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.]
9/27/25
Aloha Fellow Time Travelers!
Fall? Really? I guess so -- the Halloween decorations in Lowe's and Costco, which were on display a month ago, have now been joined by Christmas stuff. Christmas in September! Actually, maybe having an extended season of good will, charity, and humility might be a good idea this year.....
Early in the week Karen and I participated in an "Only in Kona" activity -- serving as volunteers to help
with preparations for the upcoming annual Ironman Triathlon World Championships. This will occur on October 11, a few days after we have departed for our trip to sail down the Mississippi, so we will miss the actual race. However, most athletes will have arrived in town the week before, and we'll be seeing them everywhere. They are very easy to spot, standing out rather obviously from our typical tourists -- zero body fat and physiques like inverted triangles.This year the competition is only women, about 1500 or more of them, with 60 qualifying professionals. Our job, along with other volunteers from Karen's women's club and their spouses, was to fold athlete t-shirts and stuff them into bags. These shirts are only for the finishers of the race, which these days is nearly all of those who participate. It took our group about three hours to get the job done, so it wasn't really very onerous. Karen and I rewarded ourselves with a slice of pizza, a salad, and a beer at Kona Brew Pub.
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| Hard at Work |
with preparations for the upcoming annual Ironman Triathlon World Championships. This will occur on October 11, a few days after we have departed for our trip to sail down the Mississippi, so we will miss the actual race. However, most athletes will have arrived in town the week before, and we'll be seeing them everywhere. They are very easy to spot, standing out rather obviously from our typical tourists -- zero body fat and physiques like inverted triangles.This year the competition is only women, about 1500 or more of them, with 60 qualifying professionals. Our job, along with other volunteers from Karen's women's club and their spouses, was to fold athlete t-shirts and stuff them into bags. These shirts are only for the finishers of the race, which these days is nearly all of those who participate. It took our group about three hours to get the job done, so it wasn't really very onerous. Karen and I rewarded ourselves with a slice of pizza, a salad, and a beer at Kona Brew Pub.
In Geezer Gazette news, I visited my optometrist on Wednesday and got a new prescription for glasses. The exam showed definite changes since my last prescription in May. That one was about 3 months after my cataract surgery. Since then both eyes show a bit more astigmatism, and both need additional magnification for distance vision, particularly more for my left (good) eye. A new pair of glasses have been ordered, and hopefully they will arrive before we leave. However, the optometrist showed me a preview of what I can expect, and it really doesn't seem that much different. Sigh. On the close-up problem, we worked hard trying to come up with a prescription that would help me see small detail, but nothing seem to help more than what I have right now. I'll return for another visit to assess this when we get back from our trip.
We did another workout at PF this week, and yesterday we played golf again, this time with our golf buddy. The workout was less painful, which means our muscles have resigned themselves to the effort. Golf was enjoyable but my game was pretty lousy after a good start. Still, there were enough moments of competence to make it fun.
In the Department of House Maintenance Puzzles, I may have observed a case of temporary self-healing in one of our solar-powered ceiling exhaust fans. We have two of these that we installed shortly after we moved in as a way to reduce daytime heat inside the house. As you may recall, our construction is different than mainland houses in a number of ways. We have no insulation in the walls or ceiling, something that works in our climate but would be unheard of on the mainland. In fact, our ceiling is the underside of the roof -- there is no dropped ceiling, just open beams and planking. Heat can build up near our ceiling just like in your attic, and these fans draw the hot air up and blow it outside. Being solar, they crank faster when the sun is strongest, a very positive feature. One of ours stopped working about a month ago and it was on my to-do list to have my handyman go up on the roof and remove the unit so we could test it. But the other day it started working again -- kinda sorta. Today it's immobile again. The worst kind of problem is one that is intermittent, so I'll have to wait to see what happens for awhile. I'm hoping that a gecko got tangled up in the mechanism and is slowly decaying so that eventually the self-healing will be permanent.
Ok, off to the market and then to the beach for breakfast. Carpe Vitam!
5 comments:
You are consistently good at your Weekly blogs. Good job and have fun on the Mississippi River trip!
Keep enjoying your travels!
Looking forward to hearing about the Mississippi River trip. I've looked at it for years with thoughts of riverboat gamblers, slow, idle drifting on the river while drinking mint julep's (sp?). I suppose there might interesting birds as that is a major flyway and the fall migration will be continuing about then, pack the binos! Hope its as much fun as my imagination has painted it!
Your upcoming trip sounds lovely. Wayne and I went to see Rosanne Cash and her husband John Leventhal perform at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo on Wednesday. They far exceeded my expectations. Roseanne mused about her deep connections to the Mississippi Delta. A trip there sounds awfully tempting to me.
This is our second river cruise. The first was in Europe on the Danube. The tv ads promise what you describe -- leisurely sailing along enjoying the scenery. the reality is that each time we had an included shore tour, the ship would continue on and then we would be bussed to meet it. There was just one day when we had a fair amount of relaxed cruising. We are hoping this Mississippi cruise will be better -- for one thing, except for New Orleans, we have never been to most of the towns on the itinerary, whereas in Europe we had stayed in many of them for days during earlier land trips. Good tip abut the binoculars!
We've been to New Orleans several times -- it is a unique and fascinating place.
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