Lift Up Your Hearts!

This morning I was deep in prayer, as I often am, for our grandchildren.  (Read the rest of this post before you think that sounds oh-so-spiritual.)  Because our side of the family has contributed a tendency for nearsightedness to their gene pool, one of my requests was that their eyes continue to be clear and sharp and healthy.

So far, so good.

“But what about their ears?” I suddenly thought, remembering our nephew who has a hearing loss.^*  So I prayed for their ears.

“But what about their sense of smell?”  I once worked with a guy who had lost his as an infant.  So I prayed for all of their senses.

It’s never bad to pray, but can you see the death spiral I was falling into?  What pitiful faith, and what a horrible view of God, as if he were just waiting to pounce on my mistakes and omissions, like the triumphant victor in a chess match:

“Checkmate!  You prayed for his eyes, but neglected his ears, so I think I’ll make him deaf.  And while I’m at it, maybe lame as well.  And it’s all your fault!  When you see him struggling with his little crutch, like Tiny Tim, remember that if you‘d only prayed properly, he would be running joyfully over the hill!”

Pitiful.  Blasphemous, really.

That God wants us to pray—with specific requests, for occasions of enormous important and for the most trivial desires of our hearts—is undoubtedly true.  That our prayers really matter in the working out of the details of the universe is also true, if somewhat incomprehensible.

Our prayers really matter, but they don’t limit God, nor are they necessary for his work.  If we neglect a detail, he is not going to ignore what we meant in favor of what we actually said, or didn’t say.  We do not need to micromanage God.

You must not imagine that the result depends on you. The question, as far as you are concerned, is whether you are to be honoured in having a hand in the work that God is doing, and will do, whether you help him or not.  It shows no faith in God to make frantic efforts or frantic lamentations.  — George MacDonald, Robert Falconer

^*I suppose this is not the place for a joke about how this affliction especially qualifies him for his successful avocation of rock star.

(Continued from Day 6)

This was our final day in Hawaii, and we checked out of the lovely Hilton Waikoloa Village after enjoying its amenities a bit more.  I don’t think I mentioned that they have quite an impressive collection of artwork.

Our plane did not leave until nearly 9 o’clock at night, however, so we once again ventured south, to catch some sights we passed by on our return from Volcanoes National Park.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

At Kailua Kona (where the Walmart is) we diverted from Route 11 to take in the sights along Ali’I Drive, which hugs the coast (between the pink pins on the map).  From there we found our way to Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park (green pin).  There we explored another heiau, not that we were seeking out places of human sacrifice, you understand.  Both heiaus had this puzzling warning sign:

I mean, I get the part about not damaging the structure, or stealing rocks for souvenirs.  But don’t wrap the rocks?  What’s with that?

We live in a new era:  Twenty years ago I would have puzzled over the problem for a few minutes and moved on, but today I’ve become accustomed to finding answers, even when they don’t really matter, because they're usually only a few clicks (not klicks) away.  Sure enough, I learned that tourists have been wrapping heiau rocks in ti leaves (not tea leaves) for good luck, a custom offensive to the Hawaiians and apparently with no historical basis older than a bad surfer movie from the 80s.

Across Kealakekua Bay is a monument to Captain James Cook, near the spot where he was killed by the Hawaiians in 1779.  In keeping with the tradition of making tourist access difficult, it is accessible only by a steep and difficult climb or an hour-long swim.  Or, you can contribute to the thriving local kayak-rental business and get there in 30 minutes.  We chose to take advantage of the camera’s zoom feature.

To reach our next stop, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau (aqua pin), we travelled down Highway 160.  Well, perhaps “highway” is a bit of an exaggeration, but it got us there, and was a huge improvement over yesterday’s dirt trail.  It looks desolate, but once or twice we had the opportunity to appreciate the recent widening that you can see in the photo, which made it a 1½-lane road and much more comfortable when meeting another vehicle head-on.

Pu’uhonua o Honaunau was a Place of Refuge.  The early Hawaiians lived under an oppressive set of regulations—the kapu system—that governed every detail of life.  Not that the laws could compete in sheer number with our legal system today, but the penalty for even the smallest infraction was often death.  Catch a woman eating a coconut, or a banana?  Men and women eating together?  A commoner who allowed the shadow of one of the elite to fall on him?  Death.  Shark bait.  Human sacrifice.  Torture-of-the-month.  Death by clubbing, strangling, drowning, or being burnt alive.

Or you could be fast.  Outrun your pursuers and get to a Place of Refuge, perform certain rituals under the auspices of the local priest—and you could go home:  forgiven, safe, and free.  A bit hard on the women and children, but it saved the strong and agile men for more days of work and fighting.

Statues of the gods.

Today Pu’uhonua o Honaunau is a refuge of a different sort.

Before heading back north, we took a brief detour to St. Benedict’s Catholic Church (yellow pin), known as the Painted Church, thanks to the efforts of its priest at the turn of the 20^th century.  It didn’t feel right to take pictures, so we bought a postcard instead.

It was a rather remarkable week in that the only rain we experienced fell on this day.  Hilo, after all, gets rained on some 275 days each year.  But the only consequence for us was spending rather more time than we had planned at Discovery Antiques (red pin) while waiting for a respite sufficient to let us dash for the car with some hope of not having to change clothes before boarding the plane.  We’d only gone in for another sampling of Tropical Dreams ice cream, and that’s all we bought, but the assortment of old and odd items kept us entertained during the wait.  Uncle Jay would have loved it.

Finding ourselves back at Kona much too early to go to the airport, we passed the time exploring the King’s Trail back at Waikoloa, looking for petroglyphs.

Finally, having stretched the glorious week as far as we thought reasonable, we returned to the tiny Kona airport, where we had a snack and waited.  And waited.  And finally read, in a local newspaper, about the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden.  And bought honey made from the blossoms of the ohia tree, after being assured it wouldn’t be confiscated before we boarded the plane.

In addition to the regular security line, Kona also has an agricultural inspection.  This did not surprise me, as I’ve become accustomed to such concerns when re-entering the United States.  Not that we had ever left the U.S. on this trip, though at times I wondered.  I could not stop myself from mentally adding up the cost of our souvenirs for the Customs form….

The flight from Kona was pleasant and uneventful, and we landed in Los Angeles in plenty of time to negotiate the long walk through construction to our connecting flight.  That, too, was fine, and with plenty of time in Minneapolis before our final leg, we relaxed at Ike's, enjoying their fine shrimp.  It's fun to travel with someone who knows the airports and the best places to eat!

Did I say we had plenty of time?  We were to have more than we'd bargained for, though we didn't get any more shrimp out of it.  We had boarded our flight to Orlando and appeared to be on our way when the pilot announced that a leak had been spotted in the hydraulic system.  The good news was that it could be fixed right at the gate, and there was no need to cancel the flight.  But it would take time, and did we want to stay on the plane or return to the terminal?  That's the first time I've ever been on a flight where democracy ruled:  the passengers could all get off, or all stay on, but nothing in between, so we voted.  Back to the terminal it was.

We waited.  And waited.  And waited, not wanting to get too far from the gate area.  I struck up a conversation with a woman whose husband was chasing their young daughter around, talking with her, soothing her, reassuring her.  It was a good lesson in reserving judgement on other people’s parenting:  this little child, who appeared to be mildly spoiled, was in reality autistic, and had done exceedingly well up to the point where we got off the plane.  If flight disruptions upset ordinary, adult passengers, what must they do to a child for whom any change from the expected is traumatic?  I’ve seen adult passengers behave worse, actually.

I lost track of the little girl and missed how she reacted to what happened next.

Flashing lights.  Very loud European-style siren.  And the following announcement, also at full volume:

May I have your attention please.  May I have your attention please.  A fire alarm has been detected in this area of the airport.  The fire department is investigating this alarm.  Please be alert for signs of fire and evacuate the terminal if necessary.  The fire department will provide additional direction over this paging system as required.

Repeat.  And repeat.  (“Pete and Repeat were sitting in a boat.  Pete jumped out.  Who was left?”  “Repeat.”  “Pete and Repeat were in a boat….”)

Eventually we were shooed back into the plane.  I’m convinced the exasperated pilot finally spluttered, “Get those people back onto the plane before someone makes them evacuate the airport!”  Good decision.

Our friendly neighbors were waiting for us when at last we arrived in Orlando, and the final leg of our journey was pleasant and timely.  Our luggage (and its contents) made it in good shape, albeit with the “TSA was here” note inside that I’ve come to expect.  Back in the days when the people we would visit smoked, I’d wash even our clean clothes upon returning home.  Now I’m back to doing it again.  Sure, the TSA folks wear gloves, but they don’t change them between suitcases.  Call me paranoid, but it makes me feel better, like washing new clothes straight from the store.

As always, it was good to get home, and back to the business of life.  Someone asked me if our vacation was restful, and I replied, "Restful?  Of course not.  Vacations are never restful."  But this one was enjoyable, fulfilling, and delightful.

For one who never cared much for travel of any sort, much less overseas—Hawaii may not be out of the country, but it's clearly "overseas"—I'm coming to see that it can be worthwhile, fun, and more affordable than I thought.  I'm also getting better at it, as I get more practice.  I'm a long way from putting in 10,000 hours, but if that's what it takes to become an expert, maybe I can become reasonably competent on a lesser course of study.

Aloha, Hawaii, and mahalo for your hospitality!

(Continued from Day 5)

This morning we arose early, broke out our snorkeling gear, and headed for the resort’s lagoon.  The lagoon is manmade, but open to the sea, so if you get there before there’s a lot of splashing around you can see some interesting fish and sea turtles.

That done, we were on the road again, this time going to the Kohala area, the northwestern tip of the island.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

Polulu Beach (green marker on the map) is reached by foot, via a steep trail that begins with these warning signs.

It was a nice trek, though we didn’t go much more than halfway.  The view was good enough.

Back in the car again, we made our way in a leisurely manner back towards Hawi (purple marker), stopping at various sites along the way.

The Kalahikiola Church was founded in 1855, one of the first on the island.  New England has a long reach:  it is a Congregational church.

In Kapaau we paused to see the statue of King Kamehameha the Great.  The famous version of this statue, in Honolulu, was a replacement for this one, which was lost in a shipwreck on its way from Europe.  It was later recovered, and now rests here.

We parked across the street, and walked over for a closer look, and to use the restrooms.  Porter found some nice old ladies on the porch to talk with, and one of those gentle, sweet souls gave him his Great and Terrifying Idea.  More on that later.

Feeling it would be rude to use their parking lot without stopping in, we visited the Ackerman Galleries gift shop.  It was like a magnet:  we kept returning as we thought of more and more things to buy there.  It was the first shop we tried, in this area famous for its resident artists, and it turned out to be the best by far.

(Further down the road is the original Ackerman Galleries, featuring the work of Gary Ackerman himself.  It was like a museum, but with price tags.  Entirely unaffordable price tags, so we enjoyed it as a museum.  You can see some of Ackerman’s very impressive work on his website.)

We never found the divine confections promised here, but I like the street sign.

Back in Hawi, we stopped for lunch and some Tropical Dreams ice cream at the Kohala Coffee Mill.  We had some interesting dining companions.

I’ve said before that Hawaii doesn’t make it easy for tourists.  Two important historical sites, the Mo’okini Heiau and the birthplace of Kamehameha the Great, are not far from Hawi, but you’d never guess it.  To get there one must know to turn at the sign for the tiny Upolu airport (aqua marker on the map).  At the airport, turn left onto a dirt road—and I use the term “road” loosely.  There are no signs at all.  I quote from the guidebook:

The county does a terrible job maintaining the unpaved portion.  If it’s dry, you may make it the 1½ miles to the heiau….  Otherwise, it’s 4WD on at least part of the unpaved section and the last part might even scare 4-wheelers.  Puddles last a long time here, and some of them are large enough to have nearly spawned their own ecosystem.  Even during bad weather we’ve seen rental cars back here, giving legitimacy to the question:  What’s the difference between a rental car and a 4WD?  A rental car can go anywhere…

Apparently Porter took that last line—though none of the rest of the paragraph—to heart. Either that or his success at South Point went to his head.  Or perhaps he thought, “How bad can a road recommended by a little old lady be?”

Bravely he made the left turn and plunged down the dirt road.  Weaving, swerving, dodging to avoid deep holes and large, jagged rocks, we bounced and jerked and tilted our way to … where?  We were driving by faith—in the guidebook?  the little old lady?—and not by sight; remember, there were no signs to indicate we were on the right road.  Only—there was no other road, so we pressed on.  Did I say we tilted?  Several times I thought we were at risk of flipping the car, though Porter denies this.  He’s probably right, but I recognized the feeling from several exciting sailing trips, and kept throwing my weight as far as I could to the side of safety.

Porter later wondered why I didn’t use my camera during the drive.  When I replied that I don’t take good photographs with my eyes closed, he was astounded.  I guess that when he gleefully crowed, “Isn’t this fun?” he must have taken my stunned silence for assent.  I thought I did pretty well to bite my lip and let him have his wild ride.

At last, the longed-for reassurance that we were on the right road—at the wide spot that passes for a parking lot, with room for a car or two (red marker).  Clearlly, they knew better than to expect a crowd.  We made the rest of the journey on foot.

Mo’okini Heiau was a place of human sacrifice; tens of thousands of Hawaiians lost their lives at this holehole stone.  It is a desolate place, full of history and nearly untouched by the tourist industry.

Porter asked me, “Are you glad we came?” to which I replied, “Not yet.  After we’re safely out of here I will be glad that we made the trip.”  He was quite confident in his ability to get us safely back to the main road; I, however, was eyeing the approaching storm and thinking how impossible it would be to navigate the rocks and ruts with the road covered by water.

But Porter was right; we beat the storm and I did then say I was glad we had come.

Our next, much more accessible, stop was the old Hawaiian village ruins at Lapakahi State Historical Park (yellow marker).  We had just enough time for a quick tour before it closed.

I love the contrast between the black and white stones.

We capped our penultimate day in Hawaii with a swim in the fancy pool complex back at the resort.

(Continued from Day 4, Part 2)

At 8:00 this morning we had the mandatory timeshare presentation that made the whole trip possible.  Despite having many, many opportunities in Florida to earn stuff by wasting time in this way, we had never taken advantage of them, and this was our first.

Based on the experiences of others, we expected a boring group presentation and a high-pressure sales pitch.  I even brought a book to read, as I was told that is the best way of getting through the presentation.

Not here.  First, the presentation was personal, just the agent and us.  Surprisingly, that was not boring at all.  I survived very well the insistent personal questions—designed to help her tailor her presentation to our personalities—by reminding myself that there was a person behind that sales front, and countering every question with one back at her.  “How many children do you have?” she’d ask; “Two; how about you?” I’d respond.  We actually had an interesting conversation, instead of me just resenting being asked questions I didn’t want to answer.

The presentation was followed by a tour of the Hilton timeshare properties at Waikoloa Village.  (We were staying in their hotel, not a timeshare.)  Again, it was just the two of us and our guide.

At the end, we were given the opportunity to buy into the program, and—as we had expected—some incentives to “do it now.”  But really, there was little pressure; they expect the program to sell itself.

And if we had been different people, it would have.  Timeshares aren’t the burdens they were many years ago, at least not these.  If our travelling tastes ran to staying in major cities and tourist destinations, this would be an excellent resource.  Hilton has a vast array of properties, from small apartments to major hotels, available for their community members to use on “points” generated by their timeshare properties.  Some are more luxurious than others, but all are backed by Hilton quality.  The system could save someone who vacations like that a lot of money over time.

But that’s not us.  True, we’ve learned to enjoy a nice hotel on the company’s dime dollar.  We also stopped patronizing cheap motels when the clientele went from frugal to sleazy, at least along I-95.  I’m talking bedbug / appalling personal hygiene / meth residue on the walls kind of sleazy.  We like good quality accommodations.  But our travel largely revolves around family and friends—the sales rep reluctantly informed us that they have as yet no properties in the Gambia—and we’d rather not have HD TV in the room and a golf course and tennis courts nearby.

So, they didn’t make a sale, but succeeded in proving to us that timeshare programs are like I-95 hotels:  you can find a good one if you’re careful.

All in all, considering the value we received, I call it two and a half hours well spent.

It was our fifth day in Hawaii, and we hadn’t yet been swimming.  So we headed just a bit north, to Hapuna Beach State Park, which has won numerous accolades for its white-sand beach.

The sand was nice, the water was nice—albeit a bit too calm for my taste—and we spent a pleasant couple of hours there—but it is hard not to be a Florida snob when it comes to sand, surf, and sun.

Back at the resort, we prepared for the evening’s big event, the Legends of the Pacific luau.  Big, all-you-can-eat spread of Hawaiian food.  Entertainment featuring Polynesian music and dance.  Not something that would have drawn us with its $100/person price tag, but for what we paid (it was part of our package), it was fun, and good eating.

This short YouTube video by Westjet gives you a view of the Hilton Waikoloa resort, and you’ll see part of the luau production in the middle.  I know some grandkids who would have enjoyed the fire dancer.

Historical note:  One of our table-neighbors was playing with his iPad while waiting for dinner to be ready, while his wife nagged him to get rid of it.  I sympathized with him, but he put it away and did not share with us what he had been reading—that halfway across the world, Osama bin Laden had been killed.

(Continued from Day 4, Part 1)

After climbing up out of the Kilauea Iki crater, our next adventure was at the Thurston Lava Tube.

Walking inside a cave made by flowing lava was impressive enough, but the real fun began after this sign:

Hawaii, even in the National Park, lets you be as foolish as you like.  They put up the warning signs, and you make the decision.  Actually, this was quite safe, but I was a lot happier knowing we had not one, but two flashlights.  My favorite part came after we had walked far enough that there was not the faintest hint of a glow of light from the entrance, no matter how long we kept our lights off to let our eyes adjust.  It was dark.  D-A-R-K.  Thrillingly and palpably dark.  The second best thing was that most tourists were scared off by the sign—or unprepared with lights.  We had turned around and were nearly back at the surface before seeing another person.  Having that experience all to ourselves was awesome indeed.

Our next walk was above ground once again.  Devastation Trail is a pretty accurate name, but it has a great view of the path across Kilauea Iki.

Cinder fields from the 1959 eruption.

After that we took the Pu'u Huluhulu / Mauna Ulu trail, but on the advice of a ranger did not walk its entire length.  The sights were interesting, but with time passing rapidly, we couldn’t afford another two- to three-hour hike (or maybe four at our pace), and really, after a while all that lava starts to look alike.

Or not.  This is a wall of a'a', a handy Boggle word, since the game doesn’t insist on the apostrophes.

And this is pahoehoe, which is described as “smooth”—but those soft-looking striations feel like parallel razor blades.

We continued down Chain of Craters Road for a while.  Our intent had been to take it to the end, but that was still a long way away, and it became clear that many of the stops were more interesting to those who had not bothered to take the Kilauea Iki hike.  So we headed back to the Visitor Center for one more, short trail:  Sulphur Banks.  The name pretty much says it all.

Soon we were back on Route 11, leaving Volcanoes National Park behind, taking with us lots of pictures and a memorable experience.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

Our next stop was South Point, the southernmost spot in the United States.  A quarter of a century earlier, we had stood at the southernmost point in the continental U.S.

Here’s the southernmost point without qualification.

Tourism, as might be expected, is a big industry for Hawaii, but that doesn’t mean they make it easy for strangers.  In stark contrast with Florida’s Key West, South Point makes no effort to attract tourists:  it is poorly marked, and the road, though recently made much more automobile-friendly, is single-lane and rather desolate.  Getting down to the parking area was, shall we say, interesting—and we couldn’t help noticing that anyone who knew anything about the area had come in a four-wheel drive vehicle.  I’ll save the suspense and let you know that Porter rose to the occasion, making it up the steep, rutted, and rocky grade on the first try.

That was not sufficient challenge for him, however.  He deeply regretted not having brought his bathing suit, as some enthusiastic local teens (the term “Hawaiian” is properly given only to those with native Hawaiian blood) were jumping off the cliff at the end of the road and climbing back up a blow hole.  Porter would love to have had me take a video of him doing likewise.  Me?  I’m very glad he had no suit.  He made me nervous enough by standing near the very edge, with a stiff and unpredictably gusty wind threatening to blow him in, bathing suit or no.

Oh, and the guidebook, which doesn’t hesitate to suggest risky adventures, recommends not swimming unless you know what you are doing, because the currents there take you directly to Antarctica with no stopovers.

Did I mention it was windy?

After that adventure we made a beeline for home, saving the remaining sights for another day.  We would like to have visited the green sand beach, but it is only accessible by 4WD from South Point, unless you're up for a five mile hike, which we weren't.

It was well after dark when we elected to make one more stop:  at Walmart, for water shoes to replace the ones we had neglected to bring from home.  Why I bothered to get some for myself when my Vibrams would have worked just as well, I’ll never know—but at least they were inexpensive, even in mainland terms.

It had been an exhausting and exhilarating two-day tour of the island’s perimeter, and I don’t think I’d change a thing—including the part about Porter not having his bathing suit.

We crawled into bed, anticipating a lighter day the morrow.

Just after midnight today, Steven Perezluha reached Annapolis, Maryland as the ninth bicyclist in his division to complete the Race Across AMerica.  With the 41-minute credit he received for a tornado-caused delay in Kansas, his official finish was at 11:34 last night.  Steven raced from the Pacific to the Atlantic in an even ten days and eight hours.

Congratulations to Steven!

And because no one, least of all a major athlete, succeeds without a great deal of help:

Congratulations to his sponsors, his incredible support crew, and his parents!

No, not our granddaughter.  :(  But something her siblings would probably like.  It brightened my day, and might do so for you while you're waiting for the next Hawaii post.

John Rutter's  Look at the World.  (H/T SouthForte Farms)

The Race Across AMerica may be the craziest bike race ever.  From the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland (this year's route).  The record for the solo men's division is a little over eight days.

Steven Perezluha, the friend of whom I've written before (biking to Alaska, and racing up Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning), is making his RAAM debut, his substantial crew led by his uncle, Danny Chew, himself a two-time RAAM winner.  From today's VeloNews article:

The youngest rider in the field is 20-year-old Steven Perezluha, nephew of 2-time RAAM winner Danny Chew. “My goal is to finish, hopefully in ten days as the top American finisher,” the youngster declared in Oceanside, “I’m going to try to be conservative at the beginning and not blow up,” he added. Yet it was Perezluha who was first to Time Station 1, 50 miles into the race at Lake Henshaw. In the next 20 miles he was passed by Strasser before reaching the “Glass Elevator,” a fast and winding descent down to the desert floor where temperatures approaching 100 degrees awaited the riders. While it is unknown whether Perezluha did indeed “blow up,” what is certain is that he’s slowed considerably, dropping from being the early leader down to 19th overnight.

Taking it easy, if somewhat oxymoronic to say about such a race, will be the smart thing for Steven to do:  there's no percentage in abusing his still-developing body when he has so many more years to hit his peak.  But he's such a competitor ... who knows what he might accomplish?

Here are some links if you want to follow his progress:

Steven's profile

Steven's progress

(added 6/17) Very cool page with animated map and stats, great for following the athletes' progress

Leaderboard

Live stream (I include this because it has the potential to be interesting, at least for us, although at the time of writing the stops and starts of video and audio make it too painful to listen to for long.)

Steven's website (hosted by Lime Daley!)

Go, Steven!  Finish the race!  Do well, but don't overdo it!

(Continued from Day 3 - Part 2)

There was nothing about its beginning to presage a day spent amidst reminders of nature’s primordial (and very present) violence.

We awakened early.  I grabbed my Bible and a cup of tea, and slipped out to breathe in the morning from our porch.  Rarely have I experience such uplifting peace.  I bathed in the natural beauty before me—okay, technically it was a golf course, but there were birds, and wind stirring the trees, and no sign of golfers.  Best of all was the delight for my ears:  I could hear the trilling of unknown Hawaiian birds, the crow of a rooster, and the lowing of a cow.  I could hear the breeze, and the soft sounds of Porter puttering in the cottage behind me.  More remarkable was what I could not hear:  no lawn mowers, no chain saws, no air conditioning compressors, no pool pumps, no airplanes, no construction work, and no road noise—not even a single car.  I was awed at how much more conducive to meditation is such a setting.

Somewhat reluctantly, we packed up and headed for breakfast (included with the room) at the Kilauea Lodge restaurant.  The feature was French toast:  three pieces of Portuguese sweet bread (note:  not sweetbreads), each different—plain, taro, and guava—all delicious.  It was served with two syrups, maple and coconut.  This being Hawaii, not Vermont, the “maple” syrup was not the genuine article, but Porter liked the coconut, and I found the French toast sweet, flavorful, and delicious just as it was.

If forced to name the high point of our trip, I would have to say the helicopter ride on Day 2.  No pun intended.  Really.  But Volcanoes National Park was a close second.  Florida has resorts.  Florida has botanical gardens.  Florida has beaches.  Very nice beaches, with surfing, and snorkeling.  Florida even has cattle ranches.  But Florida has no volcanoes.  Not one.  Walking across a crater is one amazing experience.  Not at all like walking across a Florida parking lot in August.  Well, only a little like that.

You can take a look at the park with this cool, interactive map from the National Park Service.  Our first stop at the park was—surprise!—the Visitor Center.  There, some friendly rangers helped us tailor our visit to our time limitations and personal preferences.  We began by taking the Crater Rim Drive to the Jaggar Museum.  Those who know how much we like museums may wonder at this, but we spent very little time in the museum itself.  It’s full of interesting information, and if we’d had a week we would have enjoyed it.  Information can be found elsewhere; not so the view!

This is the Kilauea caldera.

This is my Florida guy in Hawaii, wearing his hat from Thailand and his shirt from Tanzania.  With the Kilauea caldera.  Not at all the same as the grandsons' request for a picture of "Dad-o standing dangerously close to the lava," but the best we could do.

Porter’s favorite Hawaiian flora, the ohia tree.  If you have five minutes to spare, enjoy this story of the ohia from HGTV.

The 11-mile Crater Rim Drive circles Kilauea, but for us this was the end of the line.  Much of the park is closed due to dangerous emissions from recent volcanic activity.

No worries.  There was more than enough still open to make us wish we had more than three quarters of a day to spend at the park.

This steamy trail reminded me of New Zealand, where we watched Maoris cooking food over similar steam vents.

After that warm-up we were ready for the main hike, the highlight of the day:  the Kilauea Iki Trail.  Kilauea Iki is a smaller crater on the east side of the main Kilauea caldera.  The hike took us through rain forest along the crater rim, a pleasant enough walk as it was, but—this is where I reveal my bad tourism skills, having not read the brochure beforehand—I really became excited when I realized we were gradually descending to the frozen lava lake itself!  The trail, now marked with piles of stacked rocks, known as ahu, ran more or less straight across the still-steaming lakebed before returning steeply to the top of the crater.  If you want to follow where we trod, so to speak, you can read the brochure that was our guide.

View from the rim:  You can see steam from the Kilauea caldera in the background, and part of the tourist-foot-worn path along the Kilauea Iki floor.  That's the faint, white, straight, diagonal line that crosses from sun to shadow in the middle of the picture.  We walked across from upper right to lower left.

Good thing I don’t mind looking like a tourist:  Thai hat (gift from Porter); Carnegie Mellon shirt (gift from Heather); Swiss backpack (gift from Janet).  The belt pack kept my camera handy, and the jeans protected my legs, which were still sore and oozing from the day before, when I foolishly climbed around on razor-sharp lava rock in shorts.  Not that climbing was the problem; falling was.

But the pièce de résistance was the shoes.  My Vibram Five Fingers.  Walking barefoot across the lava was out of the question (see above comment about asphalt, Florida, and August), but I knew I had to let my Happy Feet make the journey.  They make hiking more personal, more connected and responsive to the land.  It was a sublime experience.

Eventually, and reluctantly, I switched back to my sneakers.  Walking in my Vibrams may be more fun, but over such rough terrain it was also slower.  Because we like to look around a lot while we hike, it was already clear that we would be exceeding the park’s hiking time estimate of two to three hours.  More than that—did I mention that the lava rock is sharp?  I decided I’d rather ruin a $35 pair of shoes than ones that cost twice that.  (As it turned out, the Five Fingers probably would have been fine, as they showed no damage at all from the trek.  I’m quite impressed.)

Beauty from ashes:  the ohia tree is one of the first signs of life returning to the barren land.

It’s good to know part of all that money went to something more satisfying than repaving highways.

To be continued in Part 2.

No, this is not the next installment in the tale of our Hawaiian vacation, although it will help explain why that wasn't published yesterday.

Our refrigerator was well over 10 years old.  It was bought used in 2001, and I have no idea of its history.  It wasn’t in very great shape then, though somehow it worked quite well for us.  For years Porter would periodically grumble that it was an energy hog, reminding me that it couldn’t last forever, and wouldn’t it be better not to have to replace it on an emergency basis? 

During the Memorial Day Weekend sales, we finally took the plunge.

Actually, we had tried to do so once before, several years ago, picking out an exciting model with French doors, a bottom freezer, water filter, ice maker, and other attractive features.  The feature we didn’t expect was its inability to fit through the largest door in our house.  Since when did they start making appliances that don’t fit through standard-sized doors?  Crushed, we put off the purchase for another few years, although we did indulge in occasional peeks at what was available when we happened to be in a store that sold appliances.

Porter, as usual, was the one who made it happen.  He researched the models, and narrowed the possibilities down to a handful.  Then together we made the final decision:  a rather ordinary, Energy Star-compliant, General Electric refrigerator with a capacity of 21 cubic feet.  I’m happy with ordinary!  It’s about the same size as the one it replaced, and not as large as the refrigerator we had when the kids were living at home, but it certainly ought to do well for the two of us.  Complaints about size won’t go over well here, anyway, as Janet is sure to point out that it’s 5 to 7 times larger than the refrigerators she’s had in her last three homes.

Click this link to see what it looks like.  No, we didn’t pay the MSRP, but got a much better deal at Lowe’s.

On Monday, Lowe’s called to say that the refrigerator was in, and we arranged for delivery Tuesday between noon and 5 p.m.  Our neighbor came over and helped Porter move the existing fridge into the garage, where we had planned to keep it until July, when our church would take it for their rummage sale.  After all, it still worked, and really was a fine fridge, even if you did have to kick the door to make it close properly.  That quick kick was so much a habit that I often had to explain at other people’s homes why I was abusing their appliances.

All went well, until Porter went out the next morning to get his breakfast drink.  There was a small puddle of water underneath the fridge.  At some point during the night, the compressor had stopped working, and melting ice was dripping from the freezer.  (Glad I was that I had transferred most of the contents of the freezer to our chest freezer, to lighten the fridge for the move.)  The refrigerator compartment was still cool enough that I felt comfortable that the food was safe, so I filled it with jugs of ice, as if it were a giant picnic cooler.  You don’t have half a dozen frozen jugs of water available at a moment’s notice?  Then either you don’t have a handy chest freezer, or you don’t care that June 1 marks the beginning of hurricane season.

At about 8 a.m. the next day, the delivery men called:  Could they deliver the refrigerator in about half an hour?  The thought of grumbling, “What part of ‘between noon and five’ didn’t you understand?” was immediately quashed by the pleasant thought of having  a working refrigerator sooner rather than later.

It was sad to see the old refrigerator taken unceremoniously off for recycling, but if it was going to break, I’m glad it did so before sending it to the rummage sale, and not after.  Perhaps its time had just come, and Porter was better than he knew to insist on getting a new one now.  Perhaps the move, short and gentle as it was, merely jarred something loose.  Whatever the cause, we decided it wasn’t worth attempting a repair, given its age and condition.

Many mammal mothers lick their newborns clean after birth.  I’ve never done that myself, but the instinct must be there:  I can’t use a new appliance until I’ve cleaned it inside and out.  With one thing and another, it took me the rest of the day to get the refrigerator “on board.”  Porter would have cleaned the outside and the ice cube bin and had the food back in in under half an hour.

We’re still working on the best way to use the space.  I love all the extra room in the door shelves—they can hold gallon milk jugs!—and don’t mind that the main shelves are consequently shorter, since it’s hard to get at things in the back of the fridge, anyway.  But some reconsideration of our old habits of arrangement is in order.  But that will be a joyful chore, rather than an urgent one.

And guess what?  We’re heading into summer with an ice maker!

(Continued from Day 3 - Part 1, which was continued from Day 2, which was continued from Day 1.)

Leaving behind the Waipi`o Valley, we retraced our path and rejoined the Hawaii Belt Road (Route 19), continuing westward before turning south.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

Laupahoehoe Point was a seaside village, but in 1946, twenty-one children and three adults died in a tsunami, and the town was moved to higher ground.

It is now a beautiful park, with a memorial and you-won’t-see-this-on-the-mainland warning signs.

Sugar once dominated Hawaii—and there’s a case to be made that it was as bad for Hawaii as it is for our teeth.^*  But the only signs remaining are ruins, and an occasional sugarcane plant left to grow wild.  We drove through some of this old sugar land on our way to ’Akaka Falls State Park for a nice hike and some good-looking water.

On our way back to Route 19, we stopped at the Woodshop Gallery and Café; the wood products were interesting, but not as interesting as the homemade ice cream.

Soon we deviated once again from the main road, on for a four-mile “scenic route.”  Trust me, it’s all scenic here, but this road also led to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

The story began in 1977, when fifty-six year old Dan Lutkenhouse looked at a dump—a property “so overgrown that a machete was needed to walk only a few feet through it, and filled with old cars, machinery, appliances and trash of all kinds” —and dreamed a garden for the world to enjoy.

We did, very much indeed.

Behive ginger

Mule's foot fern

Persian shield

I don't know what it is, but I love the two purples.

What's Hawaii without a warning sign?

Don't you think the cannonball tree is more deserving of a danger sign?

Perhaps we lingered overlong in the Garden.  We had no promises to keep, but miles to go before we could sleep.  Plan A had been to spend the night in Hilo, but we had not reckoned on the Merrie Monarch Festival, a popular hula celebration and contest.  Extremely popular.  There was not a hotel room to be had.

Plan B took us all the way to Volcano, and the Kilauea Lodge, which would give us a good start on the next day’s exploration of Volcanoes National Park.  Even there, the only “room” available was the Pi’i Mauna House, with capacity for six (or several more) and a price tag to match.  We had reservations, and therefore no worries about arriving late, but if you’re spending that kind of money, it’s nice to do more than crash into bed.

So we quickened our pace, driving through Hilo without stopping at any of the tempting museums.  There always has to be a reason to return, right?

Not that Hilo was without adventure.

Let me tell you something about the Hawaiian language.  It is expressed using a mere 12 letters (plus a left single quote, which represents a glottal stop).  This extreme efficiency plays havoc with my brain, especially while navigating.

Navigating through Hilo went fine until we found ourselves at an unclear intersection and guessed wrong.  The development went something like this:  I catch a glimpse of a street sign as we pass by, noting that it begins with K.  I look down at the map.  Great.  Half the streets in Hilo begin with K.  Porter calls out another name while I’m scanning the map, but his guess at the pronunciation doesn’t eliminate much.  I decide on a route to take, but by the time I’m done struggling through the syllables we’ve passed it.   Waianuenue, Komohana, Ponahawai, Punahele, Kapiolani, Kinoole, Kilauea, Kukuau, Hualalai, Panaewa, Kaiulani, Kekaulike, Wailuku ... under pressure, they all look alike.

We have friends who keep telling us we would be perfect contestants on The Amazing Race.  I say, we’ve been married for 36 years, and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you.

But we were soon safely on the way to Volcano, reluctantly sticking to Route 11 without diverting down 130 to Hawaii’s newest land, created as lava flows into the sea.  But we had seen that from the helicopter.  You might think that some compensation for having your home overcome by lava would be gaining acreage, but the State claims all new land.  I wonder how they write homeowner’s insurance policies in Hawaii.  What if your house is untouched, but cut off from the rest of the world?  See the roads to nowhere?

We checked into Pi’i Mauna House and set off to find Thai food for dinner (successful) and a view of the glowing lava flowing into the ocean (unsuccessful).  I’m not certain we were looking in exactly the right place, anyway, but apparently we were able to see lava flow in the crater because its path to the sea had been blocked.  You get one or the other, or neither, but not both.  Unless it's a massive eruption of the kind no one but someone whose home is safely elsewhere wants to see.

The obvious solution was to return to our house and enjoy the hot tub before retiring.

I know you're all—one or two of you, anyway—waiting with bated breath for the next installment of the Hawaiian Adventure.  I'm working on it.  But it's not going to happen tonight, so instead you get a quick story of today's enjoyable shopping trip.

Yes.  I did just use "enjoyable" and "shopping" in the same sentence.

Thirty-plus years ago we visited Brazil.  One of the delights of foreign travel is the opportunity to expand one's taste in food, and that trip introduced us to, among other treasures, jabuticaba jelly, Antarctica Guaraná, and suco de maracujá sem açúcar.  The last is passion fruit juice, without sugar, and was my staple breakfast drink every day I could get it.

It is hard to find passion fruit juice here, and when I do, it's always sweetened.  Our local Albertsons did start stocking plain, frozen passion fruit purée a few years ago, so when, in my new-found enthusiasm for smoothies, I decided that passion fruit flavor was just what I needed, I turned to them.

Alas, they no longer carry it.  But the willing-to-be-helpful clerk suggested we try a Bravo Supermarket.  We have several nearby food stores, but Bravo is not one of them.  Research, however, revealed one not far from our church, so this morning we ventured in.

Success!  We came home with not one but three different brands of passion fruit purée:  one from Colombia, one from Ecuador, and one from the Dominican Republic. Mmmm—smoothies tomorrow!

Finding a long-lost love is enough in itself to take the sting out of shopping, but Bravo did us one better by being such an interesting store.  Even if it were closer, it wouldn't do for everyday use, because it's a small store with not much general selection.  But it abounds in what I'd call, for lack of better information. Hispanic foods.  The produce section was amazing, with half a dozen different kinds of bananas, and dozens of fruits and vegetables I know not of.

I look forward to other after-church excursions in the future.

Our concierge had informed us of Waikoloa Village Market, where the locals buy groceries, so yesterday we picked up a few supplies, such as SPF50 sunscreen, a pineapple, a knife with which to cut the pineapple, and breakfast materials.  It was nice not to pay resort prices, but overall it must be admitted that Hawaii makes Swiss price tags seem reasonable.  Lower-48 Americans can stop complaining about the cost of a fill-up now: gasoline is about a dollar more per gallon in Hawaii.  We even paid more for the pineapple than we do at home in Florida.

We began our day with breakfast on the balcony:  Raspberry Ginger Clusters & Flakes.  It was good stuff, although the ginger overwhelmed the raspberry.  Obliterated, really.  Think of it as Blenheim-in-a-box.

The Hilton Waikoloa Village is a super resort.  You could have a bank-breaking fabulous vacation without ever leaving the property.  So, having spent but one night there, we left.  We kept the room, for we intended to return the next day.  (And we did.)  But what care we for super resorts?  We can have those for a lot less money without leaving Florida.  Beaches, swimming, and snorkeling?   Ditto.  But volcanoes?  Florida is remarkably short of that particular natural beauty.  So we hopped in our rental car, and hit the road.

If we’d been smart, we would have bought Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed (aka “the blue book”) before we left home and not paid island prices; even so, it was a great investment.  Along with the map our concierge had given us (more useful than the AAA map we had brought), this became our most important guide for the rest of the trip—even though I felt I was navigating standing on my head, since much of our journey went in the opposite direction from that described in the book.

When we had picked up the car, we had been asked if we wanted to upgrade the vehicle—to either a convertible or a Jeep.  “A Jeep?” I queried Porter in amazement, when he reported the option.  “I can see a convertible as an upgrade, but a Jeep?  No way.”  I was to learn my mistake later.  For this trip, however, we had no worries in our Ford Fusion.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

We first returned to Waikoloa Village, the continued on Waikoloa Road to the Hawaii Belt Road (Route 190 at that point), and thence to the town of Waimea.

Does “Polynesian cow town” sound like an oxymoron?

Of all the images I had associated with Hawaii, “cattle country” was not one.  Yet the Parker Ranch—which traces its origins to a gift of longhorns given to King Kamehameha the Great in 1793—is one of the largest in the United States.  (Our helicopter pilot said it is the largest, but then you have to quibble about “contiguous” and “privately-owned” and other details; suffice it to say, the Parker Ranch is big.)

From Waimea, we continued on the Belt Road (now Route 19), deviating from it for a drive along the (even more) scenic Old Mamalahoa Highway.  This is the only time I wished we had had a GPS, because we were looking for a particular cave to explore, and the only instructions, besides a rough indication on the map, were latitude and longitude numbers.  We never found the bigger cave we were looking for, but settled for this small version, and went on.

Back on the main road, we made sure to stop at Honoka`a.  What’s in Honoka`a, you ask?  Nothing less than the Tex Drive In, famous for its malasadas (a type of doughnut introduced by the Portuguese).  Yum!  Er, make that Yum!  Yum!  We each had two. Not that they were really anything special as fried dough goes, but fried dough does go rather far in that direction.

That’s also where I took a pictures of this tree.

So far I’ve been unsuccessful in my efforts to learn its identity, but I doubt it’s true name is more evocative than Porter’s nickname:  “African-American hairdresser tree.”

Our next stop required a side trip, to the end of Route 240.  From there we looked out over the beautiful Waipi`o Valley.

Here is where having taken the helicopter ride saved us:  we knew there was no need to find a way down into the valley itself, as we would never get a view as good as yesterday's helicopter tour.  As the blue book says,

Don’t even think about driving a regular car down Waipi`o Valley Road.  The paved one-lane road down into the valley has a ridiculously steep 25% grade.  Vehicles with 4WD and low gears (so you don’t burn up your brakes) can make it down the 900-foot descent (in less than a mile).  Regular cars simply can’t.  (There is a wad of metal that was once a two-wheel drive truck below one of the turns left by someone who thought otherwise.  He miraculously survived by jumping from the vehicle just as it started tumbling down the almost vertical plunge.)

I was no longer laughing at the idea of a Jeep being a rental car upgrade.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves:  The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss (Gotham Books, New York, 2003)

Many thanks to DSTB for giving me this book, and thereby redeeming a past mistake on my part, made in response to a mistake on the part of our library.

I’d heard that Eats, Shoots & Leaves was a good book—though I knew little about it, as you will see—and so one day when I found it on tape at our library, I checked it out.  I obviously was not paying attention when I put the cassette in our player, because apparently the wrong tape had been returned to the Eats, Shoots & Leaves packaging.  What I heard was so uninteresting to me that I didn’t even finish the book, and don’t remember it now; it certainly wasn’t about punctuation.

“What?”  you ask.  “There’s something more boring than punctuation?”

Read Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  You’ll never call punctuation boring again.  You’ll laugh, and you’ll also learn.

One thing I learned is something I’ve suspected for a while now:  the rules change when you cross the Atlantic.  It’s not just the spelling (and pronunciation) of that metal out of which we make soda cans and “tin” foil.  Truss encourages us to be sticklers for proper punctuation (hear, hear!)—a difficult enough task when bad examples surround us—but also cautions that sometimes what looks incorrect may be merely a cultural difference.

Be that as it may, the only thing that annoyed me about this short and pleasant book—and only as much as fingernails on a blackboard—was this British author’s persistent use of the British way of combining punctuation and quotation marks.

Many words require hyphens to avoid ambiguity:  words such as “co-respondent”, “re-formed”, “re-mark”.

I would have called that plain wrong, but it turns out that putting the punctuation inside the quotation marks (<ahem> where it belongs!) is an Americanism.

Many words require hyphens to avoid ambiguity:  words such as “co-respondent,” “re-formed,” “re-mark.”

I see the logic of the British system, but it still grates.

I also learned that there’s a reason for another annoyance ; this one is found in my beloved collection of George MacDonald books : What ?  Colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points ! find themselves preceded as well as followed by spaces.  Truss provided the answer to my puzzlement:  these books are facsimile editions, and that now strange punctuation procedure was at one time the Way Things Are Done.

Are you confused by the Way Things Are (or Should Be) Done Now?  Check out Eats, Shoots & Leaves for some seriously amusing enlightenment.

A headline recently provided by my Google News feed illustrates the importance of correct punctuation.

Ratko Mladic arrested, Hillary Clinton in Pakistan

Imagine it now, without the comma:

Ratko Mladic arrested Hillary Clinton in Pakistan

Punctuation matters.  So read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest—and enjoy!

Providence, Rhode Island.

My college roommate was from Providence.  I drank an Awful Awful at the Newport Creamery on one visit, and worked for a day in a Brown University chemistry lab on another.  I have pleasant memories of visits with her family, and of driving there from Boston, years later, when my brother's job took him to Providence one day and we met at an Indian restaurant for dinner.  I've passed through T. F. Green airport countless times.

My allegiance to that New England city was cemented by the discovery that the founder of Providence, Roger Williams, is my tenth great-grandfather.  He's Porter's ninth great-grandfather as well.  So you might say Providence is in the family.

Thus I was thrilled to learn that the town charter of Providence, brought from England by Roger Williams himself in 1648, has been found, after some 140 years of "missing and presumed dead" status.

It was discovered by Paul R. Campbell, the city archivist, who "spends his days burrowing in the very attic of City Hall amid peeling paint, stacks of ponderous tomes and dusty boxes shielding secrets of the past, from the humdrum to the historic."

As he tells it, one recent Friday afternoon, a group came seeking certain records. As Campbell poked around material stored on a level above his office, he came across an open box. Inside sat a pocket folder from the 1960s, containing miscellaneous records of the now-defunct Providence Board of Aldermen.

But in the box there also reposed “a very old document, on vellum [animal skin],” he said. “I recognized right away the writing style of the 17th century — I did some research some years ago on 17th-century writing. It began to look like something more important than a deed. It was governmental in nature.”

The signature of “John Warner, Clerk of the Assembly,” caught his eye. It dawned on him that here might be something momentous.

“I figured this was the John Warner, one of the early arrivals. The document, in a nutshell, is from when Williams came back from England in 1643 after he had obtained a charter from the king for the Colony of Rhode Island. He needed to get a charter for the Town of Providence, so he went to the Colonial Legislature of 1647-48, and asked for a town charter. This document is the town charter issued in March 1648. This is the Town of Providence creation document.”

What's in your attic?