over the big blue

one day in hawaii a couple of girls stayed in waikiki while the rest of us went to blowhole cove and hanauma bay. they decided to go parasailing and had such great stories to tell us all when we got back. hailey and i looked at our assistant coach kristi and without even saying anything we knew we had to go. the thought of it was a little scary if i thought about all the things that could go wrong, you know...what if the parachute breaks and we fall in the water and get eaten by sharks...those kinds of thoughts. but i am such a thrill seeker and had wanted to do it last year so it was decided! we called and book our spot on the boat sunday morning and sunday afternoon we were on the little trolly transport to the bay that the business was located in. 

 i get insanely car sick but have never felt sick on a boat before. taking this boat out on the ocean changed that. i thought i was going to throw up after only being on the boat for five minutes. the waves were pretty big and my stomach was not pleased. we held strong though, no throw up!

 the parasail crew consisted of me, hailey, tessie, garrett, kayla, angie, kristi and heather oh and four other random people that we didn't know that were an absolute hoot!

 kayla and angie: two of our beautiful cheerleader friends

 here we go!!!!!

 this is my, please do not throw up face. the take off was a little bumpy and had my stomach even more upset than just sitting in the boat. 

 after a few minutes the wind caught the parachute enough and up we went!

 .......clearly i let out a long stream of screams and laughs. we have many pictures of me with a wide open mouth. gosh lys, just be brave and smile like a normal human!

 before we got up in the air one of the guys on the boat told us we were in whale territory and that if we kept our eyes peeled we might see one! we kept our eyes verrrry peeled and when we got at peak height hailey spotted something out in front of the boat. after a couple seconds i spotted it too. yes, there was a whale swimming along right in front of the boat. then it was as if he called his friends over to show off for us. there were at least seven whales swimming out around the boat. we were yelling back at the boat and pointing so everyone else could see them! it was so cool. all the sudden hailey grabs my hand and says ever so slowly.....looooook dooown. she seemed almost scared so i was thinking great, here is that shark that knows our rope is going to break. ever so cautiously i looked down and saw the most amazing thing i have ever seen with my own eyes. directly under us was a gigantic, ginormous, huuuge whale! it was right on the surface of the water, dorsal fin sticking proudly out in the open air as it spouted water from it's blowhole. because it was so close to the surface we could see the entire outline of it's enormous body. holy.....holy......i don't have many other words than ahhh-mazing! it just happened to be swimming in the same direction of our boat so it was right under us for a few good minutes. just seeing that was worth the fifty dollars we paid. 

 the driver then decided to give us a nice dip in the water. hailey and i both weren't sure if we felt so keen about that seeing how there were hugeo whale friends swimming around but in we went! not without a few screams though.

such an amazing experience! if you ever have the chance i highly recommend going. floating that high in the air gives you a pretty fantastic perspective of how vast the ocean is and how beautiful it is. seeing whales was just the cherry on top of it!