Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year to all my blogging friends... you guys were such a beautiful source of inspiration, humor, friendship and comaraderie in 2007. Thank you. I've enjoyed meeting all of you, and look forward to the trips I have planned in 2008 with many of you. Bring on CDA, Vineman, Orca's Island, Ice Age Ultra, Phoenix R-n-R, Florida IM...et al. Blogging has really made the triathlon world smaller, and you are all such special people to me.

Here's a recap of yesterday on beautiful Kaua'i.

I went running just before dawn for about 8 miles. It was cloudy and cool-ish, and it rained a few times on the way inland. But after I turned around and headed back to the beach, the sun came out and there was a huge double rainbow behind me. I was starting to wonder why so many cars were stopping to take pictures until I realized the rainbow was their subject, not me. (tee-hee)

I showered, and we all headed out to the northwest shore. Here are Bobby and Ally at the trailhead for the hike. Notice how nice and clean and white their clothes are.

We hiked 4 1/2 hours through thick and very slippery clay-mud. The kids never complained, I was so impressed! It rained on and off all day. We all made it to "the beach", and then up another trail to the pointy cliff, then turned around. Too bad my Garmin battery is shot - it would have been fun to see how far and how high we climbed.

It was a trip that had its dangers. First, Bobby was totally in his adventurous element and took off. I mean, he was so far ahead of us we had no idea where he was. So the first hour was spent with Bob, Ally and me pressing on as fast as we could trying to find him and be assured he hadn't fallen off - it was extremely slippery and he was obviously traveling quite fast. We finally caught him, and he was muddy but fine and was actually really sorry when he saw how worried we were. After we re-grouped and set off again, Bob slipped in mud and Bobby yelled, "Dad fell!". I turned around and saw his feet pointed upward, his head out of sight, but obviously he was hanging upside down, on his back, off the cliff, and he was clutching brush. Thank God for the brush. Those of you who have hiked this trail know what I mean!

We had to cross the "stream" (which rushes across lava rocks just before it dumps into the ocean) to get to the beach. On the way over, it was about thigh high on me, so I put Ally on my back and made my way across. Bobby and Bob crossed holding hands. After hiking to the pointy cliff and back, the water from all the rain had risen to about waist-high on me. I was holding onto Ally for dear life (hers) and was losing her. A couple of big guys on the shore rushed in and grabbed her from me and I made my way over. The look on Bobby's eyes were something I won't soon forget.

All ended well, but I kept playing it all over and over in my head and had a hard time falling asleep last night. The kids had a blast, and Bob and I did, too, so I'll just focus on that and the fact that everybody is still here! Check out the mud - the kids painted warrior stripes on their faces.

After the hike, we swam in the beach at the trailhead to rinse off. There were more tropical fish to watch, so I was of course the bad guy when I dragged them out of the water. We are staying on the south side of the island (Poipu), so we had about an hours drive in wet clothes. We were soaked and starving, but the absolute splendor of that hike is so worth it.
There were fireworks at the Marriott to ring in the new year, but we were all asleep at 8:00. At least we saw New York ring in the new year... ;-)