Life in Hilo

There's no doubt that I like Hilo. In fact, I love it. We moved here in July 2007 and we've done so many things since we've been here. After all the initial moving in, we did the following:

• planted all kinds of veggies - eggplant (white, green and the regular purple), beans - (green, purple and pencilpod), tomatoes (roma, black zebra and persimmon), rainbow chard, snap peas, sugar peas, choy sum, bell peppers (green, yellow, red) and papaya...just to name some of the stuff
• planted all kinds of flowers - sunflowers (mammoth, teddy bear, autumn harvest, vanilla ice - yes, it is actually called vanilla ice), marigolds (court jester, disco flame, jaguar, sunset giants), zinnias (candy cane, old mexico, scarlet flame, giants, peppermint, burpeeana, tetras), calendulas, foxgloves, sweet peas, impatiens, portulaca....and some other ones I forgot the names of...
• fished - but caught nothing
• swam - although not in Hilo, we have gone to the other side of the island...Hapuna Beach, Spencer Beach...
• caught bugs - yes, caught bugs...Chris is in some sort of biology class and he has to catch and pin bugs and weeds. Don't ask me...he's turning hippie on me. Oh well, better that than raging alcoholic!
• taught Ollie how to dance - well, sort of
• taken long motorcycle rides. we found that the rides down to the southern part of the island is pretty boring...that is unless you're going about 90-100 mph and going around cars. but mostly, it's pretty straight...like i said, boring. The ride up the Hamakua Coast is really nice and we've stopped here and there just to get a Diet Coke. We found that the ride up Saddle Road, which is supposed to be off-limits to rental car peoples, is the most fun. There's a lot of twisties and you can lean the bikes over pretty far if you're going fast enough.
• taken the bikes out for long rides