During my recent stay at the Four Seasons Resort on the island of Lana’i, I had the opportunity to spend a little time with a small group getting personal instruction on the art of the Mai Tai from none other than the Four Seasons’ head Beverage Manager, Mike.

He was kind enough to allow me to film his lecture, though I don’t imagine he had any idea that tens of thousands of people might be watching it in the next week or so! Anyway, this is a fantastic drink and if you study up and make it for your friends you’ll be a rock star!
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While vacationing in Lanai one of the activities I chose to partake in was horseback riding. Although I stayed at the Four Seasons Resort at Manele Bay, the sister property, Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, offers a full featured equestrian center called The Stables at Koele.

The Stables (tel. 808/565-4424) offer various rides, including group rides which they describe as “a slow, gentle walk”, starting at $65 for a 1 1/2-hour trip. The good news is that it was “slow”. The bad news is that it was not “gentle”.
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I recently purchased and tested out the Sanyo Xacti VPC-E1 (I love Amazon’s Free Shipping!) waterproof camcorder to determine if it was going to be a workable solution for snorkeling around a coral reef on an upcoming trip to Hawaii.

In playing with the camera at home I determined that the video quality was much better than I expected, and photos were decent quality for a 6.37 MP camera. I guess I had been expecting to give up some quality in order to gain a waterproof form factor, but apparently Sanyo didn’t think that was necessary!
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