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The good old days

By Papa Al  3.26.07

            Were there ever... halcyon days?

            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.

            And they said, it couldn’t be done.

One For Me, Big Boy?

By Rollin R. Alm rollinralm@yahoo.com 3.7.07

            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.

By Connie Werner Reichert  connieis@pacbell.net 2.26.07

Paradise Found:

15 Fun Things to do in Oahu, Hawaii

            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 Oli Oli. 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

Chinese New Year

Papa Al 2.21.07

Video courtesy Ron C.

What’s Hanky-Panky In Japanese?

By Rollin Alm rollinralm@yahoo.com  2.17.07

            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.

Transmission Shops & Satin Behinds Rollin R. Alm rollinralm@yahoo.com 2.6.07

            You find love in the damndest places.

            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. 

            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..

            I like to think that she lied.

            About me, anyway.

Surfer at sunset

David Pindrys dpindrys@gmail.com 2.5.07

PF Chang 2.2.07

Love Endures at P.F. Chang’s

            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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