Golf Mishap, Fixing A Robot, Fighting Fires

Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

816/25

 

Aloha!

 

I hope you are all enjoying your summer, despite the upsetting domestic and international news these days, as well as the crazy weather in many parts of the world. We have had somewhat drier conditions here, but it still has been cloudy a lot of the time.  We're on our way to our fifth month in a row that our pv production has been in the hole. At least the warmer nights have kept our pool comfy.

 

We played golf on Wednesday for the last time before we return from our mainland trip.  It was a pretty good round, despite an embarrassing and slightly bloody mishap on the 2nd hole.  I was doing very well

Skid Marks

up to that point, and I was close to the green in fewer shots that usual.  As we do often at Makalei, I had driven the cart to a place that made for a shorter walk after finishing the hole. This tends to speed things up because the other player(s) can be chipping and putting while I reposition the cart. Unfortunately this meant I had to walk down an embankment to get to my ball, and on the way I slipped on a patch of dirt, fell backward on my ass (the embarrassing part) and skinned my right arm that I used to break my fall (the bloody part). This was partly a result of my delusional still-20-something brain telling my geezer body that it could function like it used to, and my body saying "Oh yeah?"  Anyway, I staunched the flow of blood with tissues and bravely

My First Wedgie

finished the hole.  Back at the cart we washed off the wound with bottled water, dried it as best we could with a paper towel, and slathered on some alcohol hand cleaner to disinfect it temporarily.  I kept going for the rest of the day and did quite well (by my standards), finishing with 4 bogeys.  At home I thoroughly washed my wounds, soaked them with vinegar, then coated them with antibiotic ointment.  So far so good -- no sign of infection -- but the scabs shout "geezer-guy walkin' here!"

 

On a more positive note. my home maintenance project this week was successfully fixing a problem with  our pool robot.  This little guy is a marvel of engineering.  It runs entirely off our vacuum return line, no electricity or electronic parts at all. Water and debris are sucked through an opening in the bottom of the robot, travel through a hose to a port in the side of the pool, and from there to the filtration system.  The robot travels all over the bottom and sides of the pool, driven entirely by hydraulic action.  The water flowing through it turns a turbine that powers "feet" on each side, and a mysterious gear box deep in its innards randomly varies which foot gets more power, causing it to turn left and right.  It is also

Rodney The Robot

engineered so that every part of the robot can be replaced easily, and I've learned how to do this over the years.  About a month ago the robot started favoring left turns, which results in inefficient coverage because it twists its tube into a knot. There are a few reasons for this problem, but I narrowed it down to the need to replace several parts inside. I ordered them online and this week I took the robot apart, installed the new parts, and voila, back to normal.  Total cost about $50, labor free (well, a good beer that afternoon was perfect payment).

 

We've finished making our travel plans for our trip to the Northwest, and we're in prep mode around the house.  Since this is just a two week trip, we don't have to be as thorough as we normally are when we're gone a month or more. We're getting kind of excited -- this is our first trip since last spring when we went to Yosemite and Las Vegas.  One potential wrinkle in our plans, though, is that there have been a number of wildfires in the area we are visiting.  We're hoping this won't lead to a repeat of last summer, when fires and smoke in Canada made for very unpleasant conditions. We've learned over the years, though, that plans and reality don't always coincide, and more often than not a mismatch leads to positive experiences, not negative ones. In fact, on-the-fly problem solving is one of the aspects of independent travel that we value highly.

 

Ok, that's it for this week.  I'll check in again when we return.  Carpe Vitam 

Testing My Tacks, Making Travel Plans

Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

8/9/25

 

Aloha All!

 

This week I got back to physical activities that have been restricted during my recovery from surgery.  On Sunday I did a complete workout at the gym, though with very light weight settings on the machines.  My routine makes use of about a dozen of these self-torture devices, each of which targets a different set of muscles.  I also usually use a pair of free weights to do a quick shoulder muscle exercise.  I didn't hear or feel any tummy tacks popping loose, but by Tuesday my muscles were really  sore and stiff.  Obviously they objected to getting back to work after a nice lazy 6-week vacation.  I also resumed my usual gardening and house maintenance chores, like catch-up pruning, pushing our trash bin to the top of our driveway for weekly collection, using my heavy backpack blower to clean dust and debris from our walkways, lanais and pool area, and hauling my garden sprayer around with a couple of loads of weed-killer.  I also did some outdoor repainting of one of our lanai railings. Another test came on Thursday, when  Karen and I played golf.  I whacked my way through a full (for us) round and had some pretty decent shots, winding up with three bogies.  There has been less rain on the course during the last week, so the drier grass helped the ball roll farther. Thankfully the extra distance cut down the number of fairway shots, each of which required a full swing and really tested those tacks.  They seemed to hold ok, but by the end I was really pooped and glad to get home for my afternoon dip in the pool followed by a rather deep "nap."  After all of this week's effort and resulting soreness, my conclusion is that it is easy to let a geezer-body get out of shape and very difficult to get it back in.....

 

With all our health uncertainties we haven't made many travel plans.  We have our Mississippi river boat trip coming up in October, but other than that we haven't made any commitments.  This is unusual for us -- normally by this time we have a good idea of the trips we want to make next year and even have made some preliminary arrangements.  Besides the health issues which make exotic travel

Seattle

daunting right now, even relatively easy foreign travel doesn't seem attractive at the moment, due to international political conflicts, local attitudes toward tourists, weather extremes,  and our country's self-imposed pariah status. Nevertheless, our wanderlust has gotten the better of us and we've decided to take a quick 2-week trip to the Pacific Northwest at the end of this month.  We're going to focus on Seattle, the Cascade Mountains, and perhaps zip down to Portland to visit a couple of friends who live there.  We've been to Seattle before, but it was a long time ago and a very brief visit.  Our current plan is to spend several nights in Seattle, then rent a car and drive the Cascade Loop, a circular route that is supposed to be very picturesque.  We will do this leisurely, with multi-night stops in a couple of places along the way.  If the weather cooperates it should be just what the travel-doc ordered.

 

Episode 30 of Kilauea's eruption came and went this week.  It was another bubbler rather than one with high fountains like the one we saw.  Driving all the way down to see it would have been rather disappointing, and we are glad we timed our visit as well as we did.  The fountaining may return, but for now the show is relatively subdued.  The various monitoring devices indicate another episode of some kind is coming, we'll just have to wait to see what it produces.

 

Ok, that's it for now.  Off to market and beach breakfast.  Be well and be good -- we could use more of both qualities in the world right now.  Carpe Vitam.

A Tsunami, My Royal Tooth, A Birdie !

Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]

8/2/25

 

Aloha Kakou!

 

There were several items of interest that occurred here this week.  First, as you undoubtedly heard, we were threatened by a tsunami on Tuesday, the result of an 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Russia.  Though this was huge and locally quite damaging, by the time the tsunami traveled 2k miles to reach us, it was pretty pooped out by the journey -- much like our jet-lagged, sleepy-eyed tourists. A typical tsunami travels about as fast as a passenger jet (about 500 mph), and we had plenty of warning that something was coming.  However, we didn't know for sure how big the tsunami was until it passed a network of monitoring buoys to our west.  Bottom line is that we had virtually no damage.  However, the 

LOUD

state was taking no chances and shortly after the earthquake we started hearing sirens along the shore accompanied by warnings pushed to everyone's cell phones. I received my first one as I was at the dentist paying for my long-awaited crown to fix my broken tooth.  I'd say the warning system worked very well here -- I can't imagine very many people not being aware of what was going on.  However, when an evacuation order was given things didn't go so great.  Due to poor urban planning and haphazard development, there are very few roads that lead away from our tourist-laden shoreline. I've mentioned this before in the context of the devastating wildfires on Maui a few years ago.  Our roads weren't quite as jammed as they were on Oahu, photos of which you may have seen on the news, but it would have been faster to have just walked inland a short distance.  The state also ordered large ships to leave harbor to avoid having them cause huge damage if the tsunami shoved them around.  Also, it is much safer to be in a ship away from shore, because there the tsunami "pulse" is just a rise in the ocean level and often barely noticeable in open water.  There were two cruise ships visiting the island of Hawai'i that day, one in our harbor and one over in Hilo.  The order to leave port came when a number of passengers were on excursions and they couldn't get back before the ships had to leave.  The stranded passengers weren't just left to fend for themselves, though, and were well taken care of by the cruise companies, rejoining the ships the next day. However, a few people demonstrated what seems to me a stunning degree of self-absorption by complaining on social media that their ship should have waited for them.  Let's see -- risk the lives or injuries of hundreds versus inconveniencing some who could easily get out of harm's way.  Really?

 

As I hinted above, on Tuesday my broken tooth became royalty -- it now wears a bright new crown!  The final session in the dentist's chair went very quickly compared to the one where the tooth was prepped and a mold for the new crown was made.  The final piece fit perfectly and it didn't take long to glue it into place.  I haven't had any problems with it, other than my tongue is bored without something to continually explore.  The whole restoration process took almost three months.  I broke the tooth on May 1 and it was finally fixed on July 29.  Patience, Grasshopper.

 

My final bit of news is that I passed my 6-weeks-from-surgery point this week, and that means I can now abuse my body with abandon.  Well, maybe not, but it does mean I can get back to activities that were restricted while my innards healed.  Like golf.  On Wednesday I played at Makalei with Karen and our golf buddy.  Since my muscles haven't really done much work for 1.5 months, I decided to ease back into the game by just playing about half the holes and sitting out the rest.  It went very well, including my tee shots which require a fair amount of effort and stretching. I even got a birdie, my first-ever.  Granted, it was on a short par-three hole, and I had to invoke the Kona-a-Lago rule of "If it hits the pin, it's in," but  still.......  By the end I was pretty pooped, and my body was telling me "enough!"  The last couple of days I've felt a bit stiff and sore, but mainly in my muscles, not in the area of the surgery.  Obviously it will take some time and effort to get back into shape, but I'm pleased with the progress so far.

 

Ok, that's it for now.  Take care and keep to the middle course. It's saner in the center. Carpe Vitam.