It was a gift…..

The hospital has been busy. Terribly busy. So busy, that we have started asking one doc to be on call during the day, subject to coming in and doing just admissions in order to free up the other hospitalists to be able to finish rounds. Yesterday, I was the “on-call” doc. At 9:30 am, the office coordinator called and told me that things had quieted down, and I wouldn’t be needed.

WOOT!  I had showered, exercised, ate and had my contacts in…ready to spend the day at work. Instead, DH and I threw some things in the car and hit the road.

We drove down the southern road around the island:  through Mountainview, up the flanks of Kilauea, and then down around the tip past Southpoint and up toward Kona.

We stopped at Ho’okena beach:  beautiful sand….not much underwater life….then moved on to “Two-step“: so-called because the lava outcropping from which one enters the water, has two (slippery) steps to descend…..into an underwater scene teeming with life.

Saw this cutie:

(he’s a striped sailfin tang)

….and then headed up to Kona to eat at Huggo’s (our favorite oceanfront joint where the chairs are set into beach sand and my first job is to take off my slippahs and dig my toes into the sand.)

Have we had nice day trips like this before?  Sure, but this was special because I fully expected to spend the day grinding my way through admissions. Because it was unexpected, the gift was all the sweeter.