3 mini sirloin burgers, a chicken sandwich, 2 Jack's tacos, curly fries and a soda... now that's a breakfast! Jack in the Box opened sometime the last several days on Henry street above Kuikini, ironically enough it's practically directly above an old failed Jack in the Box, now a popular plate lunch place. At any rate, I just had to go and get one good pig out in there.

The rest of this post is a bunch of blabber (like the first part was oh so important?)....

I was full. I've been real good on my diet this year so one day won't kill me, probably. My New Year's resolution this year was to be able to hike the Captain Cook Monument trail without passing out.. I started walking the top half to two thirds of it early this year, but the last time I tried it in February my knee swole up for 2-3 weeks. Next thing I know I'm weighing myself and find I'm pushing 240 lbs.. can't be too easy on the joints, especially now that I qualify for an AARP card. Back to the low carb diet to see what it does for me.

So no I'm down to 207 or thereabouts and I'm trying to keep up with my wife walking hills... getting close (she's been walking 5 days a week for a couple years) but I'm still huffing a bit. Part of my drive for the weight loss is the desire to be able to climb that Captain Cook trail, but another part is to be able to spend some time hiking (and eating of course) on my vacation this fall. It looks like the hiking's gonna work out OK, I'm definitely in better shape than the trip I managed to survive a couple years back. The eating's a whole 'nuther thing... I can't eat as much as I used to, it seems.

In the past I've generally gained about 13 pounds each time I take a vacation... so this year, since I'm down 33 lbs, I guess I'm allowed to gain 46 pounds on my vacation. It's gonna be fun! We're headed to Vegas for DEMA (the dive industry show) again next month, gonna stop in Arizona for several days first and take in the sights.

One last comment about Jack in the Box... let me tell you a story.... (hopefully my father won't mind) My father has had the good fortune of being able to travel quite a bit over his lifetime. He's lived in several parts of the country over the years, was stationed in Guam for a while, helped out in several refugee camps (Cambodia/Thailand border, Ethopia, Rwanda), lived in Romania for a while and traveled fairly extensively, and last year he mentioned that in his life he can only remember one food item he couldn't stomach... It wasn't the boiled half grown duck fetuses they ate in Guam (he apparently liked those, I guess they're considered a delicacy in some parts of SE Asia), it wasn't the food at the refugee camps, it was Jack in the Box tacos. I personally like 'em... crispy greasy mystery goo filled tacos... YUM! I'm glad to see Jack make it back to Kona. I may not get my dad in there though.

I'll try that Captain Cook trail hike again after vacation... got a couple months left in the year to meet the resolution.

Here's a shot of a juvenile Domino Damsel. They stick pretty close to coral heads when they're small. As they grow they tend to find a spot on the reef to hang out. They're interesting in that if you come up to a group of the adults, and listen as you approach, you can hear them chirp a "stay away" warning. They're aggressive for a small fish (call it 3 - 3.5 inches as an adult), but don't do much to divers other than make their presence known.

Later,

Steve

Yup, I wear a snorkel. I did a heckuva lot of shorediving when I first started diving, and after a few hundred dives it got to where I feel odd without one. If you go to a scuba message board and bring up snorkels, it'll raise a crazy amount of debate... it's a hot topic for whatever reason and there are people who are rabid pro or con. I figure to each his own. In our case, we come up and down at the boat, so there's no real need for a snorkel in most cases... but they can be handy if doing a drift dive or for people who are prone to not following the guide and getting themselves lost (sort of a peeve of ours, rarely happens, I can only think of 2-3 times in 10 years of doing this, but it disrupts the dive when it does).

So if you asked me how the month is looking this time last week, I'd have said pretty mediocre. It's our "slow" season and last week I had all of 6 charters lined up for the rest of the month with little phone action... that changed suddenly a couple days ago... I've got 20 charters lined up so far with more interest. Should be a reasonably busy month after all. Funny how it seems to go in spurts.

I've been out of the water for 5 days now... it'll be nice to get back in tomorrow. I'm hearing it's warming up a bit, so it'll be curious to see what the temperature is.

Later,

Steve

This very cool picture is one that Cathy e-mailed me. She took this some time ago and had told me about it and I really wanted a copy of it for the blog. This was found on a net floating at sea off Kona.

Sargassum Frogfish (Histrio histrio) are an angler fish species that lives in floating seaweed and other debris. They can blend in quite well with seaweeds, and snatch up small fish. Any time you have something floating in the ocean, it'll create an oasis of life in short order.... if you aren't sure of how true this is, do a blue water dive, I've seen people have a following of tiny fish in as little as 30 minutes or so.

Man, can they eat. Years ago, I was really, really, really into aquariums... worked in the trade and eventually had an aquarium store. I picked up a Sargassum frog at one point and had it at the house. I was in my early/mid 20's and few things appeal to a 20 something-ish year old beer drinker and his friends on a Saturday night as much as one of these fish (except girls I suppose, but they were in short supply that evening). We had some people over and decided it was time to feed the frogfish, then it turned into time to see how much the frogfish could eat.... 5 live goldfish later, 2 of those about the same size as the body portion of the frogfish was originally, it finally stopped chasing down fish. We were thoroughly impressed... able to eat 3-4 times it's original body weight in one sitting, all us guys wished we could do that. It looked like someone stuffed a bunch of jawbreakers in a balloon and stuck small leaves on it. I think I sold it to someone shortly after that.

We had gray skies today, it was dry though. We've had a bit of both a south and a north swell the last couple days, but it's settling down quite nicely. By the end of our second dive it became nearly glassy flat.

Manta update... the manta dive has been hopping up at the airport manta site the last couple of days, up in the mid/high teens in numbers. We have a charter on Saturday evening to do the dive... should be good!!!

Later,

Steve

This post will be all over the board (as if I'm always on topic, not hardly).

The surf's cooperating nicely, we have a charter set for tomorrow so it'll be nice to get back on the water after a few day layoff as it's been slow.

I just renewed my commercial harbor permit and insurance for another year... I hate writing checks when it's slow, perhaps I should see if there's some way we can move the renewal dates to a busier season?

Pat comes home this evening... Yay! I'll probably try to catch the first part of the underwater photo club meeting before getting to the airport. I've been a member, but I'm not what you call active in it at all... I should make the attempt.

Just perused Undercurrent.org and I'm happy to find I've been getting good reviews there. They claim to be "Scuba Diving's Most Unbiased Information Source". Essentially, it's a pay to use review site and lots of the divers on it are fairly frequent dive travelers that tend to research a bit before picking their dives (believe it or not, if you're a diver that's found this blog you've probably done at least a minimal bit of research... a fair amount people just walk up to their hotel desk and ask the likely non-diving employee behind it "who should I dive with while I'm here"... which is sort of the equivalent of asking me "where do I get a good salad?"). Anyway, Wanna Dive fared quite well for the reviews for 2008 diving. It'll be interesting to see the next "Diver's Chapbook" they put out. To anyone who happened to have put a review on there, thank you.

Sad economic news maybe... this article came out and mentioned a foreclosure may be looming for one of the big hotels here. I'm hoping it doesn't come to pass. Things have slowed down enough that several of the hotels are scheduling temporary closures or partial closures later in the year for remodeling. In the good news... the Mauna Kea Resort has "softly" opened and will have their grand re-opening in a bit over a month.

I noticed the other day that the blog has grown to over 500 posts... wow, I never thought I'd keep it going that long, or at least with that frequency, to where I'd see that many posts.

These little guys are Redspotted Sandperch (Parapercis schauinslandi). They're a cute little fish that hang out in deep sandflats. They're tough to get a decent shot of because of the combination of depth and sand... at their depth it's dark enough that the photos want to go blue, and the sand's white enough, as well as them, that the strobe flash can get overpowering. Pat took a picture of these ones, I want to say it was out in the sand at Crescent Beach outside of Honokohau Harbor.

Later,

Steve

I've sort of been batch'n' it for a few days... Pat's off in Texas visiting family. It's been slow, lotsa bookings for later but this week's been slow so I probably could've joined her for this trip. We've been Skyping (Skype is a free online video conferencing service and if you have a fast connection and a vidcam you practically owe it to yourself to join up if you have friends or family who also have the vidcam and fast connection) the last couple of days, and she's mentioned they've had some food at/from Fuad's in Texarkana... yum yum, I'm jealous, he can cook up some good food.

Anyway, today I watched a few episodes of "Man Versus Food" on the Travel Channel. That job would've been a perfect job for me back when I was 28. I'm on the tail end of my significant eating abilities these days. He visited places in several cities that intrigue me.... Now I'm interested in going to Atlanta to try Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffle place (sorry, no link) and the Vortex Bar and Grill, and to Memphis to try the Kooky Canuk, formerly called the Bigfoot Lodge and to the Boston area to try the Barking Crab and to Pittsburgh to try Primanti Brothers and DeLuca's (sorry, no link), as well as Amarillo to try The Salt Lick Barbeque and Coyote Bluff Cafe as well as to Austin to go to visit Juan in a Million,.... it's not that I want to plan my vacations around food, but these places sound interesting.... let's face it, if the food sucks the vacation might not rate as high.


The host of the show likes to take on food challenges (his Eagle's Deli challenge looks fabulous, but I'd be stuck when it comes to the fries... I saw one or two that I'd still have a chance at today, but for the most part I'm almost over eating more than four pounds of food at one sitting unless it's something I really like (last night I kind of broke that barrier with fried chicken).

Anyway, this show inspires me. We're hosting a superbowl party for our neighbors and a few dive friends next week and I'm really wanting to try cooking up some deep fried turkey tails (I didn't know anyone sold turkey tails, but the store up the hill has them) and putting them out there with all the wings, chili, chips, salsa and other garbage we have planned to see if anyone tries them (no turkey tails were on the show... just sounded good and fatty).

Here's a closeup shot of a Titan Scorpion (Scorpaenopsis cacopsis) by Pat. These guys are so camouflaged that you miss them most of the time.

Later,

Steve