Journal of Pier Luck

Driving and walking through the Botanical Gardens in Kaneohe is one of my favorite things to do here. It's called Ho'omaluhia Botanical Gardens and I should probably learn to pronounce it if I'm going to say it's my favorite spot.  Anyway, the mountains jet up to the sky and just make me feel so very little, just a tiny ant in the landscape of this massive mountain range, so green and lush and beautiful.  I imagine what the view looks from the tops of those mountains and what those mountains have seen in their time. My life will be such a small fraction of this world's existence. They take my breath away. They inspire me to learn more about the Hawaiian culture, a culture based upon living off of the land and what nature gives you and then that makes me feel even closer spiritually to my parents and how they have lived their lives. They would fit in so very well in Hawaii and I so wish they could just visit.  We were all here in 1997 and again in 1999, but as tou...

I went swimming yesterday in a pool for the first time since March 15th, so almost 4 months!!!!  Swimming and I have always had a strange relationship.  For some reason when I was young, I loved the water, but I loved to just doggie paddle and despite my father's multiple attempts to teach me at the club pool or at Council Bluff Lake, I did not want to learn.  Looking back now, this was SUCH a beautiful lake in which to swim with a perfect sectioned off swimming area, ahhhhhhhhh, sorry Dad!  I always loved jumping off the diving board and doing dives and flips, going down water slides, swimming under water, but it wasn't until 2006, so I was 28 years old when we were thrust in the triathlon world and I was forced to learn to lap swim.  I couldn't make it down and back in the pool with even the slightest form of what looked like freestyle.  My breathing was erratic and I was kicking like crazy!  In 2007, we did our first Ironman in Wisconsin and obvi...