The Happenings of the Anderson Family: Whatever Day it is...

What day is it? I forgot. Here in paradise the sun rises, the waves come in, go out, the sun sets. All accompanied by gentle ocean breezes.

Okay, I apologize for making you jealous! If it makes you feel any better, I have a rotten cold (as opposed to a "fresh" cold? Oh, whatever). I have a cold. I praise those scientists who invented Nyquil and Zyrtec without which I would not be droning on about the beauty of our Hawaiian vacation.

Yesterday we woke early as usual and decided to make a trip to Honolulu to a flea market held at Aloha Stadium to buy stuff for the fam. We drove on Kamehameha Highway.

Moving through this long tunnel, I imagined children holding their breaths for a long time!

These mountains are amazing. They go straight down into the sea.

I've never understood why the fierce Hawaiian warriors would want to be called Rainbows. That sure seems like an oxymoron to me, but here is the flea market at Aloha Stadium, home of the Rainbow Warriors.

We bought a bunch of stuff, then headed over to Haleiwa on the north shore where we were excited to watch some more surfers tackle those big waves. But on the way, we had to stop at...

The Dole Pineapple Plantation. Hubby loves anything to do with produce and I think has been to this plantation everytime he has come to Hawaii. It never changes! But I was patient as we walked around the shop and the garden which features pineapple from all around the world.

It was just a few more miles over to Haleiwa from the plantation.

You can see a bunch of surfers waiting in the calm, smooth waters, right?

NOT! The swells that day were said to be between 12 and 15 feet. I've never been in anything even close to that size in Cally.

The beach was lined with red warning flags, but there was one section where younger and novice surfers were catching some of the waves close to shore.

There were three rows of swells and the experienced surfers caught the first row.

Some background about the next set of pictures -

When I was a little girl up through my teens, we watched a show on Saturday afternoons called "ABC's Wide World of Sports." It was at least two hours long and we were pretty faithful watchers. My parents were "morning people" long before there was such a term in common use. It meant you get up with the sun, or very shortly thereafter, you don't lolly-gag around, you have breakfast and get out there and get some work done. So that's what we did! Sometimes Dad would go golfing BEFORE the sun got up, then come home and do some work and by afternoon it was time for a rest. Sometimes ABC would feature a surfing competition and being a California Girl (the term lovingly coined by our Beach Boys referring to girls such as I with long blonde hair and tanned skin - sometimes that referred to me - well, when I was a senior in high school that referred to me) I was always riveted to the old black and white screen. The movie "Endless Summer" also gave surfers the mystique that I still feel for them today. Maybe this helps explain my fasination with the waves of the north shore of Oahu.

I took a lot of pictures of surfers, but the following is a sequence of what I thought was the best surfer. From what I remember, in a surfing competition, you get points for using a lot of the wave from top to bottom of the swell and for difficult moves. Watch how this guy does all of them -