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When we arrived in Hawai’i my wife and I had racked up a ton of points on our credit card. Enough points to spend a few weeks at a hotel as we looked for more permanent lodging. The hotel we stayed at had a nice pool with a hot tub that occasionally worked, free snow cones a few times a week, and daily activities.
Previously I had written about the lunch ladies I was friends with in high school, but within my age group, the person I remember being closest to was Tara Welch.
While we were still on the island of Kaua’i, right after I had renewed my Scuba license, I knew I wanted to have adventures on the other Hawaiian islands. Doing a google search on what to do on the Big Island, I found out you could do a night dive with Manta Rays and immediately booked a ticket.
Living in Hawai’i was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I think not working was a part of it, but Kaua’i is also spectacular. The island is a little plop on the ocean, 25 miles long by 33 miles wide. It’s known as the “garden isle” for being the greenest in the chain.
Yesterday I was rehired at my old job! Once we came back from Hawai’i, one of the first things I did was go to the office to hang out with my old coworkers and help out where I could. On my return from Greece, it was pretty much the same.
Really a lot has happened since my last blog post. But a very quick recap we left the beautiful island of Kaua’i and had many sweet neighbors give us their aloha as we left.
Once we picked the date we would be leaving Hawai’i and going back to Texas, my seemingly infinite time on the island turned into a few months, I felt an overwhelming urge to pack everything I could do into the days that remained to me and not waste a moment. There was so much I wanted to do and so many beaches I still had to see.
Many fathers are into sports and in turn, push their sons into sports. My grandfather was into airplanes and his son, my father, was led into airplanes. Although he worked on airplanes all his life, I don’t think airplanes were ever one of his passions. Reading and watching science fiction were, which I picked up on my own, and scuba diving, which I was thrust into.
A few years after my Nana passed away, my grandpa started to get nostalgic. My grandpa, who we always called “Pope”, used to live in California and would talk about wanting to see the ocean again, and maybe dip his toes in the water.
Originally, Dash and I planned on being in Costa Rica for a bit longer, but my favorite cousin’s wife sent an invite on Facebook to his surprise birthday party in Colorado for the New Year. I had not seen him in person in twenty years, so I begged Delilah, who was in Texas finishing up her gig on the 1883 show, and we decided to go for it.