The Decompression of a Boomer

We spent a lot of time in and around Princeville where Steph and Vic own their home. Every morning David, Eric and I walked down to Annini beach, you know, to whip our bodies into shape. The path down to the beach is right next to the Westin Resort, just a short cut across the golf course from Steph and Vic’s house. Here is the entrance to the path:

David starts down

It’s hard to capture how steep this walk is – but it’s basically like climbing five stories in about 400 paces. It’s extremely treacherous after a rain. Slip and land on your butt just once to experience in full measure the ‘anger us conditions.’

We’re down now, at the beach.

There’s a huge sand bar so the waves crash very far out. The first time we came here we waded in and caught some sea cucumbers, which, basically look and act like … cucumbers.

I always trailed behind making it back up. I snapped photos of Eric and David ascending the path above me.

Eric is half way up

climbing the other half – back to the top

Whew! Check that one off!

You can hardly navigate Princeville without circling this fountain in the roundabout.

And spotting Layson albatross either circling overhead, doing their courting dance, or nesting. They tend to return to the same place to nest every year. There are two albatross pairs nesting on Stephanie and Victor’s street. One pair is nesting right in a neighbor’s front garden.

Albatross bond with a mate for life. Their courtship entails especially elaborate dances that have up to 25 ritualized movements.

They can’t breed until they are five years old. Both birds incubate the egg – the male does so first. There is a 65-day incubation period and the chick takes about 160 days to fledge. To mate and raise a chick requires a big commitment! Maybe that’s why you see a lot of single Albatross hanging around.

Looking studly and regal.

Albatross live a long time. The oldest known live bird, a female named Wisdom, is at least 63 years old. She recently hatched a healthy chick, believed to be her 36th (to summarize some of the information in the linked article above).

We always try to earn our keep at Steph and Vic’s house to the best of our ability, you know, stay in their good graces so they might invite us back! Although by our second day here, Eric was already getting us in trouble.

“What’s the deal with those chairs you sent, Eric?”

Eric had sent Victor and Steph two antique dining chairs from his store back in Idaho and promised Victor they would arrive the same day (or before) we did – He had shipped them in a single box. Well, they didn’t arrive; not yesterday and … not today either. “You have spider duty, Eric, if they don’t arrive soon.” Victor tells him.

Oh wait! A package has arrived!

“Is this the chairs, Eric? You just add water to expand them to normal size?”

Two more packages arrive. No chairs.

Victor is also unhappy about a certain detail concerning the antique round oak table Eric had sent two years back. It pulled apart to add leaves but one edge of the seam down the middle stuck up about 1/16th of an inch – it was annoying, and Eric had worked on it last year and declared it fixed.

“The edge is still sticking up Eric.”

Eric fiddled with it. Unscrewing screws underneath, screwing them back in. Adjusting this and that. Finally David, being a physicist, volunteered his expertise.

two hunky dudes

Voila! Table fixed.

The chairs did finally arrive. They worked out great.

Eric got out of spider duty. But he had to install the new birdfeeder. Fill it with organic birdfeed.

Then work on it again to straighten it.

The birds caught on really fast – “Hey, new hot spot open for lunch!”

Happy birds

Happy birds make happy Steph and Victor. Happy Steph and Victor makes happy world. Jody, David and Eric’s world: Incredibly happy.

I sneak in to capture a picture of the masses of happy birds, including those gathered on the ground around the feeder.

Oops. No worry. Within 60 seconds they’re all back and everything is happy again.

So ends another day in Paradise.

Life is good.

Tags: Annini Beach, Kauai, Layson albatross, Princeville

This entry was posted on February 1, 2015 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Kauai, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.