day two hundred and seventeen

number crunching time! as of today, june ninth, i have achieved twenty-nine goals, with fifteen in-process. some of those will be completed by nature of the 1001st day's arrival, but others require significant time expenditure on my part. anyway, this puts me at a 28.7% completion rate. meanwhile, two hundred and seventeen days have passed, or 21.2% of the total (i'm starting to wish i'd gone with "100 in 1000" for round numbers' sake). so, i'm ahead of the game! nevertheless i'm getting worried about completing some of these goals - particularly the more time intensive ones.

so i've come up with another accountability check (and a way to plug a cause i've recently become really interested in). for every goal that goes uncompleted after the 1001 days are up, i'm going to make a $25 kiva loan. i've been checking out the site for a while and have fallen more and more in love with what they're doing. they've been around for a long time, and were the first to offer internet microlending on a global level. they're also so transparent that you can choose which entrepreneur to loan to and for what purpose. plus you get paid back, leaving you with the option of essentially rolling one loan over and over again to help even more people. i just made my first, non-list-related loan to yolanda, a cacao grower in peru, so that she can purchase fertilizer to improve her production.

for each goal not completed by august 2nd, 2012, i will lend another $25 to a different entrepreneur. i don't want to beat myself up too much for not finishing the list, but i also don't want my potential failure to go completely unchecked, so at least this way someone will benefit from it!
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in other news: SUPERCOOL SPORTS UPDATE. griffey retired. that is not the update. the TOTALLY RAD news is that the game-winning hit we saw a couple weeks ago was his last at bat! we were witness to history. i wish i'd taken more pictures.

day two hundred and twelve

gaaah once again i have let this blog slip a bit. but 'tis ok because of all the updating that's about to go down. first, and this happened a while ago, i went to another pro sports game (#36). my boss is a huge mariners fan so he took us all out to the ballgame to drink, eat lots of stadium fare, and, you know, bond. it was awesome both to get half a day off and to get on the jumbo-tron - TWICE. true, the game was sparsely attended, but we still danced our butts off to earn a spot on that screen and we were proud nonetheless. plus, they finally brought griffey out in the bottom of the ninth to hit the game-winning drive down right field. exciting!

mariners win! that blue sleeve belongs to me. this picture belongs to mina's iphone.


like i said!
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now for the real hotness. kyle and i recently met some friends for one amazing week on hawaiian's northern-most island, kauai. when we first discovered the opportunity to go, we decided it would take the place of our seaplane trip, which would be put on hold. in the meantime, to make it up to both me and the list, kyle rented a harley and drove us all around the island for a day and a half (#12). i absolutely loved it - hands down my favorite list activity so far, and maybe the most exhilarating thing i've ever done. kyle's had his motorcycle license for a while, and now i'm totally inspired to at least look into getting mine.

our sweet ride


one of the first places we took the bike to - waimea canyon


and the very next stop


scenic point along the backroads of lihue


ahhhhhh so cool
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the cabana we stayed at also had four beach cruisers, which helped me take care of my bicycle riding goal (#76). we hopped on the two prettiest ones and took a little trip around princeville, mostly through the gorgeous golf course just across the way. i was a little rusty at first (turns out taking weekly spin classes doesn't really do anything for your actual bike skills), but i was cruising just fine when we got caught in a downpour that came on too fast to escape it. once it calmed down we hopped back on and took some pictures of our mean tricks.


sweet moves!


totally awesome!


until i sort of fell off of it
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finally, after conducting some research on things worth doing in kauai, we decided we could not leave without taking a ride with birds of paradise - on power hang gliders, that is. we got up super early to drive more than halfway around the island to meet our pilot for an early morning flight. after suiting up and getting a brief lesson in how the thing works, we were up! the views were stunning; seeing the shape of the island against the bright blue water from the air was breathtaking. plus i saw a freakin' rainbow while i was up there! it could not have been more worth it.

suited up and ready to fly


lining up on the runway


view of the kauai coffee fields - that's my plaid shoe


as soon as i landed, kyle was ready to go up for his own thirty minute session the pilot took tons of awesome shots from the air, which i had no qualms about dropping some extra cash to get burned onto a dvd. while taking a ride in a power hang glider is not on my list, taking a ride in a seaplane is, and these are similar enough (both in nature and in price) that i'm gonna go ahead and count that task as completed (#16). there's a good chance i'll still get into a sea plane before my 1001 days are up, but since the point of this exercise is to experience life more fully (not necessarily to stick so stringently to the rules i made for myself), this more than hits the mark.


the rainbow was even more vivid in person


another view of the rainbow - i still don't understand how those things work


i'm steering! and squinting! they recommended i take my shades off.


but he got to keep his somehow? whatever - look how high we got!

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