Hawaiian Dreams

I've been promising to tell the tale behind my Hawaiian WIP (Work In Progress) for as long as I've been in the quarterly quilt completion challenge. Now that I'm finally serious about finishing the Hawaiian Punch project, I thought this is the best time to share what I hope you will find to be a humorous story that also happens to be completely true, no embellishment whatsoever.

I won a trip to Hawaii back in 2003, and I took the trip of a lifetime with a very dear friend in June of 2004. I did this instead of doing my annual Elephant Rock bicycle ride and the 2004 Ride the Rockies week-long bicycle tour because my knee was still showing signs of over-training and enthusiastic participation in my first Ride the Rockies in June of 2003.

Nevertheless, I still had BIG bicycle plans for Hawaii, which I will detail in the next three weeks.

One of the now-laughable experiences during my trip of a lifetime didn't make it into the official story because it was not funny at all to me back then. I shot 1,600 photos during the trip. You would expect no less of me, right?

This was back in 2004, when memory cards were not a dime a dozen and not easily available even in grocery stores. They also didn't have a whole lot of space. I think I could get maybe 200 photos on a card back then.

One of the cards crashed before I could get it backed up at home. I wasn't about to lose 200 photos of my dream vacation!!! I went through the Yellow Pages... that was back before we could look up everything on the internet. I found a business that would attempt to save what they could from the tiny little memory card for $100. They saved 96 of the photos.

Now, it's hilarious to me, but back then, it was grounds for ulcers. I can't wait to go back with my Lizard one day and reshoot the photos I lost. Perhaps even live out my Mauna Kea cycling dream with my Cycling Partner!


Aside from what I think is an incredibly funny story, my trip of a lifetime also introduced me to Hawaiian quilting. I bought a pillow kit at the Polynesian Cultural Center, finished it when I got back home, and then purchased my first ever fat quarter collection so I could make a whole quilt.

Of course, between "winning" the trip and actually going, I'd met Lizard and fallen completely in love. Although I had tons of time to quilt while he still lived in Grand Junction and I was in the Denver metro area 250 miles away, a combination of trying to learn how to make a perfect mariner's compass for the center of the quilt, my 2004 emergency back surgery and marriage in 2005 put most quilting projects on hold.

That's why my Hawaiian Punch quilt joined the WIP list, which became so overwhelming, I joined the quarterly challenge to attempt to shrink the list. I'm hoping to take Hawaiian Punch off my WIP list by the end of this quarter.

While I hopefully work toward that goal, I'll share my Hawaiian adventure through the next three Tuesdays because the story is too long to fit in one blog post, according to experts. I would love to keep it all together in one post, but people who supposedly know more than me tell writers like me our readers don't like to read online material longer than two scrolls. Thankfully, I do not fit into that mold. Do you?

The comical account of my trip to paradise - complete with some of my most awesome photos - will begin next week. Hope to see you then!

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