The opposite of kismet.

Barack was in my hood yesterday. He had shave ice about 2.1 miles from my door. Where was I? Chuck. E. Freaking. Cheese. Friends emailed me to come meet him, as he was shaking hands and chatting. This is another reason I need an iphone/gphone/crackberry/whatever. Or friends who use phones.

I departed the Lucky annual sale slash Ross mom/daugher restocking last night to find the sky full of lightning, which is another annual event here in Hawaii. At 7pm, we lost power. It came back on 20 hours later, around 3pm today. The whole island was out. Our blackouts take a long time to restore. We had a wild night with the Felix family, playing drinking-Uno by candlelight and watching illegal fireworks from our deck. Here's Sky in half of the stuff I bought her, her eclectic look of the day.

Katherine and I had a ride planned for this morning. An easy one, but the first training ride of 09 none the less. I made it into a scavenger hunt.. power was coming on in different areas, and I needed my fix. Here I am, still smiling because it's just the third one.

By this one, I was too sad to smile for the camera. Is there anything sadder than a closed starbucks at 8am on a Saturday morning?

I did something dumb. I blame the uncoffeedness. I put on training wheels this weekend, because timex wants the pretty aeolus powertap back. Someone with a tendency to call it an areola broke it. I have no idea what I did to it, but it doesn't like me. I didn't change the cassette on the training wheels. So not only am I out of shape and jumping from an 11-27 to an 11-23 and lacking coffee, I then suggested we ride up Sierra. Last January, we did repeats up Sierra with the Rolles at least once a week while they trained for their 9 day mountain bike race in South Africa. They're at it again and in need of company. We used to get up in 15' and 3 repeats. Today we shot for not falling over. I couldn't feel my hands at the top, or make fun of the guy wearing the pink baby carrier. I guess the training has begun. I will totally start swimming next month, and I reserve the right to interpret "next" as January or Feb. This was the view from the top today -- I still couldn't feel my hands when taking this:

Later Sky caught her first waves.. it was cold, but she was brave. Braver than the sissytwins, who refused to go out. Or the sissymom, who paddled out, took pictures, and high-tailed it back to shore to shiver under a towel. Sky and her best buddy Malia, checking out the shorebreak, discussing where to line up:

Below is Brandon, Sky & Malia, after a wipeout that sent toddler bodies flying everywhere. Note Sky's look of alarm. She was all better on the next wave though, when Brandon steered them all the way into shore.