Got Built?

The night before we left for home, we tried to see lava. We had tried a few days earlier, after visiting volcano national park, but discovered toward the end of our day that the hike was two and a half hours across a charred lava field and we were out of water and sunlight.

We had read of a private access road that would bring us closer, near Hilo, so that’s where we went.

It was supposed to be a 20-minute walk.

We hooked up with another couple, a nice doctor from Maui and his girlfriend, a realtor, whom we later referred to as “danger girl”. You’ll understand why in a few minutes.

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About an hour in, we did see a few pixels of fire:

We were getting warmer.

I mean this literally. There were gusts of warm air coming up from between crevices in the lava, and one of the slabs I stepped on was HOT.

I jumped off and announced I was turning around. NOW. The sun was going down, I did NOT want to get stuck out there, roasting.

Danger-girl pressed on, her reluctant doctor friend in tow.

As it grew darker, the mountain lit up more and more - quite an amazing sight. But I was getting scared and I wanted to leave. A few more pix, and we turned around. But by then, the sun had gone down. We started walking. And walking. And walking. Three hours in, hubby admitted he was lost. I felt ill, contemplating an evening of either walking aimlessly in vain hope of finding our way back to the unlit area where our car was hiding in the middle of a barren lava field in the dark, or waiting for the sun to come up while we hoped we didn’t become Pele’s next snack.

Just when all hope was lost … hubby spotted a beautiful sight: car tail-lights. Another half hour of trudging brought us to where the locals were parked to watch the evening light-show. Our car was parked next to an old hippie who sounded EXACTLY like Father Guido Sarducci - “I sella the Noni juice-a, I gotta this girl in Japan who moves-a 400 gallons a month … I come-a out-a here-a all-a da’ time-a to watcha da volcano, this one-a time I gotta trapped with lava all arounda me, me and-a my boy, we had quite-a da fire show, totally amazing, we tooka lots of pictures… so this here Noni-a-juice, it’s-a got lots of the antioxidants-a, buildsa your immune-a function, here’sa my card, you write-a to me and I’ll send-a you some in-a-formation… ”

Buddy liked to talk!

Okay, almost end of cut here - about 132 lbs and I figure about 15-16% bodyfat in these, all from Saturday the 30th of October: Both sides …  (hit “more” to see pix) (more…)

So my cut ended not quite where I had intended. I got down to I THINK about 14%, hit 130 for these pix, (more…)

A few more pix. This is from the beach in Kailua, just after training and before an epic adventure to Find Lava. More later.

(as always, click for larger image)

Front squats, 5×5 with 145

Front squats, 3×10 with 105 done as antagonist pairs with 3×10 good mornings

Standing bicep curls, 3×8 with 25 a side

Neck is bothering me - seems worse after fronts, but they work well for quads. Must think about this …

Also, the foot is still bad. I trained in socks and sandals. I’m kinda getting used to it, but I miss the stability of my skate shoes for fronts. No cardio until I can walk in shoes again.

Easter long weekend was my last hoorah - gotta get back on with the cut. Heh. Okay, gotta totally start over. Whatever.<br> 

Workout will be the usual Tuesday fare: Quad dominant, ham accessory, maybe a little bicep work.

Thing is, I injured my paw in Hawaii. I’d love to say it was escaping a fresh lava flow, but in reality I tripped over a concrete parking-lot marker while holding my sleeping niece.

I lost some skin, but didn’t jostle the tyke - she didn’t even wake up.

My last few workouts in Hawaii were in sandals.

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My last lean pix before
the Great Hawaiian Ice Cream Extravaganza …

I really like these shots taken by my five-year-old niece. The part that amuses me is, of course, the perspective. Here I am coming back from Timmy Ho’s (Canadian culture at it’s finest) at the Vancouver International Airport:

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Okay, I’m lying.

But I CAN do pullups:

We joined a gym in Kailua-Kona, briefly - one week cost 45 bucks USD, so we cheaped out and only did the one. Daily drop-ins were $15, so our mission was to train more then three times. Simple math.

Not a bad gym - two squat racks and a power cage, all underutilized. A few hammerstrength machines, a pool, a sauna (yep, that’s EXACTLY what I want to do in Hawaii, take in a sauna … ).

I always love people-watching in a foreign gym. This one had a LOT of “functional training” - folks standing on bosu balls to do clean and press … always good for a chuckle.

We managed one complete cycle of Baby Got Back at unremarkable weights, and still, after a week off, we were the strongest men in that room.

You heard me …

When I was a little girl, after dad left and there was really no way to pay to fix the dryer, mom went back to hanging stuff out on the line to dry.

“The line” was about a hundred feet of vinyl-covered, braided-steel wire strung between two pulleys - one attached to the house, the other to the tree at the far north-west corner of our lot.

There was an indescribable sound that came off that line - an unholy, rhythmic asynchronicity from the two slightly out-of-synch pulleys that defined alpha and omega for this primitive setup. Remarkably, this exact sound greets dawn in Kona - a rhythmic, inescapable screech emitted by some breed of tropical bird … at 6:00 AM, I find myself wondering “white meat, or dark ..?.”