As you can see over our pilot's shoulder, the helicopter did not have doors. With my fear of heights, I was a bit worried, but once we took off, I loved it! I never once was afraid of falling out, even when we were tipped on the side. 

This is part of Waimea Canyon, and is known as the Cathedral because of the spire-like formation. 

Our pilot told us this is the closest volcanic crater to the ocean (looks like lake) in the world. 

Wai'ale'ale Crater. The photo doesn't do it justice unfortunately. 

Na Pali coastline...Ke'e Beach starts near the bottom right corner of the photo, good snorkeling there. 

Hanalei Bay...the small white dots are boats on the water. South Pacific was filmed near here. 

Red clay and shade of turquoise waters 

Turkish Delight

On the one hand, it's some awful tasting stuff you can find in the middle of chocolate bars here. But on the other, we booked our trip to Turkey today! Finally!! So on August 24th, I hit the road, yet again, to spend two days in Sarajevo with Maja before moving on to the Turkish coast for fun in the sun for a week! We've got an all inclusive package at a 5-star hotel near Bodhrum, and I can't wait. If I haven't melted by then from the heat we're having in London this week, that is.

Jumping from the top of a waterfall!

Aloha

So, Kauai...the Hawaiian islands are like no other islands, I have decided. They are unique and beautiful and kind of settle into your heart. It's in the 70s to possibly low 80s all the time although it never feels hot thanks to the trade winds. Kauai itself is the oldest of the Hawaiian islands, and supposedly the least built up of the islands that tourists can visit(I've only been to Hawaii and Kauai, but have been told the other islands are very built up). There is an island called Ni'ihau where you can go for a day trip with a snorkel boat or something, but there are no resorts, you can't stay overnight. Only Hawaiians live there, without electricity or running water, and there's some sort of law stating that if you ever move away from the island, you cannot move back. Anyway, back to Kauai...there are towns along the north, east, and south shores, and one or two towns on the western coast. Otherwise the island is a paradise of rainforest, canyons, old volcanic craters, wild coastline and beaches. We rented snorkel equipment and spent our days checking out the best beaches for snorkeling and swimming, hiking in Wiamea Canyon, checking out wet caves, hiking to the bottom of waterfalls and jumping off cliffs over waterfalls into the pools below, eating and drinking. OOh, and we also did a helicopter ride late one afternoon, which was absolutely incredible!! We stopped in the middle of the ride for a picnic at, you guessed it, a private waterfall. If there is any tiny thing I might complain about, it's that I can see why my parents honeymooned there-- there isn't much of a nightlife on Kauai, it's more romantic places to dine, beachside places to dine, beachside places to have cocktails, etc.

One afternoon, we ended up at a beach popular with kite surfers. I really want to learn, it looks like so much fun, and I can see myself doing flips in the air with one of those. I'm terrified of learning tricks on the wakeboard but I think with a kite it'd actually be fun! We had fish tacos for a lunch from a trailer parked on the beach, and I got a kick out of listening to this one guy explain to his buddies about moving back to California to live at the end of the summer. I can't remember the name of the place he was talking about, so I'll just call it Plano. "Dude, I'm gonna be living in Plano again, this place, it's like the ghetto, man. Yeah, last time I was living there, I heard like these three gunshots one night, and next morning it was all over the papers about these murders, like three guys shot each other dead! Yeah, that's where I'm livin' man, it's a ghetto. Shah." He was laughing about this story too, so I guess he's not too upset about living in a ghetto. Surfer talk lives on...

So, here are some photos for y'all.

A Kauai sunset, from Poipu Beach 

A martini cocktail, vodka infused with vanilla bean and a splash of macademia nut liquer. With an orchid on top, of course. 

Tressa and I swimming at the base of a waterfall during our helicopter tour. 

There were roosters and chickens and chicks running wild all over the place on the island. 

The colors are just unbelievably brilliant in Hawaii...this is looking down on the Na Pali coastline. 

Waterfalls in Wiamea Canyon 

The secret lava pools with spray from the surf in the background. 

Looking back up at the mouth of one of the wet caves...Tressa and I went into the water looking for the "Blue Room" but the water table was too low, so the blue room wasn't blue. I just ended up being spooked by not being able to see! 

Snorkelers at Hideways Beach 

Looking down on Hideaways beach. All the great snorkeling beaches this time of year were on the north shore, and all of them required a hike down. You can see the underwater coral features in the turquoise water. 

Lighthouse at Kilauea 

Your Chauffeur, Madame

I did not end renting a car yesterday, but instead got Viv to come pick me up at the airport around noon. And I still can't believe all the stuff we mananged to do before my flight. We had a nice long lunch at a Thai restaurant in Hoboken, where I consumed most of the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc we'd bought since Viv had been partying the night before. As we made our way back to her car, Viv saw a storefront and dragged me across the street for a shoe sale. Between the wine, and Viv's bad influence ;) love ya Viv, I walked out with 2 pairs. Bargain, actually, when you convert it back into pounds, but I'm not supposed to be spending money on shopping! So then we raced back to the airport at 5pm where I had to hurry up and wait for the check-in counter to open up to get rid of my suitcase and get my boarding card. Then we sped off for Jersey Gardens (outlets) where we did not shop, but stepped into the blessedly cool Loews movie theater to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest. It was really hot in NJ, and we are in for a heat wave here, but it's going to be even hotter in NJ this week apparently- I don't envy you guys! Wait a minute, I do...you're in the land of air conditioning! Lucky ducks. Anyway, we actually had to leave the movie about 15 minutes before the ending, to make sure I got to my gate on time, as the movie was two and a half hours long! Oops. Oh well- it was a crazy afternoon, but we laughed our butts off, and I don't even regret the pounding hangover I had by the time I boarded the plane. Two excedrin, a bottle of water, and half an hour later, it was all good. By the way, I saw Matador on the plane with Greg Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan...highly recommend it!

So I spent a grand total of an hour and a half at work today, since there was nothing for me to do, came home, took my customary three hour nap and am currently working hard to stay up until 11pm. I've been mostly awake for going on 72 hours now, and it wasn't actually all that bad. I think I hit a wall after the first 24, but was rejuvenated spending my afternoon with Viv, and felt pretty human still by the time I got to work this afternoon. Huh. Maybe sleep is overrated.

I'm still working on pics and stuff, but in the meantime, here's a video of a sea turtle frolicking in the surf at Poipu Beach Park, sunset on Thursday I think it was. My dad insists the turtle must have been feeding on something, but I still say it was having a grand old time bodysurfing! Oh turtles- they wanna have fu-un, oh turtles just wanna have fun...

Ramblings

To take stock, I am browner than usual (can't remember well enough whether this is a deeper tan than the last summer I lifeguarded), and I am stuck in Newark airport for the day. I use the word tan loosely, by the way, as I'm not tan by average standards. I had to leave Kauai on Saturday at 1:40pm, landed in San Fran just in time to start boarding for my 11pm red-eye flight to Newark. Landed here at 7am this (Sunday) morning, but was unable to collect my baggage in time to try and get onto the 8am flight to the UK, for which check-in closed at 7:20am. My ticket is for the 9pm flight tonight, but I figured it was worth a try for the morning flight. So I've crossed lord knows how many times zones at this point, with more to come before I land at Heathrow on Monday morning. I think it's about 4:30am in Kauai, 10:30am here. It was odd being in Kauai and realizing that in the UK, they were 11 hours ahead of me. So at 8am there, it was already 7pm in the UK. Or, even stranger, at 8pm in Kauai, it was already 7am of the next day in the UK. At this point in time, I don't think my body has any clue what time it is, whether I'm hungry, or even whether I'm tired or just on the verge of a monster headache. I think it might have been worth getting a hotel room for the day, or a car rental, in which case I could have just gone to my parent's house for 8 or 9 hours, but my head's a bit too fuzzy to sort out the logistics. Too bad I didn't think of that idea a couple of weeks ago.

I have two stories I think I'll write about, maybe later today, who knows, only two because I realize I've gone on and on in the past about my adventures, which may or may not have been interesting. And I have some great pics as well... not too many with people in them unfortunately, I guess we got carried away with the scenery...but I'll try to be selective with the pictures as well. Oh, and I may be changing my blog hosting site, but will let you know if I do. I'm not sure I can take this all day, so I think I'll go see a man about a car. Keep your fingers crossed, hopefully it will be reasonable rates.

Goofing off on the Fourth, during a pause in the VanDerMintens' fireworks show.

Teddy, learning to play with his balls in the water 

Wissahickon, as seen from the docks 

View of the docks and lake, with Tressa out on the float on the left hand side of the pic. 

Wayne showing the new munchkins how it's done in the junk drawer - passing the torch! 

A tradition at the lake, before dessert you lick your fork and pass it to the left 

Teddy and Wayne, sharin' a brewski 

Wissahickon

I think I broke my neck-damn my competitive spirit!- but other than that, it was a great week in Vermont and I was loathe to leave. We didn't have rain all week, and of course it was bright and sunny when it was time to go :( Some highlights included:

"Free Bird"...As I drove the last hour and a half of the trip to the lake, I hit a bird. Everyone else tried to convince me that the bird had probably run into other windshields before, and was probably just stunned. Meanwhile, I was laughing hysterically and crying at the same time, a very odd sensation, and pointing at the smear on the windshield with little white feathers in it, going, the bird is dead, it wasn't wearing a damn helmet! You have to have a thick skin at the lake, you have to be able to hold your own in an argument, and you have to be able to pull BS out of thin air on a moment's notice, or you won't survive. Viv wore her free bird shirt the following day to see if she could get a rise out of me, and I just died laughing, pronoucing the bird to be no longer bound by earthly ties, amen!

My fritos fight with Viv...video to come as soon as Jinny sends it to me.

Driving the motor boat solo for the first time, trollin' for guys in my bikini! ;)

Meeting Wayne's teacup yorkie, Teddy, who is half the size of Gerry...I want one!

The Wenners trying to catch sunnies in a net by dropping bright orange tic tacs in the lake as bait. One sunny was dropped onto the dock to see what Teddy what do about it, and as the fish hit the dock, it spit a tic tac back out at us!!

Sitting around the bonfire at night, with Sam or Wayne playing the guitar, making up verses to the blues from whatever mischief had gone on that day, eating s'mores and looking for shooting stars.

Reconnecting with Wayne for the first time in several years, and reminiscing about growing up together in Vermont...you'll see the junk drawer in a picture when I post them where we spent many happy hours with our imaginations and whatever happened to be in the drawer. We ran hotels, fooled around with snaps (small fireworks for kids that make a snapping sound when you throw them on the pavement), built fishing lures and so much more.

Skiing behind the boat as the sun goes down and the lake has cleared of all the daytime traffic for the most part. I do wish I hadn't taken a couple of nasty spills at high speeds as I slalomed for the first time this season....although that may have had something to do with the couple of drinks I'd already had (we operate on the "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" rule at the lake, so it's not uncommon to see beer at breakfast or soon after).

Yuengling Black and Tan- yum! One of the beers I do drink. And Key-Lime Martinis, which I now know how to make, thanks Chris!

The Alpine Slides at Bromley.

And then there was the Fourth of the July, an outstanding holiday this year if I do say so myself. Myself, Wayne, Tress and Chris took the motor boat out across the lake once darkness had fallen for the best seats in the house. Last year, Chip VanDerMinten (yes, they are horribly rich, how could they not be with a pretentious name like that, and they do own the loudest fastest boat on the lake) put on a gigantic fireworks display, and the word went out the following day that he'd spent $10,000 on the show. This year, there was a bigger, better fireworks display around the corner of the big lake, which we did get to see, but we didn't know Chip's show was going to be disappointing at the time. He played awful synthesizer music which wasn't timed to the fireworks at all (when we'd first arrived, he was playing great music for his guests, we don't know why he chose the music he did for the pyrotechnics). So we drank beer and sickeningly sweet wine coolers, made fun of Chip, of the other boats around us and their horns (one sounded like clown noses), and almost lost Chris overboard, dancing on the seat when some waves hit us! We drifted several times during the show, so we fired up the motor a couple of times to get us back into position. Unfortunately, once the grand finale was done, we discovered that with all our maneuvering, we'd flooded the motor. We tried to start it up several times, then gave up for a while and turned on the radio. I finally tuned into a rock station, and we all broke up laughing so hard our stomachs hurt as Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" came on...we sang "Motorin! What's your price for flight..." at the top of our voices as we sat dead in the water with a flooded motor. We finally decided to try the oars, making pirate jokes, and singing the "stuck in the middle of the lake blues" as we realized we weren't going anywhere fast with the oars. Chris decided to use the flashlight to send an SOS signal back to those at the cottage, but none of us could remember SOS is three short, three long, three short. As we took stock of what we had for survival- one wine cooler left- we realized we'd completely forgotten to try the motor again for quite some time. And it worked! We were no longer stranded. You probably had to be there, but I don't think any of us had laughed that hard for a long time :) Good times, good times, and just like old times.

Beckham, Rats, and more

So, England is out. In the end, it came down to penalty kicks. And being a former Varsity field hockey goalie myself, let me just say that when it comes to penalty kicks, some goalies got it, some goalies don't. Robinson don't.

And then in maybe not a shocker, but definitely a surprise, Brazil was eliminated thanks to the goal scored by Thierry Henri. What a weekend this would have been to be in Paris!

I take off for Vermont in a couple of hours here, but had a few thoughts to wrap up from the training course, which I really enjoyed. Probably had something to do with taking on the student role again, and being with a bunch of people who were all talking rehab talk. It was good to be talking treatment techniques in which you're problem-solving ways to actually make a long-lasting difference in someone's life. Speaking of which, I had an email waiting for me this morning from a stroke patient I worked with for 3 months before leaving for the UK. Seems he is doing really really well, not only able to move his right arm now but also pick up light weight objects and more. He's also walking without a cane now. I don't typically give out my email, but for whatever reason, with this family I did, and I am so happy every time I get an update every 2-3 months. Especially at the moment, that email today was a great reminder of why I do what I do. That what I do does matter, at least to a few people along the way ;)

Anywho, with our review of neuroanatomy, the male OT lecturer waxed poetic in talking about how even though the anatomy is the same, our brains are what make us unique...and naturally used David Beckham as an example. He talked about how he has played football all his life, but could never take a free kick in the same way Beckham does. He could try to replicate the funny setup Beckham does, sideways to the ball, but could never ever do exactly what Beckham does. So we are all unique, and the ways in which we interpret things, and the ways in which we do things can become even more unique if there has been an accident....

One of the other things this guy talked about rung a bell, because he was quoting some research that's been done with rats. How scientists have run tests on neuroplasticity, how well the nerve pathways in the brain can regenerate or rebuild themselves after an injury, by studying rats where they have created lesions on their brains. A ways back, when I was at Rob's house with a bunch of his friends playing poker until almost dawn, I got a chance to talk a little bit with this guy Mark, who isn't studying exactly the same thing, but is also involved in research studies using rats and their brains. And while I'm not a big proponent of animal testing, I do realize it's a necessary evil, and that there is great value to the information collected through research like what Mark is involved in. The research that our lecturer was quoting did find that in rats with lesions on their brains, if they were given a stimulating environment (wheels to run on etc), their brains regenerated more synapses, more pieces of a new nerve pathway, than did the brains of rats who did not have such stimulation. It's an interesting argument for structuring the challenges provided to patients with any type of brain injury-- and an argument for when you come up against those families who want to do everything for their loved one, and unfortunately can often be an obstacle to progress.

And finally, there is a new theory out there about applying constraint-induced therapy to cognitive dysfunctions. Constraint-induced therapy is a somewhat controversial treatment which can used in stroke patients who have lost the use of an arm. You physically restrain the arm that is functioning well, forcing them to try to use the other arm for functional tasks, and thereby avoiding something called "learned nonuse." Many patients will stop using the weak arm at all, because every time they've tried, they've failed. They learn to not use the weak arm, which basically becomes dead weight. Since you can't strap down a piece of the brain, I really don't get applying this concept to cognitive dysfunction, but apparently the idea is out there! Chew on that for awhile Midge and Kristy!!

The holiday is coming up shortly, so Happy Fourth of July to you all! I may or may not update a few times from Vermont, I really don't know, but if nothing else, I'll be back online in two weeks or so. Lots of love, Allison.

Dubya

I arrived at Newark airport late last night, and while waiting in line at passport control was subjected to a televised speech from Bush about how newspapers should not be allowed to report on shady anti-terror measures enacted by himself and Congress since we are currently at war. It's extremely embarrassing to be an American with this idiot representing us, and reminded me of some of the reasons I'd forgotten I had for leaving the country. Enjoy the joke below, I'm going to get a quick shower before the England-Portugal game...

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move."

"Oh," said the man, "Whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."