We have fallen into a bit of a morning routine here on Maui. Get up and make a coffee & smoothies, watch the turtles playing in the surf from the lanai (patio) of our condo, then head out for a morning snorkel. The snorkeling itself hasn’t been as good as it was back in February – perhaps I’m remembering wrong, but I recall seeing a lot more fish back in February.

Snorkeling, I found myself struggling with the logistics of how to manage going topless. If you recall, the entire purpose of this trip was to go snorkeling topless with the turtles. I knew I wanted to do it, but couldn’t figure out how to manage it – there aren’t that may places to discretely enter / exit the water without a top on. Fortunately, Nicky figured it out – it was just a matter of wearing a one piece, and slipping down the straps. With this technique, I can easily go topless without having to worry about losing any articles of clothing, and I can easily put my top back on before making my way back to shore.

With the logistics figured out, I decided to give it a try yesterday. It was wonderful. There is a whole new sense of freedom when you swim topless 🙂 … Unfortunately, there were no turtles where we were snorkeling – they all seem to be hanging out just outside of our condo – where the entry / exit for snorkeling poses a challenge – perhaps tomorrow we will give it a try.

On the neuropathy front, things aren’t going so well. I had hoped that as time progressed the neuropathy would get better. Honestly, I had hoped that within a week of ending chemo most of the neuropathy would have gone away! My expectations of recovery were overly ambitious to say the least. My ankles are swollen and my calves and forearms are all knotted up. Fortunately, this does not seem to negatively impact my ability to snorkel; however, it does impact my ability to walk. So for now, I’m getting my exercise snorkeling in the morning. We’ll see how things over the weekend.