Life as a Local

Checked the mailbox yesterday. I paid bills, went to the hardware store. I put out the recycle. Watered the plants. Cleaned the garage and then took a nap. After sweeping the Plumeria leaves and dropped flowers off the lanai, I waxed my board.

Yesterday, as I rode my bike toward the Westin, I ran into Dennis on the highway. Last week, as I paddled around and actually caught a few small waves, I ran into some guys I know from work out in the water.

At the places I frequent, like this internet cafe and a couple lunch spots, people are beginning to ask me if I live here. I say yes (you should always answer yes to this question regardless) and they drop the price of lunch, coffee and computer time.

I will be bringing home a surf-board and a scar on the back of my left hand. I will also be returning to Colorado with an improved financial situation.

I'm trying to be a better than complete rank beginner surfer before I get home.

And I am trying to learn how to blow a Conch shell, (What? I love it when I talk dirty!) At the Tuesday night dinner parties, dinner is announced by the blowing of the feudal horn. The Conch shell done right is very loud and environmentally appropriate, like drums on a distant torchlit beach. The environment being the back yard of Bunt and Annie's home on the ocean. It's not a big house but it is historical, being the former home of the sugar mill boss. It's a hundred years old with traditional architecture. The yard is mercifully small and the cocktail 'lounge' is perched on the point, jutting out slightly into the sea (kai) along the breakwall. When the shell sounds, it's time to move to the lanai (porch) for an outdoor dinner and intelligent conversation. The roof of this deck area that comfortably seats 10 to 15 people is a wooden lattice work overgrown with some awesome flowering plant that scents the already heady air with a tropical fragrance. These white flowers hang down their vines and are constantly falling on us. That is a memory I'll keep and value. Eating dinner with this incredible collection of characters while big white flowers fall in our food and laps and hair like concentrated snowflakes somehow reminding me of home.

Halloween is coming and it's serious business around here. The group has won first place two or three years running and then donated the winnings to some worthy cause. This year, we are going as traffic. I'm going to be a pineapple truck! I'll take pics of all of us as these guys spend money on materials and create works of art. Luckily, I'm one of those creative types and should be able to hold my own.

The first question from the ladies present on Tuesdays is if my wife and/or daughter are coming over. We've talked about it and they would like to meet my family and I'd like my family to experience this scene. I've a feeling they will, if not this time, next. I'm making some friends here.

Out of time.