Musings

I think the shocks were uneven in the original, too!

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Rustfree

In the middle of watching another wonderful documentary, totally different from “Chasing Coral“—watch it if you haven’t already.

Today’s is “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.” I remember the covers of her novels from the early Earthsea titles, the Hainish Cycle titles, and more, but I don’t remember reading a single one. Embarrassing. Time to track down several and inhale-read.

UKL had something in common with President Obama—both had one parent who was an anthropologist. Not too smug, am I? 😀

Posted at 9:41 PM | 1 Comment »

Among assorted post-trip photo-processing chores, I added selected images to our “screen-saver” collection. Great fun! And we can play the collection…anywhere.

The Guru does the complicated stuff, like geolocating images from the camera that does not support texting or phone calls; that takes real time and know-how!

Posted at 7:30 PM | Comments Off on Techno-missions

We “lost” six hours overnight, that curvature of the Earth thing. We made a full circle* by returning home from the airport via MARTA. We saw the sun come up from the train.

Home, we discovered that leaves are coming down already; is this from stress? It can’t be drought. Hey, it’s raining now!

BTW, I’m not yawning now, as I’ve had two naps of several hours…hoping to sleep an approximation of overnight later. Fingers crossed.

I think we can legitimately call ourselves home fries.

* Two ways: geographically and by transportation type.

Posted at 8:58 PM | Comments Off on Home port

Good morning, rainbow.

Good morning, ocean.

Good morning, fisherman. Best of luck.

Good morning, surfer and lighthouse.

Good morning, tunnels.

Good morning, working fishing boat. Hope you’re not tired, hahaha.

Hello, lei stands.

Aloha, loves.

Posted at 8:49 PM | Comments Off on Check (check, etc.), but not pre-check

We stayed up late (as in: after dark) last night chatting on the lanai/patio. At least three of these little lizards showed up to hunt bugs around one especially bright light. I hadn’t seen these pale ones before. This one has a shortened tail.

This morning I felt like I needed fluids. I doubled up with coffee and kombucha. After two portions of each, I felt not-quite-so-dry.

Our big expedition was to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. They’ve been fixing the landing dock for over a year, and we could not land, so we motored by, with first one side of our boat facing the memorial and then the other side, as passengers were required to stay seated at all times. The flag pole is attached to an original part of the Arizona‘s mast. The white float far right is above the bow. It was a solemn visit. The 20+-minute video before we boarded the boat was excellent; visitors were instructed not to talk during it and indeed (surprise), people were quiet.

Mid-afternoon, the Guru and I entered Puowaina, more commonly known as Punchbowl Crater. More military dead are interred here, in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. I believe the current tally of dead exceeds 53K; markers are all flat, which contrasts with Arlington National, for example. We were surprised that the floor of the crater is so high.

Then, we went to the core of the civic-ceremonial and governmental section of Honolulu. This is the ‘Iolani Palace; construction began in 1879. It replaced an earlier building that dated to the early 1840s (if I have it right), built during the reign of Kamehameha III (born 1814; died 1854; reign 1825–1854). This building dates to the reign of King Kalākaua (born 1836; died 1891; reign 1874–1891). TMI?

This fenced area is on the palace grounds; it is a burial mound and super kapu (forbidden—because of its extreme sacredness). The lands around the palace, including other city blocks, was part of a royal sacred area prior to the arrival of foreigners. Behind the fence on the back side, I saw a guy shooting up and that was during an idle glance; that was not something I wanted to see (and have seared into my memory). Elsewhere people were sleeping on sidewalks and on the grass. Homeless problem here, too, in that end-of-the-road way….

Posted at 12:32 AM | Comments Off on Sacred places

This bridge crosses the Kaukonahua River, which is dammed to be a reservoir now.

This bridge crosses the ‘Anahulu River. I think of this as a Hawaiian-style double Germfask Bridge, but there’s no reason that makes sense to anyone else, and anyway the Germfask Bridge I’m thinking of has been replaced with a normal flat bridge with no concrete arches (boring, but ¿progressive?).

Love the shape of the canopy of this big tree and of the branches….

Posted at 8:43 PM | Comments Off on Bridges plus

We snorkeled here in Shark’s Cove. Which lacks sharks. Thankfully. We poked around for about 1hr 15 mins, which for me was quite a while; I wasn’t exhausted when we quit, but I was ready. Much of that time was floating and looking down. By the time we headed in, the waves were kicking up just a tad, and I was glad to paddle assisted by the incoming tide.

We watched this dog placidly riding a surfboard for quite a while. “Quite a while” is the time it takes to do all the cleaning required when doing water sports in the ocean, or anything in/on the ocean. Thankfully, all the public parks on the ocean with parking that I have seen have flush toilets and fresh-water showers, so it’s not a struggle, but it does take time. Time to spot and watch a dog on a surfboard enjoying the same places we’d been snorkeling. Since I don’t have corrective lenses I can see shapes and colors, to some degree, so I get a sense of critters. Easiest are the green Hawaiian sea turtles. One even checked me out! I couldn’t keep 30 feet away (I think that’s the stat) like you’re supposed to, but I didn’t touch him/her (G forbid), and didn’t hang around at all, just slowly moved on. With a smile around my snorkel-mouthpiece. Yes, it can be done.

Continuing with the surfboard theme, here’s how you get home with one when you live near, but not on the beach.

Posted at 11:16 PM | Comments Off on Water sport stories, mild

Adventure clue number one. Salient points: 1) water view, no beach in sight; 2) not a drone shot.

Adventure clue number two.

Adventure clue number three. Salient point: the Guru and I did not do this.

Instead, the Guru and I snorkeled. Twice. Once at each dive spot. We saw sea urchins thirty feet below us, clear water (ahem, SALT water). Fish came far closer. We saw several Hawaiian green sea turtles, only from the boat. The boat is named Hapa, which means half; the lovely captain did not know why it is named that. He’s the fellow cleaning up after our trip. Note clouds on the jagged eroding crater rim; it’s raining there, ¿no?

Posted at 12:58 AM | 1 Comment »

Travel day, yuh. We walked to a bus station, took a bus to a train station, and this is on the train. So: bus; train.

Got off the train, checked bags, went through security, and got on the airport train. So: another train.

Then, from the international concourse: a flight.

Land ho! This is the roughly rectangular Molokai island, properly: Molokaʻi (almost correct…).

The Guru and I now have stepped on all 50 states of the USofA. And this is the US’s 50th state. Whatta coincidence. I won’t go into how the US government and US businessmen, along with a few well-meaning (hrrrrumph) missionaries, started wheedling these islands away from the people who “owned”/had them, beginning in the late 1880s at least. Finally, the coup was cemented in the 1890s, although statehood wasn’t until 1959. Colonialism in northeast Polynesia.

BTW, the Hawaiian language uses a glottal stop. This is denoted properly by a written symbol called ‘okina in Hawaiian. It is correctly a different symbol than a single quote or an accent grave, although they are frequently substituted (the former substituted here). TMI?

I’m thinking palm trees tomorrow?

Posted at 9:59 PM | Comments Off on Our 50th state