Categories
article travel

Banyan Tree Sprouts New Leaves

I’ve been reading the novel Hawaii by James Michener which takes place in Lahaina, Maui and it got me thinking about the fire there last August. I visited there in 2019 and loved seeing the largest Banyan tree in the US.

I remember seeing aerial photos of the damage and wondering if the tree survived.

From Hawaii Public Radio last month:

The heart of Lahaina, the historic town on Maui that burned in a deadly wildfire that killed at least 100 people, reopened Monday to residents and business owners holding day passes.

[…]

The reopened areas include Banyan Tree Park, home to a 150-year-old tree that burned in the fire but that is now sprouting new leaves, Lahaina Public Library, King Kamehameha III Elementary School and popular restaurants.

Great news.

Categories
travel

Substitute Teacher Conference

This weekend Andrea and I went to the ATA Substitute Teacher Conference in Calgary. Since neither of our extended families live in town, we drove to Medicine Hat to drop our kids off at my brother’s house.

I don’t remember the last time we got away for an overnight trip without the kids. With our travel expenses paid and the hotel advertising outdoor roof-top hot-tubs, it was going to be a great weekend!

The five hours of driving beforehand was a bit much but we found the conference itself very rewarding. It turns out talking to other teachers (both about teaching and about their adventures) was my favourite part!

Sitting next to Andrea during a talk, I discreetly used sign language ask her something — the teacher next to us noticed and asked, using ASL, if we knew sign language? We lit up and excitedly responded that yes, we know sign. Later, she told us how her son, at three years old, lost his hearing due to complications with meningitis. She shared her family’s journey into learning sign language and her son getting one of the first cochlear implants available. Because it wasn’t available in Canada, they travelled down to the one hospital in Los Angeles that offered it. She talked about the media attention that she got and about some of the difficult choices they had to make as parents about getting the surgery and how the deaf community reacted. Her story was inspiring. Eventually her son went on to be an engineer and now he works in the Google X lab within Alphabet in California. She says if you met him today, you would never know that he was once deaf.1

After winning some prizes2 we shared in some intriguing conversations while hot tubbing in the cool October air atop the hotel. A man named Peter told us the reason for his hand being wrapped in a plastic bag was a recent table-saw accident in which he seriously cut his right middle-finger. He explained that after making a really nice rip he turned off the saw and thought, “this 3/4″ sheet of plywood is pretty heavy for my brother to catch on his own so I’ll just do what I can to take some of the weight.” Without thinking, he brushed his hand across the blade as it was slowing. Looking down at his bloodied glove he knew right away he had a particularly serious injury. He’d lost the ability to wiggle that finger.

Luckily it was still attached and surgery to reattach the tendon would come a few days later. He got an X-ray showing the detachment but claims after a prayer on it from his pastor he was playing the organ at church the next night.3

Next, a nice woman named Elicia told us about a dangerous adventure she had in her younger years when she and a group of about five people hiked a mountain in Waterton where sheer cliffs dropped off just below them. They decided to take a shortcut up bypassing the switchbacks and found themselves on some shale just above the dangerous precipice. They all insisted it would be fine and Elicia, the lone hold out in the group, finally relented. When they got about halfway across the dangerous path one of the girls began crying. She sat down and refused to go any further while declaring that she would wait for a rescue team to find them. Elicia explained that no one would be coming anytime soon. She explained that even in the very best case scenario it would be at least 24 hours before anyone thought about rescuing them. After some time the weather began to turn and the group convinced the girl that if she didn’t move it was going to get very dangerous if the wind and rain began to pick up. Just then two young men peered down at them from a path above and called to them giving encouragement. They even jumped down into the shale like skiers slaloming down one jump after another. Seeing that, it inspired Elicia that the shale would hold if one got deep enough into it and the group got the courage to climb out of danger on their own.4

We crashed that night close to midnight and the next day enjoyed informative talks and delicious food. The ATA knows how to put on a worthwhile event. I started to feel a little under-the-weather and talked Andrea into leaving slightly early (though I wanted to stay but my head was just pounding) and we made the trip back to the kids and ended the weekend the next day back in Lethbridge feeling great about our lives and our livelihoods. I don’t believe in miracles per se but nevertheless one can’t deny life itself is a miracle. I like to reflect on that often.

  1. A miraculous story.[]
  2. A heating bag and a box of Smarties.[]
  3. He considered it a miracle.[]
  4. She felt it was miraculous they got out — I guess it was an evening of miracle stories.[]
Categories
life travel

California Dreamin’

The plane touched down at about 1:20pm Palm Springs time. My father-in-law greeted me and secretly delivered me to his place in Palm Desert. I snuck into the living room and watched the faces of my kids processing the fact that I was there. Their surprise and delight was music to my soul. Andrea heard us talking and came out of her room saying, “What is going on? What on Earth!” Apparently she had been having a hard time thinking she was ready to come home. That’s all changed now. It’s been a fantastic four day weekend.

Categories
life travel

Weekend at Barnie’s

Last Thursday I travelled up to Barnett House, the ATA headquarters in Edmonton, for a political engagement meeting. The ATA was updating its members on an awareness campaign for public education issues in Alberta before the next provincial election.

The meeting was pretty interesting. It was eye-opening to hear how many school divisions are hoarding millions of budgeted dollars instead of spending it. I couldn’t help notice that a lot of the biggest offenders are from the separate (Catholic) school divisions. I also liked hearing from pollster Janet Brown about how the UCP are not polling well since their new leader was chosen — though most of what she said was in this article by the CBC and I had already read it.

At the end of the day, I found out that my plane was delayed and that I probably wouldn’t be able to catch my connecting flight from Calgary to Lethbridge. It turns out — very long story short, WestJet had some major computer schedule issues and after a not great two hour sleep in a hotel on Friday night I ended up driving a rental car from Edmonton to Calgary so I could catch that connecting flight on Saturday instead of waiting an extra, extra 24 hours.

Because I was driving, I now had some time to kill in Calgary. I called my sister up to see if we could meet while I waited for my flight. As luck would have it, (or as it turns out bad luck) she was bringing her oldest, Ryker, to Olds for a volleyball game. Ryker plays for the college in Lloydminster. We met up and because Ryker’s game wasn’t going to start until much later and he just wanted to hang with his team, we decided to drive to the airport in Calgary to spend some time together there.

The roads were pretty bad when we set out but we hoped with the direction of the wind, it might not be so bad when we were headed south on the highway. It was really bad, even heading south. I had my AirPods in and was chatting with Jackie while watching her taillights disappearing into the white out blizzard conditions. Suddenly she told me there were vehicles all over the highway and that I needed to stop. She told me she couldn’t stop and was going to have to pull into the ditch. She did so and never had any real issues but with the extra time to slow I was able to navigate through the gauntlet of five or six crashed vehicles both on and off the highway.

It was just last week that a cousin of mine actually died in a collision on a snowy highway and so it made this situation all the more tense.

Suddenly I saw a car in my rearview mirror approaching rapidly. I tried to speed up to get out of the way but he was coming way too fast and I told my sister I was about to get hit. I braced for impact and was surprised at just how hard the force compressed my body against the seat. I stopped the car in the ditch and after a moment got out to inspect the damage. I took this footage:

Cars continued to smash for a few minutes. A couple of semi trailers pulled off the road and crashed into the nearby barbed wire fence.

The car was still drivable and the RCMP showed up fairly quickly. They shut down the highway and since we weren’t hurt and the conditions were so cold, the officer asked if we would take some of the people that had crashed their vehicles with us. I ended up taking the very same guy that rear ended me. That was fine but also I felt annoyed that he couldn’t have avoided me and now I had to sit beside him for the drive when what I really wanted to do was call my wife and complain about how I think he had room to drive by me.

As a result of the accident I had neck spasms and a headache, so I went into the hospital to get things checked out. The doctor said it looks most likely that I have, “what they used to call whiplash,” and he added that I might have a concussion as well. His advice was to take some ibuprofen and Tylenol and if I start acting loopy come back to the hospital.

So I took the day off work — I’ve also got a cough and cold going so I wasn’t feeling that well anyway.

The lesson of the weekend is that I won’t be flying WestJet for a quick day trip to Edmonton again, and if I find myself in a huge pileup on icy roads, get as far off the road as fast and far as possible.

Update: It’s been three weeks a month two months and I’m still getting headaches every day. Andrea thinks it’s time to head back to the doctor. I’m doubtful that the doctor can do much for me, and I’m still hopeful they will just go away.

Update: I got a letter from the RCMP which indicated 42 vehicles were involved in the pile-up. That’s about twice what I estimated.

Categories
Disney life travel

Our 2022 Disneyland Trip

On Tuesday, April 19th we left today and entered the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy. It’s the happiest place on Earth — Disneyland!

And we WERE happy, because getting there was no easy task. Before we left I knew that our two hour drive (by distance) was never going to take a mere couple of hours. Traffic backing up is normal going from Palm Springs to LA, but this day was a holiday — I figured it would be a particularly good day to travel, avoiding the typical commuter traffic. Not to mention, we were setting out at noon, a time one could assume to be easiest to make the journey. Well, unfortunately, it turns out we were embarking at the worst possible time. Tens of thousands of Coachella concert goers were returning to the city on the Monday after Easter. The freeway was like a parking lot. Our exasperated three year old daughter put it best as she exclaimed, “We’re moving like turtles!” Slowly and steadily (and 5 hours later) we arrived at our destination in Anaheim.

Categories
life pandemic travel

Christmas Vacation Cancellation

We’ve been planning our Christmas vacation to California since last June but with the new omicron variant throwing a wrench in the gears we finally pulled the plug on the trip last Tuesday. Now I’m just hoping we can still get our kids together with their cousins and grandparents over the Christmas break. Such is life in a pandemic.

Back in June WestJet’s website said we could book with confidence knowing we could cancel our flights and get our money back with no fees or hassle but when I called them on Tuesday, the customer service rep told me that I will get the money back as a credit and that the credit will last for two years before it expires.

I was livid. After a moment of almost losing my cool I realized I needed to keep it together and asked her if there was anything she could do to help me get a refund. As it turns out there is a website that I could go to and fill out a form to apply for a refund. I’m still mad that they were pretending like they weren’t giving out refunds but at least things worked out for us.1

  1. At least it appears it might work out but I can’t actually apply for our money back until after our original departure date on Saturday; give me a break! Anything to make getting our money back just a little bit harder. It’s so shady of them.[]
Categories
technology travel

NeverSSL.com

Here’s a great little travel tip from Marco Arment via his podcast ATP. When you don’t have cellular service but need to connect to Wi-Fi and can’t get your phone to get started, trying to connect to a non secure socket layer site will solve the problem. (This happens to me every time I go grocery shopping in the States and want to check with the better half if we need more milk).

Here’s the relevant ATP clip: overcast.fm/+R7DVAsQuw/12:17

And, as Arment points out, a sure address in which to connect that will always use just plain unencrypted http is Neverssl.com.

Categories
baby life travel

California Dreamin’

We’re off for a family trip to California next week and a couple of days ago realized that not only are we losing an hour from the change in timezone, but we’ll also lose an hour because next week is the time change.

It occurred to us that this abrupt two hour change might be hard on our daughter, The Little NessMonster, so we’ve started advancing her bedtimes by 15 minutes per day. Her usual bedtime is at 7:00 and by the time we leave she’ll be going to bed at about 9:00pm which seems crazy but at the same time, it will make it easier for Halloween since we won’t have to worry about her being woken up by trick-or-treaters.

We’re very excited for California and despite widespread black-outs due to high winds, fires, and the dangers of fires from downed power lines… Palm Springs area isn’t supposed to be affected.

(via poweroutage.us)

Categories
life travel

Hooked

Last night after catching what I thought would be our dinner, the second hook on the lure accidentally pierced Andrea’s thumb during the hook removal process when the fish made a last effort to escape by wiggling and jumping.

The lure with its two hooks, one attached to the mouth of the jack fish and the other deep in the centre of Andrea’s thumb, connected every flop of the frightened fish to driving the hook deeper. I held the fish down and another fisherman nearby helped us take the lure from the fish’s mouth.

This is what it looked like after we got the hook off the fish and the line:

IMG_6768.JPG

After a moment or two of wondering exactly what we should do and a couple a failed attempts, I gritted my teeth, locked the plyers onto the hook, and ignoring my tendancy to be paralyzed with empathy for her pain — I pulled it out as straight as I could. I’m not sure how it can be the case, but Andrea insists it barely hurt at all.

After all that, the fish, however, was too small to keep so I let go.

Categories
travel

Our Trip to Kauai

We’ve been doing a lot of travelling these last couple months. Most recently, we returned from a lovely week long adventure in Hawaii. It started out with a conversation between my sister, my mom, and me about how fun it would be to spend some time in Maui. Andrea and I had never been there — in fact this would be Andrea’s first time on any of the Hawaiian islands so we were both really excited about the prospect.

After buying tickets, some sorting out the dates and — believe it or not — which island we were going to, our whirlwind trip would be to the island of Kauai.

Selfie of Andrea and Jeff at the Vancouver Airport
Waiting at the Vancouver airport
Maui Airport Scenery
Layover in Maui
A view looking out into a blue sky, a few clouds, deep blue ocean with a couple of white waves, and green foliage in the foreground.
The view from our resort grounds
Jeff looking surprised while Andrea kisses him on cheek. They are on a beach in Hawaii.
Our first beach walk together in Hawaii
Gorgeous green foliage covers steep and tall green mountains which jut up from the sea. The sky is blue with clouds.
On the way to Hanakapiai beach
A 360 degree panarama showing the falls, people in bathing suits, and lots of rocks.
At Hanakapiai Falls
Andrea and Jeff in a selfie with the falls and green covered walls behind them.
Waterfall Selfie
Selfie of Jeff and Andrea with ocean and palm trees in the background.
The return trip
A yellow flower
Flower
A low angle shot of a pretty rooster. A woman's legs can be seen in the background.
One of the many roosters on Kauai.
Jeff and Andrea in kayaks along a river in Kauai
River kayaking
Jeff and Andrea inside an airborne helicopter
Helicopter Ride
Aerial shot of the mountains and coastline
The Hanakapiai Beach
Selfie of Andrea and Jeff in front of a beach
Beach Hopping

That’s just a brief look at our trip. Perhaps I’ll come back and add more later.