Saturday, March 22, 2008
Posted at 12:57:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Picture!
We cut the carton in half so each guy can hide half. There are ten eggs total (two of the dozen cracked).
Friday, March 21, 2008
We're making eggs for an underwater Easter egg hunt! I thought of the idea at dinner and we started brainstorming about it and we're going to try it!
Posted at 10:14:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Last night I thought of what the Keferstein's cucumber reminds me of a little, with its soft grow-and-shrink body and clinginess: a caterpillar. Except a caterpillar's feet are only on the bottom, and the Keferstein's "hooklike spicules" appear and disappear all over its body. And its grow-and-shrink ability is waaaaay more extreme, obviously. It's also like a Slinky, or one of those water-filled tube toys that run away when you try to grab them.
Posted at 10:02:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Also, Coffee & Epicuria's banana bread is extremely moist and delicious.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Posted at 9:46:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Wow! We saw this on the local news last night: "Hawaii volcano explodes for first time in 84 years."
Nice dive today at Pebble Beach. Very fun and playful. We'd never been to Pebbly before, and it's further south than we'd ever ventured on a dive, but the gang at Big recommended it on Monday, and so did the South Kona Fruit Stand lady, who lives near it (not Beth, but another lady who works there and has been there lately when we go). The book describes it as being incredibly violent, but apparently that's only sometimes, because it wasn't at all, today.
We talked to a man parked near our Jeep who happened to be a total expert on diving Pebbly, and he told us the best places to go and where to be careful. He said several different divers had been killed there (while taking crazy risks) and they never found the body of one of them. But it was such a friendly beach today, a big stretch of smooth black pebbles, minimal surf, then a calm, easy swim out through gentle lapping waves. We chose the perfect day for Pebbly. On descent, the water was so clear and bright, still and slow and requiring only the smallest flick of the fins to float through, weightless. In some areas, there were so many fish. Swimming along, just fish fish fish all spread out before you. Very relaxing.
We did a lot of signing--silly conversation and jokes, and communicating about creatures. Dean found a crown-of-thorns for me and I turned him over barehanded. I just seem to know how to touch them now, and never get pricked. He was missing one arm (or maybe two) and had a short stump in its place that looked like its end was healed over. I wonder what happened? (Triton's Trumpet??) I think he was growing it back.
Later under some coral rubble I spotted a Keferstein's sea cucumber (the super-weird old-fashioned vacuum cleaner tube kind)! When Dean tried to photograph it, it started to withdraw, so I carefully removed the rubble it was hiding under, and there were two of them under there! At first I didn't even recognise what the second one was, because it looked different--smooth and dusky instead of translucent brown and bumpy tube textured. Those cukes change their appearance so much! When I picked it up, it stretched out long and thin, almost two feet long, instantly vacuum tube-y, then shrank down again to a short smooth blob of about four inches. It kept contracting and unfurling, opening up from within, reaching out feather mouth tentacles, then drawing them back inside. Handling it, I couldn't stop shaking my head in amazement, in awed disbelief. Dean got some good video footage; I'll have to edit it and put it online.
Keferstein's cukes are just so, so weird, so alien and sci-fi. I really like them. Also, they're sticky, but in a really weird way. They stick to your fingers, and even to their own bodies at times. But it's not in a normal sticky way. They have little sticky-bits ("hooklike spicules") on their skin that cling but are easy to pull away from. The walls of their bodies are so thin, it's like a sausage-casing with nothing but water inside. They're not slimy. Just soft. It seems like they'd be so easy to tear. It almost feels like nothing to touch them. I kind of like this not wearing gloves thing. It's exciting.
It was a nice relaxing road trip both there and back, and we stopped at the South Kona Fruit Stand on our return trip. When I told the fruit stand lady we'd just been diving at her beach, she completely lit up. We also stopped at Coffees & Epicurea again, and Dean's "Larry's Famous Chai" smelled so good brewing, the orange peel fragrance hanging in the misty-moisty South Kona air. We sat at "our" table, under the corrugated metal roof thing. No pattering rain today, though. My hands like the saltwater. Oh and the parking spot/gear setup spot at Pebbly also smells wonderful. I really like plumeria trees.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
I'm really tired tonight. We dove at Pine Tree Chasm this afternoon (sister site to Pine Tree Portal, both invented by us) but, unlike Portal, it wasn't that great, and it was a really churny area, so it was a bit exhausting swimming, and hard to climb back out. Lots of underwater bolders. I didn't like the bolders; they were disorienting!
Posted at 11:41:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We used the goodie bag as an underwater marker to know where to get out, and it worked, although we missed it the first time and swam way past it, then surface-swam back along, looking down for it. I spotted it! The goodie bag was a pal. And I did meet a crown-of-thorns with a wonderfully soft mouth. I had to turn him over completely gloveless since I have been avoiding gloves on my last two dives (other than for safety getting in and out) because of my hands. My hands are maddening. They do feel slightly better after a dive, though.
This morning I drove to Kona all by myself! (Henry Street!) My Guy helped, natch.
I LOVE premium saltines. I put them in the refrigerator so they don't get all soggy from the humidty, and it worked! Chomp!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Posted at 8:26:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
If I'm sick, why do I feel so good?? PREMIUM saltines and plain jasmine rice are incredibly tasty. The footage is from yesterday, and I'm slacky so I didn't finish the real entry yet, but I put this together this afternoon and I just had to post it. Isn't it the cutest thing ever?? It's like a cookie. A sharp, pointy, venomous, poison cookie, but that only makes it ever so much more irresistible. (And no, being sick has nothing to do with the baby crown-of-thorns, or cookies.) Dean said the crown was like my "pet." :-)
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Posted at 10:17:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I am now officially writing about Monday. When I finish this I will be all caught up again! Even though it's really confusing and almost none of the date headers actually match up with the day I'm talking about, I kind of love how anti-linear my whole weeks have become here. Heh.
Do I remember what happened on Monday? Yes. Yes, I do. Monday morning we went to the Aloha Angel for breakfast because we had no breakfast food left, other than one million papayas. I had a spearfish fresh catch (not a swordfish, a spearfish) and pancakes! The fruit topping of the day was blueberry and I hate sweet goopy blueberry topping, so I got the coconut and macadamia topping instead, with coconut syrup. It was good, but not as good as the strawberry topping I had when all those geckos were antic-ing around. No geckos this time! I wonder where they were? Gecko party?
Dean got a Greek three-egg scramble with avocado on top. He wanted to order a breakfast burrito but I told him not to get that again, and he pouted but heeded my advice. When he started eating the scramble and tasted how good it was, he confessed that he was glad he'd listened! Ha.
Aloha Angel has great hours! Breakfast until 1:30 is the way it should be.
Afterwards, I drove all the way to Honaunau while Dean was making a phone call (on my Palma!). I didn't realise how far Honaunau is! It was cool driving all that way, on the high, winding roads. He finished the call right as we pulled into the hui lot. While he used my Palma to write an e-mail, I seized the op to take a photo of the great "Ground Rules" sign in the lot. I love the rules sign, especially the phrasing of rule #4. (And I love how it's just signed, "Management.") While I was nosing around, I also noticed this crazy palm. Check out the trunk!! I also took a photo of our gear lineup waiting all set up (by Dean) on the ground. Dean's is the yellow-and-black side, on the left, and mine's the silver-and-lime.
We entered at Three Step instead of Two Step. (Two Step is famous; Three Step is invented by us.) I like Three Step!! It's an easier entry/exit than Two-Step, and there's no one else there, so you don't have to wait your turn. I also really like that section of the bay... it's all explore-y, with tiny, hidden creatures to find inside holes in the coral. That's my favorite kind of dive.
First we swam out and dropped down deep, and as I free-fell down, the mini jellies were so thick it was like being inside a bubble tea. I couldn't see the bottom... I was surrounded by nothing but blue. The Ctenophores were about four inches apart, everywhere, in every dimension. At 115', we found a beautiful Day Tube Anemone just sitting alone on the sand. The photo on the left shows it with its tentacles unfurled; the one on the right is the same animal, withdrawn, only its tube base showing. Down deep, the ocean floor was sandy and mostly desolate, strange and unearthly, with large Rough-Spined Urchins spread out every twenty feet or so, one lone puffer, and long black sea cucumbers stretched out, actively vacuuming up the sand.
As we made our way back up along the reef, we started finding cool creatures hiding in the coral and rock, like a huge Marbled Shrimp with absurdly long spindly striped legs, and one of those weird old-fashioned vacuum cleaner tube -looking Keferstein's sea cucumbers, waiting for the night to fall so it could come out and sprawl in full view, tentacles reaching, alien and unbelievable. So, so cool.
Even weirder (mostly because I can't identify it), was the second sea cucumber we found hiding snaked inside the tunnels. I think it was the same kind I described (and was obsessed with) on November 21, 2005. It was mauve/lavender colored, with fleshy papillae like Loli Longs has (I think they were the same color as the rest of it, but I can't be sure). It had a smooth round body (not flat on the bottom), unusually long and thin, with tapered ends. It also had tentacles.
I reached into its hole, wrapped my fingers around it, and tried to pull it out, which was when I discovered how long it was. The body felt firmer and stronger than a squashy Loli Longs-ish cuke, but not stiff and hard like others. It felt flexible and strong, muscular. When I pulled on it, I could feel it pull back against my hand, withdrawing from my touch. I let go, knowing I would not be able to pull it out, surprised by its length. It wasn't just clinging onto something with feet and not letting go, it was actively pulling back with its body, using the part that was beyond where I grabbed. I didn't see any feet, and the part I could see wasn't fastened down.
Dean shined his dive light, illuminating various parts along its body peeking through holes, going around corners and disappearing. The body inside the rock was shockingly fat! Then he found another end, and I couldn't tell if it was a second cucumber or the other end of the same one! If so, it was super long! Two or three feet. Ak! It felt creepy to touch, and thinking about its length (what I could see and the unknown/implied more) and snakeyness made me shudder. I want to know more about this cucumber!!
As always Dean used his trusty compass to guide us back, and when he came back down after surfacing to confirm where we were, he wrote on my slate, "Perfect navigation; we're right there. Raining. Gear will get wet. :-(" Ha. :-) There was no one there when we climbed out onto the lava, despite the fact that it was only sprinkling.
On the way back, we stopped at Coffees & Epicurea (recommended to us by Sara) and Dean got a "Larry's Famous Chai." The barista cracked up when I called it that, for some reason. It was infused with orange peel and Dean really liked it. He declared it, "A good chai. Not your normal Tazo (not that there's anything wrong with a Tazo...)." It was nice sitting drinking in the covered area behind the building, warm and still and raining lightly, dripping sounds on the roof above us. I wrote in my notebook, "Feels & smells & sounds nice!" It rained hard, in the evening. Nice.
