Greetings from the Warm Place

No, I'm not in Hell.....yet.

I'm in Maui. The sun came out and I'm starting to thaw. Yippee! When we arrived Friday afternoon, they were having a "storm" and it was pouring down rain. Apparently, it's winter here, too, and they get storms where it actually rains on the entire island. Amazing! They had floods that washed out a road on the other side of the island and schools were closed Friday because of high winds and heavy rains. Seriously. High winds. I guess they were afraid Little Johnny might blow away to sea?

As I expected, traveling provides great entertainment. On our flight over, I was sandwiched between Hubby and Crazy Old Lady. Since I'm "small" and I'm such a nice person (no, really I am), I sit in the middle seat when we travel and we are not able sit on the outside sections with just 2 seats (depending on the type of aircraft of course).

Hubby's allergies were acting up and for the entire flight I hear SNORT, SNIFFLE, BLOW and then Crazy Old Lady starts coughing. Somebody shoot me now. This lady also talks to me off and on in a very loud voice, even when I'm wearing my headphones and have a book open. No, folks, this wasn't a family member as it's not common practice to have vacations from the penitentiary. I didn't know this lady. She's just one of those chatty types and she was really very weird.

This certainly wasn't the kind of sandwich I had in mind.Why couldn't Matt Damon, Daniel Craig, Kiefer Sutherland, or at least Will Smith have been in this lady's seat?

Oh yeah. They'd be in First class.

And remember that I said I wanted to thaw out on this vacation. Well, we got up at O'Dark-Thirty - 3 hours Saturday morning to go to the top of the mountain to see the sunrise. Yep, that's right. S U N R I S E! This is usually a very foreign concept for me. We went from sea level to 9000 feet and it was about 32 degrees with icy sidewalks and it was very windy! Apparently, I'm the crazy lady.

The sun finally make a spectacular appearance around 7:05 AM, starting with a liquid gold ribbon on the horizon. We stood out there for an hour or so before the sun woke up watching the twilight dance off the clouds. I know this is an overused word but it really was surreal.


Then we lost some altitude (and some attitude) and found some wet clouds. The next part of our tour was to ride bicycles down the mountain (on the road). Now I did say those clouds were wet and they proceeded to pee drizzle all over us for the first part of our ride. Yep. I was shivering and my feet finally dried about 3:00 PM. The 2nd half of our tour was awesome. It rained again during our break but by the time we got back on our bikes and headed down the mountain, the "storm" vanished and the day turned into the Maui that all of us want to know and love!


Yes, that's me. I'm wearing about 2.5 layers of clothing from the ride down the mountain. The waves were huge and the little dots in the water are surfers. This is on the north shore of Maui, known for its huge waves and hefty breezes for windsurfing.

Only one girl, a girl missing more one than one card from her deck, stayed in the sag wagon and didn't ride with us. Our guide told a story about giant spiders and she freaked out. She was also a little intimidated about riding a speeding bike down a mountain. She might break a nail or something. I don't have much sympathy. Although I've done some crazy things, I'm kind of a fraidy-cat sometimes so if I can do it......

We are having a great time. I'm wishing warm, sunny thoughts for all of you.

I can always use some smiley sunshine over at humor-blogs.com.

Photos are the property of ReformingGeek. Please do not use without permission.