HCC/Oahu trip

Okay, where to start?? Let's start at the rental car agency, where they upgraded me to a convertible (the HaoleMobile from that moment forth). Red Chrysler Sebring. You'll meet her in a moment. So my first stop is picking up Heather at a sushi joint where she has already befriended a young man. (She flew in an hour before I did.) I broke up the happy couple to get us both to Kailua, where Corinna graciously hosted us in her mom's house.

This is a random family taking a souvenir shot at Lanikai "Beach" on Oahu at high tide.

Luckily Krina, being all local and stuff, knew that if we just kept walking we would find some sand. That's her and Heather strolling t'wards the briny blue. Quite different from the feel of our Big Island beaches, that's for sure.

I set up my poster that evening with the help of some generous Velcro-toting co-presenters, then we had a mai tai (what else?) and some dinner at a beachfront bar in Waikiki, and headed back to Kailua for a good night's sleep before Presentation Day at the Hawaii Conservation Conference.

I can't show you my top-secret poster presentation (rules rules rules) but I will tell you that it was well-received. This year's conference theme was "The Year Of The Reef" and Sylvia Earle was there so I'm lucky I got any play at all. (She's the one who put the fear of God in me about eating sushi, btw.)

Okay, so I moved to my swank $84/night hotel near Diamond Head (close to the beach! a bargain, actually. Look, I could see the ocean from my room... kind of, if I leaned out over the lanai). I couldn't bear another city-locked Ala Moana hotel after last year, so I chose beachfront property. Enjoyed another day of conference (even though it was rather depressing to hear about the state of the ocean these days, people did try to keep it positive and focus on what can still be done to preserve what we have left), picked Grant up, and after one more night in the ghetto, moved to the slightly more upscale Moana Surfrider hotel in Waikiki.

And here is the new view from the new hotel room. No neck-craning necessary. But the service was TERRIBLE. Okay, at checkin they gave us leis and cold drinks and cold cloths for our sweaty brows. But after that? Fuhgeddaboudit. Housekeeping knocked 3 times when we had the do not disturb thingy up, failed to clean our room on the first day, and was generally unresponsive to all our requests. But yeah the view rocked and the bed was huge and comfy. :)

And here's Grant in the Haolemobile. He kept saying "Okay, get out of our way" and "Get out of our way, we don't know where we're going". He makes quite a good haole, actually. I got to meet his folks, who live in Pearl City and are very nice. They invited me for Thanksgiving! I think I passed the test. Or maybe G bribed them, I donno.

We hit First Friday in Chinatown and saw this theater, where I think Tom Waits should seriously consider playing on his next tour.

And here are my favorite souvenirs (Doodle modeling my favorite)

Let's take a closer look at that...

Mom and Dad happily on vacation... while the kids are in puppy jail....

I've been meaning to post an evacuation sign. I heart them.

Okay, running out of time and steam. More later, kids. HBD to Blake!

Vaycrayshunzzzz

Okay, so first I have to tell you about the Dolphin Days Food And Booze Extravaganza. I got to take my princess boat to our room, which was quite nice but apparently "O-cean View" actually means "View of Mountain with Food Tables". But whatever.

We drank so much wine and ate so much food in so short a time that my head is still spinning. We thought the food was served until 10, but found out upon our arrival (at 6:30) that it actually got taken away at 8! And booze at 9! Holy Schmolies, we better hurry up, we thought! and so we did. We had carapaccio and chocolate mousse and roast beast and.. i don't even remember what we ate, except that most of it was damn tasty. After the food ran out, we got our drink on and tasted a lot of really nice red wines, none of whose names I remember.

Then, after we were feelin' all right despite the Smoove Jazz on-stage, Mr. Whatshisbucket gets up for his final number and does.... GHOSTBUSTERS! I took a video, which i shall not post, but you should have heard me and grant laughing our asses off at the first "I ain't afraid of no ghost"! I was crying. There were fireworks and then the bar for an afterparty, where I bet Grant that my shot of Patron would be at least 2x what it costs in Nawlins, and sho nuf, it cost 3x as much. buzzkill. but it went down easy as always. I made fun of white people dancing, and then danced. Slow-danced, no less, to a band covering Al Green. Ah, the things alcohol will make you do....

Sunday was a blur. We slept in, then checked out, then went to the beach and slept some more. (Grant illustrates the sleepy vibe, below.) Then we went home. On the way home we saw a byootiful rainbow.

Four short days later, we were rising at 4 am to hit the road for Waipi'o Valley, where our backpacking adventure was to begin. We started with a hearty breakfast (should have timed our feeding frenzy, I'm sure we broke records) and headed up the Hamakua Coast, taking in a beautiful sunrise on the way. The first thing we did was ford a river (they call it a "stream") and I got vertigo because the water is really rushing into the ocean there, and I was full of aaaallll that breakfast, but I didn't fall over first thing. Whew!

Our next task was to ascend our first ridge on the Muliwai trail in the hot sun. Dusty and crumbly and steep and hot, but oh my, what a view of waipi'o! I was scared it was going to be up and down hot escarpments like that the whole way and was about to ask Grant if we could just go back and camp in Waipi'o, when we rounded the crest and... boom! cool breeze, ironwoods and pines.... a much different hiking situation, much more to my liking. We went up and down I don't know how many valleys and hills, and then, finally, we saw our destination: Waimanu Valley. (Queue choral music) The sign at our final landmark told us it was only 0.9 more miles!! (We'd been hiking six hours at that point, and I for one was pretty pooped.) So we got all excited and started our descent.

Well. What a steep freekin descent it was, and it started raining and got slippery, and we walked and walked and the beach still looked just as far away as it did from the top. That was a real morale-buster. Grant had to pep-talk me through the last one and a half hours. He's a very patient man.

FINALLY we got to the bottom and all we had to do then, after 8 miles and 8 hours, was cross another river with slippery rocks all up in it, and then walk on more rocks to the veeeeery last campsite on the furthest end of the beach. I guess we set up camp then. I don't really remember, because I was so tired! Somehow the tent got set up and we went to get water from a nearby stream. [Waimanu hikers: Campsites 6, 8, and 9 are the best ones. Campsite 1 is AWFUL, you have to sleep on rocks!! I am so glad we got assigned #9, even if it was a bit of a walk. Also, there is a Mango Minefield on the way to the water source on the west side of the valley, and (in season, of course) you have to cover your head to not get mango-bombed. but oh, the mango-ey goodness!]

[In the cliff shot here, Grant is the little speck in the water about 1/4 from the right. He's boogie-boarding on one of two boogie boards that fortuitously (and ominously) washed up on the beach for us. ]

We loaded up on water and mangoes and made ourselves a little Dr. Bronners Peppermint Ho-Bath, and washed up. There was one other camper there, but he left in the morning, leaving us this whole valley and beach to our lonesomes. it was awesome.

some other campers showed up at night, as did a pighunter and his lady friend and their six dogs, who proceeded to hunt down a pig at 4 a.m. our second (and last) night there. Yeah, we woke up to the sound of a huge pig being dragged thru our campsite!



[these shells contain opihi, considered a delicacy by the hawaiians. I ate one that Grant pried off the rock and cut out of its shell with his Rambo knife. I guess it was pretty much still alive when I ate it. It didn't go down very easy and I think I still have its little soul lodged in my throat.]

We broke camp pretty early and headed back, unpleasantly surprised that, despite all the food we ate, our packs were still Really Freaking Heavy. Oh well. The hike back was not as grueling as the way in, and the day was beautiful, turning overcast as we reached Waipi'o again and giving us a lucky break on the dry (but not broiling like it could have been) descent. It felt good crossing the river and seeing that the truck was still there. But of course it was --we left Kung Fu Panda to guard it! Nobody dared touch it. We stopped at Tex Drive In for dinner and then headed back to home for a long soak in the tub and a good night's sleep.

yay, beach!

The Kids invited me to come chill with them at Kua Bay, which was awesome. Really fine soft sand is kind of hard to come by on this young island, and most of it resides in Kohala, the oldest of the 5 volcanoes here. (who's been paying attention?)

so i got some serious Sun Time in, with company for a change. After the Kids split, I thought it was a little crowded so I moved on to the next beach on the checklist.

and hey, this is a holiday weekend? wtf. This is Anaehoomalu Bay (or A-Bay), about 10 miles north of Kua Bay. Get outta my way, people! Damn!

A-Bay has an ancient Hawaiian fishpond (right) and the Pacific (left) with a very solid sandbar between. It's not the supersoft sand, and the atmosphere is a little hoo-dee-doo, but sometimes that's nice. There are lava paths that lead you through some archeological treats: the buildings of an old Hawaiian dwelling, the fishpond of course, and petroglyphs.

here's a not-so ancient structure being visited by vermin. This particular specimen is the mongoose equivalent of the Doodle. It's like four mongooses all put together in one. (BTW the Cat Ladies' Association has some serious political clout for getting that shelter built.)





















and this is a fake sunset. I wanted to get home by dark. It would have been a lot prettier than this and I must catch an A-Bay sunset someday. Just not today.....

beach day (local kine)

beach day: kikaua

welp, the guidebook wasn't kidding about this beach not being crowded -- happy president's day to me!

it was a beautiful day in hilo town, but i just had to take a little road trip. you just don't get this kind of beach on the hilo side of the island. it was utterly lovely, the pictures don't do it justice. it is heavily manicured, for sure. but that's exactly what i wanted today. you have to get a parking pass b/c this beach fronts the Four Seasons resort, but all beaches in Hawai'i are public property, so anybody can crash the rich ppl's party. i think i'll crash the mauna lani resort people's next time.

i kind of wanted to go to Mauna Kea and touch the snow on the "way" home, but towards the mountain it got really cloudy, plus that's a trip in itself, so maybe this weekend i'll finally hit it. there is SO MUCH snow up there since that last rainstorm. i'm going up to hakalau this week, but that's only halfway up. maybe stargazing this weekend. we'll see. i might have beach fever now, today really hit the spot. i am once again "lucky live hawai'i".

i also got to eat a vietnamese noodle bowl, something i haven't done since nawlins, and got a vietnamese po-boy to take home with me. spicy lemongrass tofu. damn tasty.

here's a pretty little waterfall i found along the way. above it was this magnificent vista:

i make monkey noises when i catch glimpses of the snowy mountain. all that snow just activates the Snow Day response, or something, it just makes me happy. Glimpses of a particular shade of turquoise ocean also elicit monkey noises, as well as other random sights.

and here's some cryptic graffiti:

someone should write a short story about that.

Coming home through waimea it got really cloudy and creepy, and then i saw this huge thing. in the mist and grey it really looked like it could have been from the film-within-a-film in The Ring. spooky fo sho.

that's it for me kids, i'm pooped. hope everyone had a lovely president's day. i would like to note that i will (probably) be happier Next president's day. There were a bunch of Obama supporters in one town I went through having a rally. Our caucus is tomorrow. We call it a caucus instead of a primary for some reason. the cuteoverload lady posted about a telephone message she got from stevie wonder telling her he just called to say he loves her, and to vote for obama. she titled that post "holy target audience, batman" or similar. stevie wonder has not called me. hmph.

this just in: boy will be moving back to New Orleans! Not only that, but belle is flying up to oregon to meet him and be his travel companion on the way back. i cannot WAIT to see the posts that ensue. i get a hangover just thinking about it. cheers daahlings.