Maui (not so) waui

originally uploaded by pr9000.

In Minneapolis, Mother Nature is screwing over the entire Midwest.

In Maui, Mother Nature is screwing me over by raining for hours and hours while the top was down on our car.

Now the car is extremely clean, but it probably smells like a mushroom forest in there.

So the weather hasn't exactly been great here; we're on the northern tip of Maui and it seems like we're in the path of a bunch of rain clouds and high, heavy winds. Seriously -- the first two days here felt a lot like Minnesota in late September, which as you can imagine isn't exactly nice ... nicer than two feet of snow, of course, but still, not what you'd expect in a tropical paradise.

When you drive south about 10 minutes, toward Lahaina, the weather magically changes: warmer, less breezy, almost hot. It's very odd. You can almost pinpoint the exact mile marker where the change happens.

This photo, along with a whole bunch of others, was taken as we drove north toward Poelua Bay ... my lovely wife's manager and I had a boys' day off. It involved much photography, and at least one harrowing trip down volcanic soil, toward a secluded beach that you couldn't even see from the road.

Now my feet hurt, my sandals are deeply worn (of course I didn't wear good shoes) ... and a good time was had by all. It was the way I wanted to spend the day, which is good, because vacations don't always work as a "one destination, two agendas" kind of event. In this case, my lovely wife had a day with the girls, and I had a nerd-a-thon with the boys.