Hut...Hut...Hoo!!!

I've been meaning to blog about one of my favorite activities since I moved here, paddling in a 6 person outrigger canoe.  I joined up with a group through the university, not knowing what to expect, and it turned out to be a lot of fun, great exercise, and a great way to spend time out in the Hilo Bay.

I happened to catch a cruise ship pulling into the harbor while I was taking pics.  The little white pontoon type thing on the left is called the Ama.  It provides stability for the canoe.  Six people sit in a row, paddling on alternating sides (the person in front and behind you paddle on the opposite side you're paddling on).  We paddle in rhythm, everyone's paddle hitting and exiting the water at the same time, for about 10-14 strokes until the person in the 2nd seat from the front calls out a 3-2-1 type command that signifies the moment for each paddler to switch sides without losing a stroke.  However, instead of saying, "3,2,1", they call out, "Hut, Hut, HOO", and then you switch.  Typically, everyone joins in on the "HOO".
The person in the 1st seat (front/bow) sets the tempo of the stroke and the person in the 6th seat (back/stern) steers the canoe.
Occasionally, if we paddle the boats into some surf, we can catch a wave and it gives us a little push as we're paddling.  The guys who are really good at it can catch bigger waves in these big canoes and take them for a nice little ride.  It's cool to watch, hopefully I'll actually get to do it some day.  You can pay someone take you out in a canoe and ride the surf in Waikiki on the island of Oahu, but I want to learn how to do it as a team to get the real experience.
The paddle I bought was hand-made by a local carpenter, and the store I bought it from, Hilo Bay Paddler, "sizes" you to make sure the length of the paddle fits your reach.  Here's mine.

The last day of paddling with this club was this past Thursday and we had a pot-luck.  Tons of great food.  Sad to see the Thursday meetings come to an end, but they will resume again in another month or so.  Until then, I'm going to check into getting with another university club that meets more regularly.  I'm still working on getting a water-proof camera so I can start getting some action shots.

Hitchhiker, Valley, and a Topless Chick

Did you know that President Obama and Manti Te'o (Notre Dame star Linebacker) both graduated from Punahou High School on the Island of Oahu?  I just found that out.

Well, Spring Break 2011 is in the books.  I kind of chuckled to myself all week long that I'm 39 and on spring break from the University of Hawaii at Hilo.  It was a little different from the spring breaks of my teens and early 20's.

I took two notable day/road trips.  The first was to Waipio Valley.  I was rubbing it in most of the way there by taking pics and sending them to my brother Dan.  One of his responses was rather bitter and I won't repeat it on this blog.  Let's just say it had something to do with him hoping a shark bites me in a sensitive area.  I probably deserved it.  I've been rubbing it in a lot lately.  It's only because I'm hoping you'll all become so jealous that you'll come out and visit me.

I drove up a side road from the coastal highway and it wound up and up toward Mauna Kea (background).  It looked like mostly agricultural land and ranches.  The scenic diversity is amazing here when you follow the "mountain to the sea", or Mauka(mountain) to Makai(sea) route as they say in Hawaiian.  Native Hawaiian lands were originally divided up using this system, called Ahupua'a.  Strips of land were apportioned from the mountain to the sea so that each clan (Alaea) had a tract of land that could provide its families (Ohanas)  everything needed for survival; fertile lands for crops, ample water supply, access to the sea, etc.  Original Hawaiian maps have the Ahupua'a boundaries.

After my little detour and as I was pulling up to get on to the coastal highway again, I noticed this long-haired, bearded hitchhiker standing on the side of the road smiling and dancing, waving to cars as they drove by.  Hitchhikers are all over the place here, I typically don't give rides, but at the same time I'm not opposed to it.  I used to hitchhike to and from work in the Rocky Mountains when I worked at Keystone Ski Resort when I was 19.  Anyway, I had seen this guy when I left Hilo about an hour earlier and I respected his hitchhiking technique so I picked him up and told him I could take him as far as Honoka'a, about a half hour further up the road.  He happily accepted the ride.  It turns out that he had ditched optometry school in Alaska because he just wasn't feeling it, and decided to do some backpacking around the world to take a break from school.  This guy had some good stories.  His next move (after spending a couple more months in Hawaii) is to northern India to help teach English.  He had met a woman who runs a school there when he was traveling through Europe and she offered him a job.  This guy was content and it showed. Imagine a less intense version of Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild).  I dropped him off in Honoka'a and wished him the best of luck. 

Moving on, I made it to Waipio Valley on the Northeast shoreline of Big Island.  Wow....

From the top, lookout point.

Zoomed in a bit.  From the beach (below).

From the black sand beach, looking up into the Waipio Valley.

Waipio Valley is definitely a "must see" if anyone plans on coming to the Big Island.  However, the walk down along the 4-wheel-drive-only road is steep; not hard going down on foot but coming back up was a hell of a workout.

Two more things:  As I was hiking along the coast I passed by a couple who asked me if I wanted to try some fresh-picked New Zealand lettuce.  It seemed like an odd thing to ask, but sure enough they identified it and picked some right off the edge of the coast.  I had one leaf and I have to say that that one piece of lettuce was better than any salad I've ever had.  The leaf was lightly coated with salt from the salt-air blowing in from the ocean.  It had an incredibly sweet, salty, and fresh taste.
Oh, and then I saw a girl from the Czech Republic jump in the ocean, topless.

That's all for now.

Wait, I said I took two road trips, almost forgot.  I went to Mauna Kea Resort (not to be confused with Mauna Kea, the mountain) beach on Thursday for a little more relaxing, touristy-type fun.  The beach was beautiful and the snorkeling was great, although not as great as I had been lead to believe.  I'm getting picky with my snorkeling spots because there are so many great ones here.

Had to rub it in one more time.

Kona, Tsunami, and Fiddle

I traveled over to Kona on the west side of The Big Island with my neighbors two days after the tsunami devastated parts of Japan.  Apparently, and I just found this out, The Big Island saw the most impact from the tsunami of any of the Hawaiian Islands.  A house in Kealakekua Bay was swept out into the bay and another badly damaged, and many shops and hotels were damaged in Kona as well.  I talk about Kealakekua Bay (Captain Cook) in an earlier post.

I searched Youtube and found this video shot by a guy who was standing on a break wall in Kona.  You might say this guy's a fool for standing there, but keep in mind that this was shot more than three hours after the first tsunami wave was expected to hit the island.  Most people assumed the worst had already passed by this time. It goes to show that the effects of a tsunami are long lasting; and successive, large waves can arrive long after the original.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSulxinFkQ

Here's a pic I took of the street where that guy was taking the footage.  You can't see much from the pic, but most of the concrete beyond the barricades needs to be replaced.

This structure is a shrine called Ahu'ena Heiau and was actually part of the original capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, built by King Kamehameha I in the early 1800's before the missionaries arrived.  It received some damage as well.  Here's what it looked like prior to the tsunami.  Most of the damage occurred around the base.  It's actually amazing that this little thatched building remained standing.

We went to Kona for the Kona Brewery annual Brewfest, which was a lot of fun.  The highlight of the evening for me though was when I got back to the hotel at about 2am, a fiddle player was sitting in the lobby playing tunes.  My neighbors and I sat down next to him and we ended up requesting and singing along to a countless number of songs well into the morning.  This is not something you would find at most "resort" type hotels on Maui or in Waikiki.  The hotel staff probably wouldn't allow it!  But the Big Island is a little different that way. This guy was good too.  He knew a ton of songs, was an amazing fiddle player,and had an excellent voice to go with it.  He played everything from Dylan to Van Morrison to classic Hawaiian songs.
We went back to the room and since people were scattered about, I took my blanket and camping pad out onto the balcony and slept outside.   

Aloha

Tsunami from Hilo

It's 3:04am and I've been up listening to reports and watching footage of the devastation from the tsunami that hit Japan several hours ago.  I can't imagine what it's really like to be living there right now.

The tsunami is expected to hit the island of Kauai in a few minutes so I'll probably get some early reports on whether there's been any damage and that may signify what could happen here.  Fortunately, most of the main Hawaiian Islands rise relatively sharply from the sea, although I think Kauai is the flattest.  My apartment lies above the evacuation zone, but I'm still relatively close to the sea, just high enough so that even a very large tsunami would not reach this height.  Still, if any damage happens to downtown Hilo, I'll see it as it happens.

Anyway, it's been bizarre.  The tsunami sirens have been going off every hour for the past 5 hours or so.  I went to the grocery store with my neighbors at about 10:30pm and it was packed with people buying up all the water and preparing for the worst. 

They had a similar warning last February if you recall.  I remember hearing about it and watching on the news but not much happened.  This is different because it's happening in the middle of the night.  It's quiet but you can tell everyone's still awake (how can you sleep with the sirens?).  I'm sure people will start going outside in a few minutes as the expected landfall time approaches (about 20 minutes from now).  People here may have a false sense of security since the last one was small.

I'll post again later this morning.  Hopefully everything will be fine on the islands.  Things are not fine in Japan.

Addendum to "I Can't Complain"

In my previous post I mentioned that I snorkeled at Leleiwi Beach, but I saw no sign there that said "Leleiwi Beach" and as it turns out I was not at Leleiwi Beach.  Like Columbus who wrote about finding the peoples of the East Indies when he really found the peoples of the Caribbean, I was mistaken.  Yes, my story is very similar to that of Columbus.  Columbus wishes he had a blog.

So, since I really saw no sign at all at this particular spot (common here on The Big Island) I'll just say it's a small park just north-ish of Richardson's Beach, which most certainly will be designated on maps and in guidebooks.  Richardson's Beach also offers some great snorkeling as well, but can be a little more crowded.  In fact, I don't think I was at a typical snorkeling spot at all, but it was incredible just the same, maybe more so because I had the spot to myself.

And as guidebooks go, someone gave me (probably Mystyn or Cindy) a really good one called "Hawaii:  The Big Island Revealed".  I recommend it for anyone traveling to any of the Hawaiian Islands.  The publisher offers a similar one for each of the main islands.  This one is written by Andrew Doughty and it's published by Wizard Publications.  They accept no money from businesses (restaurants, resorts, parks, etc.) that they endorse or bash, and visit them all anonymously.  Reading through it, I discovered that I was not at my intended destination of Leleiwi Beach, so now I have to go back and find Leleiwi. 

I'll report about the real Leleiwi after I visit it.

Aloha

I Can't Complain...

...and if I did, who would listen?  This little saying seems to sum up life here so far on Da Big Island, Brah!  Sorry, I'm picking up a bit of the pidgin spoken here.  I'm not bold enough to use it in conversation yet, but one can't help but to listen and try to interpret.
Probably the most popular pidgin saying is, "If can, can.  If no can, no can."  Pretty easy to translate that one.  I take it to mean, "If you can do it, fine.  If you can't do it, still fine."
A few days ago I asked this guy where I could get something good to eat and he said, "Oh brah, go up da hill der.  Dey got da kine grinds."  "Kine grinds" meaning good food.
Or, if you want another beer you might say, "Eh brah, get one nuddah beer."

But as I was saying, I can't complain.  My buddy Jonny, most of you know him, Jonny Lee or Scott Lee or Jonathon depending on which era and where you know him from, sent me a text the other day saying he just got done shoveling snow at midnight and that it showed no signs of letting up.  So I say, how can I complain and why would I when I'm sitting here in shorts and a t-shirt and many people who I know are out there on the other side of the world shoveling snow and trying to stay warm?

No, I can't complain.  I got my open-water scuba diving certificate last weekend.  It was an incredible experience and though I doubt I'll become addicted to it, I definitely loved the experience and feel like I conquered some fears I previously harbored about doing something so completely unnatural feeling as scuba diving.  After spending the first two days dividing time between a classroom and learning basic skills in a pool, we got to go on an open water ocean dive down to about 55 ft.  Some of the skills tests while we were down at 35 feet included:  Flooding our masks and then clearing them, simulating running out of air and then switching to your partner's auxiliary air, and practicing emergency ascents.
I may not become addicted to scuba, but I am quickly becoming addicted to snorkeling, and the scuba class helped my snorkeling technique.  Snorkeling is the easiest way to get out in the ocean and see what's happening underneath the surface without a lot of fuss.  I found a sweet place about 10 minutes away from here today (see pics above and below) and swam around looking at Green Sea Turtles, colorful corals, and amazingly colored tropical fish for over about an hour and a half.  Our bodies are much more buoyant in the ocean, due to the fact that salt/sea water is more dense than fresh water.  This allows you to leisurely float on the surface while looking down through your mask into the crystal clear water while breathing through your snorkel, occasionally diving down to get a little closer to the action or swim with the green sea turtles who don't seem to mind that you're in their space too much.

This is Leleiwi (pronounced Leh-leh-ee-vee) Beach.  I don't know why they call them beaches here because there's no "beach".  There's a lot of rock though.  They should just call them Rocks.  No madda brah, this is where I snorkeled.  It was pretty amazing. 
I can't complain. 

Paddy'O We'll Miss You

Patrick Edward Riney Sr., "Uncle Pat" to me, Paddy'O his pen name, passed away yesterday.  Uncle Pat was a true Patron of the Riney family.  He was the kind of person we all looked to for strength and guidance...even when we didn't know it.  I saw him more than a year ago at Uncle Keith and Aunt Joan DiMaria's wedding anniversary party and I approached him the way I used to approach my dad's brothers when I was younger, with great respect.  He seemed genuinely happy on that day.

Uncle Pat was a great poet.  I remember his book The Equine Me proudly displayed in my parent's living room.  My dad was very close with Uncle Pat.  He treated Pat like a brother and a friend.  Uncle Pat was actually my cousin, but because he was so close in age to my parents we always knew him as "Uncle Pat".

As I run through all the memories I think about my Aunt Patty, Patrick, Shaun, Kelly, Kevin, and their families, and how they must be grieving.  My heart goes out to you.

Cheers, Uncle Pat.  You will be greatly missed.