I awoke this morning before dawn to my lovely bride of 11 blissful years gently whispering to me ever so softly, awakening me in such a way that I thought that I was being visited by an angel. I arose and adorned myself with attire fit for a warrior who was training to defend his true love with his life, if necessary. Sure, it was 6:15am, but workouts are always better with an angel by your side, right?
Not if it’s the angel of near death experiences.
Crystal and I don’t interact much before the sun comes up. It’s just better that way. In fact, some of the worst fights in the history of our marriage came when we had our coffee shop, Espresso dell’Anatra, during the time between when we arrived and when the cafe opened. When she’s up, she is fully awake, is ON and is all business. Not me. Especially if it’s early and I have to leave for an early meeting of some kind, it’s all I can do make sure that I’m wearing pants. I know, coffee is an odd profession choice then, but that’s another post. She keeps looking at her watch, tracking the time. She’s trying to be sweet and nice (especially since it’s the first morning and I actually showed up), but I know her well enough that if I don’t get a move on, I’ll be wasting her time that she’s guarding like a sentinel and she WILL hamstring me. No, really.
Keep in mind that my last post was at about 10:30pm last night and now it’s 6:15. After my post, I did that “Ab Ripper” workout and it promptly ripped my abs clean off. AAAAND WE’RE BACK! You do the math. Workout #1 was at about 9:00-10:00pm. Pause, write last night’s post. It posts at about 10:30 and I start ripping up my abs/Workout #2 at about 11:15 until 11:30 or so. Recovery time until about Midnight, then I’m in bed by 12:30. Workout #3 now starts at say, 6:20am and lasts for an hour.
Kids, don’t try this at home.
Have you heard ever heard of “Plyometrics?” It’s sometimes called “Jump Training” That was today and it basically lots of lunging and deep stretches with a LOT of jumping. This line of exercises is why heart rate monitors were invented. Now, I could whine and snivel and be funny about what happened over the course of the next hour, but really, my takeaways were twofold: A) I needed new shoes. My old, broken down cross-trainers weren’t going to cut it for actual cross-training anymore, so they got downgraded to “shows that I will mow in” when I brought the new ones home. 
About 10 minutes in to Holycrapometrics, it felt like someone had taken newly forged and still hot spear tips and jammed them into the outside edges of the balls of my feet. Really a crazy and painful feeling and I had to back down for a bit until the cramping subsided. Bad shoes was probably exacerbated by the fact that B) I realized that the main reason that I am struggling with a lot of these exercises is that my muscles are not stretched out like they should be. I had planned on doing the stretching video tonight to kind of correct that, but I got an extra workout because Crystal volunteered me to a neighbor to move trunk pieces of wood from two trees. Wow! Not going to lie. I was a hurtin’ unit after that one!
At day’s end, Crystal rubbed down my sorest spots with some Mana Oil that we had picked up at a farmer’s market on our recent trip to Hawaii. That stuff is amazing! Works really fast and very well. I’m sure we’ll talk about that later as I see lots of it in my future. Better sign off and go to bed before my angel wakes me once more.
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WOW! That was a long trip! We flew direct from Chicago O’Hare to Honolulu and it took 9 hours! By contrast, it only took 8 hours to fly from Detroit to Amsterdam this past fall. Pretty crazy to think that in 5 months, I have travelled half the distance of the planet (Honolulu to Amsterdam). I know a few people that for them, leaving the country nearly monthly is a regular occurrence, but I don’t get out like that so for me it’s pretty sweet.
The first thing that I noticed after we got settled in to our hotel about two blocks off of Waikiki Beach was that given our proximity to the water, there was next to NO salt smell in the air! What in the world?!? Seriously, it’s not there. Having grown up on the West Coast, I was really looking forward to that smell and got nothing. NOTHING! Really disappointed, but I’m in Hawaii, I so guess I’ll cope. Heh.
Our travelling party consists of four people: Crystal, Isaac, Me and a short and sassy lady named Marguerite that Crystal grew up knowing who was married to Cliff, a native of Kauai, HI whose father was transferred within the sugar cane industry from Kauai to Hilo. Cliff and Marguerite lived near Crystal’s hometown in Kansas before she was widowed and has been visiting Hawaii annually nearly without fail for 40 years. How great to have a built in tour guide! At 67, don’t you take your eyes off of Marguerite; she is a ball of fire that will run circles around you if you’re not careful.
One of the things that I quickly learned after arriving is that the word “Aloha” has a far deeper meaning than I ever knew as evidenced here. Really, all I knew about it was that it could be used as both a greeting and a farewell. It’s much more than that and it almost has spiritual connotations to it. Aloha is a way in which life is lived by those who ascribe to the concept and in Hawaii, nearly all permanent residents do. It is very reminiscent of the Biblical command to love your neighbor as yourself. Practically, Aloha means to slow down a bit to see the larger picture of life; to engage in the things that are actually important rather than getting caught up in the superficiality that people so often do. It means to think of the other person before yourself, offering to let them benefit themselves ahead of you even if it means that you receive second best. It is kind of a code by which people choose to live by and the word is used as a kind of continuation of that code until the next time you see them.
It really is a beautiful concept and people here don’t really seem to say it as a throwaway phrase used just for tourists (though that certainly exists), but if you have an extra 5 seconds, so do they. Think of how our own lives would be changed if everyone we interacted with took this same position. Great stuff and honestly, I am a bit convicted about it. I am sorry that we will not be in the same place long enough that I can form relationships that will allow me to really see the Spirit of Aloha in action.
Guess that means I’ll have to come back. :)
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I have just finished my third day here in Amsterdam. I really had intended to write something each day, but between jetlag and a full schedule seeing the town, this is the first chance I have really had to stop and think. Really, I suppose I should be out and about tonight since Amsterdam has a thriving nightlife much like Las Vegas or Monte Carlo.
This has been a fantastic trip and I am glad that I came. It’s funny, looking up and down the street, if you don’t look at the street signage, you would almost thing that you were in a large city on the Eastern Seaboard like Boston or Alexandria with much older architecture. It looks pretty normal, which is part of the point. Try to go anywhere or talk to anyone and it’s pretty clear that you’re not in Kansas anymore (sorry, I had to). For the most part, English is spoken as a second language and most people can switch easily between the two. Being that both English and Dutch are Germanic influenced languages, there are many similarities, which also helps when trying to read signs while speaking only English. Usually you can get an idea of what’s going on and if you can’t, someone who speaks both languages is likely nearby.
The real bonus of the trip is the morning teaching sessions. Having taken two Missions and two Church History classes through my church’s in-house Bible institute, it really set me up for taking this trip. Our Senior Pastor and trip leader, Jeff Adams had repeatedly said that while some content is repetitive there were some things that could be taught far better here than in a classroom and he is so right! I am not much of an artistic person in terms of fine arts and most of the time, whatever message the artist is trying to convey just blows right past me, but Jeff has spend considerable time showing us how philosophical ideology and forward thinking shows up later in art. It is far too much to get into here, but it’s a great study! I know that when I get to the museums, I will get a lot more out of it than I otherwise would have.
If you have any connection to KCBT and not been, I highly recommend the trip. When you look at the itinerary, it looks like there is oodles and oodles of downtime and yes there is some, but boy it goes fast!
I’m sitting in my room writing this and chowing down on some stroopwafels. If you know what they are, I know you are jealous. If you don’t, you should be!
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About 10 minutes in to Holycrapometrics, it felt like someone had taken newly forged and still hot spear tips and jammed them into the outside edges of the balls of my feet. Really a crazy and painful feeling and I had to back down for a bit until the cramping subsided. Bad shoes was probably exacerbated by the fact that B) I realized that the main reason that I am struggling with a lot of these exercises is that my muscles are not stretched out like they should be. I had planned on doing the stretching video tonight to kind of correct that, but I got an extra workout because Crystal volunteered me to a neighbor to move trunk pieces of wood from two trees. Wow! Not going to lie. I was a hurtin’ unit after that one!
