical moment when a dolphin actually comes up to me instead of always swimming with the pod away from us. I guess at that point, I will write a book! Outrigger Canoe Ride with The Keauhou Canoe Club My next adventure came the day after my mom arrived. I had been invited a few times to come paddling with the Keauhou Canoe Club on their daybreak paddles out into the ocean. I finally decided to give it a try and ended up at the canoe shack at 6:30 in the morning. I was given a paddle, a short instruction on how to use it and then the woman who had invited me, kept a seat open near the back for me to be near the woman steering the outrigger canoe for extra instruction. It was a 12person canoe, which was great, as I had hoped that no one would count on me to get them from here to there. We took two laps around the Keauhou Bay (which is at the end of our street and it has taken me six months to finally get out in an outrigger!). Incidentally, Eric and I borrowed a kayak from a family at the school and had given it a go about two weeks prior to this adventure. We spent 30 minutes in the kayak paddling around the bay and about two minutes in the open ocean before we both felt sick. This was the extent of our use of the bay, thus far. So, the story is that the lead steersman of the canoe counts to 14, and then yells something, and then everyone takes one last paddle and then switches sides. The first few strokes are taken hard and fast and then the last ones are easy ones. We got out to the open ocean in only a fraction of the time it took Eric and I with so many people paddling and since I had to focus on using the paddle correctly and going with the rhythm of everyone else, I did not have time to think about getting a bit queasy.
The moist warmth coming off the water was the first thing I noticed. Since I had never been near the water that early in the morning, I did not know that it would be so warm against the chilly morning air. I might have to do some morning swims now! (Well, that was until I heard that sharks come into the bay to feed off the chum from the fishermen…but I also heard they don’t bite…yet). So, the view from the outrigger was fantastic with the early morning light casting a rosy glow onto the shoreline. We paddled out to the Outrigger hotel where my mom was staying and turned around and waited for the sun to come up over Hualalai. I was secretly hoping that my mom was standing on her patio seeing this, but nope. When the sun came up, everyone raised their paddles in salute…and then a pod of dolphins appeared. It was glorious. They did not stay long, but it was just a beautiful way to start the day. The best part was this paddle was a complimentary way to see if I was interested in joining the club. They go out at dawn on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and I think I can manage at least one morning a week. I cannot wait until anyone who comes to visit and wants to do this can come out with me! We can walk down to the bay from our house and get in right at the beach. The group goes out for coffee and donuts after they haul the boats back up. Believe it or not, I was the youngest one out there. Most of the members (they had three canoes that went out that morning) were women in their fifties and sixties! I did not have to work that hard to do the paddling, but my back was a bit sore the next day from using muscles that don’t usually twist and pull for an hour. All the members were so happy and talkative that I hope to have found a good group to belong to for the rest of my time here and for the summers when I return. Mom Comes to Visit My mother’s adventure out to see us was completely different from my dad’s. She did not want to go on tours, boats, or helicopters while she was here. She wanted a low-key vacation and wanted to spend time with Caylin and Devin. She refused to let Eric and I pay for just about everything while she was here. She bought Caylin a new wardrobe, a
beautiful black outfit for me with a purse to match, Devin new books and toys and the house some entertaining accessories. We held a dinner party for her and friends of hers who own a condo here and had a wonderful time. Another night Chef Amy came over and met my mom and fell in love. She thinks my mom is the cats meow since she has a background in food, as well. Chef Amy came over whenever my mom was here and smoked and chatted and had a grand old time on our lanai. It was during this time that she said we could use her condo while she was away on business for a few months. Who were we to tell her to leave us alone at that point? ;-) My mom also had a grand ole time shopping at the local Safeway and Wal-Mart with me and the kids. I had not been to the Safeway here since we got here and had only shopped at our local grocery store. I was amazed at all the products available! We bought so many fattening things, along with Chef Amy bringing my mom fresh baked croissants and fruit tarts that I have to diet now for a few weeks. We had a lobster and clam bake for dinner that I invited Capt. Barb to so she could meet my mom. Well, it was the day before my mom was to fly out and she ended up getting sick because she was so nervous to fly the next day. Chef Amy, who had secured the fresh lobster and clams and told us how to cook it all, came over and helped us enjoy the feast. Capt. Barb and Amy actually got along and we ended up drinking wine and cracking shellfish until late in the evening. I wish my mom could have tasted it. Eric and I had never had a full lobster before and it was very entertaining hearing the different viewpoints of how to crack and eat a lobster from the Chef and the Captain. Chef Amy insisted that the legs, brains and innards of the lobsters should be thrown away. Captain Barbara completely disagreed as she sucked the legs and scooped up and munched on the green gook that was the lobster’s internal organs. Chef Amy insisted on using pliers to open the lobster and Capt. Barb attacked it with her teeth. It was so funny when I asked my mom the next day how she ate lobster and she said she sucked
the legs, feasted on the innards and broke the shell with her teeth! I was just happy to eat the tail with drawn butter and not think about how I slowly brought to a boil a live creature on my stove. My mom also had a great ocean swimming opportunity at Snorkel Beach, which was right next to her hotel. She met us down there and looked very good in her swimsuit. She recently shed forty pounds and was feeling terrific. Caylin, my mom and I all went in the water together and paddled around for a bit. Devin hung closer to shore that time, but on another day when Caylin was in school, my mom had a chance to get into the water a bit more with her grandson. It was truly a memorable occasion and I am so happy that my mom was thrilled to be in the soothing water of the ocean and kept exclaiming how much she was enjoying it. She met me for a daybreak trip to the Sheraton for coffee and we had a chance to walk along the cliff and sit and look for whales on the horizon. We also had coffee one morning on the Verandah terrace at the Outrigger and saw an octopus in the shallow water below us. It was great sharing with her my coffee hangouts that I have come to love while living here. We also made her breakfast and drank coffee deep into the morning on our lanai a few times, too and chatted about life. So, although we did not do the aggressive Hawaiian tour thing with her, I had a chance to just enjoy her company and have some tasty lunches at local restaurants and have her see the children in action. Super Bowl Time The Super Bowl was spent at our friend Mike’s house in Capt. Cook with about 40 other people. I chose to root for the Steelers since our friends, the Adams, were there in yellow shirts. Everyone else was for the Seahawks and we had a grand time yelling at the opposing team until our team won! Caylin and Devin were swept away by three girls from Caylin’s school who just love them and it was a really good time. I kept realizing that we were all wearing tank tops and shorts and the sun was still up during a Super Bowl. It was very cool.
My mom left on Wednesday and I miss her so much already. She had an overnight flight to Portland and I cannot thank her enough for going through the strain and expense of this trip to see her grandkids and us. On the Eric front, we have not moved forward on the bathroom renovation since we had visitors here. Everyone has thoroughly enjoyed our new lanai, even though we have not taken a decent picture of it yet to show you. Maybe tomorrow. Days are pretty slow around here and I really like the pace. It’s nice not having to worry about taking time off from work when friends come to visit and it actually helps keep us honest about getting out and seeing the sights while we are here. Eric loves to swim at our pool in the evening with the kids and is in incredible shape. We have decided to get a membership to the Los Gatos pool so we can continue our amphibious behavior when we get back home! We take strolls down to the end of the golf course to watch the sunset and Eric chases Caylin up and down the little hills on the course while waiting for the sun to make its daily descent into the ocean. Devin loves running free on the grass in his bare feet and we all look for whales and clap with the tourists when we see one breach. It truly is a great life we are living right now and I am so totally blessed to be here with my family. I hope you will consider coming out and sharing a week with us! I am up late again. We are all coming down with colds now. Carole, I don’t think it is the one you had, I think Caylin’s classmates are to blame I drank iced tea at dinner and now am having insomnia on top of a sore throat, which I will pay for tomorrow at 6 am when the kids awaken. It’s 1:30 a.m. and I think I will sign off now. Aloha and Mahalo nui loa for continuing to read my tales from the South Pacific! 2020 Insights My mom Have you ever realized something was a precious gift years later? Having my mom come and spend five days with us to sit and drink coffee in
Hawaii and soak up her parenting advice, see her having fun floating in the ocean, cooking dinner together while the sun set and we shared some laughs with friends-I wish I could be teleported back to even a few hours of that week to see my mom again. For those of you who have lost your parents, have you noticed the older you get, the more your parents seem to become like members of the Donner Party who forged the trail for you and you wonder how the hell did they manage the house, jobs, raise kids, worry about retirement and the future? We think we are in some pretty dark days right now in this country, but every generation probably feels they went through hard days, too, with the wars and recessions. My mom lost 40 pounds to show up for her Hawaiian vacation to see us. It’s amazing what you can do when you have a goal in front of you and an eye on doing something like getting into a bathing suit in the middle of the winter to go to Hawaii. I know many of my 365Kona fans who dream about their vacations months in advance and the thought of getting into the warm ocean, sitting on a beach and finding their way to a tasty Mai Tai keeps them saving money, exercising or just staying focused to be their best selves when they finally step off that plane. I get it! I run that extra 15 minutes or pick up another project so when I get to where I am going, I am feeling good and can enjoy that fancy restaurant. I didn’t know it then, but my mom would make a similar push to meet us in Disneyland in 2007 and that would be my mom’s last vacation before she passed away in 2014. If you can use the excitement of a trip to just keep going and keep that sense of adventure alive, I think it does prolong your life. At least that is what I keep hoping for as we plan something around the island just about every weekend! Have you seen our YouTube videos!? Running on the Golf Course Again, going along the lines of things you take for granted. We used to take the kids for a walk through the fairway of the golf course in Keauhou. One day a maintenance worker saw the kids running through the sprinklers and drove up to me in his golf cart to suggest we may not want our keiki to be doing that. I asked why not and he suggested I hop
on his cart to find out. He drove me to the pumping station in the middle of the course and explained that the golf course also served as the wastewater treatment facility for Keauhou and all that water coming out of the sprinklers was actually the gray water from the facility. When I told the kids we would not be having them touching the water anymore and explained why, I think Caylin ran home and washed her mouth out repeatedly! Since then, they closed the course to people wanting to just stroll down to the cliffs due to liability issues and after we moved away from Keauhou, the kids never resumed their enthusiasm for joining the parents on a run down to sunset. Am I sounding nostalgic yet?
Eric and Caylin learn to Kayak in Keauhou Bay
All You Need Is…Chocolate
Email 11 - February 11 - March 16, 2006 It has taken me a month to get this out. In the interest of giving my readers a chance to view what aspects of our lives they care to read about, I am titling the paragraphs so you can just scroll through and read what part of our lives you would like an update on! Caylin and Devin Devin is 18 months old today! He is FINALLY saying a few words. He can say “ball”, “down”, “bird”, “bye-bye” and my personal favorite, “Mama”. He has uttered an occasional one word statement like “no”, “hello” and “kitty”. He has a little routine I put him through where he has to wave bye-bye with two hands over his head, then he has to pat his head, touch his nose (which he mistakes for toes every now and then) clap his hands, turn around, touch his toes and then slap the ground with two hands. It’s very cute and he loves showing off. He also does the happy dance where he stomps one foot and jumps a few times in the air. His favorite place to do this is in the rain puddles in front of our house. He is
getting more comfortable with the pool and allows us to dunk him under a few times and can sit on the top step and splash around and walk down to the next to last step so he is standing submerged. I don’t know when toddlers can actually be expected to swim, but he is well on his way to paddling one of these days! Caylin is an underwater swimmer. OJ and Baiba, who were here this week, were marveling over her ability to “swim” long distances in the adult pool underwater. I guess I should not be concerned that her hand over hand swimming is non-existent, but she can completely handle herself in the pool and I don’t have to worry about her, so I can take both kids to the pools by myself and enjoy them. Whew!
Julie, Devin and Caylin wearing her new outfit on Valentine’s Day
Caylin has also discovered fashion. My mom bought her a bunch of new outfits when she was here in February and she just sent some great dresses this week. Baiba came with some dresses for Caylin, too and I swear that girl changes her clothes three times a day! We took the kids to a miniature golf course (and they had a driving range, which Eric LOVED immensely since he brought his clubs here and has not had a chance to use them) and the kids actually did pretty well with the clubs and playing the game. We taught the kids how to play volleyball at the sand pits at Magic Sands, too.
Adventures with Dolphins and Whales A quick adventure story. I worked on a dive boat with about 14 people who worked for a software company. Since we had a large group and rented a boat, a boat captain from Jack’s Diving Locker who is a professional videographer, came with us. We were very fortunate to have a group of about 60 dolphins circle us in a small bay where we were swimming and we stayed in the water with them for over an hour! I even had one within reaching distance slow down a bit so I could get closer. The videographer, who was in the water with us the whole time, caught some great underwater footage of the dolphins cavorting with us and got me swimming near a group of them. A whale of a time was had on an afternoon whale watching tour that I crewed. Sadly, it turned out to be the last time that I would see whales for the season. We went out with a wildlife photographer and his wife and endured some pretty choppy seas in search of a whale. We were cruising around for almost two and half hours before finally seeing a whale breaching in the distance. My greatest hope was to have a 40-ton whale breach in front of us, since I had had the experience of seeing a calf breach near us in January and the “cows” (mom whales) come up near us and breathe and then dive down. So, we got as close as we dared (or is legal, you could say!) and waited. The photographer had this huge digital camera and was trying to look all around us and still be able to get the lens lifted in time to catch a split second shot of a breach, meanwhile bobbing and weaving with the waves. All of a sudden, my dreams came true and a truly massive whale leaped out of the water about fifty feet from us! I ended up ordering the three best shots he took during the next half hour as we followed the behemoth down the coast. (These pictures are now on my “whaling wall” in the bathroom in our condo!) The whale ended up breaching almost out of the water about four times right near us and then quietly disappeared. We saw a momma and a calf, which was only a few days old, on our way
back to the harbor. Sadly, that was the last whale sighting I have had for the season. I did not realize how much I would miss seeing these beautiful creatures in Kona. For almost two and half months whenever you scanned the horizon on the ocean for any length of time you would see a whale breaching. Many times I would pull the car over at a look out point and see them in the distance making little white splashes out in the blue ocean. Kayak Time Eric’s father and step mom came out to visit again and we had the opportunity to do a Z family ocean kayak tour. A woman we met here offered to let us rent her kayak for only $25 and take us out on a tour of Keauhou Bay and another family let us borrow their kayak for free. A teenage friend watched Devin, and Caylin jumped aboard the guide’s boat and we all headed out to the ocean. We did not last too long as we were fighting some wind and choppy water and Eric started feeling seasick. Eric’s dad, OJ, and I had a tough time working the kayak together and kept going off in a different direction than the others! I was pretty exhausted after 40 minutes! It was fun to do a family adventure and get everyone out at the same time. Caylin really enjoyed herself and after we got back to shore, she and Eric cruised around in the safety of the bay so she could try paddling on her own. She loved it! During the time that Baiba and OJ were here, I was working for a few hours each day on the March of Dimes Walk America event. I secured teams to walk, got donations for prizes for walkers, and got 500 eggs donated for the breakfast! The work I did for this event helped me pay for Eric’s 40th birthday gift, a weekend away to the Mauna Lani, a four star resort up the coast. The Mauna Lani donated a two-day ocean front suite to the March of Dimes to use as a prize valued at $1500. I turned it into a silent auction gift and only competed with two other people and won the prize for only $375! You have to be clever when you don’t have much money! We plan on having Eric’s 40th birthday party on May 6th
(a day after his real birthday) at our friend Mike’s house and then the weekend after that, spend a glorious weekend alone on the coast! Yahooo! I celebrated my 41st birthday in my usual fine fashion of celebrating my own life and the time I have spent on this planet. My friends at home know that I usually put on quite a little shindig for my friends and myself every year. I did a variety of things over the course of two weeks including going out to dinner, drinks, breakfast and coffee, snorkeling, etc. with friends. In fact, Eric took me to a beautiful outdoor hot tub place, Mamalahoa Hot Tubs, which have the most beautifully landscaped tropical gardens. We sat in a private scalding wooden hot tub, surrounded by banana and palm trees, ferns, and flowers while we sipped wine. There were tiki torches along the path for illumination and that was it. You could see the stars overhead through the gazebo we were soaking under. I will include the website info on our website and in this condo for anyone who wants a truly romantic and tropical evening. The last thing I wanted to tell you about was the 5th Annual Kona Chocolate Festival. I won the ticket selling contest in which I busted my butt to approach strangers to sell them tickets and was rewarded with a night at the Mauna Lani, which I am selling to help pay for the incidentals that Eric and I want to do when we go to the Mauna Lani in May, i.e. dinner, massage, drinks, etc. The shell game that is my life of low finances but high creativity! Kona Chocolate Festival Eric worked on helping with set up the day of the Chocolate Festival and was able to fully partake in the evening’s festivities and all the tasty chocolate treats that were available. They had 25 booths giving out all kinds of chocolate creations. I ended up working in the Aloha Tent, which became an adventure right out of the reality show, The Apprentice. I was given no instruction on how to run this high end VIP area and was given about six willing, but clueless volunteers.
The hotel staff forgot about the set up of this tented area and when I arrived, there were only table clothes on the tables. I had to chase down the Food and Beverage Director to get silverware, napkins and glasses on the tables before the guests arrived. The appetizers the hotel provided ran out about 2/3 of the way through the event as we did not know that there was no more food coming because the volunteers were giving guests heaping platefuls of food, and we got down to one champagne bottle when the volunteers got a little excited about keeping everyone’s glasses full. Event Planning In Paradise It was a rather hot and humid evening, which made everyone drink all the water we had for the area by 7 pm. The wine tasting portion of the event was excellent as I got some really high end bottles donated. I was at this tent from 4-9 pm, missing most of the event in the main area, but Eric kept coming over with samples of chocolate and champagne for me to enjoy while putting out fires in the big top. The volunteers did a really good job even under the circumstances and I was offered a job working at the Kona Wine Market, too! When I finally escaped from running the Aloha Circle tent, I hooked up with some of my friends whom I had invited to the event and got to go full speed on tasting the best chocolate offerings. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like being able to go booth-to-booth gorging on delectable chocolate desserts! Tortes, mousses, brownies, fondue, truffles, candies, and more were all consumed while chasing them down with Cabernet, champagne, and merlot! A gastric circus is what it was. I would love to bring this event to Santa Clara County and who knows, I just might! The event raised over $30,000 to help Caylin’s school meet its operating budget and I made some good friends in the course of my volunteer work. Well, that about does it for this update. I WILL say, that after hearing from a few of you, that there are those of you that enjoy these stories and
as one friend put it, it’s her “Calgon take me away” opportunity to see how life is like in the islands. And, just so I do not forget, anyone who has lived here for more than a few months agrees that we live in a Third World country which everyone else thinks is the United States! The education, the traffic, the housing, the police, the politics…it’s not what it is on the Mainland, that’s for sure! But, I could not ask for a more beautiful place to discover and a slower pace to raise kids in. Aloha and Love to all! Julie 2020 Insights Whales: I have to say seeing breaching humpback whales from a boat NEVER gets old. Each year I plan at least two chartered outings with my friend Jan Salerno, Dolphin Whisperers Hawaii, and invite people from my Kona Newbies group to join me. I have offered a Valentine’s Day chocolate and wine pairing out on the water a few times, as well! I have seen double breaches in front of the boat, a whale surface next to me while I was on a Zodiac and I could have stepped on his back. Floating near Kawaihae Harbor on a sailboat after sunset, we were treated to whales singing underneath the boat and then the only sound we could hear was their breathing and huffing as they surfaced. The magic of the whales is one of my favorite things about living on this island. Decide on the Outcome Advice for any of you who have a dream to swim with dolphins, lead whale tours or simply go on a chartered boat -you have to get near the water! I had dreams of swimming with dolphins, but the dream could not take shape until I put myself halfway to the goal by moving to Hawaii. Then I was able to meet the right people who needed help and I showed up with enthusiasm and really, courage. I have found in my life that if you decide on the outcome of what you want to do, you step into faith and let
the universe take the wheel. Next thing you know you may move to an island, meet a boat captain, work on a charter boat, and find yourself skimming across a blue ocean watching for whales and spinning dolphins with a joy in your heart that is indescribable. Third World Country That last paragraph, which seems now kind of tossed in for good measure, has actually shaped our life here for better and for worse. Because of the school issues, we moved off of the island in 2016 to seek a more rigorous education for our children in Lake Tahoe, CA. We planned on living there for four years while my daughter went to high school. The schools had technology we didn't even know existed while we were on the island and they were pushed to perform. When my daughter was starting to fail her math class, we found out that she had a pretty significant learning disability, which had gone undiagnosed in Kona. The pressure to compete with her classmates, along with the cold, the lack of Aloha and missing our friends led us to return to Kona after only one year away. It gave us some needed perspective on how much we loved our island home, even with its issues. I have found that if you really care enough about making something better, you have to dig in and do what you can do and not sit on the sidelines and complain about it. I volunteered at my daughter’s high school to teach social media marketing. I helped create the Best of Kona Festival in 2019 to provide economic development opportunities for our small business owners, exposure for our local non-profit organizations and charter schools and provide a fun day for kids to play for free. I encourage newcomers to the island to volunteer for beach clean ups and help with fundraisers and to vote. We all have a chance and choice to make a difference.
Julie and the kids at Magics Beach
"A picture is worth a thousand words" Bonus Email: March 27 - April 1
Aloha everyone! The adventure continues! I was on the charter boat I work on with a wildlife photographer. A beautiful 40-ton whale that we had spent three hours looking for finally breached right in front of us! (in REALLY high swells, too… I am very surprised these are as clear as they are since we were being rolled around on the boat quite a bit!) The photographer has gorgeous work, if you want to check it out on www.kencongerphotography.com I am trying to get another update story out for everyone, but dang! I have been really busy with my volunteer work with the Kona Chocolate Festival (which was this Saturday and was a huge success with over 1000 people there and 25,000 pieces of chocolate served!) and the March of Dimes Walk America which is this coming Saturday. After that is over, I
can go back to my normal life and write stories about our travails and travels. I am creating a “Kona Wildlife” wall in our almost renovated bathroom that will feature all the beautiful photos I have been fortunate to receive from the professional photographers I am meeting on the dolphin charter boat. The Spinner Dolphins and Humpback whales bring a feeling of ocean energy into this space. I don’t know if everyone’s weather is terrible, but it has been raining and overcast here almost every day since Valentine’s Day. Today it has been raining non-stop since four this morning. Caylin is off all week on Spring break, too. Try entertaining two small children in 850 sq. ft. in a downpour. AAAAAAAAAAHHHH! I am thinking of putting them both in grubbies and having them attack puddles. It’s the coldest it’s been since we got here for the middle of the day, 69 degrees. BRRRR… (hehehe… know that sounds balmy to some of you at this time of year). Caylin had a hailstorm up at her school on Friday and there has been mass flooding on Kauai and Oahu the past few weeks. Someone who has lived here since 1967 said this is the longest stretch of cruddy weather she has seen since she moved here. That really figures. I leave Silicon Valley to finally have a nice warm spring and I pretty much get what I left. However… I can’t whine too hard, because there have been hours of sun that we have used to take the kids to White Sands Beach and use our pool and I still have a pretty good tan. Eric is humming along on the bathroom. He is going to start building furniture here and shipping it back to his high-end clients since “inexpensive” manufacturing is a thing of the past on the Mainland. Besides, Mr. Z wants to keep those creative hands busy since once the bathroom is completed, we are done renovating the condo! Yeah! I have heard things are changing at home. Marriages, news of upcoming births, new careers, etc. We really miss home! We have only four more months here. Hope you will send me an update of what you are up to.
Could use some news to read to get a much-needed break from painting, drawing, Barney, and balls. Love to all! Julie 2020 Insights Of course, I had to check archival weather patterns for spring 2006 in Hawaii and lo and behold an El Nina weather pattern was occurring bringing heavy rainfall to Hawaii and Northern California during this time. From the NASA website: The islands received record-setting rain throughout March 2006. On Kauai, Mount Waialeale (one of the wettest places on earth) set an all-time monthly record of 93.71 inches of rain. I swear, whenever we move somewhere new (which we have done much of in the past 15 years!) there always seems to be some crazy weather event that follows us! Record setting heat, rain, blizzards, cold, tides, wind, eruptions, and what have you. The joke has become, if the Ziemelis’s move anywhere near you, watch out, you will be subjected to record setting weather! The wildlife photographer, Ken Conger, whom I mentioned, has gone on to do inspiring and gorgeous work! I checked out his website from this email and enjoyed seeing his ascent as a visual artist through the past decade.
Julie and the kids in Hawi
These Running Shoes Are Made for Walking Email 12 - April 2 - May 11
Aloha! Welcome back to “Tales From a Big Island Adventure!” This update takes our wayward travelers on some treks to a few new beaches, a few stories of exhaustion and worry and best of all, a story with two sides of the tale! Devin and Caylin First of all, I have to start with my children. They are increasingly becoming such an important part of my life. I know that is an odd thing to say, since Caylin is 4 ½ years old, but I have realized lately that since I put Caylin in daycare when she was eight weeks old, I had put career first and children second. Even with Devin, I still focused on making money more than I did on being an attentive mother. It has taken nine months here, and sadly, going a bit broke, to finally slow down enough to cherish the precious moments of motherhood. Devin screams, “Mama mama mama mama!” and runs out the door to greet me when I come home from the store. Caylin gives me foot rubs, back massages and brushes my hair while telling me how much she loves me. While holding him in the
shower, Devin puts his head on my shoulder and I rub his back and let the water cascade down him and just watch the smile sit on his face as we enjoy these intimate moments. It’s been such a newfound joy to actually spend time down on the floor playing games with them, helping them draw, create new caves and fairy spaces and having them hug and kiss me. I still have a little way to go, as I still yearn to go out to the beach and spend time alone in the water, or finish my scrap-booking projects, or calling or emailing my friends. However, I know time is short here and even shorter when I think about how fast they are growing. Devin is such a great little kid! He is a mischievous imp who screams to have you open the fridge or freezer to scan the latest offerings, but can also make you belly laugh when he dances in front of the TV. Caylin and I have been spending more time together since I have helped on a variety of class projects. You can see how much she is turning into a little poser when you see the picture I took of her in the Easter dress her grandma Dutcher sent to her. She is not full of herself at all, but has a great confidence about her and has inherited her mother’s trait of not liking being left out of social circles. They are a joy to watch grow and mature and I am so happy that we came here to find a way to enjoy them more. Adventure to Kiholo Bay Eric and I have seen this bay from the main highway about 40 minutes north of our house every time we drive up to Waikoloa or Waimea. It is a stunning blue and sits around an oasis of palm trees out past a lava field and a crop of bushy trees. There are usually about three or four cars parked along the road and we assumed there must be a trail out to the beach. Well, yesterday, we decided to finally go out and have a look. Well, the long and short of it was…we got a late start, so we did not start the hike until 11:30 am, we took Devin in a backpack, we were wearing limited sunscreen, took only two bottles of water, snacks, no lunch and did not tell anyone where we were. I decided to take our cell phone in case anything happened (I had just programmed one person’s name into
the phone a day before we went on this excursion, the one and only contact in the phone…a point you will see was important later). It only took us about fifteen feet to realize there was no clearly marked trail for us to follow and about fifteen seconds to realize it was a GOOD thing we were wearing running shoes since almost immediately we were walking across lava called a’a. The Hawaiians must have called it this because you say, “Ah ha! This stuff sucks to walk on!” (actually, I just found out from some web research that a’a in Hawaiian means “blaze or glow.”) It’s what we call crunchy lava. So, we walked on the lava and down little hills through trees called Kiawe (pronounced Kai ivi), a form of mesquite tree. They had inch long barbs on them. So, we were bobbing and weaving along the lava and through these treacherous trees with Devin on Eric’s back trying to find our way to the beach and not poke Devin’s eye out. The a’a lava gave way to pahoehoe (pah-hoy-hoy) lava, the kind that is black and wavy and EXTREMELY hot. (just found out that pahoehoe means “ropy” and “hoe “is to paddle in Hawaiian. (This word may be taken from the image of the swirls on the surface of the water matching those of the lava.) Being out on an open lava field, with no path was pretty intense and I can see how people can get good and lost and in deep trouble out on expansive lava fields like they have in the Southern part of the island. In fact, we found the bones of wild goats that had fallen in the collapsed lava tube holes and had died down there. After an hour of walking in the general direction of the palm trees, under the hot sun while taking great pains not to trip on the uneven surfaces, we were finally able to break through the brush to the beach. And when we got there, it was shockingly beautiful! Of course, we drank half our water supply right then and there, as well as devouring most of our snacks, since it was now almost one and we did not bring lunch. (We really thought it was going to be a quick stroll to the beach!) Devin got out and promptly went up to his butt in the water, soaking his diaper and shorts. SO, I took off my shorts and got into the water, too. We took some shots of the area with Eric’s digital and my film camera.
We only got to spend about 20 minutes there since we still had to drive almost an hour to go pick up Caylin from school. (Which was so sad! I would have loved to have gone swimming in this BLUE lagoon). Thank goodness I got my shorts back on because a couple strolled up to us looking like they had just emerged from a resort with brightly colored towels around their necks. We asked them how they had gotten to this beach and they said there was a PAVED road about a half-mile away they had walked down! (They said it still took them an hour to get to where we were, though). So we chatted with them for a few minutes and we took each other’s pictures and said goodbye. Being in a bit of a hurry and having to struggle to get Devin back in the backpack (which was terrible, because he was wet and sandy and NOT in the mood to go back into confinement) we headed back into the prickly Keawi trees. (Oddly enough, these thorny trees are not indigenous to the islands. We heard a story of the missionaries planting them to make the Hawaiians wear shoes to avoid the stabbing needles the trees drop!) With Devin screaming most of the way, we tried to find an easier and faster way back to the car. Our water was all gone about 30 minutes into the hike back and the sun was attacking my poor son who did not have a hat and husband who was not wearing sunscreen. We ran into a herd of wild goats on the way back and it looked like the lead ram was going to take us on. That was the only time Devin stopped screaming. We skirted them and FINALLY saw the highway. I was pretty relieved. I know it was a rather straight shot to the highway, but feeling lost, thirsty, hot, underprepared and such is never a great feeling on a “happy adventure”. Lost and Found When we got back to the car, Devin literally did a happy dance in the back of the van and I swear he bent down and kissed the ground! It was then that we realized we had left our fanny pack with the digital camera and our cell phone back on the beach! Aaaahhh! There was NO way we had the time or energy left to go back and get it right then. Dismally, we drove to get Caylin. I told Eric that there was a chance the couple we met would find our pack, get into our phone and call the one contact we had
in there, describe who we were and be able to return our stuff. Well, Eric was not quite buying this stream of optimistic events. Believe it or NOT, that is exactly what happened! They called the one person on the contact list (Loren) and they drove our bag to his house the same night! Loren drove it to our condo while we were out to dinner and voila! I am able to share the photos with you all! What an adventure! Our Saviour Couple Finds Us Now, the odd thing about this tale is that it continues on! We took the kids to Huggo’s on the Rocks later that week and a woman called out my name. I looked over and had no idea whom she or her husband was. Well, after some small talk I finally figured out it was the couple that returned our camera bag! So, I asked them to explain their side of the story. Well, they found the pack and knew it was us who left it there by scrolling back over the last few digital images (meanwhile, I called the phone to see if anyone would answer it and he could not get it opened fast enough to answer it. Then when he called the number back, the teenager whose phone we borrowed, did not want to answer it because she was listening to Eric tell the story of how we lost the camera bag (and of how ridiculous it was to call our lost phone in the middle of nowhere!)). The gentleman who found the pack got a teenager’s answering machine and did not leave a message since he did not know who she was. So, he scrolled through our phone’s contact list and found Loren’s number. He called Loren, described us, and found that Loren lived only a few miles from where they were staying. So, I tried to buy them a drink to thank them for being such Good Samaritans, but they were already finished with their meal and were headed back to Seattle the next day. I promised I would send them this story to see how both sides ended up coming together for one pretty unusual and wonderful ending. Kiholo Bay Redux Well, after I wrote that story, I was hell bent on getting back to Kiholo Bay and getting into the BLUE water. Well, during this time is also when Oahu was having raw sewage spilling around Waikiki Beach due to a
break of a sewer line from flooding on the island (Can I also interject here that the Hawaiian Islands had record breaking rainfall for the month of March...the most they have seen since 1951. So, for all you people in the Bay Area that were getting socked and soaked, we were getting our fair share over here, too!). Well, a person fell into the water in Waikiki, got cut up on the coral and also got flesh-eating bacteria into his wounds. He was literally eaten alive by this bacteria within a few days and as the doctors were contemplating amputating all his limbs, he died. His own mother did not recognize his face due to the ravages of the bacteria. I tell you this because a week after this guy died, another man contracted the same bacteria at Kiholo Bay! I had to do some soul searching as well as skin searching for open wounds before deciding to go back to the bay. I invited our friend who drives Caylin to school, Jessica, with us this time, because she has a four wheel drive vehicle and I wanted to go down the road for the “quick and easy” way to get to Kiholo. So, this time we had plenty of food and water and such and headed out. We drove down as far as we could and got out at a black sand beach to see how far we had to walk to the bay. A ranger saw us and we chatted about the flesh eating bacteria as well as the easiest way to get to the bay. Good news on the bacteria front, the guy who got it was sitting in the Queen’s Bath, a brackish fresh/salt water pond a good mile from where we wanted to go. Bad news, he said the best way to get to the bay was to go back out onto the highway, park and walk in! Can you believe it!? However, this time, we found a well-used and easy path to get to our destination. I will outline exactly how to find this path for anyone who finds themselves here on the Big Island and wants to see the coolest dang place I have ever seen. We got a chance to jump into the water and experience the strangest sensation of chilling fresh water on top and warm salty water below. The bottom was all silty, which is why it was a neon blue color, and even with goggles on, I could not see more than three feet down. Very weird, but really cool and actually kind of scary, too, since you could not see what
was below you. We saw an awesome silty green turtle on the beach and some nice tropical fish along the edges. There is a lot of black sand and very few trees, so I would NOT suggest doing this in the heat of summer, but for a slightly cloudy spring day, it was perfect. I will include this in my cool things to do book that I plan on leaving for our rental guests. The Tough Reality So, here it is May 11th already. I started writing this almost three weeks ago. Unbelievable how fast time is going now that we are getting closer to coming home on August 1st. I bought our plane tickets, so it’s official, we are NOT staying. Paradise has been wonderful, but prohibitively expensive. Eric is building furniture projects under a mansion up the hill from us and brings the projects home to work on our lanai for finishing touches and crating the piece for shipping to the mainland. BZ Design, Eric’s company, is going through a tough time right now as China and its cheap labor have really bitten into Eric’s dream of mass manufacturing his designs. He is focusing on creating the high-end furniture himself here and setting up future plans to do some renovating and design work back in the Bay Area. Speaking of design work, we have been working on our website to market the condo to the world. We have been using our pictures and experiences in West Hawaii to help add flavor and a different experience for people considering staying here. While we are not getting paid for this work right now, we hope it will pay off in the long run with at least three weeks a month being rented out. We have had quite a few hits so far on the VRBO site and we feel confident that we will be successful as vacation rental owners! While Eric has been very creative in finding ways to make money here, its been such a HUGE deal for me to create a decent paying job on this island, albeit, I have the added “burden” of Devin and lack of childcare in Kona, but I would never have thought how much I have had to kill myself to work on projects which I have made so little money. For the month that I spent helping to coordinate the March of Dimes Walk America and do the thank you letters and such, I made less than $5 an
hour! At least I spent a lot of time on the phone asking for things or working on the computer instead of performing hard labor for a few bucks. This I DID do a few weeks ago. Case in point, a story I will call: “The Hardest Dollar” First of all, in regards to Capt. Barb, the owner of the charter company, she did not know how hard this day was for me until we discussed it much later, so please reserve judgment. So, Capt. Barb calls me and asks if I would like to come out and crew on her boat since her regular employee was desperate for a day off from the busy Easter season. I needed the money (which, I have learned, is a terrible thing to think on your way to a job. You should go because you like the work, instead). So, I showed up at 8:30 am on a very warm and clear day and helped the Captain go into the boatyard to get the boat from its dry dock slip. Well, here is where it all started to go downhill…at 8:40 am! I had to guide her truck back to attach to the ball of the boat trailer. Well, I am not the best hand signaler, I found out, because I was telling her to go left and she kept going right. We were inches off for quite a few back up attempts. Then, when I got her over the ball, I yelled stop and she did not hear me and backed her truck right into the trailer. Ouch! “Put up both hands, don’t yell”, I found out later. Hmmm. Well, we finally got the boat attached to the truck and out onto the dock area. Captain Barb has some delusion that I will one day be able to hook the truck up to the boat myself and get it into the water, HA! I suck! I have already run into a lava wall and punched a hole into the bumper of our VAN! She grew up backing up horse trailers as a teenager. Well, then I had to “open” the boat while she greeted the guests. I realized quickly that I had two terrible things working against me. One, I had not done this in a few months and two, I could not remember anything! I turned 41 and lost what was left of my short-term memory. I think it’s worse when you are under pressure to perform.
So, it took awhile and I forgot a bunch of things, like how to tie the knots to keep the buoys attached to the railing. So, down at the launch area, six guests were standing there watching me catch the ropes to tie onto the cleats to get the boat secure to the dock for everyone to jump on. Well, I over tied the rope to the cleat and with Captain Barb yelling, “Too tight, Julie! Too tight, you’re gonna make the boat” CRASH! Right into the pier. JEEZ LOUISE. I felt like such a friggin idiot I cannot even tell you. If I could have crawled into the water and under a rock, I would have. However, I knew that the day would SUCK if these people had no confidence in me, since I had their lives in my hands out in the ocean! So, I re-tied the ropes onto the cleats (and no, I did not punch a hole into her boat) and just smiled. When I stood up and the guests started walking toward me, I said, “Maybe I can’t tie a boat onto a dock, but I can sure swim with dolphins really well!”. They laughed, which helped, and Captain Barb explained that I was the marketing person doing the “real” crewperson a favor by giving him the day off. I did so much better every other time I have gone out with Captain Barb. I have tied those lines off in the past and have never been responsible for ramming her boat before. It was the start of a very long day. There were quite a few screw ups during the trip, like forgetting to bring the buoys back into the boat until we were going 30 miles an hour, dropping the dive ladder into the water and catching it before it sunk, chatting with a guest about life and forgetting my job until Captain Barb screamed from the helm to get drinks and pineapple served to everyone, and forgetting where the snorkel masks were kept. Here, Take the Wheel However, the real doozy was when the Captain unexpectedly said, “I need you to take the wheel so I can go give the presentation to the guests”. I found out later that Captain Barb thought I had some experience with driving a boat. I DID drive a water ski boat for about ten
minutes back in 1994. That was a completely different experience than taking the wheel of an OCEAN going boat with EIGHT people on board! This is starting to come back as rather amusing, but when it was happening, it was scary, overwhelming, and was happening in slow motion. Captain Barb had me come up to the Captain’s chair and within 30 seconds told me that I had to avoid dive boats, since SCUBA divers could surface anywhere near them, fishing charters, since they drug their lines up to 70 feet behind the boats and excursion charters, since you did not want to alarm the passengers. And THEN SHE HANDED OVER THE WHEEL AND LEFT ME THERE! That was ALL the instruction I received. She then promptly motioned for everyone to come to the bow of the boat for her “dolphin talk” and sat backwards from the oncoming hell and faced me! I could NOT believe how much confidence she had in me to drive the boat. And sure enough, a dive boat was on my right, a fishing boat on my left and an excursion boat was headed in my direction. I wanted Eric there so bad to save me! It’s amazing when you are thrust into unfamiliar territory how bad a margarita and a trusty dusty husband are sorely needed. So, I tried not to get into the wake of the fishing boat and skirted the dive boat by about 50 feet. I thought I did a good job since I did not feel us hitting a diver or sucking up all the fishing line into our propellers, but Captain Barb yelled up from the bow, “Julie! You came too close to that dive boat!” Oops. Well, getting yelled at is not one of my favorite ways to calm my nerves and assure me that I am doing a good job. So, I decided to head straight out to sea so I could avoid any more close encounters with ocean faring vessels. Well, that tactic was not met with enthusiasm as Captain Barb saw what I was doing and started pointing back towards land. She did the universal “what the hell are you doing? Get closer to shore, where the damn dolphins are!” gestures.
So, I headed for a cove and figured she would wrap up her speech by the time I neared the rocks. Nope. She said, “Start looking for dolphins” while making the motion of “drive the damn boat AROUND the rocks and get a clue”. So, here I am, after 30 minutes, driving a boat in the waters around Hawaii. Who knew!? Finally, we came to a beach area where a few other boats had “parked”. She finally came back to the wheel and god, I wished I could have gone home after that. I seriously was in dire need of a drink. So, I got everyone suited up and jumped into the water after seeing the dolphins cavorting about with the tourists from the other boats. As soon as everyone was in the water, and started looking around, the dolphins disappeared. We ended up going in and out of the water four or five times as we followed the pod as it headed south. Each time, I had to rally the troops to get their snorkel gear on and ready to jump when we stopped the boat. And sure enough, the dolphins would swim right by us and we would have to get back on and do it again. Now, when I first started swimming with the dolphins, I could not get enough of the adventure. Well, after freezing out in the water, getting Charlie horses in my calves from the fins while kicking, and not being able to go back onto the boat when I was tired, it was losing its luster and appeal. I was out in the water for at least two hours with the guests, who kept switching off for lunch or rest, while I had to stay out there the whole time for safety reasons. The wind was blowing, so Captain Barb, who considered relieving me, did not trust me with the boat so close to the rocks, which makes her a very perceptive woman, but left me exhausted in the water. Well, the guests were nice people and were even celebrating an 11th birthday for a son and they were very kind and tipped us $60. Captain Barb gave $20 to the guy who helped drive the boat in and out of the water, and kept $20 for herself. Then, I had two hours of scrubbing the boat. This normally takes me about an hour, but I was so tired, I felt like a lead weight was on my shoulders. I had to scrub the upper portion of
the boat, including all the rails, cabin, decks, etc, while Captain Barb scrubbed the hull and trailer. Exhausting, hard work. Not only was it a tough day, but I also got a big fat sunburn all over my face and ended up with blisters on my lips. To say the day was a pain is an understatement. The kicker was at the end of it all, Nancy wrote me a check for the going crew wage of $60 for the day. From 8:30-4:00. It was the hardest $80 (don’t forget my tip!) I think I have made since I stood in front of a grill flipping hamburgers at Great America when I was 16. Sadly, the next day, when we were at church, Eric took my hard fought for $20 tip money and donated it in the collection basket. It just about killed me. They bless the money each week and say that it will come back to you in other ways, and so it did today when I got a contract job at Caylin’s school writing a donation letter, creating a brochure and making some fundraising calls. I plan on using my god given talent, instead of my back and hands, to make a living from now on. I am getting too old for working on the boat now. Next time I go out, I will pay Captain Barb as a guest and bring some friends along. It has been an excellent adventure and experience for the most part, really, and I got quite a few stories out of it to tell you all. I have to thank Captain Barb for that! Meanwhile, I have helped her get a contract to promote her company at the Keauhou Sheraton Resort and will continue to do what I can to help her company bring joy to people who want to experience the thrill and beauty of swimming with the dolphins. Dropping into the water and coming within a few feet of a pod of 60 or more dolphins is one of the most amazing things you will ever experience. Beauty, serenity and pure joy awaits. I will send this off now, as it’s almost midnight and I want to keep the stories flowing for my friends and family who enjoy “Tales from the Big Island.” Aloha to all! Julie and Family Z
2020 Insights I think Aunties exist to tell mothers with young children that it goes by all too fast and sit and enjoy it while they can. Reading about how I was finally getting off the Silicon Valley fast train to sit down and play with my kids on the floor and have a few moments to cherish their babyhood instead of constantly chasing down my career makes me realize what a gift it truly was to come to Hawaii Island for a year. Most people would not have the means or the spirit to do that, as it WAS very hard and expensive! That time was a true gift and in the writing of the insights to this book, I am feeling more and more blessed. Now that my children are teenagers and are focused on their own fun and lives, the memory of my son bursting out the front door yelling, “Mama mama!” makes me so happy that I wrote this down and have that tucked into the happy memory file of his early childhood. I bet some of you who may be reading this are heading towards retirement and are wistfully remembering how so much of raising kids seems so hard and time consuming and yet, when you look back you wish you had taken a step back to enjoy it more. That is why, I am sure, becoming a grandparent has a certain flair to it. Crew Work That story of my “learning experience” of driving the boat still makes me cringe and laugh at the same time. Working on a boat is as fun as it is hard. That was the last summer I spent any length of time in the sun, as soon after I ended up with some skin lesions, one of which turned out to be malignant skin cancer and I ended up in Honolulu with MOHS surgery on my forehead! I came home looking “weathered” from my year on the island and I can thank my hours on the boat as part of my permanent wrinkle base.
Making money You would think that since 2005 it would be easier to make a buck in Kona. Making a living wage here to offset the high cost of housing and food has ALWAYS been a struggle. We call it the “paradise tax” and most people here have to work two and three jobs to make ends meet. The average salary in Kona is $50,000 while the cost of homes has risen steadily since 2009. When I first arrived, the housing market was on fire before the recession, so it was even harder to make those condo payments then! I have been fortunate to have been able to work with some mainland clients over the years that pay me more than my clients here in Kona can afford to offer. I also have counseled MANY people considering a move here to bring a mainland job with them. In all the years that I have been on this island, a $50,000 marketing position has never opened up for me to go sit in an office and have full benefits again. I created my own consulting business in 2010 and have been working with a variety of restaurants, small businesses, nonprofits and events ever since. And I can tell you-I have never again worked for $10 an hour on a tour experience. Swimming With the Dolphins We are hearing that the authorities that oversee the dolphin charter experiences are considering banning boats from bringing visitors out to swim with the dolphins. They are working towards having people only view them from the boats. The whole experience I have shared with you may no longer even be possible in the future.
Julie and kids at Kona Pacific
Adventures in Babysitting
Email 13 - May 11-June 21, 2006 Aloha! Welcome back to “Tales from a Big Island Adventure!” Devin and Caylin All I can say is “Help!” Caylin has been out of school since June 9th and I have both kids full time now. Our teenage babysitters have gone on to visit relatives off the island for the next month, so I am mostly out of resources for some help. Eric is busy working on furniture making and some other projects that have him out of the house for a large portion of the day. I am making the most of my time with the kids, but free time to send cards and greetings to my friends has been scarce. I have been running off to the Sheraton every morning now to make sure I get my “me” time before being engrossed with PlayDoh, Barney, library runs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pool toys. I cannot complain too hard, since I know life will change dramatically in five weeks when we return home. Devin’s vocabulary is still limited to about 10 words, but he understands what we tell him. However, he gets frustrated when I don’t understand
what he wants and he melts down. Is it time for the terrible twos or is Madam Pele trying to punish me for sending my friend some black sand? Caylin is learning how to write letters in chalk on the small street in front of our condo. Our neighbor is constantly amused by what she finds out there sometimes, including palm trees, parking lines, and little alien heads that Caylin tells me is her family. They both love the pool and since I am so sweaty and hot from my run due to the warmer weather now, I grab them both around 9 am and head to the pool for an hour. Caylin is diving down to the bottom of the eight-foot pool to retrieve objects that Devin throws to watch his sister perform. Devin shows off his budding athleticism and jumps in from the side of the pool into my arms. We get out in time for Devin’s nap around 10 am and the day goes from there. We are taking them to the golf course at the bottom of the resort entrance and playing ball with them at sunset. It’s like a park that we have to ourselves, and we entertain the tourists in the condos along the golf course with Caylin rolling down the hills, Devin kicking and running after his balls and us chasing the kids around to wear them out for the night. It’s a good life with them right now and I am savoring every minute while we are still here. Cool Snorkeling Adventure Eric and I have been looking into the water at Keauhou Bay at the end of our street for 10 months now and have never snorkeled there. We never see anyone out there snorkeling, and have heard that since the fishermen throw the fish carcasses into the bay, that sharks sometimes come in to feed there. Well, we decided to give it a shot before we left to see what lurks in our own backyard! We had a babysitter watch the kids for a few hours on a Saturday and headed down there first thing in the morning. If anyone comes to our house and wants to do this, make sure you do it when the
water is really calm so you don’t get smashed against the rocks. Summer is a good time for this! We found that the top of the bay near the kayak/outrigger launch area is quite murky and we could barely see anything as we swam across the middle of the bay (shark alert here for anyone who knows you should never swim at sunrise, sunset or right after a storm when the water is cloudy as sharks can not tell exactly what you are and need a bite before deciding if a meal is in the works or not). However, we chose a beautiful blue day and I have never personally seen a shark fin in Keauhou Bay in all the mornings I have run through this area. We swam to the Sheraton side of the bay and found some great areas to see a variety of tropical fish. The closer we got to the open ocean, the more fish we saw swimming around the walls of the bay. Then, about ¼ mile from where we started and only about 100 feet from the end of the bay we hit fish pay dirt! We saw hundreds of baby needlefish. They kind of look like baby swordfish and were about five inches long. Right as we were enjoying watching these minnows skim the surface, we noticed a surf crash zone that was harboring THOUSANDS of fish near the rocks! It was a hatchery of sorts and it was full of every kind of tropical fish I have seen out in these waters. The water was no more than two feet deep and it was right near the end of the Sheraton’s property. I came back to that spot during my morning run the next day to see what it looked like from the surface and you would never guess what was below the water there. A true treasure trove of marine life that no one really knows about and we share it with you now! Again, like I said, you can only really enjoy this snorkel trip if the surge is really low because the waves around this area are usually pretty intense, a good reason why the fish probably live there. The water was crystal blue and you could see where it became steadily more indigo as it got deeper at the mouth of the bay. It is just amazing and made us feel like participants in a National Geographic film.
Side note, the fish here were not as likely to hang around like they do in Kahalu’u Bay where the tourists sometimes feed them. On the other hand, they were also not as unpredictable, like the time in Kahalu’u Bay on Eric’s birthday in May where a Picasso Triggerfish the size of my hand attacked me. The little bugger looked at me, put his orange and black head down and charged me and bit my finger! They are my favorite looking fish here and now I stay pretty clear of them! They have little teeth that they eat coral with and if it comes at you with its teeth bared, you better get out of there! Helicopter Ride I did not get to tell you that I finally took a helicopter tour in April after they cancelled twice on me for weather and mechanical failure problems. Kathy, a friend of mine, went with me on the tour, as Eric has motion sickness and could not fathom going with me. We flew from near the Waikoloa Resort area about 35 minutes north of Kona to the other side of the island. We flew past the area that they filmed for the opening scenes of Jurassic Park, sheer green and black cliffs with waterfalls cascading down into the ocean. There are no roads across this part of the island along the Hamakua Coast and to say it is remote is an understatement. It was amazing to see a huge valley with 15 waterfalls coming down thousands of feet to an uninhabited lush green valley floor. The pilot took us right up close to the waterfalls and I had video, digital and film cameras blazing. It was raining (tropical rainforests have a habit of having that happen) so the pictures are not as spectacular as it was to actually be there, but it was worth every dime of the trip to see this part of the island from the air. The tour lasted about an hour and a half and we went into the valley with the waterfalls and Waipi’o Valley, where we peered into at the lookout and still have plans to get down to the beach and hike around. The tour guide gave a fascinating tour with stories of ancient Hawaiians holding weddings and funerals in these valleys and hiking for days to get
in there. I know it sounds trite, but it was a magical place where time stands still and I found myself thrilled that no one has developed or ruined the pristine beauty of the valleys and coastline.
Eric and Julie at their ocean front room at the Mauna Lani
Mauna Lani Weekend I hate for this letter to sound like one big travelogue, but what do you want to hear about? How do we get up with the kids at the crack of dawn with the birds shrieking behind our house until the sun finally rises around 5:45 am? Or that we live in such a small space that Devin has one drawer, Caylin has two, Eric and I both have three drawers and we all share one 15 foot closet and one shoe tree? I could tell you about Devin still sleeping in a travel playpen and Caylin pulling out a sofa bed to go to bed every night and their playroom encompasses ¼ of the lanai and a space near the TV set. When you have spent 10 long months living together EVERY DAY and not getting a chance to go somewhere new to get a change of scenery, you jump at the chance to go spend two nights at a luxury resort on the Kohala Coast! I finally coordinated a series of three babysitters that would take the kids from Friday after noon, through Saturday evening (this was a feat unto itself and thus we did not get to spend two nights alone!). Eric and I got to the Mauna Lani and it was a gorgeous day. We checked in and since
the hotel was not booked, they gave us an upgrade from an ocean view room to an ocean front room! The guest service representative took us to a separate concierge desk where she put fresh plumeria leis on us, served us chilled passion fruit juice and then gave us a complete orientation of the hotel and the restaurants. She even booked our reservations at the restaurant, the Canoe House, for that evening. I thought since we had given them a gift certificate for a high-end room that we got this exceptional service. I found out from the bellman that they do this FOR EVERY GUEST that checks in! Unbelievable. If you love quality service, go to the Mauna Lani Resort. Our room was rather small, but the view made up for it! We went out and swam in the lagoon/bay and then got a cocktail and swam in one of the largest hotel pools I have seen (except for the ¼ mile pool in Cancun that I experienced in ’95). The water had to be 90 degrees and the hot tub was pleasantly scalding! We watched the sunset between two palm trees and a hammock from our lanai. We enjoyed an extraordinary dinner at the Canoe House restaurant and I had a delectable filet mignon. I ordered the cabernet that they suggested with the entrée. No price attached. The waiter came to pour my one glass with the whole bottle in her hand. She let me taste it before she poured the full glass, which I have never seen done with a single glass of wine. When I got the bill and saw that the one glass cost me $16, I can see why they were so service oriented about it! On Saturday, I pulled Eric out of bed at the crack of dawn to walk the beach and see the sun rise and take pictures. Some beautiful shots came out of this and I shared many of them in a Kodak Gallery Share program with a lot of you. We went to the Mauna Kea Resort for lunch and the view from the back of the hotel is stunning. The water was so turquoise that it just did not look real. I think that is the best view on the island.
We went and picked up the kids in Kona and drove them back to the hotel and had them spend the night and most of Sunday with us at the resort. They loved the hammocks on the beach and the sharks and turtles they have in the ponds on the property. Caylin loved the slippers, robes and hot tea in the morning and I can see a girl who really enjoys being pampered! It was a wonderful experience and I am so glad I worked hard on the March of Dimes Walk America and Kona Chocolate Festival to be able to do this for Eric’s 40th birthday gift. A memorable (and not soon to be done again!) experience! Kona Marathon This will be short, as it was supposed to be a huge deal, but a feat nonetheless. I was told of the Kona Marathon only a week beforehand and was challenged to run the half marathon. I thought I could do it and started training, with only five days to prepare. After running five miles one day, and six the next day, I ended up with blisters on my feet and a heavy heart. I asked the advice of a running enthusiast friend, who has completed many marathons, and he said I was asking for trouble trying to run 13 miles with no training. I actually took his advice and competed in the 10K, instead. I completed it in one hour and thirty seconds, which is about the time I ran it ten years ago. I want to pat myself on the back, as my neighbors here said to do, but I wish I could have done the half marathon. I will have to train for at least eight weeks in order to do it successfully and I need a new pair of shoes and non-cotton socks. I WILL do one, and perhaps even the Kona Marathon when I come back to the island next summer. I have huge respect for long distance runners and especially people who compete in triathlons. But I got out there at 6:30 am and did my best and came in 33 out of 100 in the 10K category. A Guest Visits, Finally! Tracey, one of my good friends from the Association of Realtors I worked at in San Jose, came out to see us this past week (June 13-20). We have not entertained an out of town guest since March, so it was
wonderful to hear news from home and have someone to tour around with again. Tracey had an interesting time here, since she spent two days with us, then we went to Oahu for four days, and she stayed in our condo alone and then we spent a day and a half with her when we returned before she flew out. This gave her complimentary lodging, use of our car when we were away and a chance NOT to have to have all of us crammed in here together for a week straight! While I attended a Festivals and Event conference in Waikoloa, on the Thursday after she arrived, Eric and the kids took Tracey to Hawi and to the end of the highway overlooking the cliffs at Polol’u Valley. They decided to hike down to the beach from the road. I heard that it rained on them and they were not quite prepared for this adventure. I am awaiting pictures from Tracey’s digital camera of this active afternoon. Eric said the kids walked the half-mile down by themselves, but needed help on the way back up. By the time I saw them at 4, they all looked pretty exhausted from the day. Tracey said her calves hurt for many days after that!
Julie on Waikiki Beach on Oahu
Oahu Here We Come! We went to Oahu to see our friends, Lisa and John and their children who are about the same age as Caylin and Devin from June 16-19th. They were the folks who gave us the idea to move to Kona in the first place and they just moved to Oahu so John could help sell the condos that are now being developed in the new Waikiki Trump International Towers. Father’s Day fell over the weekend we were in Oahu and so Eric got to do some fun Father’s Day activities with John. On Saturday, after we went to Pearl Harbor and toured the inside of a submarine and checked out the museum and then drove around the island, Eric and John went for a kayak ride from the dock outside of John’s house. They both headed off near sunset for an hour tour of the canal/slough in the Hawaii Kai area that leads to the ocean (the houses in this area cost a fortune and everyone has their own private dock. Some people take their boat and can actually dock at Costco and some restaurants near the marina!) . Saturday evening we got babysitters to take care of the kids so we could go out to Benihana’s in Waikiki and drink Mai Tais and enjoy a festive atmosphere. After dinner we sat eating ice cream at a café near the white sands of the famous Waikiki Beach. Of course it was dark and I could not see Diamond Head, but the water was so calm that couples were out frolicking about in the ocean. I can see why people spend a few days here: lots of shopping, restaurants, and the beaches are beautiful and people watching is a sport. We had a great time with Lisa and John and I hope Lisa will send me her digital pics of the trip! (We ended up coming back to Waikiki Beach on Sunday afternoon so I could get a picture of us on the beach with Diamond Head in the background…we stayed for ten minutes and jammed back to Lisa’s house to go snorkeling!).
On Sunday morning, Eric and John went body surfing at Makapu’u with a 60-year-old pro. Eric said that the waves were between 6-8 feet high and even with instruction from the local pro, he got mangled in the waves as they kept hitting him every time he surfaced to get some air. He said that the experience was one of his best since coming to Hawaii and he now knows the advantages of sliding sideways against the wave’s belly instead of facing forward and being thrown over the top, which leads to neck injuries. He spent about an hour in the water and came home with a sunburn, some muscle soreness, but with more excitement about the adventure than I have seen in a long time. He is STILL talking about the waves and mimicking how he conquered them, so I am sure when we get home he will do this for all our friends when asked about one of his favorite parts of our move here. The Moon Jellyfish Incident Caylin had her own scare with the waters of Oahu, too. She was playing on the dock behind Lisa’s house with Lisa’s daughter, Alexis while the two teenagers were watching them, as we all got ready to go out. She had just taken a shower and was wearing her pajamas. The girls were scooping Moon jellyfish, which were VERY abundant at the dock area, into plastic pails and watching them up close. We had told them before not to touch the jellyfish as they can sting. Well, Caylin was trying to walk around Alexis near the edge of the dock, lost her balance and fell into the cold water! She was terrified. Thank goodness she knows how to swim, the jellyfish did not sting her and the babysitter pulled her out as quickly as possible, but it took thirty minutes and a good hot bath to get her to stop crying and calm down. I don’t think I have seen Caylin traumatized before and it was so sad to watch her break down into tears whenever she recalled the experience. I guess I would have been pretty freaked out, too…there were dozens of jellyfish the size of small dinner plates floating around in the water around the dock.
The Z Family at Hanauma Bay in Oahu
Hanauma Bay Experience Later that day, we took the kids to Hanauma Bay, which was only a few minutes from Lisa’s house and one of the most beautiful bays I have ever seen. We were unprepared for the CROWDS! The parking lot, (a dollar to get in) had several hundred parking spaces. On our island, most beach parking lots fit maybe 75 cars. Then we had to pay $5 per person to use the beach (free on ALL beaches on the Big Island) and had to sit through a nine-minute video on how to use the beach and not kill the coral. Then we paid $2 for the shuttle down to the beach. The water was beautiful, but there were not that many fish to see and the coral is not the same healthy, large and colorful coral we have on the Big Island. This experience made me realize how fortunate we are to not have crowded beaches and parking lots with fees and how lucky we are to have unspoiled marine areas to explore.
The eight lane freeways of Honolulu, the high rises, the high density housing developments, the minions of tourists everywhere, the lack of Hawaiian culture and people, and the intensity of life there made us so happy to come home to our island! I am sure we are going to suffer from culture shock when we go back to Santa Clara County. I am glad we had a chance to leave the island for a bit and come back so we can really appreciate what the Big Island has to offer before we leave again. You can just feel the Aloha Spirit in the air here. Even just going through our quaint little open-air airport gives you the feeling you are entering a quieter and simpler environment. The backside of Oahu was gorgeous with verdant green mountains that reminded me a lot of Moorea in Tahiti. The life from one side of the island to the other is night and day. What? No Black Lava? It was kind of strange not to see any lava on Oahu, either. We have gotten so used to seeing lava fields everywhere and lava as part of the landscape all over the island. Oahu is a much older island and the erosion and plant growth have “melted” the lava so that it looks a lot like the ocean areas in California. They say the Big Island is a young island, and after seeing the difference in topography, I can appreciate the a’a and pahoehoe lava a little more. I can also appreciate the fact that we have preserved the Hawaiian culture on this island and there are heiaus, halaus, and historical areas here that give you insight into how the Hawaiians lived here hundreds of years ago. Winding Down Back to Tracey on the Big Island who picked us up from the airport in our van. We took her to our favorite terrace at the Verandah Lounge at the Outrigger for drinks when she first got here and spent the rest of the time cooking dinner at home and catching up on life. Tracey and I ran to the Sheraton on her last morning and she got to see where I enjoy my
coffee and paper and see the view. She also spent a day at the beach with the kids and me, and let me swim alone for a while, which I thoroughly enjoyed. (Mom’s out there, you can imagine how having 20 minutes in the ocean to just relax, is THIS close to heaven!) We said goodbye to her this past Tuesday night after watching the sunset on the golf course. She said she got a pretty good taste of our life here and it will be fun to get together with her and the friends that made it out this year to reminisce about life here. It’s been a great experience and I am so glad we made the sacrifices we did to do it. We are expecting Eric’s friends, Charlie and Trish to come out for the Fourth of July weekend and then his friends Bryan and Candy a day after they leave. So, the next few weeks will be filled with more sightseeing and touring around as we prepare to say goodbye to our wonderful island. I hope to write one more update before we come home, so stay tuned. On Eric’s career front, he has big plans when we return to go solo and really have the freedom to create his own design line and do projects around the Bay Area that showcase his artistic talent. We are working on a new website for him. I have been offered some great opportunities in the real estate industry doing PR and marketing and feel confident that Eric and I will jump right into the game when we return. Thanks for enjoying the travel stories and being a constant reader, as Stephen King would say! Aloha! Julie and Family Z Insights 2020 Running a Half Marathon As many of you know, putting a goal out there is only half the effort. Actually making a solid plan to make that goal a reality is a different story! In 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession, I made a plan to run
a half marathon. It was better than sitting in despair waiting for the phone to ring with more creditors. I started training in February 2009 and ran 7 miles of the San Jose Rock n Roll ½ Marathon with Eric in September. I then completed the Silicon Valley Half Marathon two weeks after a head on car crash in two hours. That medal meant more to me than anyone will ever know. My Friend Tracey Died This Year In all the craziness of 2020, both my sister Delorie and my good friend, Tracey passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Reading back over the time Tracey spent in Hawaii with us makes it even more poignant and cherished. I think this year has made it abundantly clear that tomorrow is never promised and to hang on tight to those you love and cherish those memories. Tracey taught me about the Aloha spirit long before I ever stepped foot on the island. Hanauma Bay Experience Looking back on what we went through to get to Hanauma Bay was a classic case of a little too much, a little too late. I am hearing that the Bay is actually doing better with the lack of tourists over the past five months there. What we learned is that the chemicals in sunscreen were wreaking havoc on the coral, along with the run-off from the golf courses. The reefs have been given a bit of a reset button with the pandemic. In January 2021, chemical sunscreens will be banned in all of Hawaii. Oxybenzone and its ilk, will no longer float down from thousands of visitors so the coral can’t reproduce. If you are reading this year’s in the future, I hope you can say that the pandemic and the subsequent sunscreen ban have helped Hawaii’s ocean eco-system exponentially. The Sacrifice I wrote “It’s been a great experience and I am so glad we made the sacrifices we did to do it.” Maybe you are considering throwing caution to the wind, too. Here is a little Easter egg for those of you who have gotten this far. No matter how hard it ever got, it was worth it. Having to learn to eat papayas, chicken thighs, and a myriad of things that are on sale at KTA, Costco and Target is part of the sacrifice of living here. If you get
to come with unlimited funds, fantastic! However, if you are someone who knows that paradise is costly and there are tradeoffs you need to make to live in Hawaii, you do what you have to do to make it work. Just about every day! But you do it in order to see the blue ocean stretch out for miles in front of you, to be surrounded by truly GOOD people, eat food from volcanic soil that is full of nutrients and are free of much of the mainland craziness. Even if you can’t move here full time, there are lessons about sharing Aloha with other people and seeking out nature to find your center that you receive from being here only for a short time.
Eric and Julie on one of their last nights in Kona at Kanaloa.
Saying Aloha to Our Time in Hawaii Email 14 - July 1-July 31, 2006 The Final Days It is starting to get real that we are leaving. I find myself soaking in the island and its happy energy more each day as we head towards our final date. But, the adventurous life is not yet over and we couldn’t leave the island without an Emergency Room adventure for Devin. I think I told you that we most likely would end up there at one point or another. Let’s start there, as you may be thinking Devin and the lava finally had their fateful match. We were invited over to our friend Mike’s house for a BBQ in South Kona and his house is pretty large so we could not see Devin at all times. We had been there quite a few times and never had reason to worry about Devin wandering off and getting into trouble. I was on the lanai talking to Mike when Eric quickly came around the corner and calmly said, “We have to take Devin to the hospital for stitches, get your things we have to go now.” Of course, I freaked out. I
ran over to him and Devin turned to look at me and had a deep gash on his cheek and even more disconcerting, blood coming out of his ear. All I could think was that he had a skull fracture and had cranial bleeding. But, no, Mike’s Sheltie had bitten him in the cheek and the bleeding coming out of his ear was when the dog grabbed his face with her teeth, she also punctured his ear. My beautiful baby’s face. Torn under his eye. If we didn’t have to get out of there so quickly, I probably would have started screaming. Mike kept saying that Devin must have done something to the dog for her to bite him like that and since no one was around to see what actually happened, we will never know. (Mike did reassure us that he would handle the medical expenses) Even if I didn't have to worry about who was going to pay for the hospital visit, what I knew was that my son was going to have a scar on his face for the rest of his life. As we were driving to the hospital, I was holding Devin in my arms. He was actually quite calm, I think he was in shock. I called a babysitter for Caylin who lived right above the hospital, so she could be taken care of. After leaving Caylin, we got Devin into the Emergency Room and the nurse got him into a room for the doctor to check him out. They decided to wait until a plastic surgeon could come and put the stitches in. Devin was so good at this point that I thought maybe it would not be such a big deal. Then the surgeon showed up and said they would have to sedate Devin and start stitching his face. This is when I found out I am not the kind of mother that can handle watching my son in pain. They tried to hold him down to deal with the stitches and Devin started fighting them and crying. They said they would have to put him in a straight jacket so he wouldn’t fight the doctor and damage the fine stitches they needed to put in to help lessen the scar. I was a mess and I was basically told to leave the room by the nurse and the doctor as they put him into the straight jacket. They said I was of no help to anyone with my fear and told me to go to the waiting room and
Eric could stay. I still feel tears welling up thinking of how horrible it was to hear Devin all the way out in the waiting room SCREAMING while I could do nothing to help him. They had already given him a sedative when the doctor came, but as soon as they went to deal with his wound, he started flailing and they had to dose him up again. I ended up having to actually leave the building in tears to get away from the sound. I was absolutely helpless. If there was ever a low point in my life, this was it. I felt a similar sense of helplessness when Devin was born premature and spent two days in the ICU and I could not hold him and sat praying he would be ok as they worked to get meconium out of his lungs. Silence soon came and so did Eric with Devin on his shoulder. I took that baby in my arms and held him so tight while he whimpered into my chest. If there was ever a moment of pure momma love being poured into a child, this was it. I held him for a few minutes out in front of the hospital while Eric dealt with the paperwork until he finally fell into an exhausted sleep. I could not see the stitches due to the big bandage they had placed on his face, but later I would see the six cross stitch marks of the black thread they used. Devin came out of that experience like a little trooper and we think he is young enough that he won’t remember what happened. We joked that someday he could tell his future girlfriend a story about his Hawaiian adventures and the scar would add to the bravado. I will most likely be watching this kid like a hawk from now until he is a teenager. Fourth of July Before the Devin drama, our friends Charlie and Trish came to visit with their three children. They stayed across the street from us in a condo on the golf course. We had fun taking them to dinner on the 4th of July and we decided to hang close to our condos with the kids instead of being part of the crazy that was building in downtown Kona as the firework show would be going off of a barge in Kailua Bay.
We took a cooler and snacks and sat on the 9th hole, which gave us a nice view of the ocean and the far off bay. While we were waiting for the show to start, Charlie pulled out a very techy looking speaker and said it ran on something called Bluetooth technology. It was beyond cool and this little speaker was SUPER loud! We played “American Pie” and not only were we all singing, the groups of people around us were singing along, too! Can you imagine, about twenty people sitting in the dark on a golf course in Hawaii, with kids dancing on the green, belting out, “so bye bye Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry..”? It was certainly a memory that I will carry with me from Hawaii and whenever I hear that song. Soon afterwards, the fireworks started. In the Bay Area, the fireworks shows are accompanied by the radio playing music in sync with the light show. So Charlie stepped up as DJ and his little boom box provided the soundtrack for the fireworks and the kids had a blast. Waipi’o Valley When we first discovered the Waipi’o Valley lookout, one of our goals before leaving the island was to be able to get down to the valley floor. Hiking down with two small children was out of the question as the road is a 25% grade down, making it one of the steepest roads in America. When Charlie and his family were enjoying dinner and drinks at Huggo's on the Rocks with our friend, Mike, and us they said that we should go on a fun adventure that all of us could enjoy together. Mike jumped in and offered to lend his driving skills and his huge truck to take us all down to Waipi’o Valley. A plan was hatched and we were all very excited. We drove separate cars to the top of the valley and piled into the back of the big yellow Ford truck. Devin sat in the back seat with Charlie’s oldest daughter and his wife and the rest of us hung on for dear life as we rode standing up on the way down into the valley. We really had no clue how steep that road was going to be, because we found ourselves all squashed together with Caylin and Charlie’s 8-year-
old daughter pushed against the back window. We were all laughing and yelling together and taking in the spectacular view of Waipi’o. Once we got down to the bottom, Mike took us on a very bumpy ride out to the beach and we were actually somewhat relieved to get out of the truck and find some personal space again. We walked over to the river that runs through the middle of the valley and looked up into the mountains in the distance. It was beyond gorgeous, something out of a tropical painting. I felt rather sad that we had only just discovered this beautiful place only a few weeks before leaving the island. I knew I had to find a way to come back and spend more time here. The kids spent time playing in the river, and we walked the black sand beach to the cliff where we could see a waterfall flowing from the cliff near the beach. MANY photos were taken and we were giddy with the beauty of it all. When it was time to leave, it was with heavy hearts we got back into that truck bed and made the long and steep ascent out of the Valley of the Kings. We said goodbye to our friends the next day as they flew back to California and we promised to see them in Lake Tahoe when we got back ourselves.
Julie’s last hurrah at the Mauna Kea Resort
Packing Up We gave ourselves about ten days to say goodbye to our friends, pack up our belongings, clean out the condo and fly out on July 30th, almost exactly to the day a year since we first arrived as bright eyed new homeowners. You may recall many of the fun restaurant experiences that I have written about in these emails during the course of the past year, right? Well, I had a crazy desire to see most of them again during the course of the next ten days! Eric was going to kill me! As he focused on closing down our life and I was on a “this is the last time” bent. With a few babysitters in place who wanted to spend some time with our kids, thank you Aunty Carol, we did the “last time” trip up to the Mauna Kea Resort to have drinks at sunset and soak in the view of that blue blue bay. We vowed to come back to visit during the summers with the kids and enjoy the island and perhaps some day move here full time. We also did the “last time” snorkeling, and drinks and dinner at Huggo’s on the Rocks and Jamison’s By the Sea and the Sheraton Resort for coffee
and pastries. Each time leaving these establishments with a heavy heart and gratitude for the good times we had created there with our new friends and visiting relatives and friends from the mainland. The more we went to beaches and parks for the last time, the more I realized how much I loved this island and knew I would be leaving a piece of myself here, as well. On the last day before we left, Carole came over to see if she could help. We were in a panic trying to clean the house for our first VRBO rental while the kids were running around playing and it was HOT. I won’t miss the heat in the condo during the middle of the summer, I just won’t. Eric kept saying that we were behind due to my running around trying to live out my best days before we left the island. I was! In fact, much to his dismay, even though the food was great and so was the view, I took him down the street for our last sunset dinner at the oceanfront restaurant at the Kanaloa resort. As I was sipping my last Mai Tai and the sun was sinking, I kept taking photos of the view and us. There was a manic energy that I felt, much like having the best ten day vacation of your life and on the 9th day, trying to hang onto it all before having to go back to work for the next year in a small office. That is how I felt. The last morning, I ran once more to the Sheraton for coffee and said goodbye to the cafe staff whom I had become friends with. I told them we would see them next summer and I hugged them and said Aloha and a hui hou, (when we meet again). My other friends came over that day to give hugs to the kids and us. We were still frantically packing our 350 lbs. of luggage up again to get to the airport on time and check it all in. And finally, when we got the last bit of garbage out to the Dumpster, our friend Carole pulled up to help get our luggage to the airport. Seeing her made it all real. We were
leaving. This was it, I thought as I got the kids buckled into their car seats. We all yelled, “Goodbye Keauhou Resort! Goodbye pool! Goodbye shopping center and plumeria trees!” I looked around again at all the things that when we first got to Kona seemed so foreign and strange. Now we would be going home to chilly mornings without an ocean within walking distance. No golf course or pools for the kids to play in and this feeling of light heartedness that I had come to have from just letting go and taking the experience as the adventure it was, would surely be different. We hugged Carol for a long time in the parking lot and she said she would always be there for us, all we needed to do was just call. I believe her and know we have found a friend for life. Just one of the many blessings we discovered here. And then we got on the plane and I know this may sound silly to you all, but I felt that I was leaving a piece of myself on that island and I started counting the days until our return. 2020 Insights After 15 years, and reading the thousands of comments on my blogs from people who visit and have to leave, that I was not alone in the feeling that a piece of my soul stayed on the beach to play in the ocean without me while I was away! I didn’t really understand the energy that emanates from Hawaii Island and soaks into the hearts of the right people. If you read my book, “How to Move to Kona”, I always point to the 20th chapter. That is where I share the fact that I felt as if Pele herself said, “Don’t forget about me” and I wrote about her, the mana and the energy of this island. If you feel it, you know. One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was created after I heard a voice say, “Tell my story” while standing at the top of Alii Drive looking out over the ancient Hawaiian battle ground where the Kapu system was broken at the “End of the World”.
Now, I have told MY story, but there are SO many more stories to tell! Hawaiian history, the present experience of this island and her people and the future of the island all combine to create the creative energy behind a poised pen, or a keyboard. Prologue As for my wonderful children My son Devin, as of this writing is 16 now! He attends the local high school and is one friendly, grounded kid who loves to body board at Magic’s. Yes, he still has that scar under his eye and he does not remember a thing about the dog-biting incident. Caylin is now almost 19! She will be attending the local college for two years and then finding her way, in hopefully a COVID-19 free world on the mainland to finish her education or get going on a career in photography and fashion. She is already a TikTok influencer, so watch this creative force and after this book, you can say you knew her when! Eric and I Soon enough, we will be empty nesters. From those days of preventing my kids from hurting themselves, drowning and volunteering in their school, to spend more time on adventures, creating fun videos on our YouTube channel at 365Hawaii and writing, photographing and sharing what we find to inspire us, we are moving past 2020 with hope and energy. We know we gave our kids an amazing experience by living here, in a rural island environment, so they could grow up a little slower, be in a place where aunties and uncles deserve respect, and parents work hard and ask their kids to lend a hand so they feel like they are part of the success of the family. We are not geniuses for figuring out how to live in Hawaii. We made sacrifices and there are days luck showed up at the right time. There was much movement, too! We left the island in 2006, came back in 2010, left in 2016 and came back in 2017. I think we are done now.
Life is an adventure, yes, it is true! We have found this in spades during the time we have lived in Hawaii. I also know that regret is a bitter pill and throwing off the bowlines and sailing away from the safe harbor IS a way to live a full and courageous life! Thank you for joining us on the first part. The Stories: If you found this book before you found my other work, E Komo Mai! I have been talking about the best the island has to offer on my 365Kona blog and my “365 Things to Do in Kona” page on Facebook since 2010. The spin off of these pages is the Kona Newbies group on Facebook with over 1500 members. I also run a Facebook group for people looking to purchase a home here. In ALL the groups I run, I keep Aloha at the center point, education and information as a central topic, and respect for the ‘aina, the ocean and the people as common ground. Join me there and find community with like-minded people! And Now, A Reality Check The Financial Reality of Life in Kona Three things I did not discuss in my emails back home was how we financially made the whole experience work, how we almost came home in January because we were running out of money, and how it took us quite a while to recover financially from the year we spent in Kona. I have one specific reason for bringing this up. When you read this whole “year in paradise” story, and you read my 365Kona work on social or the web, it would appear we have endless resources for making our life magically happen. We didn't back then, and we still don’t now! If you look in the photos of this book, you will see that I was pretty damn thin. In fact, I was down about 8 pounds from my “normal life” the entire year. Why? Because food is expensive in Hawaii, so are Mai Tai’s, meals out in restaurants and things that take precedence over food, like health care costs. I was lucky that the kids didn't eat much back then, because
my grocery bill now is almost $300 a week. I talk about sacrifice, resiliency, and “how bad do you want it?” in most of my written work. Even the show Hawaii Life would say, “You don't have to be rich to live in Hawaii — you just have to want it.” Well, I call bullshit. Most of the people who I see living on this island for more than two years come with financial reserves. They come with their own jobs that pay mainland money, they have passive income streams, or they retire with funds coming in from a well-planned life. When I see families with small children deciding to come now, and think they can simply find a rental with their two dogs and think that they can work in hospitality or construction and think everything is going to be fine, they are wrong. I have to say it because I get emails from these optimistic souls asking for my advice. It is becoming ever more expensive to move here, housing costs are much higher than they were even five years ago, and food costs just keep going up with the cost of shipping things here. The year we lived here in 2005, we pulled money each month out of our equity line of credit on the house we had in Los Gatos that had gone up in value during the run up in home prices back then. We hadn’t planned on using that money to pay for groceries! We also thought we were possibly going to renovate the condo and flip it and make back the money we had put into it. We struggled financially the entire year we were here, and it was exhausting. Seriously, when I got back to California after our year was up, I was almost in tears in a Trader Joe’s salivating over the 59 cent yogurt cups that were $1.29 in Hawaii, or the 25 cent cobs of corn that were $2 each in Kona. I could go back to buying beef! Financially, it was the slow boil of losing the freedom to spend money. That worked for a year because we knew we were leaving and going home to jobs and less expensive childcare, health insurance, etc. So, if you are reading this book looking for a road map to following what we did, it is just not the same now as it was back then. I didn't write to my friends and family that I couldn't find affordable child care (you still
can’t) or that I almost begged my husband to go home in January instead of July because I was so frustrated being stretched thin financially. Did we make it to the end? Yes. Did it take out our savings? Yes. Was I able to get a job to help pay the bills while here? Not really. I made $10 an hour working on the charter boat, $5 an hour working for March of Dimes, $15 an hour painting base boards, etc. Finding decent paying jobs in Hawaii is hard and especially so on this island, and now even more due to the pandemic. As my daughter likes to remind the world, how you paint the picture for the public is most likely not telling the whole story. I thought it would be irresponsible if I left this part out of the insights for the book.
The Blog Posts: Thanks to my experiences of being both visitor and resident, I have written many blog posts over the years that have resonated with my fan base. Here is one I wanted to share that was particularly popular. I wrote this in 2013 and it ended up on the front page of the Huffington Post! “Why The Big Island Is a Terrible Place To Live” The Big Island is a terrible place to live because: 1. You send pictures of what you did on the weekend to your friends on the mainland and they write things like, “I used to like you”, “Stop, you’re killing me!” “Can’t you please keep it down?” 2. Once you stay here for any length of time, you feel the energy of the land and the people. When you leave the island, you can’t shake the feeling that you are missing a part of yourself. 3. You can’t imagine going back to a major city center. I used to love going to big, fancy shopping areas, watching movies in big theaters with hundreds of fellow movie goers, and watching people wearing the latest fashions. Now, I can’t imagine dealing with the traffic anymore. I can now show up 5 minutes late to a first run movie and get a good seat. Fashion does not own me anymore. I used to work to afford expensive shoes, the latest seasonal dress, and new suits. I wear sandals and flip
flops, shorts, tank tops and on occasion a sundress. I don’t spend much on clothes anymore, and with the extra time I have not working to afford the clothing, I sit on a beach with my kids. 4. You have to drive slowly. And let people in. You actually have to relax on the highway, because since many residents practice the Aloha Spirit while driving, there is very little, if any honking. Most people who ride people’s bumpers, are from California on their way back to the airport. 5. You can’t rest when it’s a blue day. Since you always feel like you are on vacation, it’s VERY difficult to look outside from your computer and not have the feeling that you should be out swimming. Or running. Or surfing. You feel the same way about laying around in your house with a book. You feel guilty that you are not out enjoying another day in paradise. 6. You can’t get anything done when people come to visit. If someone came to visit us in the Bay Area, they usually had other family members or friends to visit. Or they would come for dinner and go about their trip. Here, they live next door to us for a week. And since we are the consummate lovers of adventure and travel on this island, we can’t say no to taking friends and family to the best snorkeling spots, dining with a sunset view and sharing umbrella drinks, coffee farm tours or 4 Wheeling to remote beaches. Nope, your days are shot. 7. You meet people who make you re-evaluate your diet. There are MANY organic farmers on the Big Island. They talk about pesticides, genetically modified seeds, and commercial farming and livestock handling and how that affects your health and your spirit. You don’t realize it all at once, but you find yourself touring local farmers markets and giving tropical foods a try. You purchase island grass fed
beef, no GMO dairy products from island dairy farmers, and you think about planting a garden yourself and growing vegetables. You find yourself blessing your food and really understanding where it came from. Isn’t that crazy? 8. Sunscreen? Hats? Swim shirts? You better have plenty because you find yourself walking on sunny trails, strolling through bright outdoor markets, swimming in tide pools, reading on a beach, driving in a convertible, exploring a Volcano or heaven forbid, hiking down into a sacred valley. 9. You can’t wear big, fat, heavy coats. Or thick scarves. Or shovel snow out of your driveway. Or have your car skid on black ice. (caveat…unless you go up to Mauna Kea above the 9,000-foot visitors center. Then all bets are off on the above complaint) 10. You can NOT commiserate with your friends on Facebook or Twitter when they say things like, “It’s going to be 114 degrees today in Scottsdale” and another says, “It’s 112 here in Tucson” and then finally from Phoenix, “My car thermometer says it’s 120. Please, kill me now”. Nope, you cannot jump in there with a knowing statement. Conversely, you can only offer condolences when your friends send pictures of the four-foot snowdrifts left by a recent blizzard.
11. And the last thing I have to say about why this island is a terrible place to live…you see people standing on the walkway outside of the hotels and resorts with their bags packed waiting to go home. And you feel sorry for them. The Last Insight - #KonaStory2020 Circle of Aloha Recently, I took my husband, Eric out for a celebratory dinner for passing his drone test at the Kona Inn-a place we love and have not been to since COVID-19 closed down many of the restaurants in Kailua-Kona. Right after my husband and son ordered their drinks and I ordered one of their famous Mai Tais, sadly with no plastic monkey, we received a call at the table. It was the woman who was renting our Toyota Highlander while she was visiting the island and the battery was dead and she was stuck in a parking lot about a mile away. So Eric left to help her. Right before this happened a couple came over to say they recognized us from the 365Hawaii adventure videos we have been doing and they said the copy of my book, “How to Move to Kona” has a permanent place on their coffee table. After Eric left, we continued to chat and before long I found out that they are intuitives (because those are the ones who always tell me they feel called to live here) and all the coincidences that lined up perfectly for them to move here a few weeks ago. They had just emerged from quarantine and were celebrating at the Kona Inn and how coincidentally they ran into us, the folks whose adventures inspired them.
Salt of the Earth, Aloha filled, intelligent and ready to serve the island people. My favorite kind. She’s a speech pathologist here to help the community. This is the third couple this week that have recognized us and stopped to thank us for helping them follow their dream of moving here and all of them are already gifts to this community. So while Eric was helping the woman who has our Highlander, he gave her our new Honda Civic to take to go home with her groceries while he waited for AAA. (He got a jump from another nice person in the parking lot with jumper cables!) Our server, who was Hawaiian, came back to ask what happened to our dinner companion and was impressed with Eric’s Aloha spirit of giving our car to help another person. So when Eric finally made it back, he ate his cold bbq ribs (but loved them) and the server brought him a complimentary Mud Pie and said, “You deserve this for your Kokua and Aloha”. Of course, Devin and Eric were thrilled! Then the server said, “When people move here they have to know that Aloha is like a circle. As much as you receive, you must give away. If you don’t do that, and only take, this island will kick you off.” Anybody familiar with how this island works, knows he was not kidding! The server was so genuinely kind and sweet - the kind of person that makes living here a joy. So in all of this, I just want to share what a society built on gratitude, giving, a shared joy of living here and a commitment to kindness looks like. #LuckyLiveHawaii
Acknowledgements I want to thank my husband, Eric Ziemelis, first as he helped inspire and then create the journey and adventure to buying a home on Hawaii Island with our two kids for an epic year that we told ourselves we would be still sharing into old age. Well, here we are. His natural talent with planning, resourcefulness and patience have been the perfect combination with my impulsiveness, quest for the adventure and courage to live life with passion. We have made a great team since 1998 and pretty good parents since 2001. To my children, Caylin and Devin, who may have not had much choice to join in on the adventure in the book, but they have made sacrifices to live on this island and I am sure there will be a memoir coming from Caylin soon enough! Thanks to you both. To my friend Lisa Pegg who held onto these emails for many years, compiled them and gave them to me, not once, but at least three times via email and encouraged me to write this book with them. She lives in Kona now and I know she was one of the first people we inspired to live the island life.
To my friend Mark Gross for encouraging me to take my ADD shoes off and sit down and compile the emails with my own insights and get this book done! He wrote most of the chapter names, assisted in editing and formatting the book, helped with promo and has lent his good humor and wit along the way. Thanks to my sister, Andria Dutcher for her editing skills and my friends Karen Rose and Kristin Westland for lending their editing talents, as well. All True, But For A Few Things... I have changed some people’s names in this book. Hawaii Island is a small place. Anne Lamott, a favorite author, said, “Own everything that has happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” One of my editors said being kind was important, so I changed the names and not the story to protect privacy.
Cover photo by Julie Ziemelis Cover design by Alicia Nagle Interior photos by Eric and Julie Ziemelis Formatting and cheerleading by Mark Gross
About the Author Julie Ziemelis, owner of Ziemelis Communications, has been a full time resident of Kailua Kona since 2010. She is the founder of the Kona Newbies group, author of “How To Move to Kona”, the “Insiders Guide to Buying Real Estate on the Big Island of Hawaii”, and this book. She is a content creation force of nature blogging daily on “365 Things to Do In Kona” on Facebook and 365KonaHawaii on Instagram. She and her husband vlog on YouTube at 365Hawaii, Spotlight on Big Island Businesses and 365Hawaii Real Estate Minute. She also has a private Facebook group to help would be homebuyers at “365Kona’s I’m Moving to the Big Island and Buying A Home”. You can find out more at 365Kona.com and MoveToHawaii365.com. To support the island’s agricultural aspirations, sustainability and business opportunities, Julie co-founded the Big Island Chocolate Festival in 2011 and created the idea and co-founded the Best of Kona Festival in 2019. Julie is a passionate supporter of housing opportunities in West Hawaii and volunteers as an advisory member for Habitat for Humanity Hawaii Island. Using her social influence, Julie is a proponent for sustainability, ocean conservation and visitor education on Hawaii Island. For further information email: [email protected]