a soldier’s tale (part iv of vi)

The next day, in a break from wholesome family fun, I decided to have Tracy lay down on her back and get dirty.

The Mazda had been in desperate need of some minor mechanical work for ages, so we decided to finally get it taken care of. Tracy and I worked together to get the starter out of a very tight spot, despite the completely pointless act of removing an apparently fully-functional starter.

Live and learn.

Pants-shitting excitement is a frequent occurrence in our family, and an unexpected evening trip to the beach provided the perfect opportunity for more. Rather than head to one of the beaches we’ve seen so many times, we decided to go north near Dillingham Airfield. I’ve been by those beaches a few times on my own, and remember the water being calm enough for the kids. The late afternoon breeze begged to differ, but still, we had plenty of sand and crabs to keep everyone entertained.

Plus Tracy totally learned how to walk on water.

Also she learned how to look dead sexy while entering a vehicle.

So, we’ve done fake Christmas, the zoo, the car, the beach … what next? How about something else we’ve been meaning to do for the last three years or so? If you said Diamond Head, give yourself a gold star.

We dropped Raden off at daycare, stocked up the baby backpack with food and a baby, and headed up the trail. We were greeted by Happy Trashcan.

Happy Trashcan is happy. Even little River recognized the smiley face welcoming us to the trail.

I’m a big fan of signage in general, and the Diamond Head hike did not disappoint.

Here we can see the clear admonition, in order to make our hike enjoyable, to not cause fires.

At the peak you can find this sign, scrawled upon by visitors as far away as Perth, Australia and as far back as 2004.

This next sign entertains me for a few reasons: first, the heading “No Hiking” in the middle of a hiking trail is funny. Granted, the intention is to not hike beyond the signed area, but still. Funny. Secondly, someone took the time to draw a bicycle around the pictured hiker and add the words “Mahalo, fixed” in a word bubble. Apparently the whole thing was done in white-out. Who hikes with white-out in their pocket?

Allegedly the same white-out-wielding wayfarer attacked a sign with the word “jive” that had previously been marked with the tag “handy.” Handy jive. Again, funny.

OK I’ll be quiet for a few seconds and let you enjoy the views.

To wrap up the Diamond Head trip, just before we headed back down the hill, we stumbled upon a young man right in the middle of a marriage proposition! I snuck a few pictures of them, only to later realize they had friends up the hill also taking pictures. (Fine, jerks, I didn’t want to give you my pictures of you, anyway!)

(She said yes.)