 |
| Red-footed Booby (Sula sula) |
Because the flight left about an hour earlier than the previous morning flights I helped with, I started my morning walk at 6 a.m., an hour earlier than I usually do; I love watching the sun come up! And I really enjoyed the coolness of the morning; it was about 75 degrees F and the sun had not yet risen above the ridges. I walked around Maunalani Circle with LaVie, she also likes an early start. As she continued with her 2 additional laps around the circle I headed to the park. Since Cody & Robbie were already there I skipped the lap around the field and went straight to Lurline at Sierra. I finished up the walk, did my cool down stretches, and was back on the road by 7 a.m. as planned. Access to the freeway is really easy from Maunalani; as I come off the hill I go straight across Waialae and it is 1 block to the freeway entrance. It's about 55 miles round trip; it takes me about 2 hours to do a transport from the time I leave the house until I am back home again.
Dad was asleep when I returned to Maunalani a little after 9 a.m.; his breakfast was sitting in front of him on the tray table. He had not touched the sausage, egg, & biscuit but he had eaten about half of the papaya; he had finished off about half the supplements.
For my mid-morning walk I started from the upper parking lot, went down to the park, then to Lurline and Sierra. On my walk up Lurline I stopped to talk to Antony; on one of my earliest walks up Lurline I had seen that they had a Tesla battery as part of their solar PV system. Antony said they had the 1st Tesla battery system on the West Coast and are very pleased with it. He said they have had it for 2 years and use only about $10 worth of electricity from the grid each month. The next time I see him I need to find out more about how much of a load they put on their system; I know they have 2 electric cars but I don't know if they have an all-electric house or whether they have air conditioning, too. I suspect they do since they have 2 Tesla batteries.
I also saw 2 squashed invasive species today. The first was an African snail in the morning, then a brown anole during my mid-morning walk. I can understand the African snail, cane toad, & Jackson's chameleon becoming traffic victims since they are slow moving & relatively large targets, but some of the others baffle me. Like the geckos & anoles, they move pretty fast & are fairly small; did they zig when they should have zagged?
 |
| African snail (Lissachatina fulica). |
 |
| Brown anole (Anolis sagrei). |
On both of the morning walks my right ankle started to feel a little funny part way through the walk. It wasn't painful but felt like it might get that way if I wasn't careful. I think I strained it during my early morning walk when I jogged for a very short distance to catch up with LaVie. During the mid-morning walk I was able to go about half way before it began to feel funny. This is the ankle that I injured while I was in graduate school; or more correctly, that the JERK that was playing racquetball with me injured when he fell on my outstretched leg as I tried to move away from him!
I had been minding my own business practicing on the court that I had reserved when he & his friend came along; there was a rule, if all the courts were in use & you were alone you had to allow someone else on court if they asked, so I did. I found out later that I really only needed to allow one of them on court; if I had known that I would have only allowed the guy who knew how to play on court, not the jerk who fell on me who had never played before. All the ligaments in my ankle were torn; blood leaked from the tears through the gap between the ankle bones to the other side of my ankle creating a large, nasty looking discoloration. The university health center doctor that looked at it the next day said it would have been better if I had broken my ankle. He said my ankle would never be as strong because of the damage to my ligaments; I think I am feeling that weakness now. Walking at a pace that was tai chi slow on my mid-morning walk eased the discomfort I was feeling; stopping for those few minutes to talk to Antony also made the discomfort go away.
Lunch today was Steamed fish with dill sauce, Wild rice pilaf, Tossed salad, Green beans with bacon, Fruit cocktail with whipped cream, and Tomato basil soup. Dad did not eat any solids, he just drank the liquid supplements.
During my afternoon walk I went from the lower parking lot to the park, once around the field, and back up to the lower parking lot. There were 2 Kolea at the park, one in the forested area & one on the field. Since I did not go around the field for my 2 earlier walks I don't know whether there were more Kolea on the field earlier. I did see several Kolea around the neighborhood, one at the grassy area by the lower parking lot, and several at houses on Lurline.
The storm increased in strength quite a bit last night and now has sustained winds of 160 mph; Hurricane Walaka is now a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. It is about 965 miles southwest of us and about 240 miles south of Johnston Island (the red dot on the map below). The eye is expected to pass to the west of Johnston Island some time tomorrow and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (highlighted in pink below) the following day.
 |
| At 5 p.m. |
Happy Birthday to Vikki! And Happy 24th Anniversary to Chris & Ernie!
 |
| CJ & Ern Dog on their honeymoon in 1994. |
No comments:
Post a Comment