Well finally something to write about......

So not much going on since Thanksgiving out here. Nice weather, went home to CT, came back to celebrate Christmas here with a morning waterfall/beach hike and some fresh coconuts on the beach with Jason, Angela and of course Katrina.

We shipped our Christmas booty from home out here, got it lost in shipping and it miraculously arrived 6 weeks later as I was calling to file the claims paperwork. Considering my golf clubs were part of that shipment, I was relieved to get it all safe and sound, albeit late and after much frustration.

Uneventful New Year's Eve included diner with a bunch of friends and some laughs. Got a new President and the same problems. I'm certain they'll soon be either replaced by, or in addition to, new ones.

My parents came out for a quick 8 week visit to do some traveling and remind me that in my Mom's eyes, I'll always be 8 yrs old and unable to do anything for myself. Some things never change.

We took them to Kosrae (ko-SHRY) after spending a week golfing, fishing, pissing off some local people, and touring Guam's beaches and sites. Mom tries to be politically correct, but.....not so much.

Kosrae was great. I've flown through there and it is stunning in it's untouched beauty and natural features. It's a fairly mountainous and under developed island in the Federated States of Micronesia. No ATM machines, so bring your cash money. Part of the island is not accessible unless you've got a boat. No lights, no phones no motorcars......You get the idea. Just a short step away from car-camping. Although, our accommodations in Kosrae were very adequate, a lot of the island in not accessible unless you hike or swim and most of it is not inhabitable. It's straight out of Jurassic period for much of it.

I went scuba diving one day, and fishing that morning brought in a couple barracuda and a 20lb Wahoo that gave me nearly as much fight as the 137lb marlin did this past summer. Another day, Katrina and I caught up with Hemilson Philips, a local guide, for a spectacular hike to the summit of Mt Ohma, through the rain forest (400 inches of rain/year!!) Along the way, we crawled through some Japanese WWII tunnels, learned how to set a wild boar trap, scare the mountain-apple tree to make the fruit sweet instead of bitter (crazy but true), enjoy some orange/banana/coconut straight from the trees, and bask in the reward that was one of the best views in Micronesia at the peak. That day provided for some great pics on our Flickr page. Hopefully we'll make it back for a few more days. Hemilson promised to teach me how to spear fish. He has a very welcoming and beautiful family that made my parents, Katrina and I sweet smelling floral leis to take on our flight back to Guam.

Guam was a short sleep and we were on an early flight to Sapporo, Japan, for the 60th annual snow festival. We were only up there for a few days to check out the festival. My parents seemed to like it, but are genuinely uncomfortable in places where they can't communicate easily with everybody. I love it 'cuz nobody bugs me.

I learned just how adventurous my parents can be when my mom ordered spaghetti for dinner the first night, and was concerned it'd be too spicy. Not exactly sure what Katrina and I had, but they were both really good. The next day we froze for the day at the snow fest. So many people, all considerably shorter than I, made me feel huge. A giant among people with far superior toilet technology (Don't miss that pic either...It's amazing and slightly awkward).

The Snow fest at Oduri park was chock full of snow statues. Some were 5-10 feet tall, and some were pushing 5 or 6 STORIES tall with bands and stages built in. They were surely time consuming to build the larger snow buildings, amazing feats of design and detail, and useful for about a week.

Susukino (night life district) had the ice sculptures. Most 5-15 feet tall, and lit up at night with flashing lights and spotlights. Pretty to look at, funnier to see Katrina mock them and slide down them while screaming "Bonzai!!!".

Back home now in Guam, and leaving here in a couple short months. We're gonna try to get a few more trips in before we leave. Philippines in March, Tokyo in April, and hopefully Kosrae and maybe Palau one more time. Other than that, Katrina and I are golfing, playing tennis and doing some harder training in case I decide to race at all this year at home. And if not, I could stand to lose a few lbs anyway.

Hopefully the updates will come a bit more frequently now that we're getting back to travelling again.

A Guam Thanksgiving

It's been a rough year in the Weaver household, but we're very thankful that we've been able to get through all these obstacles while also having some of the most life changing experiences ever.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Jason, Angela, Jerome and Lynn down in Jerome and Lynn's apartment. Stephen nominated me about a month ago to make the turkey - which turned out to be the best in my four years of thanksgiving turkey cooking. After 24 hours of brining the bird, it cooked to a beautiful golden brown color with nice glossy skin, and it practically fell of the bird while Stephen carved with out being dried out. In our group effort, we also enjoyed spinach and artichoke dip with chips and veggies, creamy hand mashed potatoes, from scratch cranberry sauce, cinnamon yams (I can't even describe how good they were), stuffing (with homemade wheat bread), some saucy gravy, Japanese and Filipino rolls, the ever classic green bean cassarole, fruit salad ambrosia, and chocolate chocolate cupcakes (the made from scratch frosting was to die for).

After multiple helpings to the main meal and dessert, we played dominoes for hours - 15s down to 7s for those who know the game...then we had to let Jerome get some sleep for work the next day.

In all it was an amazing day and we feel blessed to have been able to enjoy it with such great new friends. We hope everyone we know had a great Thanksgiving and that the holiday season finds us all in the spirit. It's definitely put me in the holiday cooking and decorating mood - so watch for some recaps of the Thanksgiving cooking (because I also made chocolate chip pumpkin bread and turkey soup for the weekend) and the decorating of the cutest little tree ever (thank you Karen!!!).

How to bust a (coco) nut in Guam.

Just prior to our weekend in Oahu, we took a nice little hike to a secluded little beach on the northwestern side of the island. I think it was about 40 min walk. Up and down some small coral rock formations that break up the sandy stretches and through the water around some others that didn't look as easy to climb, and we soon found our little sandy slice of Guamness.
Matt, Vic, and Katherine initiated the hike and KW and I thought it was definitely worth it. They all snorkeled and said it was pretty good (which translates to very good in other parts of the world). Something about a 75' anenome filled with clown fish....and chock full of other stuff. Three guys snorkeled by that were catching octopus. They were the only intruders into our day of sand and sun.

So, what to do after a good hike, and some sun and surf? How about busting a nut with Catherine, matt and myself. Sounds like fun? Tasty too!!

So, it's not really as hard as cartoons can make it out to be. First, try to climb the palm tree and knock one down. After that doesn't work, grab a large stick and knock a nice green one down. Smash it on a rock or log and taste it. Pretty nasty. Next, go take the stick and knock down a brown one that is ripe and infinitely harder. Spend a half hour or so cracking it on a coral chunk and a log. Don't bother with the Catherine-inspired sea shell cutting technique. No matter how sharp the shell is...it's a pain. Besides, the ever-prepared Matt had a knife.
Once you get the outer shell off, the inner nut is the good part. Surprisingly, the cartoons are inaccurate regarding this part too..... the three little dark spots don't wink at you. So, take a knife and stab two of the holes and cut the "eyes" out. One is for drinking out of, the other is for venting. Don't mix the blood from Matt's cut finger into the coconut milk though. That would be nasty. The eyes are the softest part, and make it easy to not spill the coconut milk. A Dewalt drill would be better, but the knife worked well. Once you drink the yummyness, smash the nut on something hard and eat the white part inside. Delicious and good for your hike back. A machete would cut your time from half an hour to under a minute. But, at least if you Gilligan Island yourself in the tropics without one, you can eat nicely.
Extra credit Bonus.....
Carefully crack the shell in half and make your female companion a coconut bikini top. She likely won't wear it, but at least the thought was there.

Getting off this rock for a few days!

Just wanted to say "YEA!!!!"

I'm getting off the Guam rock for a few days by going to work with Stephen tomorrow...how weird is that? I'm joining him on the island hopper to Honolulu (this being my very first trip to Hawaii - and probably one of the shortest any of you have ever heard of - we'll be on the island for 50 something hours).

I can't wait to just be somewhere different...I'm not feeling anything of the cabin fever I've felt at other times this year - but I do think I was going to be hitting a wall soon enough. A perfect break in the Guam life so I can come right back to it and enjoy some more. And with a car rental, we hope to check out the north shore and I'm hoping to eat a good burger and a sandwich from the Whole Foods (like back in the days of field work for ENSR).

Hopefully we'll get some good photos to share, and perhaps a funny story or two.

Traveling Home for Our September Visit

When we travel stand by it's all about checking the magical load numbers before you go to the airport, gambling if you'll get on the plane as a standby, or if you'll be looking for an alternative routing. So around 8am on the 3rd (guam time), Stephen checked, and it all looked good- now I will note that he had a ticket for him (no stand by) because he was on the way to training...he was really checking how my stand by status looked. I looked to be the second to get one of three seats. not bad, considering the day before I was second to get none of minus eight seats (over booked by eight and then one person who ranked higher than me in the standby).

It's not until we're at the actual gate, that we meet a lovely dispatcher from Houston, who's trying to get home, that we learn that the flight to Honolulu (which also goes on to Houston) that morning got canceled and they rolled 20 passengers over on to our flight to through Narita (Tokyo). So the two of us (not stephen, the dispatcher and I) are thinking, we just got bumped by revenue passengers and that she and I may be looking for hotel rooms in Tokyo. Then the gate agent hands us our new boarding passes and says we're checked through to Houston...what!

Even in Tokyo, we were nervous nellies. They took our dispatcher friend's boarding pass at one point, which we thought was bumping her off, but turned out to the JAL employees that cover for CAL there, it was very important that they write "OK" on it. After loading the plane with all three of us in first class, we kept watching the JAL employees who were coming on board to rearrange passengers (we don't understand their system but just thought they'd be coming up to us next to say we had to give us our seats).

The nauseous feeling finally left me when I heard the landing gear being pulled up into the plane as Tokyo was growing smaller. Then it was time for 14 hours of good food, lay out seats and the new on-demand video/music system (built into each seat). Yup, I think I got lucky this time.

And let's just say, this also meant I got out of cooking Stephen birthday dinner. I had made mini-chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast before we left, but I can not compete with: open bar, sushi and lobster for appetizers, variety of hot rolls, filet mignon, the other side dishes, ice cream and fruit cobbler, cappuccinos (okay we skipped those because we had to get some rest on the flight, but they do have the machine on board) and then don't forget the omelet and fresh fruit and all cinnamon rolls for breakfast. No one should judge us for eating all that (plus we later had dinner in Houston) because the 3rd lasted over 40 hours for us...I think somehow that justifies all the eating :)

Now it's training time in Houston and I'm just waiting until we can get on another plane and head up to CT to see you all!

Sunday Afternoon Stroll

Stroll maybe the wrong word...hike, sweat, climb, sweat, walk. Yeah, that's more like it. Stephen took me up to the Nimitz Hill area (that's the hill/road he likes to ride his bike up and down and up and down...and this area is where he's been mountain biking before) for a Sunday hike.

We parked pretty close to what I'd call the top - just a few hundred feet lower than all the TV towers on island that occupy the peak. It was a rocky, but slippery narrow path down to an amazing waterfall, from which Stephen pointed out where he hurt his ankle a few months back while I was in CT. We then had to use a series of ropes to get down closer to this spot of hurtful memories, during which I rolled each of my ankles once though I could still walk on them so no harm no foul. The waterfall looked even cooler from below - though the water at the bottom looked murky so no getting in it. It so weird, from up the hill by the towers you couldn't see the waterfall, just hear its little roar coming out of the valley that is lined with palm trees - very distinctively telling you where the water is. So from on top of a grass hill (and the grass can cut you here) we had descended into a tropical jungle area. Now it was more ropes and slippery clay areas that we needed to climb up to get back to the grasslands. Yeah, that's the point I almost had a break down, as I am sweating through all my clothes, the mosquitoes are starting to think I might be tasty, and I can't see the towers to know where the car is. But I kept it together and even impressed myself as I hauled my butt up some steep rocks/seasonal rain washouts with and without the help of ropes and Stephen.

Once again in the grasslandish area, we were on the easy part of the trail - the 4-wheeling area. We have the smallest Napa Auto Parts ever here, and there were so many of these people out 4-wheeling it up - I have no idea what they must spend on shipping, never mind the crap they install on those vehicles. We saw one jeep on it's side get righted as clouds of coolant burned off his engine - wonder if it will ever leave Nimitz Hill now that he started the engine upside down? It sort of made us sad, because these guys keep taking over the hiking and mountain biking trails which widens them and makes then pits of mud. There are so many trails out there and the trails after a good rain, re-level themselves in a way, that you should be able to not need new trails for your 4-wheeling. But to each their own, I guess.

After Stephen ran up a few hills to figure out the way out, we got back to the car and road home. All in all a great hike, and I'm just proud to say I did it. Never hiked anything like that in Connecticut or anywhere. Bonus was bumping into a guy in the parking lot with a nice road bike when we got back. There are other bikers on Guam!

It's an Empty-Box-of-Tissue Kind of Morning :..(

It's a gorgeous monday morning here in Guam and I am sad. Football is on and the sun is warm outside, yet my nose is runny and my eyes are watery and red.

Maggie is gone. It seems cliche to say how unique and special a dog was. Yet, anybody who ever met Maggie and had her jump up and nap in their lap, or play "tag" with her would know that it wasn't cliche. She never chased a ball. She actually did play "tag". She never growled. Never. She woofed only when she needed somebody to open a door. She was precious and gentle as could be, to the point where it was kinda silly. If God ever made a more perfect furry companion, I would be stunned to hear it.

I was really looking forward to playing with her when I went home next month. I hadn't seen her since Christmas time, when I took these pics of her. I didn't realize how much I would treasure them as they're the only pics we have of her that I know of. Sleep well BabyDog. Your Boy misses you very much.