Kittens! (Introducing Poppy and Sesame)

Rare pic of all three kitties

We weren't initially in a hurry to get another cat after Oreo died, since none would be as awesome as Oreo was, but it very quickly became clear that Pepper was not very happy as an only cat.  I don't know if she was lonely exactly, or if she was just bored.  But she was noticeably needy with us, especially when we left her home alone, even for only a few hours!  So we decided pretty quickly that we'd need to find her a new friend.  (To be fair, Rob and I were also super needy with Pepper -- often competing for Pepper's affections, and lap presence.)

Poppy and Sesame

We figured at Pepper's age, getting one young cat would be a recipe for annoyance.  So we decided to get two kittens, who could annoy each other, but still keep Pepper company.  So we started looking around at various rescues and shelters to see what we could find.  We weren't particularly looking for more black and white cats, but boy are there are a lot of black cats (and tuxedo cats) out there to adopt!  And then Rob fell in love with "Bonnie and Belle" -- but mostly Bonnie, a very pipsqueaky looking black kitten.

Poppy in a hammock in my office

When we went to meet Bonnie and Belle, we also met their sister, Hobbes.  Bonnie was the smallest one, who Rob was obsessed with.  We couldn't really decide how to pick between Hobbes and Belle, but Hobbes seemed kind of into Rob, so we broke the tie like that.  When we picked out Pepper and Oreo, Rob picked Oreo and Pepper picked Rob.  So this seemed similar, and that worked out well.  (If it sounds terrible to take two out of the three sisters, don't worry -- they had a brother too, who Belle was eventually adopted with.)

Sesame keeping the cable modem warm

I'm not really into cats with people names, so of course, we had to pick some new names.  We stuck with the food theme, and after considering quite a few black food words, we finally settled on Poppy (for Bonnie) and Sesame (for Hobbes) -- also known as "the seeds".  Pepper also got a new nickname -- the Giant, because she looked huge compared to the little teeny kittens!

Pepper the Giant

What we refer to as a "Peps-Pops pile"

RIP Oreo, 2005-2021

 I'm very sad to report that Oreo passed away after a short illness.  We miss her terribly, but we had a great ~16 years with her, and she was an awesome cat!  Oreo had some health problems over the years, but she had been doing great for the past year or so, aside from some arthritis.  She was back to her fighting weight, enjoying her retirement in Monterey, where she had many many sunny perches.  Here are some recent pictures of her.

Bonaire 2021

We went to Bonaire for Rob's big birthday in July.  We came up with Bonaire as a destination by intersecting places that were open for travel with places we would want to dive.  There were a couple of other places in the running (like Maldives) but none of our favorites (Fiji, Philippines) or places on our list of places to go soon (PNG, Indonesia) were open.  But we figured something was better than nothing.  This was my first flight since before the pandemic, so that was exciting.  We were traveling with our friends John and Cookie (who are "vacation divers").  Rob continuously reminded me that Bonaire is a Tier 2 (or did he call it Tier 3?) dive destination and we were only there because of the pandemic.

Accommodations

We stayed at Den Laman Condiminiums, which is where we stayed on our previous two trips.  They no longer rent them out directly, but there are a couple rental agencies that rent several of the condos each, so finding two condos there was no problem; and you can still do a combination deal with a condo plus a dive package.  When we first stayed there ~15 years ago, it was all shiny and new.  It's still nice, but the furniture in at least our condo was definitely looking worn out.  Also, they repainted the outside of the building which used to be 3 shades of Dutch island pastels, to 3 shades of grey, and I must admit, this makes me like the place less :).  On the plus side, there were some resident kitties that hung out near the dive shop.

Bonaire is way way more developed than it was when we were last there, both north and south of town.  I'm guessing there are tons of nice houses/condos that you could rent there now, though the proximity to the dive shop and the excellent house reef is still a good reason to stay at one of the dive resort/condos closer to town.  On the topic of the dive shops... the dive shop by Den Laman is now Dive Friends Bonaire, which seems to have a near-monopoly on dive shops on the island.  This is great, because if you have a package with them, you can get tanks from any of their (eight) locations.  We took advantage of this at least once on the trip. 

One other development since our last trip to Bonaire is that the trucks are now automatics (good for me, disappointing for Rob).

Food

On our previous trips to Bonaire, finding places to eat each night was not a thing that really required much advance thought.  We found out the hard way that this is no longer the case.  Maybe it's because stuff was just re-opening after the pandemic and not at full capacity, or maybe this is just the way it is now.  But the first night we wandered around looking for a table at several restaurants and could not get one.  So after that we got a bit more organized and made reservations.  On the plus side (maybe), it seems that there are a lot more upscale places to eat in Bonaire now.  I guess this goes along with the new development. 

We ended up eating at the following places:

• Lunch
• IRIE Jamaican Cuisine: We went here for lunch one day.  It was great.  We liked it enough that I think we wanted to go here a second day, but it was closed that day of the week.
• Stoked Food Truck: Food trucks are a thing on Bonaire now, which I'm a fan of.  I had the pulled rib sandwich, which was good.  And the mango punch was a hit with everyone.  The food truck is a double decker bus, and in theory there is seating on the second deck, but it was closed (not sure if that was pandemic-related or what).  
• Posada Para Mira: This is supposed to be authentic local food on the north side of the island.  We had trouble finding it, and in fact a local kid (on his bike) kind of led us part of the way until we were back on the scent.  I think some of the things we had (goat stew) were good and others (iguana stew) were less well-liked.  The service was also pretty slow.  It seemed like we were there forever.
• Doner Station: Kebab place right across the rotary from Den Laman.  It was awesome.
• Mi Banana: We got very different advice on whether to go here or not.  It was a very local/authentic place that was kind of like a taqueria vibe but with Caribbean food.  I liked it.
• Between 2 Buns.  We went here for breakfast the last day.  It was good.  They had very good looking desserts, but we didn't try any.
• Drinks/Snacks
• Gio's Gelateria & Caffe.  We ate a lot of gelato -- my usual goal on vacation is to eat ice cream everyday.  I ate at least the following flavors: cheesecake, salted caramel, marzipan, coffee, snickers, hazelnut, and pistachio.
• Breezes n Bites (the restaurant at Den Laman).  We went here for drinks and snacks before dinner a couple of times.  It was perfectly adequate for that purpose.
• The Bar at Captain Don's.  We went here before dinner the last night.  The drinks were fine.  Some of the customers were obnoxious.
• Dinner
• La Terrazza: We ate here the first night, when we couldn't find any other place.  It's an interesting concept; they don't have a menu, you just say what your allergies/preferences are and courses start coming until you say you don't want any more.  It was delicious -- we had wahoo ceviche, shrimp skewers, and chicken stew.  And wine pairings with some of those.  We went here a second time later in the week.
• At Sea: This place is an example of how there are more upscale restaurants in Bonaire now.  We did the 4 or 5 course surprise menu, and it was good, but it kind of seemed like the restaurant was trying too hard to be fancy.
• Blue Garden: Brazilian place that is more down to earth than the previous two dinner places.  I can't remember exactly what we got here, but it was some mixed grill sort of thing.  I remember there was a ton of food, the table was totally packed with stuff, and it was good.  But we still managed a night dive afterward!
• Sebastian's:  This was a fancy place.  It was really good, had a nice view, and they had good cocktails, but it was SO slow.
• La Cantina: Another more down to earth dinner place.  I thought it was pretty cute inside, and had some interesting things on the menu.  We were doing a night dive, so sadly we could not sample their cocktails.
• Brass Boer: We went here for Rob's birthday, and did the tasting menu, and it was very good; a good choice for the big night.

Diving

And last but not least, the diving!  We did 3 or 4 dives a day.  I am not going to do a full blown dive report for each dive, but will summarize the places that we went:

• Bari Reef (House Reef).  This was a big reason that we stayed at Den Laman, and it did not disappoint.  I believe that we did six dives here, including two night dives.  There were tons of eels, and at least two resident frogfish (one of which we were able to find over and over again).  At night, there were lots of lobsters, basket stars, and huge tarpon.
• Hilma Hooker (twice).  Big tarpon and lots of barracuda.
• Andrea I and II (once each).   Lots of lettuce sea slugs, and these shaggy jelly creatures all over the place on one of the dives.
• Salt Pier (twice).  Really good viz, tarpon, barracudas, huge green morays.  We were hoping for turtles but never found them.
• Alice in Wonderland.
• Captain Don's Reef (Klein Bonaire). Nice sloping reef, with a sand slide with lots of soft (and non-soft) corals along the side of it.
• Mi Dushi (Klein Bonaire). Rob saw a turtle and squid but I didn’t :( John found an eel out in the open, it was light grey with white spots. Tons of soft corals right on the edge of the drop off. 
• The Invisibles (twice).  Neat sand chutes on both inner and outer reefs. Tons of fish.
• Oil Slick Leap.  It was a little sporty on the surface/getting out, but the jump in is always fun :)
• Tolo (Ol Blue).  This seemed more like a real beach dive than most sites in Bonaire.
• Cliff.  This is the house reef at Hamlet Oasis, but there is a Dive Friends here, so we could access it (and even use their tanks).  There is a section with a very vertical wall, which has a lot of whip corals on it.  Worth a visit.
• Something Special.  This is the easiest shore entry on the island.  Rob found a really cool slug here.
• Margate Bay.  Tons of soft corals along the top edge of the drop off.
• Tori's Reef.  We tried to go here earlier in the week, and went to Invisibles instead, because we couldn't figure out the entry.  Well we were looking in the wrong place (wrong side of the bridge).  You walk down rocks that kind of make steps. Tons of orange elephant ears.  Drop off is a little deeper. Finally saw a turtle.

We went to a lot of places that we hadn't been before, and it was a good variety.  Only doing 3 or 4 dives a day gave us more time to go further afield for some of the dives.  We only went out on the boat once, and we probably would have gone out at least once more, but it turned out that it was hard to get spots on the boat.  I wish we had been told this when we first showed up; we would have reserved spots earlier in the trip if we had known.

Even though Rob claimed Bonaire is a Tier N dive destination, he got a lot of nice photos, and I had trouble choosing which ones to post here.  Check all of them out on his blog.

Weeknight Dive

One of my goals for the holiday break was to do a night dive.  I figured it was the perfect time for a night dive, considering the proximity to the shortest day of the year.  We did a bunch of night dives last spring, but once the days started to get longer, my intolerance for waiting until 8PM to get into the water kicked in, and we hadn't done any night dives since.  So I figured there had to be a few nights of good weather to get a night dive in.  Early in the first week, there was a night that looked promising, but my laziness and the fact that it was really cold out led me to think there would surely be another night during the break when we could do a night dive!  And then for like three straight weeks, there was 10+ foot swell.  Okay, it's possible that's not exactly true, but literally every night since then that we could go on a night dive, the swell forecast was either really big or really long (or often both).

So finally this week, Wednesday and Thursday looked good.  Rob was just getting back from the bay area on Wednesday night, so we decided on Thursday.  It was kind of chilly during the day on Thursday and for some reason (I think it was the walk down to the beach on Thursday morning), I was freezing cold all day.  So cold that the idea of going diving seemed really unappealing to me.  Rob was finishing up a meeting until 6:00, when we were supposed to head out, and I was literally laying in bed under the covers, cuddling with Oreo, trying to warm up.  I really did not want to go diving.  But I reminded myself that I'd been watching the forecast for literally weeks, and the next several days in the forecast looked once again pretty big.  So I dragged myself down to the Breakwater, and boy am I glad that I did!

When we drove up, we saw another team getting ready to go into the water.  And we could see lights underwater from at least one more team already in the water.  As we were finishing up our gear check, a team came out of the water and said conditions were pretty good.  And they were not lying.  As we got into the water, when I bent over to put my fins on, the water in the surf zone looked really clear.  As we swam out, I realized I had not tested my light (I tested it in the garage, but not right before we got in).  So I flipped the switch and... nothing.  Then I realized my E/O cord had popped off.  I plugged it back in and... my light worked again.  Phew.  We continued swimming out until we were a bit past the bathrooms.  When we first started the swim, the moon was totally obscured by the clouds, but then they cleared a bit so we could actually kind of see by the time we dropped.  I stuck my face under the water before I'd turned my light back on, and I could see the bottom.  Without any light!  Rob pointed out that there was bioluminescence in the water, so we flapped around for a bit on the surface without our lights on to entertain ourselves.  We dropped in about 18 feet of water and the viz was great.  I think it was really as good as it gets at the Breakwater, and you could see as far as the lights would allow.

We spent most of the dive meandering out over the sand.  In the first 5 minutes, we saw like 5 little octopuses.  Some were tiny!  Throughout the dive, we saw tons more of them, and many of them were quite active, out climbing around on things.  Basically anywhere that we stopped to look around, I could find at least one!  Aside from that, I found a bunch of Limacias.  They were all in one area.  I found one and showed it to Rob, and by the time he came over to take its pic, I'd found another.  Then while he was taking pics of them, I found a bunch more.  We also saw a single sea hare.  So pokeable.

There were two good finds on the dive.  One, which Rob found, was a Tritonia diomedea.  That was super exciting, because I think this is only like the third time I've ever seen one in Monterey.  Definitely less than the tenth time :P  The other good find was a couple of squid.  We found them as we were (finally) headed back to the wall.  Rob managed to get some shots of one, which was surprisingly not that annoyed by Rob's strobes.  I did feel bad for the little guy though.

And about that swim back to the wall... at some point, maybe 45 minutes into the dive, I suggested to Rob that we head toward the wall.  So Rob starts swimming, and I follow.  And we are headed southeast.  And we are swimming and swimming and I keep kind of correcting us to the right.  And we stop a couple of times and when we start going, Rob keeps heading southeast.  Finally I had to tell Rob we were going *this* way instead.  As a result, when we finally made it to the wall, we were really far out, and it was like 45 feet or so at the bottom.  So at that point, we had to head pretty directly in, because gas was actually getting low.  There was not a lot of time to lollygag.  Along the swim in, we picked up a whiskery friend.  A very rotund harbor seal.  He followed along with us for pretty much the rest of the dive.  He was very cute.  I would never rub a marine mammal on its tummy, but I can't say the same for my dive buddy.

As usual, we surfaced from like 7 feet and I was annoyed that we surfaced too far out :P  Every time I dive the breakwater and don't swim in until I can stand, I end up annoyed when I surface and its further out than expected.

But it was a nice night for a short surface swim.  We didn't make it out in time for Little Chicken Hut, so we settled for In N Out for dinner.  There was an astoundingly short line.  The last time we did a night dive and went to In N Out afterward (sometime in the spring), the line was all the way to the edge of the parking lot!  That was shortly after the miracle of takeout restaurants reopening.

Italian Christmas

For obvious reasons, we didn't go anywhere for Christmas or New Year's this year.  But my company had off for a full week and a half (and I added two days, too make it a nice round 2 weeks off), and Rob rather ambitiously scheduled several days of diving over that period.  Ambitious in the sense that, well, it's December, so the likelihood of cooperative weather is low.  We've done some great dives over the Christmas holidays in past years, but we've also been blown out a lot.  Well I can't say we were totally successful in our diving efforts over the holiday (more on that in a future post), but our most ambitious plan of all was to go back to Italian Ledge the day after Christmas.

As I mentioned the last (and only) time we went to Italian Ledge, it took quite a few tries before we managed to get there.  We've been trying to get back ever since; I think we made a serious attempt last year in September and then again over the summer this year.  Well December 26th seemed like an unlikely day to be able to go there.  And the weather forecast did not look so good in the run up to the date.  We'd rescheduled our Christmas dinner to Christmas Eve, which I regretted when I saw that forecast.  There was supposed to be big scary swell and some wind.  But it seemed like there might be a window in the morning before it actually got big.  The day before the dive, I told Rob that if it was borderline at all, we were not diving.  We had once before made it out to the dive site and had an argument about whether it was diveable (it was not!) and I didn't want a repeat of that.

When we got out to the site, it was dead calm -- definitely not borderline!  The color of the water also looked pretty good!  We took our time dropping the line and getting geared up, and then we jumped in and started the long scooter ride down to the bottom.  The water was clear and bright quite a ways down the line.  Around 150 feet, the line went from being pretty much straight vertical to bending at a slight angle.  There was a teeny bit of current from that point down.  When we finally got to the bottom, it seemed like we had landed on a relatively barren section, compared to our previous dive.  The viz was 30 to 40 feet.  So we followed the structure down to the bottom and around it, and eventually we found some crinoids.  Phew, finally something worth coming to see :)

We ambled around on the bottom, and came back around the structure to find a school of Bocaccio hanging out above the structure (with a bunch of olive rockfish mixed in).  While we were watching them, I suddenly heard a noise, like a very loud humming noise, and then after a moment I realized it was whale song.  I asked Rob if he heard it and if that's what it was.  It was quite intense and we could hear it on and off for the rest of the dive and throughout deco.  I could not believe how loud it was.  I felt like a whale must be about to swim by at any moment!

When we came around the structure, we saw a monster cowcod.  I would have estimated it to be like 4 feet long, though Wikipedia says they only get to 39 inches :)  Maybe it was because I was under the influence oof whalesong.  But seriously, even more impressive than the length of the cowcod was how tall it was.  It was just enormous.  Later in the dive, we saw two more cowcods, which were just normal sized.  Still exciting to see, since I've only seen them once or twice before!

We also saw some big yelloweyes and one flag rockfish.  Last time we saw several flag rockfish.  This time we didn't find the one until pretty late in the dive, so I was just glad to see one at that point.  Overall, this was not as much of a star-studded dive in terms of all of these exotic "deep" rockfish, but I suppose it was a pretty good showing overall.  One super bummer was that Rob had some kind of camera problem that caused a button to stick on, preventing him from changing the focus on his camera.  So he got just a few photos early in the dive, but none of the exciting fish that we found later in the dive :(  Luckily you have my excellent description of the dive to paint a picture of that ;)

When we headed up the structure before starting our ascent, we passed some sections that were more encrusted with corynactis.  This was like the prettier spot where we happened to land on the way down last time.  Rob whipped out the reel and put the bag up and we started our ascent.

We had a very long deco, but it was not that boring.  First of all, the viz was crazy good.  The water was super blue and clear and bright.  And there were lots of deco critters.  No sea nettles, but lots of random singleton jellies and salps and stuff.  Just a steady stream of things drifting by that we could swim over to and look at to pass the time.  I really don't know how the time passed so quickly, but it really wasn't a bad deco at all.

The highlight of the deco was at 30 feet, when a school of bonito swam by.  I couldn't believe it when I saw them just as we were approaching the 30 foot stop.  I wish I had my GoPro for that!  They circled us a couple of times.  So cool!

When we got to the surface, it was still nice and flat.  Phew, we timed it perfectly!

According to Greg and crew, they didn't see any whale spouts at all the entire time that we were down.  So I guess there wasn't a whale about to swim past us during the dive.

Road Trip to "Idaho": A Non-Dive Trip

We were getting a bit restless having not traveled anywhere for 6 months, and I was very grumpy that my plans to go somewhere awesome for my birthday had been thwarted.  So we wanted to go somewhere, and since flying somewhere seemed like a bad idea, we decided it was a good chance for a road trip, and hence a good chance for a non-diving trip.  I somehow got the idea to go to Idaho.  I think I got the idea when I did a google search for road trips from California :) and started to zero in on some hiking and backpacking in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho.  Coincidentally, one of my coworkers went on a "bikepacking" trip to the Sawtooths a few weeks later, and when I saw his pictures, that sealed the deal.  So I spent quite a bit of time researching where to go and where to hike, and I even bought a paper map (quaint, huh?) of the trails around the area.  Then a couple of things happened.  I had a company event, so we had to delay the trip by a week, and the entire west coast went up in flames.  Well enough of it to make half of the country smokey anyway.  So by the time we were headed to Idaho, the air quality there was quite bad.  We devised a plan B of going to Utah, since it was still looking nice and green on the air quality map.

Oh, one extra interesting kink in the trip plan.  Rob recently got a Tesla.  So this makes long distance travel extra interesting to plan.  I was rather worried about ending up somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with a dead car and no charger in sight, and having to have the car towed to somewhere with a charger :P

Drive to Twin Falls, Idaho

Sun Valley, Idaho

Evanston, Wyoming

Red Castle Lake, Utah

Antelope Island and Salt Lake City, Utah

Alta, Utah

Back to Salt Lake City

Road Trip: Back to Salt Lake City

After that, we headed back to Salt Lake City and checked into our hotel, the Hilton Salt Lake City Center.  We stayed at the Hilton this time because they have a Tesla destination charger, and because it's like one block closer to places you would go for dinner in Salt Lake City.  After lazing about for a bit, we decided to go for a walk to Temple Square and then up to the Utah state capitol.  The temple was undergoing some extreme construction, but we walked around the square and looked at some gardens, a statue of a sea gull, and talked to a few different young Mormon ladies, one of whom explained to us why there is a statue of a sea gull.  Rob tried to avoid talking to the Mormon ladies, but I think this is part of the experience with going to Temple Square.  After that we walked up to the capitol, looked very briefly at it (it was hot and sunny), and then headed back to the hotel, for more lazing about.

For dinner, we went to Market Street Grill, which is right next to Takashi, and which Rob had been to before.  It really reminded me of an east coast style seafood restaurant.  We had oysters and I had surf and turf.  And key lime pie.  Yum.

The next morning, we headed home.  It was a pretty uneventful drive.  We spent part of the really boring drive across Utah debating the merits of motorhomes, and looking at pictures of crazy luxury motorhomes online.  Turns out that while you can't watch Netflix on the Tesla while you are driving, you *can* search the internet.  Good to know.

Our last stop to charge was at Donner Summit, which was the biggest and most crowded supercharger that we saw on the entire trip.  It was in the parking lot of a shopping center with a grocery store.  We went into the grocery store to use the bathrooms, and it was without a doubt, the most crowded grocery store I'd been in since March.  I guess everyone is going to Tahoe, since they can't go on a real trip.