I started using Instagram in about May of 2015 after noticing that I mainly posted photos to Facebook.  With time I started using it almost exclusively; even though I also share them across platforms, I tend to avoid looking at Facebook itself.  As 2015 started to wind down, a number of people began posting a “Best of 2015” mosaic, showing their nine most popular photos from the year.  It’s easy to do, but when, out of curiosity, I ran it for my account, I discovered a flaw.  The number of “likes” you get is highly dependent on the number of hashtags you use, and the popularity of the tags.  Use something popular like “lego” and you can end up with many more people looking at your image, and consequently can end up with a disproportionate number of likes.

I didn’t like the skewed rankings, and set out to create my own mosaic.  At first I wanted to pick my favorite photos, but as I was looking through them my goal changed.  Instead of necessarily picking out my favorites, I picked the ones that held the most meaning or represented important events.  I actually surprised myself with some of my choices, since a couple pictures I thought were a given for inclusion because they were simply cool didn’t make the final cut.

Some of the images represent a deeper meaning or event beyond what it actually shown.  With this in mind, I decided to include a description of what they mean to me and why I included them.  This made it much more of an involved project than creating a simple nine-photo mosaic, which is why I’ve posted this long description here instead of directly with the image.  (Perhaps this is what happens when you have the day off on New Years Day and don’t have a television to watch any bowl games.)

Thanks for following me on this trip down memory lane.  All told it’s been quite a year (especially since this just covers the second half of it), and I look forward to what 2016 holds in store.

Solar Impulse 2 landed at Kalaeloa just after sunrise on July 3rd, following a nearly five day flight from Nagoya, Japan.  This was an amazing accomplishment, setting multiple records including longest flight by a solar-powered aircraft (both distance and time) and longest solo flight in any type of aircraft.  We had the great fortune to join a number of local pilots in their hangar at Kalaeloa to watch the landing, mingled with the group of Solar Impulse dignitaries during the landing, and then wandered back to the reception hangar with them to officially welcome the aircraft and Andre Borschberg to Hawaii.  This event ranks right up there with watching SpaceShiftOne’s first flight into outer space from Mojave in 2004.  (How do we end up at these events?)  We spent all morning at the airport and received a personalized tour from one of the assistant flight directors.  I had previously helped him with some local weather knowledge; SI2 is a very large but also very light plane (wingspan of a 747 but weight of a car), and they wanted information on local weather patterns and climate.  (This was one of those situations where the relationships I have developed as the office aviation weather program manager provided some amazing and unforeseen benefits.)  I have many photographs from the landing and the tour, and they really deserve to be shared; hopefully I will be able to update this brief description with a link to a more detailed one in the near future.

In one of those trips that harken back to our non-rev days, Lisa and I went to Europe with only the following concrete plans:  fly into Paris on Monday 10/19 and fly out of Copenhagen on Sunday 11/1.  (We also wanted to bike through the Loire River Valley and catch up with a friend in Brussels, so it’s not like we didn’t have any agenda.)  The bike idea really set the stage for the whole trip.  In order to be self-supported, we traveled with only carry-on bags and avoided picking up tchotchkes along the way.  It’s funny how the souvenir you think you need doesn’t speak to you quite so loudly when you realize you’ll have to carry it on your back for the next two weeks.  (Of course this restraint was thrown out the window in our last city when confronted with the selection of craft beer only available locally during a tour of the Carlsberg Brewery.)  We rented touring bikes from a great shop in Orleans. (Cycles Tabard:  they get a full 5/5 stars for support, equipment, and friendliness, and a whole-hearted recommendation for anyone looking to tour the Loire valley.)  From Orleans we rode as far as Amboise, caught the train to Chinon for a couple nights, then train back to Orleans to return the bikes.  We have many pictures from this part of the trip, including ones that show some of the beautiful scenery, but this is the one I chose because it has both Lisa and me in it together.  (We’re as close as we trusted we could get while riding without crashing into each other.)  Not only did we get to see a part of France that most people miss, and to see it in such detail and at such a speed that you can really enjoy it, but more importantly we got to spend the whole time together.  Whether we were riding single file through towns and using our radios or riding side by side in the country, we spent the whole time chatting.  What did we talk about?  Anything and everything.  Actually it’s just like a normal day together, but with nothing but beautiful countryside to get in the way.

This photo is from the pau hana that Hawaii Bicycling League organized at the end of Bike To Work Day.  We showed up early and offered to help, and they put us to work behind the bar.  Kona Brewing had donated several cases of Longboards, and someone had to give them out.  Beyond the event itself, this photo represents how we have become more active in the cycling community.  From spending time with them, I realize how much the people at HBL believe in what they’re doing.  I want to learn from their example, and do what I can to make cycling safer and more accessible for everyone.  I also posted a photo from earlier in the day, when we were helping at one of the energizer stations, giving people snacks and coffee on their way to work.  (It was certainly a full day of bike-related community service.)  However, I had to include this one instead, since it reflects another aspect of our personalities–we’re horrible at mingling.  Given the chance at a party, Lisa and I would much rather stand in the corner and talk amongst ourselves than go out and meet new people.  However, when you play bartender, every comes to see you.  You don’t have to start a conversation, since they’ll start it for you.  And, you don’t get stuck talking to one person for too long since there’s usually someone else in line behind them.  All that, and you feel like you did something useful–highly recommended.

For this one, my caption with the original post says it all most of it:  “This seems like one of those nights you only see in a movie. Walking back to the hotel after a late dinner, we pass a bar with live music. Really good music. Like, people walking in off the street couldn’t believe it was free type music. It was just a piano player and a singer, but they carried that place. She had a great stage presence in addition to a voice and really knew how to work the room. So we stop for a drink (supposedly) and end up closing the place hours later. During that time, we made friends with the singer, invited the piano player (a former transatlantic racer) to go sailing back home, and met a couple of teachers from Wales who invited us to stay at their place on holiday. And there was another Welshman now living in New Zealand who might be described as a rugby hooligan yet who kept buying flowers from the street peddlers outside. Then, music over and finally back on our way home again, it starts to rain, but that’s OK because it’s warm despite being the end of October. And of course a couple small local grocery stores on the way to the hotel are still open, because it’s only 130am, not late at all, so we stop and get some bananas to have with breakfast.”  The one contextual thing I want to add is that I have a natural tendency to be lazy and not want to try new things.  If fact, we walked by this bar at first despite hearing the music inside, because it was late, I was tired, and we had to catch the train to Brussels in the morning.  But by the end of the block, I realized a couple things:  1) we’re on vacation and can set our own schedule; and 2) how often does an opportunity like this present itself?  We didn’t travel all the way to Europe to go to bed at a reasonable hour.  So, we went back to the bar and the rest, as they say, is history.

I took this photo of the two of us while sitting in the bandstand at Kapiolani Park after finishing the 2015 Honolulu Century Ride.  We’ve ridden in the HCR for many years, but this is the first time I completed the full 100 miles. Over the past year or two, I had come to realize that long group rides are not my thing.  I don’t have the attention span for riding all day, and I certainly don’t have the temperament for being surrounded by an endless supply of other riders.  Any time I go for a long ride, it’s always to a destination, even if that destination is a made-up reason to go for a ride (for example, riding to Hawaii Kai for breakfast at Jack’s or lunch at Kona Brewing).  HBL has two major rides each year, a metric century starting in Haleiwa in the spring and the full century starting in town in the fall.  We had already completed the full Haleiwa ride a few years ago, and this was the last chance I gave myself for completing the full century.  As I mentioned, I realized these large group rides aren’t my thing, and we decided we should volunteer from the support side rather than riding in the next event.  Lisa and I rode together for most of the course, but were starting to slow down by the 75 mile point in Kailua.  (The batteries in our radios had also just died, so no more chatting to pass the time.)  She caught a ride with one of the HBL guys in a support vehicle, and I took off on my own.  Sensing the end being near, I made some pretty good time during the last stretch, finishing the day in 7:43.  Achievement unlocked!

I snagged this photo in Orleans, on a promenade along the Loire River.  The bike shop where we rented our touring bikes was a bit outside of the city center, and we used Velo+ bike share bikes to ride out there.  When the guys at Cycles Tabard were getting our touring bikes ready, we returned the bike share bikes to the closest station, which was just past this area.  We saw this guy doing some amazing acrobatics just for the fun of it.  Ok, maybe he was trying to impress his friends or doing it for YouTube posterity (many of them had cell phones trained on him), but it was still just a local kid hanging out with his friends.  This is the sort of thing that we would have missed if we hadn’t been getting around by bike.  Beyond this one event, this picture represents something that we’ve come to realize more and more as we commute through Honolulu by bike:  Life is happening all around us, and people zipping by in cars don’t even realize they’re missing it.  Not only do you enjoy more sights and smells (and believe me, with some of the flowering bushes and trees around here, there are some amazing smells), but you also make a human connection with the other people on the road.  You say howzit or nod to the bikes going the other way on the bike path; you strike up a conversation with someone stopped at a light; you smile at a pedestrian out walking and they smile back at you.  This picture reminds me never to take for granted the world outside that you would otherwise miss when speeding by in a car.

I still like the caption I posted with this photo from the 4th of July:  “Nothing celebrates the birth of a republic like rum-soaked maraschino cherries covered in layers of sugar.”  We’ve had people over to the boat to watch the Magic Island Fireworks for the past few years, and the numbers have really gone up the last two–especially in 2015.  I think we counted 30 people on the boat at one point.  One of my coworkers said that when he was having a cigarette on land, he noticed the masts of all the boats.  There wasn’t much wind or swell and all of them were upright and steady–except for ours.  With all those people on deck, it was swaying back and forth like crazy.  Which seems only fitting, since we were having a crazy fun time.  This photo represents that gathering, but in a larger sense it also represents the way that Hawaii is our home.  We are much more involved and social here than we were in any other place we’ve lived.  When I think back to the people here that night, there were coworkers from the NWS, students from the meteorology department, sailors that we race with, and people from around the world that we recently met and simply connected with.  These people have become like family out here, and it’s nice to be able to invite them over for an evening of camaraderie and colorful explosions.

During our visit to Michigan in August, there was a 5k run/walk fundraiser in Davison for a local charity that helps homeless families stay together and get back on their feet.  My mom had done the walk the previous year, and, knowing that Lisa and I had started running since moving to Hawaii, thought we might like to join them.  We like doing destination races, and this one sounded like fun.  Unfortunately we ended up having to squeeze in a moving trip to sort through all of our old household goods (that’s another story unto itself); however, Lisa took care of the movers and gave me the chance to do the race.  I hadn’t done much running this year, instead focusing on cycling with a goal of riding 200 miles each month.   Looking back, I had only run once before this since January, even missing perennial favorites like the Great Aloha Run and Ford Island 10k.  So, I didn’t expect much from myself, and was just hoping to stay under a 10 minute pace.  It was on the cold side that morning (60F–cold by Hawaii standards) and cloudy/drizzly, but apparently that was good for someone use to running in a much warmer climate.  I ended up setting a new 5k personal record of 25:11!  The course ran through the Regional Park and out into Collingwood for a bit, then finished back in the park.  I felt kind of like a tourist, not someone who grew up in Davison.  For at least the first mile, I was looking all around in amazement and thinking things like “I don’t remember there being a lake there.”

Lisa and I completed our PADI open water dive certification over the summer.  I didn’t have any cool underwater pictures to post (during the training dives I was kind of preoccupied with things like learning how not to drown), so the best image I could think of to post was this one that the dive shop took and used for my certification card.  And, I really wanted to post something about it because I was proud of the accomplishment.  Not that it’s a hard process–it was rather enjoyable, especially since we had a pair of excellent instructors.  But as I mentioned above, I’m generally lazy and not interested in trying new things, so it was a big accomplishment just to get out to do it.  We had talked abut getting our open water certification for years, ever since we did an introductory dive on the Great Barrier Reef back in 2010, but just had never gotten around to it.  A new friend provided the kick we needed to get going.  She wanted to do a night dive with the manta rays on the Big Island, and convinced Lisa to get certified so we could go with her.  (It turns out I wasn’t able to make that dive, having to get back to Oahu for a forecast shift that I couldn’t swap out of.  I know–unheard of, right?)  Beyond just the dive certification, this photo represents a larger change in our attitudes–making conscious attempts to move out of our comfort zones and try new things.

That seems to be the theme for this past year:  getting out of our comfort zone.  Whether it’s learning how to dive, socializing with a big group while playing bartender, or taking off for Europe with just a backpack, we’ve made a conscious effort to try new things and really get out and enjoy life.  Hopefully we’ll carry on even more during 2016.  If I ever have any doubts, I can just look back at this page and remember all that we’ve accomplished in 2015.  Happy New Year!  Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!