A Birthday Blog

    Soixante-huit...huit that sounds like wheat.  Wheaties...Breakfast of Champions!

The Greatest lived to 74.  Am I on pace?

     That loose word association was floating around my head a week ago as I snorkeled on the Ironman side of the pier.  It was a glorious day, relatively dry, with a light breeze and blue skies, which should have lifted my spirits, but last Saturday was my 68th birthday.  I suppose my associations were attempting to put the best face possible on the inexorable aging process.  There is always the old saw, "Consider the alternative."

    I had originally planned on swimming Paul Allen's Reef, but that morning there was a Kai 'Opua (the paddling club based in Kailua Kona) event that took up the entire beach in front of the King Kamehameha Hotel.  I was to discover after my swim that the founder of the club had passed away and that this convocation of paddlers was a memorial to him.  "Uncle Bo" Campos made it to 83.  Quatre-vingt-trois. Not too shabby.

    I didn't see too much that Saturday morning.  On the way out, I encountered a friendly  whitemouth moray that insisted on having his picture taken.   And on the way back in I happened upon this well illuminated two spot lizardfish.  Certainly,  it was good to get out and have swim on my birthday, enjoy the sun, the fishh and the friendly people on the beach.  For sure, our family and friends on the mainland weren't snorkeling, more likely they were shoveling the driveway.  So this was pretty
good.

A whitemouth moray providing me with a happy birthday greeting.

   The week following that nascent event was spent, largely, getting the Casa Ono kitchen put back together, including the installation of new counter tops.  So you see, not only can I still go snorkeling, but I can stand on a ladder and paint walls.  Hoo rah. 

    Yesterday, I made it back to the pier.  Not only are we entering a period of calm seas, but the weather had cleared after two days of torrential rain.  This day I had the beach in front of the hotel virtually to myself.   There was a nice young family from Seattle that permitted me to waste their time while I put on my gear.  Their children were exactly the ages of Colsen and Reid and they had been enjoying the ocean. What's up with that?

Can a lizard fish even say, "Happy birthday?"

     After braving the cold of the Inner Harbour,  I checked in with the coral croucher, still residing in front of Paul's lagoon.  I have just done some sleuthing back through the blogs to discover that this coral croucher was first seen on August 31, 2018.  That's almost six months of crouching in the same
coral.  Is it time to call Guiness to see if its a world record.  Or is it time to raise a pint of Guiness  and say, "Good on ya, Spotty!"

   Around the corner I was striking out until I happened upon a Whitley's trunkfish.  This fish seems to be a specialty of the area around the Kailua Kona pier; it is uncommon both north and south of this single location.   I hadn't seen one for a while, so it was good to get a Whitley's for this year and the experience was augmented by the acceptable picture that you see here.

  

Whitley's Trunkfish, Paul Allen's Reef, Kailua Kona February 2019

     A few minutes later I happened upon a mushroom coral.  Before the great coral die off of three years ago, this species was not terribly unusual in this location.  Like the cauliflower coral, the mushroom coral took a pretty big hit.  Perhaps this coral is a harbinger of good things to come.

Mushroom coral, Paul Allen's Reef, February 2019.

    On my way back to the beach I saw a Hebrew cone that was sitting shiva for Uncle Bo.  Bo has gone to that ocean in the sky, where the skies are blue, the seas are flat and everyone strokes in unison.  I, on the other had, am still here with you and our friends the fishes.  May the dear good Lord bless us, one and all.

Jeff

Kai 'Opua says aloha nui loa to Uncle Bo.