Simpler times?
Happier, sweeter, easier. I just told my grandson about playing
with tops and yoyos and other wooden toys. He said, "Yeah?" in
utter amazement. He said , "What about the CDs and DVDs, why
didn't you play with them?" I said there were no computers back
then. Bill Gates hadn't been born.
He said, "Yeah?" in
utter amazement.
It didn’t make me
feel old. It made me feel wonder.
Wonder in how it
happened that I got here, so long later than when I started.
Wonder in how it all changed, when I wasn’t looking. Even
though I knew it was changing. Wonder in how it really was back
then.
Actually, it wasn’t
that great.
We lived three miles
from downtown Honolulu. It took an hour to get there by
electric trolley. I remember the electric lines overhead
crackling. The rails on the street.
They installed the
first mile of H-1, the Hawaii Interstate. People used to drag
race on it at night. It was the biggest piece of road in Hawaii
at that time. We used to take it just for fun. It didn’t go
anywhere for several years.
My friend and I rode
bike down the valley to Waikiki and shagged boards for the beach
boys. There was Steamboat and Wata and Napoleon. In those
days, people rented boards and just brought them back to the
beach and left them. I think it was before credit cards and
deposits.
I don’t remember
sunsets over the golden sands, whispering trade winds dancing
over the water. In late afternoon, we’d begin the arduous climb
on our one speed bikes back up the road about 3 miles and
probably several hundred feet elevation. Back home before mom
got worried. Or mad.
Fishing was another
thing. We were allowed to catch bait. Fishing was for adults.
We were relegated to bamboo poles and nets. Little kids.
Locals like to says “small kid time.” I took some kids out my
grandson’s age to re-live fishing with bamboo poles.
It isn’t as easy as
it looks. The fish sniff at your bait and steal it when you
aren’t looking. The kids got bored. To show them, I tried. I
must have been smarter back then. Or quicker. Or maybe I don’t
remember it exactly as it happened. The kids walked away. Took
me 15 minutes to catch one tiny reef fish. The kids came back,
looked at it and sniffed.
Do you remember that
saying, no, not the one about going home again, the one about
how things that used to look huge, suddenly look smaller in the
height of grownupness.
I went years without
that happening to me.
Things in Hawaii
looked exactly as I remembered them. I remember the moon coming
over the valley walls. I remember the sound of coconut leaves
fluttering in a small mountain breeze. I remember the ride over
the Pali, the whole car shaking and trying to believe it was
just the wind and not some terrible god angry over the people
not believing anymore.
But things looked
the same.
I remember when I
was about 30, they straightened the telephone poles in Palolo
Valley. They used to be crooked and different heights, the
cables sagging, under the weight of new line added to poles that
hadn’t been designed for all the new development.
My image of Palolo,
the valley just behind Waikiki, was of a gently curving country
road with crooked telephone poles. Then one day, they installed
new ones. Bigger, fatter around, all straight. The valley was
never the same anymore.
But it looked the
same size.
The phenomenon of
things shrinking because I was older and bigger never happened
to me.
Until yesterday.
I was riding through
Nuuanu Valley, the valley just behind downtown Honolulu, the
valley my Korean grandmother lived in. My friend stopped to
look at an old VW. I told him my grandmother used to live
around here. I paced off some steps in my mind. There were
only a few old homes left. I figured my grandmother’s house had
been torn down long ago.
She died in the
early 90’s. I had lost track of the house.
There was an old
house there with a fence. I didn’t recognize the house or the
fence. Behind the fence was a teeny yard. I didn’t recognize
that either. There was construction going on. They were
building a two story addition.
I went back to my
friend. He was getting along well with the two brothers who
lived in a house mostly hidden behind a wall and stacks of bird
cages. They looked slightly younger than me. They didn’t look
familiar at all.
I asked about my
grandmother.
“Halmuni?”
Who could have known
we called her that. It’s the house right next door, he said.
The one with the fence and they new construction. Couldn’t be,
I said. The yard is too small. The house is too close to the
road. They said they lived there all their lives. They
remembered the names of my uncle and cousins who visited Halmuni
more than I ever did.
I said no, couldn’t
be.
They remembered my
father’s name.
Yeah, they said. Of
course.
My friend went back
with me to look at the house again. It’s been renovated, he
said. Look at the roof line in front. They added maybe 10 feet
to the front. The porch was different. I guess that’s what
happens when you enclose the old porch and extend the roof line.
My Halmuni never had
a concrete driveway up to and beside the house. There used to
be yard there. It was my grandmother’s house. I could see it
now.
That day I felt
older.
Not decrepit old.
But the kind of old
you can’t deny any longer.
The kind of old that
the years have rolled by.
The kind of old that
makes gods smile and young children wonder. It didn’t seem
amazing any more.
Walking in
Waikiki
With Cloudia
Charters 3.19.07
I have always been
enchanted by the romance of Waikiki. And while I envy kama`aina
like Mr. Apaka and Mr. Brower who had the good sense to grow up
here, they will never know the magic of imagination as it paints
a pastel Summer Waikiki sunset over the pewter and gray of an
East Coast Winter sky. Talk about imagination! Arthur Godfrey
filled my “small kid times” with real Hawaiian music that wafted
over the radio waves while I memorized all of the Hawaiian words
that National Geographic Magazine saw fit to print during the
first thrill of Hawaii Statehood.
Ah, Waikiki – you are my
home at last! I’ve been here long enough to miss the Kuhio
Theatre, old Hula’s Bar & Lei Stand with it’s magnificent Banyan
tree, Cillies, Lollipop Lounge, and yes, even the late lamented
“The Wave” nightclub “on the edge of Waikiki.” So many rowdy,
youthful indiscretions! I miss them too, sometimes. I think that
a place truly becomes “home” when your memories are all tied up
with that place, as mine have become with this place. So this
must be the place, right?
But our first date didn’t
go so well, me and Waikiki. Fresh off the jet at midnight, we
told our taxi driver to take us to the “Outrigger.” Little did
we know then that there are 627 Kelly family Outrigger hotel
properties in Waikiki! Our reservation was at the old “Outrigger
East” on Kuhio, right in the middle of a cement strip of bars
and attractions that had attracted a crowd more like that on a
New Jersey boardwalk, or Mardi Gras New Orleans than idyllic,
tropical, legendary Waikiki! Things have improved considerably
since the mid-eighties, but Kuhio Avenue in the wee hours
remains, um, “lively.”
I was glad, back then, to
move on to our first Hawaii home on the Big Island’s Kona coast.
Only later did I become acquainted with ole Waikiki on sunnier
terms. Today I’m happy to live with my husband, our cat, and all
my memories and demons, on board our 55 year old, locally built,
cutter-rigged pinky-stern line island trader. She’s steel, like
a solid old car (or a dumpster!). This is not the boat that
comes to mind when you hear the word “yacht” but it’s
functional, funky, and “home.” Actually, it’s the boat a child
draws: mast, Popeye wheelhouse, high bowsprit, and three round
portholes on both sides, port and starboard.
So now my neighbors are
reef fish like Moorish Idols, Trigger Fish, and the occasional
sea turtle like neighborhood favorite “Patty” with her missing
fore flipper. Oh! And Boxy, my pet box fish. He looks eerily
like a big, soulful face, with brown expressive eyes grafted
onto the front of a square fish body like a psychedelic
nightmare. If he weren’t so sweet natured he’d probably really
creep me out, you know?
My human neighbors are a
special breed, too: boat people. Folks with nice boats who come
down for recreation on the weekend; there are also those of us
persistent and patient enough to finally hold coveted “live
aboard” slips. And always there are cruisers: folks in serious
boats who stop here while circumnavigating the globe via the
poles, like the big, steel Russian (the boat AND the captain)
that was here a while ago, or retired couples from New Zealand
on their way to San Francisco (or vice versa). We also see
seasonal cruisers; folks who call no dock their home, just their
trusty boats, along with their extended networks of connections
in little coves and indigenous villages around a world that
tourists never get to see.
Boats that I have known, or
just marveled at, are just now cruising up the Thames, through
the San Juan Islands, Central America, or the smaller islands of
Samoa. The bulk of humanity does NOT live afloat, so most of us
who do have an interesting story about what lured (or chased!)
us off of dry land and the steady life. It’s a bit like
motorcyclists, or hot air balloonists: “How did you get into
this?” Yes, the sea has always been a safety net, safety valve,
or alternative, to societies structures and life’s
responsibilities ashore.
The always immediate and
changing eternal sea makes light of today’s “important”
concerns. Things always look different out here on the water,
off shore, un-tied. Even boats that rarely leave the confines of
the harbor remain attached to solid land only by a slender line
of rope, a rope that may be thrown at any time. Floating out
here at the edge we have furled sails, the sleeping engine, full
water tanks, even boxes of canned beans. We are ever ready to
slip away on the tide that always seems to be flowing somewhere.
else. Yet…yet we stay in Waikiki…
Yes, our home is constantly
moving, bobbing, swaying, heeling with the wind. Such a home
nurtures different certainties about home and foundations. Our
main attachments are to nature, and to each other: other boat
people. We have learned that boat people will always catch your
thrown rope and make it fast. They expect that you will do the
same for them, that’s just the way of the waves. One day, the
neighbor in the next slip will be gone, leaving only an empty
space of water. Then a new neighbor in a new house will arrive
to share our narrow dock to solid land. Boat people know that
nothing is forever, except maintenance. Shipmates will sail on
different tides at last, and nothing really lasts except the
dear harbor itself, the frigate birds, sailing clouds, monthly
jellyfish, and the sea itself, all constantly morphing, eternal
with it’s ever changing light, spinning seasons, and our passing
wakes stretching out behind us. Nothing else remains- except
Diamond Head (that sphinx!), and the way we choose to feel about
it all. Here at the edge of Waikiki. Till later, Malama Pono (do
the right thing) I’ll be walking here in Waikiki.
Cloudia
Charters’ novel: “Aloha Where You Like Go” is available at
amazon.com
Kula Kai: The last sampan
By Papa Al 3.12.07
Eighty feet long, a unique deep V
bow—made for cutting through the average 12 foot seas driven by
25 knot winds every day during the summer tuna season--high
deckhouse to search for wheeling, diving “aku” birds, monster
diesel engine, four foot prop, wide open stern deck for men
standing with a 20 foot long bamboo pole, bare hook and 200 lb.
test monofilament to catch 20 pound skipjack tuna, mano a mano.
The Kula Kai comes from a
different time. A different place. It’s the last of its kind.
Hawaii was once full of unique
classic wood vessels like the Kula Kai. The second to the last
“aku” or skipjack tuna boat sank at its slip. The one before
that went aground at the mouth of Kewalo basin, a total wreck.
By 2005, the Kula Kai’s 3 in. planks were rotted and worm-eaten
hollow. It had a hole in the bridge deck. Paint was cracked,
bare wood lay exposed, rust stains and sea worn planks spoke of
her age.
They said she couldn’t be fixed.
The Kula Kai was built in 1949.
Its planks are 3”X12” curved and twisted up to 40 feet of common
fir. It used to be edge grained fir. Ribs were gone. Sam
Whippy, Hawaii’s last sampan shipwright, used two 4”X6” timbers
bolted together to recreate sister ribs, which were married to
their partners.
No computers. He scribed the
patterns.
“Some people, they try to do
this. They plane the plank, fit it, plane a bit more, fit.
Maybe it takes them two days. I do one time. They say cannot.
I say come back tomorrow. It’s done.”
The scribing technique, he says,
is a trick of the trade, a secret.
After the hull was repaired, all
below water line areas were coated with roofing cement and tar
paper.
“When it’s dry, it’s just like
steel,” Whippy says.
Then the hull is covered with ¾
in. marine plywood. The trick to creating the curves and twists
is to start from the center. No steam box. Use jacks to work
your way out. Every sheet of ply is overlapped and glued with
epoxy. The angles of overlap are cut by eye.
“No eye, no boat. When you’re
done, it’s like having an 80 foot long single piece of wood.”
That’s what Whippy says.
He comes from a long line of
shipwrights.
His great-great-grandfather was a
Nantucket trader who jumped ship in Fiji. The Whippy clan built
boats completely by hand.
Young Whippy came to Hawaii in
1973. Today, if you want a wooden boat in Hawaii, you want
Whippy.
In September, 2006, the Kula Kai
was re-launched. It started bringing in 10,000 pounds of fish a
day.
A surfer-dude sold
me his red Chevrolet Corvair as the Seventies were getting
underway in Hawaii, and used part of my money to buy his ticket
back to the Mainland.
A guy had to grow
up. A guy had to face reality. He had to learn to face forty
years of salaried servitude. In short, he had to learn a lot of
what serfs in Russia under the czars had probably never
questioned. But, I’d bet that he sometimes stares out a window,
and thinks back to Kakaako as it was more than thirty years
ago—a gentle time when the beer was always cold and seemed to
flood into a man’s veins. You were as witty as Johnny Carson
and a stud on the prowl.
I’ve even forgiven
the surfer-dude for the Chevrolet Corvair.
I’ll concede that the vehicle extended my horizons. I could
explore any part of Oahu at will, as long as I could find
somebody to help push it when it stalled. And, by giving that
floundering surfer-dude my money, I may have given him his first
taste of financial success, a flush so invigorating that it
inspired him to go for the really big bucks and run for the US
Congress years later.
I can’t remember the
surfer-dude’s name. He was just another floater in that warm
little piece of 1970’s Honolulu called Kakaako. There were no
condominiums overlooking Kakaako back then. Hell, there were
very few habitués who could spell condominium back then.
The life of the
district—the only life that counted—were what were called
“Korean bars” in every newsroom, and around every office water
cooler everywhere in Honolulu, and by every truck driver eating
a sack lunch with a helper in any given parking lot.. Everyone
called them “Korean bars,” except militant members of Korean
ancestral organizations. They insisted members of the press
refer to them as “hostess bars.”
I can hear an
exchange in my mind’s ear now.
CITY EDITOR: “Hey,
Ed, gimmee that story of the fracas last night in that hostess
bar.”.
A pause.
CITY EDITOR::
“Whaddya mean…whadda I mean? You know, that fight where a guy
in Kalihi got stabbed in a Korean bar.”
A pause.
CITY EDITOR:
“Whaddya mean, why don’t I say what I mean?”
Such confusion was
understandable. “Korean bar” is what everybody in Honolulu
called Korean bars, and that’s the way almost everybody
continued to refer to them. The ancestral organizations did
bludgeon enough editors into finally getting the media to refer
to Korean bars as “Hostess bars” in print and on the tube, but
nobody but concerned ancestorians ever really called them that.
An explanation is in
order, perhaps. When I moved to Honolulu in the Seventies,
there were few bars outside hotels that weren’t owned by Korean
immigrants. That’s a guess, but a good one. Before them, it
had been a Local Japanese industry, and also run in what could
be called the “Asian format.” In other words, staffed with bar
girls.
Korean bars dotted
much of the city of Honolulu, but in Kakaako they were satin
isles set among a tangle of transmission shops and other small
businesses. The clientele was predictably local—plain talking
men in plain work shirts from Sears and plain leather work boots
from Penney’s. But the social elite, too, crept in wearing the
mufti of inconspicuous aloha shirts. They often held their
identity cards chose to their chests.
I grew to know a
fellow often on the next bar stool fairly well—an attorney.
“You’re an attorney,
too. Stop trying to kid me. I can tell by the questions you
ask,” he said one night after work. To be fair, judging by the
name of his employer, he was probably a good attorney, but at
the time, I thought this wasn’t the kind of judgment I was going
to hire to get my money back from the surfer‑dude, if we ever
could track him down.
The attorney, who
even now I think of as a friend, wasn’t the only upright member
of the establishment who would slip into Kakaako after work.
There were businessmen, other professionals. Every one—the
girls seemed to agree—would need to have his fly unzipped to get
brain surgery at Queens Medical Center.
The appeal of the
Korean bar should be clear to anyone who knows anything about
the mind of man. Ladies—usually meticulously maintained and
smartly dressed—sat feigning interest as men in aloha shirts
droned on and bought them splashes of Coke for the price of
Johnny Walker Black. The same men did this night after night.
At last, they would think, a woman who understands, a woman who
cares. And men from transmission shops would tell the girls of
their wives, and the potholes on their road of life, until they,
too, could buy Coke no more.
There must have been
some hellish—absolutely hellish—fights with the wife when these
men dragged themselves home broke, nearly two months behind in
the mortgage, and smelling yet again of Korean Bar perfume and
betrayed by lipstick missed in the men’s room mirror. Not that
the wives had any doubt where the sonsabitches had been.
Korean bars had a
lot in common with today’s “American Idol.” Can an aspirant
justifiably feel abused, when that same contestant has watched
the same blunt ridicule season after season? A boxer knows he’s
going to be hit when he steps into the ring—even a good boxer.
In neither case has it been an ambush. The fault lies with the
dreamer.
Most “Idol”
contestants have never tried to evaluate themselves
objectively. As most think they can sing, so most Korean Bar
habitués believed they were loveable deep down. In most cases,
it was very deep down. Burn me once, call me a victim; burn me
twice and laugh at me for being a fool.
Testosterone is a
fuel far more potent than alcohol. Blend those fuels, though,
and you’re burning rubber in a sprint toward financial
disaster..
I remember the State
worker from the government offices off the base of the nearby
Fort Street Mall. He loved the roll of a boat at sea. He
thought fishing. He talked fishing, and on precious Saturday
mornings twice a month, he went fishing on a deep-sea
charter boat. I remember one Friday night when he wasn’t even
lucky enough to get a hangover the next day.
Hooking into an aku-tuna
stirs a man. Man against the sea, and man winning. After such
moments, even a drudge has a life worth living. He is flush
with victory, cheered by conquest. But, there is something
missing. Sometimes, in the lonely hours of the dark of night, a
man yearns for more something more than fighting aku and spunky
mahi-mahi. He wants a woman, the quiet of a woman, a
woman-woman, to share his innermost thoughts, a woman-woman to
place her loving hand on his naked chest and speak tenderly of
the mysteries of life—like, “Who do you think’s going to win the
Superbowl this year?”
(Believe me, the
girls who trusted you confided these are the guys who sat there
tedious hour after tedious hour buying Cokes at Courvoisier
prices, and trying to run their hand up your skirt. A girl just
had to know where to draw the line. My God, and to think
critics of the industry—mostly wives—said they were too lazy to
look for real work, that they were taking the easy way out in
life.)
The fisherman had
been thinking aku and baked mahi-mahi when he entered the bar
that evening. The lady owner—a lovely thing, really—said she
was thirsty. Well, hell, one niko-hanna (literally in
Korean, one for me) wasn’t all that much. They lady
gulped it down like a trout taking a floating mayfly.
Another beer for the
fisherman, another niko-hanna for the lady.
She laughed, not
at him like the women did at work, but at the clever things
he said. My Goodness, and you mean a man like you is really
single. Oh, no, I can’t believe that. You’re so smart, and so
funny, too. No…I refuse to believe it. Some pretty girl
snapped you up long ago.
“No, really…,” an
exchange like this would run. When you have never been called
clever, have never been accused of being witty, and have never
even in the most charitable manner been described as
handsome—much less ordinary—such words have to force to move the
Pillars of Hercules, and, a man’s wallet.
She suggested a
bottle of Lancer’s wine.
A cruel choice
presented itself: It was the certainty of bobbing through
tomorrow morning with a fishing rod in hand, or the more distant
eventuality of laying his hand on that lithe female body. Not
tomorrow, maybe, but soon. Why had it taken all of these years
for a woman to fall in love with him?
He pulled the money
from his wallet, scarcely frowning at the loss of this Saturday
morning, and ordered the bottle of Lancers. He’d be on the
water again two weeks from tomorrow. The lady was forever.
The lady signaled
the bartender for more glasses. Half a dozen hostesses
descended on the couple like ants chasing a piece of devil’s
food cake that had been dropped at a picnic.
“But…”
The Lancer’s was
gone in minutes. The girls drifted back to the two tables they
shared to wait for another fish like the fisherman. There was a
whispered conversation between the fisherman and the lady at the
bar. The fisherman was shaking his head in frustration.
Finally he signaled for another bottle of Lancers.
The girls flocked back.
The expression on
the fisherman’s face was something you’d expect to see if
someone had hollared, “Run…he’s got a gun!”
The wine had cost
something like thirty—maybe thirty-five or even forty—dollars in
the mid-Seventies, not on the lofty floor of one of Waikiki’s
finest restaurants, either, but in the tatty tangle of Kakaako.
He opened his wallet again, and pulled out the remaining bills.
He was a few dollars short. His body language said it all:
“That’s all I got.”
“Well look in your
pockets,” the lady howled, one note short of a screech, “I know
you got change.”
He found a few
coins. He held them out in his hand. The lady said something
aloud, in the tone of a disgusted cop letting a felon go for
lack of evidence, “We’ll take it this time, but don’t you ever
try to pull anything like that again.”
She took the change.
It’s important to
the story to note that the wine was Lancers. Lancers came in an
opaque pottery-style bottle, and could be refilled with
anything, and usually was. I had become known in the
bar—although not as anyone who was going to spring for a bottle
of Lancers—and sat at one end one afternoon watching as the
bartender filled empty Lancer bottles with Lancer-colored soda
from the gun. Fool him once, sharp practice; fool him twice,
“Grow up, sucker.”
Well, the fisherman
wasn’t the only one who eventually learned something in the
Kakaako of the Seventies.
I will NEVER buy a used car from a member of the United States
Congress.
It’s a
city of dreams, hopes and bustling activity. Honolulu has grown
leaps and bounds over the years, and today even more skyscrapers
are filling the beautiful tropical island of Oahu, Hawaii.
Nevertheless, the city itself is impeccable and an international
shopping mecca for locals and tourists alike. Oahu is a
special place and quite the destination for travelers seeking
the calm respite of turquoise seas and cobalt skies. The people
are friendly and its natural breathtaking beauty and unique
culture is what draws people to its shores. There is always
something fun to do in Oahu, from extreme sports to simply
lounging around in a cabana by the pool at a fancy resort.
Here are 15 “Must
Do” Activities to give you a memorable vacation:
1. Almost every
weekend families are invited to Waikiki Sunset on the Beach in
Honolulu. It’s a free event for the entire family, spotlighting
documentary films and feature movies, all showcased on a 30 foot
screen. Bring your own lawn chairs and beach blankets and enjoy
the show.
2. On the North
Shore, at Turtle Bay Resort, it’s the Legends of the North Shore
Luau, every Friday night. There’s an exciting dinner show with
special entrees for
the kids. You can enjoy tropical drinks at the outdoor. Surfside
Hang Ten bar as well as late night entertainment and dancing at
the Bay Club. There’s even live Hawaiian entertainment in the
lobby daily from 4:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
3. The Sheraton
Waikiki is the place to be for the best of live Hawaiian music.
You will enjoy the mystical sounds of old Hawaii daily from 6
p.m.-8:30 p.m. at the poolside Sandbar.There is also live
entertainment by Stardust beginning at 8:30 p.m. in the Hanohano
Room.
4. North Shore
Shark Cage Tours are definitely for the adventurous. You only
need a mask and snorkel that is included in this tour, as they
immerse you into thrilling shark infested waters. There is no
diving experience needed and it is without age restriction. This
tour is guaranteed to change your feelings about sharks.
5. The Dole
Plantation is a haven for Pineapple lovers. The grounds are
immense and well manicured, featuring the world’s largest maze.
There’s also Pineapple ice cream, taffy, jam and clothing and
other merchandise for the whole family.
6. Hilo Hattie is
the store of Hawaii since 1963. Here you’ll find anything and
everything Hawaiian. You can take a free shuttle bus from
various hotels in Honolulu and once you’re there, you are
greeted with a shell lei and fresh passion fruit juice.
7. Sports fishing
is a must if you have never had the experience. There are a
variety of charters that will take you out for about 4 ½ hours
on the deep blue ocean as you wrestle with Marlin, Mahi Mahi,
Ono and Ahi. There’s nothing quite like catching your own
dinner. Many of the charter boats will allow you to clean, gut
and cook your own catch right on the boat!
8. Helicopter tours
are a wonderful way to see the “Gathering Place” that you
normally cannot see by car. You’ll be entranced by majestic
waterfalls, breathtaking vistas, and razor-sharp ridges--the
hidden Oahu few experience. Check with your hotel concierge for
the best value and availability.
9. You must play in
the water if you want to truly enjoy Hawaii. The best cruise on
the island is the Kai OliÂOli. The $1.5
million catamaran takes you out to see dolphins and flying fish
in their native habitat, and they stop and allow you to snorkel
in an underwater marine preserve. The surrounding areas you will
see starboard include the homes of the CEO for Harley Davidson
as well as actress Cameron Diaz. A delicious lunch is also
included. It is only 20 minutes from Honolulu and a wonderful
way to spend part of your vacation.
10. Cirque Hawaii
features award winning artists from around the world that
display an exotic blend of strength, balance, humour, skill and
beauty. The circus performers are experienced and graceful as
they accompany you on your journey into a magical world.
11. Ever try
parasailing? Perhaps now is the time. Extreme Parasail is one
company that will give you an experience you won’t ever forget.
It’s the only parasail company that flies side-by-side tandem so
you can sit next to your loved one as you sail above the
turquiose waters. It averages about 15 minutes of airtime and
will be sure to give you an adrenaline rush!
12. The Polynesian
Cultural Center is magnificent. As Hawaii’s #1 paid attraction,
this center takes you back to old Polynesia. You will experience
first-hand the 42-acre grounds with seven native villages.
Activities allow visitors to throw Tongan spears, prepare
Tahitian coconut bread, and even train with Samoan fireknife
practice batons. You’ll also encounter one of Hawaii’s most
authentic luaus.
13. SeaLife Park is
an adventure for the family. You can learn about dolphins and
other sea creatures through touch and play. Their manta ray
encounter brings you face to face with stingrays as you snorkel
through their lagoon as these animals glide through the water.
You can also hang out with sea lions and dolphins and witness
the amazing personalities of these fun loving creatures. Sea
Trek Adventure takes you three fathoms down into their 300,000
gallon tank to explore and photograph eels and sea turtles and
colorful salt water fish.
14. Pua Mau Place
is the haven for botanic and sculpture gardens with 15
landscaped acres of gardens on the Kohala coast. It is the home
of hundreds of species of native and exotic flowers, trees and
shrubs. There is a Hibiscus flower maze and an outdoor
amphitheatre with live music. Plus, there is an aviary with
peacocks, guinea hens and chickens, along with a whale watching
deck.
15. For real
Hawaiian music, don’t miss the legendary Don Ho Show at the
Waikiki Beachcomber. He’s the King of Hawaiian entertainment and
you’ll celebrate the true spirit of aloha with Don Ho and his
family of entertainers.
Oahu is truly
an island of many opportunities for fun for the whole family.
Discover Oahu and the excitement and relaxation it has to offer.
You can visit a travel agent or simply book your airfare,
accommodations and rental care on-line. As they say in the
islands, “Aloha!”
Travel tip:
Airlines still have restrictions of no gels, lotions, toothpaste
or perfume and other items of similar consistency allowed on
carry-on luggage. Pack these belongings in your suitcase to
avoid hassles and the confiscation of these items. And yes, you
still have to take off your shoes at checkpoint.
Connie Werner Reichert has been a travel
journalist for 21 years. The President of Write Side Up may be
reached at Connieis@pacbell.net or at 530.277.4560
He
stood as relaxed as a limp banana leaf on a warm tropical
afternoon—a middle-aged Japanese businessman nodding to his wife
as she left for the ladies’ room off the lobby of Honolulu’s
Ilikai Hotel.
I had been taking Conversational
Japanese nights on the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii,
and prowled Waikiki every Saturday morning to practice on the
Japanese tourists. I hadn’t learned much yet, but I walked up
and fired my best conversational opener.
“Is that lady your wife?” I
asked in Japanese.
The color drained slightly from
his lightly suntanned face. A flicker, nothing more. Then, he
flushed blood red. His lips moved, and he was barely able to
croak the Japanese word for “No.”
Who was this guy, he
obviously wondered, this Japanese-speaking American Caucasian
who had tracked him down in a hotel lobby 5,000 miles across the
Pacific from home? A cop?
No…more likely a private
detective an affiliate detective agency in Japan had hired to
spy on him in Honolulu. His mind may have flitted
though
certain vulnerabilities in his company’s books. They were okay,
some questionable expense-account charges, maybe, but nothing
criminal. His wife? Just the kind of thing she’d pull, all
right. Perhaps he really should send the old lady on that
month-long tour of Europe she’s been wanting. A waste of money,
sure, but cheaper than a divorce.
I didn’t see him again that
day. He probably saw me coming.
I had moved to Hawaii in late
1972, and had been lucky enough to land a writing job in an
Honolulu advertising/public relations agency almost
immediately. That done, I promptly enrolled in Conversational
Japanese—not to reap any professional benefits but because
learning Japanese was like playing basketball: No point to it,
but it was fun.
As the weeks went on, and I
progressed eventually from Beginning to Intermediate Japanese, I
grew to know the language and the Japanese tourists better. I
had even seen marketing research at the agency where I worked,
and had learned the thing Japanese tourists liked least about
Hawaii was this: It was too Japanese for a Japanese.
The vacationers were off on a
life-long dream in many cases—a trip to exotic isles where a
foreign flag waved in the tropical breeze.
But, something was wrong.
Paradise looked an awful lot
like the airport bar they had just left in Tokyo.
They usually came as part of
large group tours, and the cabin crew wished them well in
Japanese when they landed. The crew of the airport bus—all
Americans of Japanese ancestry—told them in Japanese that they
would find their baggage in their hotel rooms. The staff’s
Japanese could be oddly accented, and sometimes slightly
archaic, but it was Japanese. And so it was at the
registration desk in the hotel, and from the Japanese faces
behind the counter in the snack bar, and the local Japanese tour
guides,and the signs in their rooms.
After even one afternoon of
this, the skeptics’ charge that Neil Armstrong’s landing on the
moon in 1969 was really shot in New Mexico and a on a sound
stage in Burbank didn’t seem quite so nutty. After all, if you
could make a Polynesian paradise look like Japan…
I knew looking like an American
in America accounted for my popularity. These Japanese
tourists had flown the Pacific to come face-to-face with an
American; they yearned to meet an American, much like
tourists on safari crave the sight of a rhinoceros on the
veldt. I didn’t look like a young Paul Newman, perhaps, but I
looked a lot more like Paul Newman than the local Japanese
baggage clerk at the airport.
My field trips to the beach had evolved into a settled format.
I would strip down to my swimming suit, and in the days before
cheap watches were reliably water proof, I tucked mine in the
toe of my shoe, and covered it with a sock. Any thief worth his
after-raid Primo Beer would know right where to look. No point
in forcing him to rummage through clothing, and perhaps lose
your 39-cent comb in the sand.
But, there was a treasure
greater than my watch under that little heap of clothing—my
Intermediate Japanese textbook. It was a large-format
paperback, and there were whole pages covered with nothing but
Japanese script. It wouldn’t have been necessary to hold the
book in my lap. I could have read the large Japanese kanji
characters from ten feet away.
I had a special spot at Kuhio
Beach, a fragment of what looked like an old concrete
foundation. When Japanese honeymooners were about—and they
always were—I would sit on my piece of concrete, looking down,
and appear totally absorbed in my open text. But what I was
looking for were the bare feet and shins of the Japanese
tourist I knew would come into view. The encounter was always
the same.
The story loses romantic polish
to say it this way, perhaps, but the young Japanese lovebirds
came at me like buzzards: The new groom would begin to circle,
peering down at me and the book with Japanese kanji as if he
were sizing up a dead mouse. He would begin a second circle,
but a little closer as his bride stood off to the side.
Finally, he would flutter to a
stop.
“Ehhh…nihongo ga dekimaska?”
he would venture.
I would say “some” in Japanese,
and then go on to explain that I was studying nights at the
University of Hawaii.
I would rattle off
the same story—the same story to so many tourists—that it was
starting to sound like I really did speak Japanese. The
illusion didn’t break down until five or six minutes had passed,
and I ran out of words as suddenly as a car can run out of gas.
You don’t have to know much to sound good, if you practice,
practice, practice.
I was getting so
good at it that I wasn’t prepared for the time a Japanese
tourist in a red polo shirt began to walk past me, and then
stopped:
“What the hell are you doing?”
he asked with in a flawless American accent.
There didn’t seem to be much
point in going into my five-minute act. I told him my scam,
about using the text as bait. He thought the charade charming,
even admirable. He had grown up next to an American Army base
in Japan, and learning English while shining GI shoes had been
so much easier and more direct.. “Keep working on it,” he said,
or words to that effect before he walked off. But, like waves
on an ocean, other Japanese tourists would come.
I live in the Philippines now,
and those Japanese honeymooners have aged into grandparents. It
warms me to reflect that I am a part of their past, part of
their love story. By now, many of them probably have converted
their old honeymoon photos to high-definition digital media
files, and periodically relive that glorious trip with an
electronic slide show.
There I sit on their beach mat,
drinking the iced coke that one of them sprinted to a
refreshment stand to buy—the foreigner in a foreign land who was
trying to be somewhat civilized by studying the Japanese
language. I am—inadvertently, certainly—a part of their love.
And then there must be the geezer somewhere in Japan who stares
into his scotch and soda as the sun creeps toward China and
begins to set over the Inland Sea.
Who was that guy in the lobby of the Ilikai Hotel thirty
years ago, anyway? A cop? A private dick? The cop had had
plenty of time to squeal before the missus took off to Europe.
A strangely unnerving thought may have begun creeping into his mind
lately. She had returned from that month in Europe all
atwitter, and her mind seemed to wander in the strangest of
ways. She would smile without reason at nothing. If the cop
had said something about the lobby of the Ilikai Hotel, she
wouldn’t have been that happy, would she? She hadn’t said a
damn thing before she left for Europe.
Just what the hell was she doing that month in Europe,
anyway?
Vietnamese New Year, Waikiki Beach
2.12.07
Papa Al 2.10.07
Hole in the
wall restaurant charm
There’s a certain
charm about finding little, out of the way places. If you go
looking, sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes… not. They don’t
review the hole in the wall joints.
But now you’ve got
me.
I love hole in the
wall joints. I can tell you the best ones in Honolulu. There
aren’t that many, so we’ll dole them out slow like. Savor the
experience.
Ethel’s Grill in
Kalihi is one of those places.
It was featured on local television on a show with some of
Honolulu’s most famous chefs. They picked Ethel’s as a
favorite. Enough recommendation for me.
You don’t find
Ethel’s easy.
It’s three blocks
off Nimitz closer to the airport than Waikiki in the light
industrial area full of small warehouses, tiny, two story circa
40’s wood frame homes, plumbing shops, painters, machinists, a
few auto repair places.
It’s a warren back
there like Beijing’s hutongs. Dirt and grit sit heavy on walls
and ledges. You’ll miss it if you blink. Ethel’s doesn’t even
have one of those signs that run perpendicular to the street so
that you can see it coming from a distance, even a small
distance.
No, Ethel’s is a
tiny shop that has its name painted on the window and you have
to be about ten feet in front of it to see it.
Then there’s parking. Good luck. Just keep in mind that the
food and experience is worth it. And how far can you walk, it’s
an island, for goodness sake.
I’ll give you more
explicit directions. If you’re coming from Waikiki, get
on Ala Moana past the great, monument of a shopping center and
the park, past downtown, winding through the harbor, just past
Young Brother’s barge on Pier 40 on your left, I would say 3
miles, some smidgen more from the airport end of Waikiki. Take
a left on Kalihi Street, the first traffic light after Young
Brothers. Down about four blocks. I don’t remember. Park
anywhere you see something. Don’t be afraid to go around the
block, maybe two blocks.
What awaits you is a
local style menu with flair.
Their Japanese
hamburger steak is a hand made patty with grated daikon, sprouts
and a ponzu-like sauce. This place, by the way, is loaded with
pictures of the Japanese sumo wrestler named Konishiki. He was,
if you don’t know, a 500 lb. giant who was born in Hawaii and
rose to the second highest rank in the centuries old Japanese
sport.
You can imagine the
servings aren’t your $35 fufu plates with frilly vegetables
sticking out.
The Friday special
is Hawaiian lau lau plate. This is better than paying big bucks
to get a Hawaiian luau. The food is authentic, and you can meet
Ethel, who’s in a class by herself. She’s had Ethel’s for 30
years. If she likes you, she’ll give you a plate of sashimi or
raw fish, free.
I’ll give you a
tip. Be nice.
There’s kim chee
‘ahi don which is slightly seared raw ‘ahi or yellow fin tuna
with the Korean spicy pickled vegetable called kim chee, nori,
which is Japanese dried seaweek, sprouts and Ethel’s secret
sauce.
Need I go on?
Soda comes in a
can. The menu also includes standards like donburi, katsu,
tofu, teriyaki, ox tail, saimin and of course spam. Spam is
Hawaii’s official canned food. If you want to be local, you
have got to try fried spam.
And I’ll give you
one last tip, go early. But not too late. Ethel’s closes at 2
p.m. Monday-Saturday. 232 Kalihi Street, Honolulu 96819. No
reservations, I think? 847-6467.
I had just moved to Honolulu, and
was sitting in a bar at an hour many people would consider
indecent. I was looking for a job, but I had nothing more to do
that late morning. Some bumping sounds caused me to look toward
the door. A short Okinawan fisherman staggered in, bent under
the weight of the tuna on his back that had to be the size of
the fisherman’s twin brother.
That memorable moment was when I
fell in love with Kakaako.
I wanted to get to know this
place.
I wanted to BE here.
To follow this comfortably, you
will have to know how to pronounce Kakaako: Ka-Ka-A-Ko, with
“A’s” that carry the soft sound of the “A” in the word
“father.” The third “single-A” syllable is accented slightly.
Disco was taking over the
country in the Seventies, but there was a gentler sense of
the Forties in Kakaako, the district that
ran
for about a mile up along Queen Street from the government
buildings in downtown Honolulu to Ward Avenue. Kakaako
hadn’t even begun a march toward $200 aloha shirts. Kakaako
was denim work shirts amid a tangle of transmission shops
and other small businesses which managed to grind out their
monthly rent.
Yet there was a sense of angel’s
breath, too, in the commercial clutter. It was a man’s world, I
suppose—exquisitely maintained bar hostesses in satin dresses
that made a man forget how hard the money came that was buying a
hostess shots of Coke for the damage of over-priced whiskey.
Now, I was living in Kakaako..
I had arrived by airliner,
without an automobile in my checked baggage. The bachelor hotel
I’d found was a 15-minute walk downtown to the towers in
Honolulu’s business and financial district at the base of the
Fort Street Mall.
The hotel was modest, a
mom-and-pop operation that—as I recall—didn’t even have a sign
bearing the name of the hotel. It was a time of particularly
short Okinawans, for me. I would come home after dark, and see
Mama playing that Okinawan stringed instrument that looks like a
one-pound coffee can—shortened by half—and attached to a 30-inch
piece of broom stick. There was a gentle, soft, wail of notes
and lyrics wafting into the Hawaiian night.
And then the murder happened.
The man had murdered himself by
sticking the muzzle of a loaded shotgun in his mouth, and
depressing the trigger with a big toe. I didn’t exactly hear
the sound of the blast, even though it came from next door and
through thin Hawaiian walls. I awoke, but the sound was gone
before I regained consciousness.
Pop began banging on my door.
“Rollie-san…Rollie-san.”
I don’t know if he had peeked
into the man’s room before he began knocking on my door. Maybe
he needed an extra hand to return, maybe he need the courage of
company to discover. What we saw wasn’t pretty.
The morning sun was just starting
to seep through the window. (The man presumably had remained
awake all through the night, probably trying to dodge devils
that only he knew.) There was a lesson here. Never commit
suicide with a shotgun to the mouth if you’d like an open
casket. It didn’t take an expert in weapons-effects to picture
the dynamics of a load of shot and expanding hot gas entering a
mouth with nowhere to go. The head literally explodes.
The thing I remember most about
that early morning is the smell of zinc. It reminded me of
zinc, anyway. Brains literally dripped down the walls.
It’s said that Westerners are
misfits, Easterners who had moved west because they couldn’t
find happiness or acceptance in the east. That judgment
probably applied to this guy, and I say “guy” because no one at
the hotel knew his name—perhaps not even Mama and Pop if he paid
cash.
Pop’s—and my—biggest surprise
came when county personnel clad in white carted the headless
body down to their vehicle. I suppose they were about to say
“good-bye” when Pop asked them when they were going to scrape
the sticky bodily remains off the walls, ceiling, and floor.
They weren’t going to do anything
of the sort.
There was another lesson to be
learned:
Not only should you avoid
committing suicide with a shotgun, you shouldn’t let anyone else
do it either, at least not in your house. The county or the
state will take the body away—the biggest piece, so to speak—but
they will not clean up the mess.
“Ahhh…Rollie-san.,” Pop groaned.
I felt sorry for my
neighbor—whoever he was, wherever he was from—but I learned yet
another thing that morning. We react: Me First. That’s
just the way life is. The dead man and I occupied the two rooms
above Mom & Pop’s detached house. How lucky I had been that I
had climbed those stairs after beers at the Nihon Bashi night
after night, and the man with the shotgun and the shells did not
take me for one of the demons that had been chasing him. You
are overcome with the sense, better him than me.
Life ended for him, but it soon
went on for everybody else in the neighborhood—again simply the
nature of the world.
The Japanese owners of the Nihon
Bashi sold the bar to some Koreans, who had markedly more
aggressive marketing policies. I think what I missed most was
the daughter in her early twenties. If her husband were to
learn now that I had fallen in love with her, he would
congratulate me on my taste.
And, being a pragmatic man, he
would take one look at me now, and mutter, “Keerist, he’s
nothing to worry about, anymore.”
Life in Kakaako floated on, as
softly as clouds drifting in off the ocean. The wife of a very
conventional executive of a national corporation began making
more money than her husband in the still-hot Island real estate
boom, so he ran off with one of the bar hostesses. The little
restaurant around the corner continued to serve wonderful
breakfasts of fried Spam, eggs, and rice at dawn. A bakery
selling fresh pita bread would later open across the street.
But first, before the bakery,
peaceful, soft, hard-working Kakaako would see another tragedy.
I didn’t have the authority and
leverage of a police detective’s badge, but the story I ran down
was this:
Five construction workers had
knocked off about three in the afternoon, and had been drinking
in the old Nihon Bashi until somewhere around ten. Enough was
enough. There was beer in the refrigerator for a nightcap at
home. They were saying their good-byes on the sidewalk, but a
little too loudly for the owner of the surf board shop across
the narrow alley.
He came down from his upstairs
bedroom, opened the door of the surf shop, and stepped
outside. He demanded the workers shut up, and go NOW. The
men told him what he could do to himself. Angered, the shop
owner pulled a gun.
Now, the men were
enraged—insulted you might say. The story at the bar goes that
the men closed in on the owner. He fired into the air. Now
they were pissed. The workers charged. The owner ducked
back in and locked his door, but the workers weren’t to be
denied. They began breaking down the door.
The owner opened fire, again, but this time
not at the night sky. The last I heard, three men lay dead, and
one was in critical condition in a local medical center.
You don’t rush a man with a gun,
no matter how right you are.
I had grown up with guns. Every
boy I had consorted with in my little logging town on the Oregon
Coast in the Fifties owned at least one. But, later, after I
began working as a newspaper reporter in urban areas, I began
seeing them differently. Guns had been sporting goods to the
kids in our town, little different than basketballs and fishing
rods. More often, I began to see, city folk don’t see them
that way. They don’t think deer or duck at the target end—they
think people.
Looking at life through a purely statistical
prism, guns get you into more trouble that they prevent. They
take away the good sense to run, or lead to the shooting of a
husband who’s coming home late through the kitchen window to
keep from waking his wife.
After whatever legal fees (the
authorities were talking “murder,” after all), and after
whatever paperwork was done, and after all the police
interviews, the shop owner was found to be shooting in self
defense at men trying to break in.. But, he had to sell out and
move back to the Mainland. Those workers had relatives. Like
the locals here say, Oahu is a small island.
Mama now has long wailed her last
Okinawan lyric into the Hawaiian night. Pop is gone, too. The
lovely young wife at the Nihon Bashi who would sound like
bluebells if flowers could talk must remember the days when
Kakaako had better sense than to go disco.
I can hear her husband now in my
mind’s ear.
“Remember that haole guy from the
Mainland who used to look so moon-struck when you were around?”
he might ask.
“No,” she would say, turning away
to finish wiping up a spill on the drainboard..
P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is the
perfect place to enjoy your Valentine’s Day dinner. To fully
enjoy it, you need to know the story about the giant mural
adorning the wall. Entitled ‘The Green Hat Mountain’ the mural
is a about devotion, love and determination.
Far in the mountainous region of ancient China there existed a
very special mountain, the top of which was only accessible by a
narrow stairway that spiraled around the mountain. The stairway
was carved into the rock by several men (scholars and
philosophers) who longed for a retreat from the world. They all
lived in harmony. Some cooked, some cleaned and some tended the
gardens. However, one thing was missing….Love.
In their quest to find love,
three of the men headed down the mountain to the nearby
marketplace of the local village. They soon met three women,
fell in love and eventually married. The new husbands asked
their loves to follow them up the stairs to their future home on
top of the mountain.
The women balked at the trek.
They were terrified of steep, dangerous ascent and refused to
follow. The men pleaded with them but they wouldn’t budge.
Relunctantly, the men went on ahead. Although they had loved
their wives, their work was at the top of the mountain.
Sorrowfully they climbed.
The women tried again and again
to follow their husbands up the mountain stairs, but each time
they lost their balance. Just as they were about to give up and
go back to their village the ghost of a goddess appeared in
front of them.
The goddess asked about their
plight and took pity on them. “Love and devotion should never
be separated,” she said. And with a flick of the wrist the
three women turned into cranes able to fly long distances at
great heights. All three quickly soared to the top and with a
shake of their feathers turned back into the lovely brides the
three men had left behind.
Love endures at P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. And there’s a
special Valentine’s Day dinner with a Lucky 8 dessert that
contains chocolate crème filled sticks served with a warm
caramel and peanut butter dipping sauce and bits of toffee
brittle. Wo ai ni!
Hazel 1.29.07
Cruising’Round the Hawaiian Islands
Bon voyage! We were off on the
Pride of Hawaii, the largest ship to cruise the islands the week
after Thanksgiving. We got in on a lowfare for an inside
cabin. Having lived in the islands most of my over
half-a-century life, I wasn’t expecting more than just a lazy,
relaxing time. It was all that and more.
Hopping on the pier’s free shuttles, we got to go to every
port’s Hilo Hattie. The excitement was in trying one’s key on
the Treasure Chest and getting a chance to crack an oyster
shell. On Maui I amazingly got two, not one, fresh water pink
pearls. Then, again, after riding the lifeboat to the shore of
Kona I got lucky at their Hilo Hattie and hit an oyster shell
with two PINK pearls again!!!
The people on each island were
great – the sales people, the bus drivers – they talk about
their families, their lifestyle, their interests. They’re
hard-working, friendly people.
What’s neat about being on a cruise
is that in one large, but yet confined, area you get to meet
people from all over the world. You hear Australian accents,
British accents, the Chinese rising tones, the soft Japanese
voices, the Hawaiian melodies.
While I took five minutes to get to the
Honolulu pier from my downtown condo, others told of the 30-hour
trip from Nova Scotia or other areas on the East Coast. A
retired fireman and his wife shared about life on a 15-mile wide
island called Ocracoke off the shore of South Carolina.
Teachers there can get paid full salary for a class with only
one student. This past year’s senior class consisted of just
two students! No hospital, no big shopping malls or
supermarkets. Wow, this place exists!
Spectacular beyond words was the fiery, red
lava splashing off into the Pacific Ocean expanding the real
estate on the Big Island. Sailing by at night, we viewed the
work of Madame Pele with awe and respect. All those travelers
from afar were viewing for the first time what I, a lifelong
resident, was also viewing for the first time – it is beautiful!
Karaoke in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
was fun, too. All kinds of singing from folks just sharing
their favorites and having a good time. In addition to the main
stage, we found breakout rooms. In the midst of a group singing
Chinese oldies, a honeymoon couple from a mainland state sang
their favorite love song.
For the more serious stuff, there were
lectures on Yin Yang, assessing one’s state of health, balancing
one’s energies, and reminders about the simple supports for good
health – drinking water, sleep, and deep breathing.
Then, of course, there was the exercise
room. My 80-year old companion did good with 30-minute sessions
on the bike. I, by far much younger, did good with 3-minute
sessions!
There was much more - soothing
music entertainers, Hawaiian culture, lei making, hula dancing,
line dancing, shows, pool fun, and tons of food. For me,
though, the best part was relaxed conversations with old and new
friends, the time to reflect, and the opportunity to experience
a bit of all four islands in one trip.
North Shore waves
Posted by Papa Al 25, 2007
The weather service boosted their forecast of
huge North Shore waves from 30 to 40 feet. In Honolulu, it
was sunny and the wind light. Usually this means
parking
lot traffic jams two miles long from Haleiwa to Waimea.
We tried to sneak in the back way coming from Punaluu along the
cliffs of the windward side. As soon as we crossed the
Pali, it started to rain and the wind picked up. Traffic
was light. We stopped at a supermarket to buy those cheap
$3 panchos. We laughed that either we were smarter than
anyone or people knew what we didn't, that there were no big
waves that day.
Hunting even a glimpse of Hawaii's monster waves can be a bit
like looking for bears at Yellowstone National Park.
It's a little iffy.
In my whole life, I have seen 30+ foot waves only once.
Usually they show up at night or on a work day. Hundreds
of people sneak off work. Half the tourists in Waikiki
head out to the North Shore.
Even if you try, you may be stymied by the traffic jam.
Many people turn back after waiting for hours trying to get in
walking distance. If you get within a mile of Waimea,
you'd be smart to park on the side of the road and walk.
If you try to get any closer, you may never get a space, or you
may get towed. Trying to get glimpse of the monsters is
nearly impossible from the eastbound side of the road.
In fact, it is impossible to see Pipeline from the road.
But we arrived at Sunset Beach to 10 foot wind flattened waves.
There was not one surfer at Pipeline. No one at Waimea.
The waitress where we ate in Haleiwa said they were expecting a
big day but she thought the rain kept people away.
She was surprised the waves hadn't come up. Oh well,
Hawaiian style. There's a another day.
If you ever get a chance to see the big waves, go. It
could be once in a lifetime. And it's worth it.
Sailing
Posted by Papa Al Jan. 19, 2007
We're just back from the Friday night beer
can races off Waikiki. The wind was variable. It
clocked 360 degrees.
We started with a big jib, went to a spinnaker, gyped the
spinnaker, went back to the jib, all on the same compass heading
from Ala Wai to Diamond Head buoy.
Waikiki is beautiful in late afternoon, the sun shining golden
on the hotel windows. Since the wind also varied from 10
knots to 1 knot, we also got to enjoy the night lights and the
Friday fireworks off the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
It's too bad more locals don't get out to the water and enjoy
this fantastic part of Hawaii.
If you'd like to get closer to this local kind of thing, go down
to one of the yacht clubs and ask around. Most of the
skippers are very friendly and open. It's not uncommon to
take on a stranger to their boat for one of these races.
True, you'll be relegated, probably, to the position of movable
ballast--you'll be asked to ride the rails and move from side to
side when the boat tacks--but it will be fun and there's nothing
like being on the water.
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