Update - Part 1

Sorry, sorry, sorry! I know it's been a long while since my last post but I've been pretty busy/tired.  So what does that mean?  I have a lot to catch you up on.  Where to start...

The whales are awesome.  It's still incredible to see them every day and it's pretty awesome that I get to see them every day.  More and more of them are showing up.  It's getting to be what they call "whale soup."  There are just so many whales out in these waters now that they're everywhere!  Literally everywhere.  I can't imagine being a boat captain and having to avoid all those whales.  I'd be stressed to the max!  Good thing they've been doing it for years on end.

What else have I been up to?  Well, on January 18th, Surfrider  (the Maui Chapter) hosted a beach clean-up down at one of Kihei's local beaches.  Most of the research interns and our boss, Manue, all joined in.

                           

It was pretty successful and the beach was actually really clean - always good to see.  After the clean up, Helen and I had the day off and decided to head towards the north shore of Maui to a town called Pa'ia.  It's a tiny little hippy town pretty much focused around surfing.  The waves were a little more than Helen and I dared to handle so we set up on the beach and watched the much more advanced surfers do their thing.

Not a bad way to spend a day off.  The following day Jack and I decided to venture to the northwest portion of Maui to a town called Ka'anapali.  There is an area called the "Whalers Village."  Sounds potentially cool right?  Wrong.  It's a giant shopping center surround by resorts.  I was super bummed about that but we walked down the beach a bit and found a cliff from which people were jumping off.  It looked pretty sweet and it had been a long while since my cliff jumping days with Todd & his friends.  It's called Black Rock.  We climbed to the top of the 20-25' cliff and juuuuuummmmppped!

It doesn't look that high, but from the top looking down - a few butterflies sprang up in my stomach.  We jumped a few times and then enjoyed the beach.  It was a great weekend.

I don't want to bombard you with too much of an update at one time, so I'll stop here and hopefully write another post tomorrow night to catch you up to current date.  Still lovin' Hawai'i! :)

Aloha!