Fishies!… part 3…

Turns out that identifying reef fish on Maui with only a couple of dive cards is like picking a perpetrator out of a police lineup when they are all wearing clown makeup. Even sitting here at my computer, zooming in on each fish, with the dive cards beside me, it isn’t easy. They either aren’t on the cards at all, or there is another fish that looks too much like them to be quite sure…

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So you can imagine how tricky it is when you are bobbing around in the waves and then diving down and trying to follow the fish around while they try to escape from you…

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I am almost positive that one is a domino damselfish… almost…

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And that one is a whatthehellisthatfish…

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Obviously that is a trumpetfish… unless it is a needlefish…

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Oh, that one should be easy… that is… uh… wait… really??? That one isn’t on either dive card? For crying out loud. It’s orange and red with blue and yellow tail and fins! How can that not be on the cards?

All I know is that the water was so clear, and the colors were so incredible…

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That I am going to be boring you with pictures of fish for a few more days… HA!

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Fishies!… part 2…

I am learning something from going through all the pictures of fish I took on Maui…

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Hey… look at that… the refraction makes it look like I am touching myself on the head with my own disembodied hand… cool… Anyway, what I am learning is that even with the photos and a dive card, it is really hard to identify all the fish…

a 1 a 2Like I am pretty sure that one up there is a bird wrasse.

a 1 a 3That one, I have no idea… it doesn’t seem to be on the dive card.

a 1 a 4And neither is that one.

a 1 a 5Or that one. I run into the same problem when I go bird watching with my mom. They never look exactly like the picture in the book. Maybe they are juvenile birds, or the picture is a male and you are seeing a female. Or there are ten pages of yellow birds that all look a lot alike.

a 1 a 6Or maybe these fish just weren’t spectacular enough to get put on the cards.

a 1 a 7Makes you feel sort of bad for them.

a 1 a 8Like the kids who could never get anybody to sign their yearbooks.

a 1 a 9Look at that one… yellow… with a cool tail and a weird orange and blue oval spot on his side and he still can’t get any respect.

a 1 a 10I am pretty sure that one up there is a manybar goatfish…

a 1 a 11On the other hand, I thought that one was a manybar goatfish too… so… uh…

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And I have no idea what kind of fish those are, but they don’t have to worry about getting anyone to sign their yearbooks yet… because they are still in school…

(Ha, see what I did there?)

 

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Fishies!… part 1…

Oh yeah… snorkeling the reefs of Maui… on our second honeymoon…

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So I have some pictures of fish to share… for the next few days… Now, you might think that we had to get on some boat and go miles out in the ocean. You would be wrong. Most of the pictures were taken 30 yards offshore… right in front of our hotel…

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You could see the reef from our room.

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At low tide, you could see it really well. I swam with a sea turtle right there, but I didn’t have the good underwater camera that we borrowed from my wife’s sister yet, so I only have some pictures of the turtles taken with a disposable underwater camera, and I haven’t gotten them developed yet. But even this close to shore, the diversity of sea life was incredible. It was like swimming in an aquarium…

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That was another of my favorite places to swim… the reef right along the lava-rock shore, located conveniently right in front of our new favorite bar.

And now, some fish…

a 1 a 5That is a reef trigger fish.

a 1 a 6I think that is a convict tang surgeonfish… it isn’t always easy to tell just by looking at your dive card…

a 1 a 7That is… uh… some other kind of fish… don’t worry, I am saving the best ones for last…

a 1 a 8That’s a… fish…

a 1 a 9And that… down there in the bottom left corner… correct me if I’m wrong… but that is also a fish…

a 1 a 10Now there is a lot of dangerous stuff down there… besides the sharks, eels, stingrays, and devil scorpionfish… oooh… and I saw an octopus that was pretending to be a scorpion fish, but I hid and watched it come out and turn blue and purple… unfortunately I never got a good picture of it… but anyway, there are things down there that will cut you, rip you and poke you… and strong currents and waves and stuff… to push you into those sharp things…

a 1 a 11Also, it is very easy to get a bad sunburn while you float around in the water, so I apologize to the ladies… and some of you guys… but there will not be any pictures of me without a shirt on… safety first…

a 1 a 12I would like to identify that fish as an orangespine surgeonfish. But the tail is not exactly the same as the picture on the dive card… so it either is or it isn’t… but if it isn’t… you know the diving was awesome, if a fish like that didn’t even make the cut to get selected to be on the dive card…

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It’s a good news/bad news thing…

The good news is that I am going to mix in some stuff with all the pictures of Maui… mostly redoing old posts that most of you haven’t seen, and maybe some other stuff, like some more of my silly Tweets… The bad news is that I just uploaded all the pictures that my wife’s brother sent me… so… lots of underwater pictures from the little Go Pro camera we borrowed from them… along with some other stuff… so… uh…

In the meantime, while I organize the new pictures, here is another of my very early posts…

It was called:

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I before we, except after me…

That is my motto. This is the self-centered mind-set of an artist. Ladies, you should all date an artist at least once… (particularly a guitar player… just saying)… but for heaven’s sake, don’t ever marry one!

The truth is, even I am getting tired of hearing me talk about myself… I know, I can’t believe it either…

So let’s get back to talking about art. OK, obviously I mean my art, but it is a step in the right direction… sort of…

This is going way back to my early days as an artist, so judge me accordingly. Every artist with work hanging in the Louvre started off drawing stuff that his mom wasn’t even sure she wanted to stick up on the refrigerator, so to speak…

Here is a comic that I started that has a tie-in with the present. My brother, Jack, was a Tin Tin fan way back before the movie came to the big screen…

I notice that I signed it ‘Buzz Browne’, which is a nickname I picked up for a while when I was a teenager… never mind why…

You should check out the Tin Tin books. They are full of excitement and adventure and good family fun…

So far, this is nothing to write home about, but it is another step on the journey…

And that is as far as I got. Comics are a great way to practice your drawing, coloring, shading, and writing and story telling, all at the same time. You can also make copies, staple them together and give them to your kids or friends. Go ahead, write a storybook for your child. They will keep it forever, I bet.

We are in the home stretch of my early drawing stage. These are the last of the early works that I thought were worth keeping. These were all done on large pieces of paper, so I couldn’t scan the entire picture…

You can see the fold in the middle of that one. It would be more impressive if you could see the whole thing, but not by a lot… You can see how weak I was at shading, and the muscles are just plain lame, but the imagination is there…

Here is another alien landscape…

Again, nothing to rant about, but it interesting to note that I used a watercolor background, as well as in some of the details. The shiny towers of the alien city were done, if I remember correctly, with silver model paint. I was doing multimedia before I had ever heard the term… In fact, I don’t believe the term existed in the early 70’s… I would have to Google that…

I also played with charcoal and chalk, but not for very long…

That one seemed to be all about trying out shadows and shading, as well as light reflections. There are no wrong steps on this journey…

To finish up, here is a picture that I really wish you could see all of. I called it ‘Amsterdam reflections’ and it was loosely based on a photo I saw in National Geographic magazine. The photo showed the distinctive buildings of Amsterdam reflected in the water of a canal…

Wow, that really sort of takes me back to when I visited Amsterdam when I was a little older… The buildings looked like that to me, and I am not talking about their reflections, either… But never mind…

Thank you for bearing with me, for having patience, and for trusting that we are building to bigger and better things as we go…

I plan to do this blog for a long, long time…

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Travel should be like a good stage show… it should always leave you wanting more…

Whenever we went down to the beach at our hotel on Maui, to snorkel or take a romantic walk or to watch a sunset, I would always take a moment to gaze wistfully at the little islands in the distance…

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We made a decision on our second honeymoon not to island hop. We wanted to see one island and get to know it, and Maui was a good choice… even though the decision wasn’t easy, because I love boats and adventures…

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But what about those little islands in the distance? They aren’t famous islands. Nobody talks about them. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t adventures to be had out there…

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I have always been like that. I need to know what is around the next bend, or over the next hill…

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I would watch the trade winds move the clouds around those mountains and wonder if I was missing out on anything…

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And perhaps, that is the best thing of all about an adventure…

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It never really ends…

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It just keeps calling you back.

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And now, despite the fact that she asked me to never put her in my blog again, except for that one picture of her on the day we were married, I give you a bunch of pictures of my wife… on Maui… on our second honeymoon… because I just love her that much…

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Isn’t she beautiful? And she always looks so happy.

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I guess you can see where my daughters get their good looks.

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It was that smile that first attracted me to her.

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I mean, who doesn’t love that smile?

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There she is learning how to do a hula dance at the luau we went to.

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No, most of that food was for me… just so you know… that is how she keeps her trim figure.

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There she is relaxing in front of our hotel room… well, one of our hotel rooms… if you remember the story of how we moved a few times…

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There she is with her sister, enjoying the soothing waters of the Pacific on her toes… she does have toes… I swear…

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She always looks so glad to see me. It is really quite moving.

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There she is at the fancy dinner we went to after our re-commitment ceremony… that was a very romantic evening.

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But she likes adventure too. There she is at the top of the volcano.

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See, she is wearing the matching heart necklace we bought in Lahaina town.

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She loved the romantic sunset horse ride we took.

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And the Iao valley really brought a smile to her face.

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And who doesn’t look happy when they are all decked out in flowers?

 

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Because you never get tired of looking at pictures of me… and neither do I…

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It doesn’t matter if I am just a little drunk at a luau…

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Or spending a little quality time with a banana… hey… don’t judge me… I didn’t know my wife took that picture, but that was the banana I bought on Maui on our second honeymoon, and there is no banana quite so full of bananaliciousness as a Hawaiian banana eaten in Hawaii…

a 1 a 3Or if I am hanging out with another old sailor…

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Or dressed like a goofy tourist, walking amongst the lava flows…

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Okay… it’s a little better without the hat… but not much…

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Or I could just be enjoying a refreshing, fruity adult beverage…

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Or relaxing under a palm tree on a beach… seriously, I just sat down for a few seconds to take that one picture of my feet to do in that post about how your feet are your best friends because they take you on cool adventures, and my wife took that picture up there before I got back up again…

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I might be wading in a tropical pool near a waterfall in the jungle…

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Or sliding around on some slippery, barnacle-encrusted lava rocks taking pictures of a tide pool… wait… are we sure that’s me?

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Yeah… that’s me… I recognize the hat…

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Or maybe I am looking sort of sexy with my Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned just a little too far… you know… Like Magnum P. I.

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Or taking a break to do some reading when it was raining pretty hard…

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I might be in the passenger seat of the monster-vomit-green Mustang…

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Or looking smart in my reading glasses…

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Or perhaps petting a goat… okay, do I really look that goofy?

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Or I might be telling a story to my in-laws… I do tell a good story… In fact, I annoy people at parties because nobody can tell a story about any topic that I don’t have a better story about…

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Or even when I am just sitting behind the wheel of that crazy green car… I am just fun to look at… because I look like I am having fun.

Honestly, I am not as happy about some of these pictures as I could be. I finally finished up posting most of my pictures of the trip to Maui… minus a few selfies I slipped into this post, and some that have my wife in them and I have to Photoshop her out because she doesn’t like to be in blog… so I am now doing the pictures taken by my wife and my wife’s sister’s husband… but I can’t help thinking that I look better in selfies and close-ups than I do from further away. Hopefully that is just because I was dressed like a goofy tourist.

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Hey, I am not self-centered… I just like horses… with me on them…

Okay, I just thought it would be funny to try to figure out the best angle to take a selfie while riding on a horse… on Maui… on your second honeymoon…

a 1 a 1That one came out pretty well.

a 1 a 2Oh yeah, that captures the mood.

a 1 a 3It isn’t a bad picture of me, but you can’t see the horse.

a 1 a 4Once again, there seems to be something missing.

a 1 a 5Oh come on… if people wanted to see pictures of my face they would just look at half the other posts on this blog… which is basically just a large tribute to my own ego… I mean, I do have an entire link in my word cloud in the sidebar called: Pictures of me…

a 1 a 6Well, that’s a little better, but it is sort of blurry.

a 1 a 7Close… but no cigar…

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This is not as easy as it seems like it would be.

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Well, that certainly captures my exuberance.

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I do like the way I am grinning like a happy idiot… because that is exactly what I felt like.

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Well that’s just weird.

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Sigh.

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I am starting see why you never see any cowboy selfies from back in the days of the wild West… it isn’t easy to do… and of course, when the camera was invented in the 1800’s, they were heavy… and the pictures took a long time to expose on the plate… so they would be all blurry if you were moving… and of course they had to use a big pan of flash powder to get light in the picture, so you probably would have set your horse on fire… so… uh… yeah.

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We rode horses… on Maui… the final chapter… sort of…

So here is the story of our romantic sunset horse ride on the side of a volcano on Maui on the last night of our second honeymoon. First, I would like you to meet my new friend. Her name is Hanalei…

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When we showed up for our ride, we were delighted to find out that there were only four people going… my wife and I, the trail guide, and this cool Hawaiian surfer dude who was learning to work with the horses…

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That is our guide on the right, and her new ranch hand riding tall in the saddle, pardners. There is my buddy Hanalei, taking a drink. Now, I happen to know a little bit about horses… because I love them. Some of you may have seen right off that there is something special about Hanalei. Notice the huge hooves and the short. stiff, bristly mane. And look how strong she looks. As soon as I saw her, I asked our guide if she was part draft horse… maybe one of those Belgian ones I couldn’t remember the name of. Our trail guide was very impressed that I had spotted this, and she realized at once that I was no mere city slicker… no dude ranch cowpoke… no urban cowboy… you get the idea.

Because my wife and I were the only people who signed up to ride that night, and because she trusted us not to fall off our horses or get kicked doing something stupid, she did something awesome for us. Usually, with bigger, less experienced groups, she took them to this pond near the mouth of the valley, let them walk around for a half an hour or so while the horses drank some water, and then started them back down the trail. But she asked us if we wanted to cut the rest time a bit, and go further up into the valley…

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Well, heck yeah, I wanted to go farther… further? I can never keep those two straight…

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And we did… back where the grass is tall and the pot farmers have their secret pot fields…

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It was so awesome… oh… dang it… you can see my wife’s head up there, sticking above our guide’s head… I am not supposed to put pictures of my wife on the blog…

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Whoops… there she is again… And don’t go thinking that I was riding in back the whole time. I happen to be a much more experienced rider than my wife, and I was leading the way for a while, but I took these after we turned around to start back down, as can be seen by the fact that you can see the ocean and an island in the distance in this next photo…

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Another neat thing about this little adventure is that it was a sunset ride…

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It wasn’t the most spectacular sunset we saw on Maui…

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But watching the sun sink into the Pacific ocean from the back of a horse on Maui is pretty cool…

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I took one last look at the valley as we crossed the road and put an end to our journey…

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And then I couldn’t resist taking a picture of our monster-vomit-green convertible Mustang as the sun disappeared… because… you know… Mustangs are horses… so… uh… yeah…

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If you ever end up on Maui, give these folks a call…

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The Lahaina Stables… totally worth it.

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We rode horses… on Maui… part 2…

My horse was a hungry horse…

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She would try to stop and eat some grass every time it was growing close to the trail… and on Maui, that is most of the time. I mean, all horses like to eat…

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But you had to work to keep her moving…

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I am going to introduce you to her later today… I am just setting the mood here… but man… I love that horse…

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But when you eat that much grass, you need a big drink to wash it all down…

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Okay, I am not really telling this story very well… I will try to be more organized in my thinking if the crack squirrels will cut me some slack. The ride started off with scenery that by Maui standards was not all that impressive…

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Sure, we had the ocean on the other side to look at, but before too long we passed through some pretty forest…

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And we were headed towards this awesome valley…

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Where the grass was really tall and thick…

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