Entries Tagged 'Places' ↓

The overnight low barely dipped into the 60s. There’s little wind and few clouds. It’s cold this morning in Honolulu.

Today will be another picture perfect day in paradise, save for the chill early this morning. Perhaps I’m getting to old to appreciate what really cold weather is like to folks into that sort of thing. Frankly, anything into the 60s is chilly, brisk, almost autumn without the leaves.

It’s been a few years since I traveled to the mainland during anything but the warmth of summer. The coldest weather I’ve run into in that span has been a trip to the summit of Mt. Haleakala on Maui, and a morning motorcycle ride through Manoa Valley. Oh, and sticking my hand in the freezer to grab a cup full of ice. That’s cold, too.

I doubt that blood actually thins after years of living in a warm climate, devoid of exposure to the extreme weather of the mainland. If Dallas in August is warm enough to make the blood boil, then why can’t it be considered a cold night in Honolulu when the temperature dips into the 60s?

Cold, just as it is with hot, is relative. One man’s hamburger is another man’s steak. Our bodies are sensitive to a change in temperature of just a few degrees. Ditto for sensitivity to humidity. Even Hawaii’s weather, so consistent to people from Michigan and points elsewhere, changes unexpectedly and with noticeable results.

We can feel Kona winds, even when there’s not much wind. The difference between a really hot Honolulu day where the temperature barely touches 90-degrees, and a very comfortable trade wind day of 84 is nominal yet noticeable.

I pity the poor folks of Chicago who see temperatures ranges of 50-degrees in a day.  So, just as 110-degrees in Las Vegas isn’t really hot, when it’s a cold day in paradise, it’s a relative cold.

How many of the Seven Wonders of the World can you name? Though it may be difficult to believe, nothing from Hawaii made it to the list. Now there’s a new list.

National Geographic magazine has a new list of the Seven Wonders of the World. Hawaii may have some of the world’s best beaches, but none qualify as a world wonder. What does?

Tops on the new list of wonders is the 105-foot Christ the Redeemer statue high atop a mountain near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Couldn’t Hawaii do the same thing with, say, a King Kamehameha statue?

Also on the new list are the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, and India’s Taj Mahal. Hawaii needs a new structure to replace the aging Aloha Stadium. How about building a colosseum in the Pacific ocean? If the legislature would allow gambling, Waikiki would soon have a half dozen Taj Mahal-like structures.

The National Geographic list also has Jordan’s ancient city of Petra, the Inca ruins of Machu Pichu in Peru, and the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico.

Apparently, nothing in Hawaii qualifies as a great wonder of the world to National Geographic. If you could vote for a Hawaii wonder to include on a list of the Greatest Wonders of the World, what would it be?

No news is good news, and old news is forgotten. Quietly, with little fanfare, and few complaints and complainers, Hawaii SuperFerry has been busy ferrying people, cars, and trucks between the islands and no one seems to care.

Whatever happened to all the complainers? Where are the worry warts of the environment? Maybe they’ve decided to try the patience of the courts, legislators, and SuperFerry investors in a different way, by exercising patience of their own.

Patience?

Buying a round trip fare for me, my wife, and my car to Maui on the SuperFerry is a simple, seven step process online. However, with the special introductory fare of $300 for me, my wife, and my car, I decided to exercise a little patience of my own and not book the trip.

Why?

The cost for using SuperFerry was more than the cost of a roundtrip flight on Hawaiian, Aloha, or Go airlines, including a rental car for two days. Market forces may do to SuperFerry what environmentalists, activists, and complainers could not do.

Allow me to voice a complaint of my own. SuperFerry is expensive.

Few landmarks in Hawaii carry more prominence and visibility than Diamond Head. Even tourists to Hawaii know about Diamond Head, though few know why the extinct volcano is so named.

Regardless, Diamond Head, mostly unchanged in modern times, (after all, it’s a big hole of rock, so to speak) transforms each year. From late spring to early fall, Diamond Head is dusty and dry, a forlorn landmark that stands out like a sore and visibly dry thumb from the lush green of nearby Kapiolani Park.

In fall and winter the rains come. Diamond Head begins a transformation from an arid rock in paradise to an arid rock in paradise covered in a thriving, luxuriously green band of vegetation. It’s beautiful.

As with Hawaii’s daily sunsets, Diamond Head’s winter beauty doesn’t last. Dry weather and increased sunshine force the green band to retreat into a hibernation. While island residents sweat through a long dry summer, seemingly lengthened by the effects of global warming, Diamond Head’s beauty slumbers, only to be awakened by by the winter tears of nature.

I walked to the front of our condo and picked up the mail today. On the way back I saw someone on the side of our building, digging through the trash near the dumpster.

My first thought was to let him be. Digging through trash can’t be the best way to find dinner, regardless of circumstances, but it’s far too common these days. From what I could see, he had both dumpster doors open and trash scattered all over the area, so I turned around and walked back down, willing to to usher the digger off the property.

“Hey, do you live here?” was my manly shout, announcing my presence. “No, I live next door. Sorry, I’m looking for bottles and cans,” was his quick and courteous reply.

He smelled of alcohol and hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He was wearing tennis shoes, shorts and glasses. A cell phone hung on a lanyard around his neck.

“You need to move on back next door and don’t leave a mess,” I said, again with the commanding voice.  “Oh, no mess at all. I understand a appreciate and respect your property. I was just separating bottles and cans from the trash,” he said meekly, but he looked me in the eyes.

Indeed, the dumpster area appeared messy from a distance, but viewing it all up close I could see he had diligently segregated glass bottles into a plastic bag, cans into another, plastic bottles into a third, while rummaging through another.

I looked into his face for what seemed like half a minute but was probably far less. “Found anything worthwhile,” I asked? He looked down at the bags beside the dumpster, and said, “A little of everything, I guess. Bottles and cans. Some guy left nearly a case of Bud Light cans.”

Again I stared into his face as if searching for some hint of danger or defiance. What I saw looking back at me was a man who needed to eat today, and was willing to dig through trash to find enough for the next meal.

“I’ve got some bottles and cans and things,” I said, as I turned and walked away. He continued to dig through his assortment of bags as I left.  Moments later I returned with four small bags of glass bottles, aluminum cans, and plastic bottles, and a couple of pictures of Abe Lincoln.

“Here,” I said, “these are for you, including this.” I handed him the bags and the five dollar bills. “Don’t drink your dinner. Eat something good tonight.”

He smiled and said, “thanks,” then turned back to sort the additional bottles and cans into their appropriate plastic bags. That’s a rough way to make dinner.

According to a news report and a survey, the most literate U.S. cities are Minneapolis and Seattle. I wonder why?

Could it be that Seattle and Minneapolis have a high literacy rate because both cities are on the geographic edge of nowhere, blessed with forgettable weather, so residents there have nothing better to do than sit inside, sip coffee, and read?

That’s my guess.

That theory makes Hawaii look like an illiterate state, which may not be far from the truth. Take the best possible late spring day in either Seattle or Minneapolis– warm breeze, blue skies, temperature around 80-degrees– and compare it to Hawaii.

We have about 330 such days every year. By that standard, Hawaii is an illiterate state.

Instead of sitting around sipping Starbucks and listening to the rain fall and towels mold, as they do in Seattle, or instead of sitting around the fireplace in Minneapolis trying to figure out the season (hint– three of them have the word ‘snow’ in the definition), people in Hawaii almost live outside.

Outside means parks and playgrounds, beach and surf, hiking, sports, walks, runs and all those things that seem to prevent literacy.

It won’t last, but news of Hawaii these days is all about Warrior football, and it’s likely to stay that way until January 1, 2008 when Hawaii beats Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

Google “hawaii news” to see how much the news is dominated by the University of Hawaii’s football Warriors, quarterback Colt Brennan, and head coach June Jones.

Dozens of headlines in publications all over the country tout the underdog status of the Warriors, Brennan, and Jones. The New York Times, ESPN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Philadelphia Daily Neews, Fox News, Sporting News, even the International Herald Tribune in France all carry the amazing Hawaii story.

When will it end? Soon. Win or lose, Hawaii’s top story for 2007 (and the first day of 2008) will be the Warriors of the University of Hawaii, the only major college football team with a perfect record.

What will Hawaii’s news be after the Warriors fall off the front page headlines? It will be back to the usual assortment of daily news– weather, tourism, traffic, politics, education, and crime.

The biblical Noah, the preacher of righteousness and originator of ark building, didn’t have much success convincing his contemporaries to pay attention to God’s will. He followed God’s plan, built an ark, and saved mankind (not to mention animalkind and the shipping industry).

What if Noah lived in Hawaii and God told him to build the ark here?

Uh oh.

Chances are good that local residents would ban together and file a lawsuit to prevent construction of Noah’s Super Ark, citing potential damage to the environment, perhaps even requiring a detailed environmental impact study. Who knows what damage a Super Ark could do to God’s precious, unspoiled islands?

Hawaii’s labor unions would picket Noah’s construction site, pointing out that his three sons were not union employees, perhaps calling the sons scabs, or citing substandard work from his inexperienced crew of ark builders.

Failing an effort to stop the ark’s construction, environmental experts would orchestrate pickets and protests over the ark’s eventual launch. Why? Well, an ark might require a large dock from which to sail, and facilities would have to be built using taxpayer money.

Divine intervention may be required to get Noah’s Super Ark to sail, though Hawaii’s lawmakers would want assurances from God that the ark would have a navigation plan to avoid whales, would not float faster than 13 knots, and not dump animal waste material into the ocean between the islands.

To ensure that Noah’s Super Ark properly adhered to the legislated restrictions, Nephilim would be required to ride the Super Ark with Noah’s family.

His sovereignty bruised by the unprovoked attacks on his lawful right to direct mankind toward a new world, the Almighty eventually moved Noah’s family and the Super Ark project away from Hawaii altogether, eventually settling in a more hospitable location near what would become Turkey.

Don’t complain about the rain. We need it.

Remember, it was just a year or two ago when Hawaii received 40 days and nights of rain. We needed it then but complained anyway.

Well, we’ve used up all that rain and then some, and now we need more. Well, it’s here, so let’s not complain about it.

After all, we survived 40 days and nights of rain once. Wait. Twice. So, maybe we can survive another 40 days and nights of rain.

I wouldn’t mind the rain so much if it always came from the same direction as the trade winds. All too often we get muggy Kona winds. Humid, sticky, sultry Kona winds do not icing on the cake of rain make.

My arthritic knee is highly sensitive to Kona winds, rain or not. I can wake up in the morning and tell which way the wind blows. I’d gladly suffer through a winter of Kona winds if it brought a steady pouring of overnight rains.

I won’t complain about my knee if you don’t complain about the rain. Instead, lets both complain about something more common to the detriment of mankind.

Politicians.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. It’s not a bad day, like Black Monday, or a bad thing, like Black Bart.

Black Friday is the day which marks the start of profits for retail stores. They’ve led everyone to believe they’re in the red and don’t make money from January through Thanksgiving, so they hold huge sales for the month before Christmas to make their annual profits, and go into the black.

I don’t buy that.

What I will buy is that Black Friday has become an insane effort by shoppers to save money on products that are probably already overpriced, then discounted. Insane? Yes. There was no parking available at Ala Moana Center very early Black Friday morning.

Worse, some family members trekked to Waikele Shopping Center before midnight on Thanksgiving to get in on the very early morning Black Friday sales. Uh oh. No parking. They spent 90-minutes sitting along H-1 which became a huge off ramp for the Waikele exit, and when they finally got into the shopping center there was no parking. I assume that Pearlridge Center was equally crowded. We didn’t bother to find out.

Instead, what we did was venture to the newly giant Safeway grocery store on Kapahulu Avenue, which opened to huge crowds a week or so earlier. We tried to get into the Safeway parking lot two days after it opened, but couldn’t find a parking space.

How was Safeway on Kapahulu on Black Friday? It wasn’t deja ju all over again. There were plenty of parking spaces, wide open aisles, and a few very intelligent shoppers, most of whom figured no one would be at Safeway because everyone else would be busy circling around the parking lots at Ala Moana Center, Waikele Center, and Pearlridge Center.

Grocery store shopping is best done the day after Thanksgiving.