Another update from Manny at SFO: Shawn wanted to take Tonie somewhere different for her birthday. So on Cyber Monday last November he shopped for travel deals to the island of Kauai. It turns out that it costs more to spend a week in Kauai from Hilo that it costs to fly to other more distant places from the San Francisco Bay Area. So it looks like we’re heading to New Zealand. Get this: It costs twice as much to fly to New Zealand from Honolulu as it does from San Francisco. With air miles, it’s more affordable to go to New Zealand! Shawn went there 10 years ago, and promised Tonie he’d take her there when she’d stop teaching. He’s making good on that promise now.
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So Tonie was humming the “Do you know the way to San José song while at the Kona airport. So that’s where we headed next. We’re now staying with Tonie’s cousins Patrick and Emmanuelle
, while Shawn takes care of a whirlwind tour of errands and quick visits in the area. We saw Dr. Moore in Monterey, where Shawn received another injection to relieve a bone spur in his thumb joint. It’s an improvement already. We made a quick visit to to Shawn’s former workplace of Cabrillo College to drop off some paperwork for a friend. It was great to connect with our friends there, And then we got to go to Open House with Noah at Branciforte Middle School. We also happened to see Shawn and Tonie’s former house and got to spend a little time with Bill, Eddie, and Brantley in Susie’s kitchen. We could feel her spirit smiling down on us. My Mom might have been watching us there too. We were in Santa Cruz for a only few hours, so we didn’t get to see everyone, But it was great to connect with those we did get to see. Aloha! My name is Manny. I’m a manta ray. I was created and carved out of wood by a really cool dude named Josh Anderson., after his first visit to Hawai’i Island, over a year ago. Josh can build anything you can dream up, and he’s a real artist with wood. But he would never say that himself, so I’m saying it for him. He even built Shawn and Tonie’s beautiful house in Klawock, Alaska. Josh took me to Hawai’i with him on his second visit this year, and he put me up on the Ogimachi Christmas tree. We’ve been having fun ever since.
You’re probably wondering who the bear is. That’s Fuzzy, the Branciforte Bear. He was gifted to Tonie by one of her fourth graders, Natalie Sharp, probably about 20 or some-odd years ago. Over the years, Tonie made it a habit of sneaking Fuzzy into Shawn’s luggage whenever he’d take off on some trip by himself. Shawn would find Fuzzy stowed away while traveling, and it would make him smile. So Fuzzy is a very well-traveled bear, and he’s showing me the ropes of traveling with Shawn and Tonie. He’s also providing a little extra protection and cushion for my wings. Tonie is kind of an abalone. She lives on two rocks in the Pacific, and it’s often hard to pry her off whatever rock she’s currently living on. But once Shawn starts brandishing his abalone iron, and pops her off her rock, she travels really well and she has a great time. It looks like we’re leaving Hawai’i Island soon, and we’ll be going “holoholo.” I wonder where we’ll end up next. We are heartbroken at the passing of my wonderful, fun-loving, goofy uncle. We love him so much, and have so many happy and hilarious memories with him. Those of you who knew him already know how great he was. We are still reeling from the shock of his recent passing. I take some comfort in the fact that we were able to spend some good quality time with him in France just a few short months ago, while he was still full of life. I will spend the next few weeks digging up pictures and stories to share with our family and with those of you who knew him. He loved his cameras over the years, so he was usually the person taking the pictures, rather than the subject in the pictures. But I will still manage to find a few good ones of him. He was the “fun uncle,” who knew where to find all the good stuff. He was the best tour guide for any place you traveled with him. His sense of adventure and sense of humor were infectious. We had a wonderful visit with our good friend, David Spencer. Since fishing has been slow, David took our greenhouse to the next level. The entire greenhouse is made of salvaged materials, and it's turning into a thing of real beauty. This past weekend, some good friends had a full-day stop in Ketchikan during a five-week cruise they are taking from the West Coast of the US to Japan. The weather conditions on Clarence Strait looked unusually favorable, so we decide to take our C-Dory over to Ketchikan to meet them. It was a wonderful mini-vacation! I forgot just how comfortable the V-berth in the C-Dory is. I slept better than I have in many moons. And the C-Dory is the boat in which we first came to Alaska. Lots of great nostalgia for us as we sat in Bar Harbor, watching the sunset. The Fourth of July celebrations here on P.O.W lasted over several days. We started with a nice fireworks show in Craig on the evening of July 3. The fireworks show in Klawock moved to the evening of July 5, due to fog on the night of the 4th. So on the evening of July 5, I rode my bicycle down to Klawock Harbor to enjoy the fireworks show about our C-Dory, Sisu. Shawn and are friend Dave Spencer were already asleep. I laid my bicycle down on the dock, with my little backpack in my bicycle pannier. I had reached inside of pannier to get my cell phone out of backpack, and I took a few photos of the beautiful display. At about 11:30 pm, a boat sped by and rocked the dock. I heard a little "sploosh," but I didn't think much about it, and I continued to watch the fireworks show. When the show ended, I got off the boat, and I lifted up my bicycle and noticed that it felt considerably lighter. I then noticed that my bicycle pannier was empty. Apparently my little backpack had rolled out of the pannier, off the dock, and into 30 feet of water below the dock. In that backpack were my wallet, my bullet journal, my very special pen, my good knife, and my hair fork. All are hard-to-replace items. But there wasn't much I could about the situation at that point. So I rode my bike home, and went to bed. I did not wake Shawn or Dave up, since they were going fishing the following morning. Instead I laid awake, formulating some kind of plan to try to retrieve the backpack during low tide. The next morning, I tried to call my "go-to" friends to see if I could borrow some kind of grappling hook, or other device to try to drag the bottom below the dock. No one was answering the phone, so I looked around our construction pile to see what I could come up with. I found a good length of line and a heavy-duty milk crate, and I made a sort of basket dredge that looked like this: I also put the word out about my predicament on Facebook. Sure enough, my fellow fishermen rallied to my aid in a big way! First, Dave Ryno tried retrieving the pack with his Klawock spinner. He might have even hooked it up on his last attempt, but the line snapped. He also gave my milk crate dredge a try. That might be a good device for bringing up seaweed, but we were not successful in bringing up a backpack. So Dave told me about another fisherman who happens to be a really good free-diver. "This guy is an animal with the that kind of thing," he said. I figured it was worth a try. Next thing I know, I'm on the phone with with Marvin and Wendi, and their son Gabe, who were aboard their boat, Kismet in Craig. I race over to Craig, to pick them all up, before the tide would start coming in too strong. These wonderful folks seemed to think it was no big deal to help me out in this way. Marvin made several dives in the murky, chilly water, 25-30 feet down. He saw a lot of stuff down there. The current is strong, so the backpack could have drifted a bit. Marvin was very persistent. Right when I was ready to give up on the whole thing, he found it! The color of the backpack was the same color as the water, so it was a real challenge. Fortunately, everything was still in there and intact! Even the postage stamps that I kept in my journal still stick to envelopes, once I dried them. And my pen still writes. All the cards in my wallet still works. Best of all, I made some really cool new friends in this whole process! This mercury retrograde has been a bit of a doozy, but in a yin/yang sort of a way. Crazy stuff happens, leading to more good stuff happening. What a ride!
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Tonie OgimachiA few things I'm passionate about: CategoriesArchives
February 2020
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