School closing songs

The new social media thing seems to be school administrators creating a school closing song.

I had nothing else to do so I came up with a recommendation.

Baby shark would provide a great melody for a school closing song.

School is closed dut dut dut dut.
Stay at home dut dut dut dut.
It is cold dut dut dut dut.
Read a book dut dut dut dut dut.
Help your mom dut dut dut dut.
Come back soon!

A routine

We have several different groups visiting us while we are in Hawaii. We have come to appreciate the differences in our experiences. While a week may seem like a long time for those who must go to school and work, it really isn't that long when you travel a great distance. It takes a while to overcome the fatigue of the trip and the difference in the time of day. You have a few days of frantic exploring and fun. Then sadness sets in as you realize it is time to make the trip back home to your real life. When you are retired and still in reasonably good health, this is your real life. You have time. You even have time to fall into a routine.

I like a routine. When in Minneapolis, I have my own routine. I like to walk to Starbucks in the morning. It is not the type of coffee shop I think is ideal, but it is 1.2 miles from our home and this is about the ideal distance for me both getting in some exercise and having time for coffee and my hobbies. I spend a couple of hours reading and writing. Then, I walk home. I can do this for days at a time. It is what I enjoy.

I found that I can do almost the same thing here. I found a coffee shop that is also 1.2 miles from the condo where we stay. It has a small seating area where I can read and write. The coffee is better than Starbucks. Kona coffee is great, but a little more expensive than Pike Place. They even play mostly 60s and 70s music. I have no idea if they actually prefer this period or just have a lot of old customers. I don't like the Internet here, but my phone works just fine as a hotspot unless I want to upload video. Cindy will even sometimes make the trip with me. I don't expect guests would want to do this, but their time is when I explore. A routine is a great way to fill in the time between.

A word to friends and family in the midwest. We are watching your situation with concern. The weather you are experiencing is brutal and probably worse than we ever experienced. Keep safe and remember your present situation will make great stories when you grow old and spend your winters in a warmer location

Tree maintenance

These guys are messing up the trees I use to frame my sunset photos over the water. Impressive to see them climb these tall and skinny trees. I now understand the origin of the scars I see on the palm trunks. This guy is a master with the machete.

That way madness lies

Tide pools are cool. When the tide goes out each day, water and water creatures are caught in these pools, and are, potentially, available for close observation. So, if you are not into snorkeling, you can still have the opportunity to see some interesting things by venturing out onto the rocks to view these pools.

Unless you are me. Pools are not found in the nice soft and fluffy sand. They are typically areas in rocks and here that means lava rocks that are rough and very slippery when wet. I see kids and agile young people nearly runing across this terrain. I must move slowly in my size 14 shoes (no barefoot exploring for me). My legs are stiff and I must move very carefully and still I slip. One fall in the wrong way and I would spend the rest of my trip with a cast on one part of my body or another. This is worse than walking on ice. BTW - sorry folks in the midwest. Yes, -30 is cold and I do feel very grateful I am here.

Cindy really likes exploring tide pools. She also likes snorkeling. She moves more easily than I do. I did make the effort yesterday and was rewarded with some good photos. Maybe I should get a drone. I would not have to do dangerous things like fly it over the surfers. I could stand in the sand and fly it a few yards away over the tide pools.

Turtle and sea cucumber.

Big Surf

By luck, our condo is situated overlooking what is a premier surfing break on the Big Island. We can watch the expert surfers and boogie boarders from very early to very late. There was a tournament the first day we were here, but there has been even more activity on some of the other days when surf conditions have been better. The days with big waves bring out not only the surfers, but also the photographers with their big lenses and drones.

I read a review that in describing this particular break said that it is frequented by the best riders who dominate the surf and “leave only scraps for visitors”. It must be kind of like playground basketball, You soon learn which court and which time of day is a fit for you.

Uncle Roberts Night Market (and hippie gathering)

Hippies in Hawaii

We have found some of the lost hippies from the ‘60s. They are living the life in Hawaii and they congregate for food, old folks dancing under the influence, and some more typical Hawaiian market vegetables and crafts at Uncle Robert’s Wednesday Night Farmers Market in Hilo. You could park on the road outside the venue for free or venture into the lava field to find a spot for $3. We chose the lava field. The surface had been kind of smoothed out, but walking on crushed lava in the dark was a bit of a challenge. I would call the organization of the parking area unsupervised so leaving after an evening of revelry might have been interesting. We did not stay until closing time.

It was a big and energetic crowd so this was certainly the place to be on a Wednesday night in Hilo. From time to time, you could catch the pungent smell of weed in the air and pipes made of crystal, native woods, and other unusual materials were going fast at some of the stalls. The band was old, looked something like the Grateful Dead, and were pretty good. Strange thing about the musicians, I saw a trombone player, a sax man, and a guy playing the harmonica behind the stage. These guys could not have been part of the group on stage because they had no mikes, but they were certainly having a great time and part of the show if you happened to have the right view. One of the band member’s wife or girlfriend was dancing on stage wearing a horse head and later danced around the audience asking for tips for the band. People my age need a hobby and as long as the musicians close up shop by 10 this seems as good as any.

Farmers market warning

Some folks who travel from cold climates post pictures to poke fun at the folks back home. I refuse to go that route even though it is more than twenty below there. Here is a travel warning instead.

Always check your bananas before placing them in your bag.

Manuela Malasada

These are a treat we discovered last year when visiting Honolulu. They are called Malasada and are fried dough of some type with various toppings and fillings. We took an Uber to find this shop that was supposedly the best in Honolulu and bought a dozen. I would rate the food truck (Manuela’s Malasada) we discovered here even better. I think this was because the ones we sampled here were served hot after just being made so this probably has something to do with how good they tasted. The fruit fillings made with fruits from the island are most popular, but I had Bavarian Creme. The two Malasada at the top of the photo were mine. Reviews I read afterwards online also singled out the Bavarian Creme as a particular favorite.

It seems to me many cultures have a variation of some type of fried dough. Native American fry bread with powdered sugar seems very similar. Natasha, one of our Russian friends now living in the U.S., saw my photo and said that something like this is made in Russia and is called a “ponchike”. She and her husband are coming to visit us here and she said she will make some for us. Having sampled her creations on multiple occasions, I can say she is a creative and gifted cook and baker so we will certainly enjoy her creations when she visits.

Domesticated Sea Horses

Green is the thing on the Big Island. This is partly because of necessity and partly a life style. An area near Kona must have convinced investors to put in huge amounts of money because they created a system intended to generate electricity from the temperature differential at the ocean's surface and at depths of thousands of feet. They built the piping system at each depth to bring the water to reach the plant on shore and found that the cost to production ratio was not good enough to sustain the venture. What now?

The source of sea water to the shore was invested in aquaculture - raising sea life in tanks on shore (albacore, octopus, etc.). Sue Hegland suggested that we visit the sea horse farm so we took the two grandkids who are with us while their mom and dad were biking.

Evidently a problem with sea horses is that salt water hobbyists are fascinated by them, but they starve to death in home salt water tanks for lack of a reasonable food source. You can't just throw some of that flake food into the water and assume the sea horses are fed. Ocean Rider Sea Horse Farm set out to change the habits of sea horses in captivity so that so many would not be taken from the wild for hobbyists. The used the water source near Kona to create a business of raising sea horses and of finding a way to sell "domesticated" stock that would live in a home aquarium. They were successful and now offer tours of their facilities as a way to generate additional income for their nonprofit. The tour is expensive, but the cause is just.

The secret to domestication was to find a way to convince the sea horse to eat a food source available to hobbyists. I raised tropical, not salt water, fish for many years and I was familiar with a food source that was essentially a small frozen slab of a protein source similar to shrimp. This may not have been exactly what they finally used, but it was similar and a source I could understand. The thing was that the sea horses would not originally consume this food source. Sea Horses are carnivores and evidently rather picky. The useful thing is that they are also very social. They placed the desired food source in the tanks and typically nothing happened. By chance, they found one sea horse that would eat the new food (they called it Mikey) and Mikey "taught" the other horses to eat the food. Now, when they have a tank of stock that will not eat the food, they introduce a sea horse from another tank that shows the rest how it is done.

You can order a pair of sea horses from this company. You must purchase a pair because of their social nature with a cost somewhere between $300-500. They will ship to your home. They claimed they required new owners to take a course on sea horse rearing and the link to this online course was on their web site. I could not find it. This seems like one of strategies where an adoption agency of any type requires that your prove you are worthy. Typical commercial pet outlets would not care if their stock made it more than a few weeks in your tank - more business for them. Ocean Rider takes a different approach.

Not a sno cone

Shave ice stands are everywhere in Hawaii. While I have not taken to shave ice made with local fruit flavors, I am a fan. I lean towards peach and root beer.

I have written about shave ice on a previous trip, but I decided I would take a little more time and try to be more informative.

So here is a picture of the partially eaten peach shave ice I had yesterday. Shave ice is the consistency of snow and created by shaving rather than crushing ice. It is more accurately a snow cone than the sno ones most of us consumed back home.  I like the style in which the ice is shaped around ice cream. Last year the ice cream was macadamia nut, This year vanilla. I will have to take a larger sample to determine if this is an island preference.

You can find rankings for shave ice stands like you can find rankings for coffee, brew pubs and pizza back home. We hit most of those ranked in Kauai and thought we were at the #1 on the Big Island yesterday. Evidently, the ratings differ because this list says it was #2. Shave ice critics have different criteria. I think a focus on local ingredients gives you an edge. "Homers"

There must be an interesting back story for the Scandinavian shave ice store, but the web site was not helpful. Probably some folks from the midwest who escaped for the winter and just never made it back home. I do think there would be an opportunity for web developers here. Like teachers, there is  plenty of opportunity but low pay in an expensive housing market.

I did make the effort to try to understand the origin of shave ice. Evidently, it comes from Japan where they first used a sword to shave "snow" from blocks of ice. It kind of makes sense it would end up in Hawaii. The diversity of the population is high and the mix of nationalities is very different from the midwest. 

Kids first day

We have been able to bring our kids and their kids on a few of our trips. This will be the case with the Big Island.

One of the benefits of the trip from the Midwest is that it takes your body a little while to adjust to the new time zone. While really tired when you arrive, you are able to get up early the next morning. You also are unable to see much when you arrive so the view the next morning is extra impressive. The first group of visitors arrived last night and our two grandkids were able to just sit and take it all in this morning.

This is not just a kid thing. Cindy and I have always spent as much time as we could traveling for the same reason. There are always so many interesting and inspiring things to see. 

Saturday Morning Sports

Parents and grandparents with kids are probably familiar with Saturday morning sports. Volleyball, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, or baseball/softball they have woke up early on the weekend to drive to a field or court to watch the young ones play.

Same here. We were super tired after being up for more than 24 hours to make our way to Hawaii. We could not see much when we arrived, but this was the view from our balcony/lanai this morning. A surfing tournament. I have no idea idea how you score this sport, but the parents set up their chairs along the boundry of the "field" just like soccer and watch. Parents with very large telephoto lenses were taking pictures and someone had a drone in the air above.

Portland Airport Carpet

 Some places brag about a giant ball of string or a statue of Paul Bunyan. Portland has its airport carpet. Evidently, the pattern (this is the second generation) is a map of the runways. Thanks to my sister Ruth for making sure I appreciated what I was walking on.

Yes, that is my foot. No, my foot did not appear in this photo by accident. I read somewhere that all photography contains a little bit of the self. I don’t see much of me in most of my photos so I wanted to personalize this one in the only way I could come up with on short notice. I think a lot of art is created in this manner. Artists create something and then come up with a story to explain their inspiration.

Every day holds the possibility of some new and exciting discovery.

Hawaii 2019

I was very concerned about this trip because of the government shut down. We allowed three hours to get through security in Minneapolis and the crowd at the entrance suggested this was a good idea. However, we were sent left instead of the several block long lines to the right. That and being qualified for pre-check made getting to our gate pretty much at the usual delay. Now if we can get through Portland and Seattle without something really strange happening all will be well.
Aloha