WhutsHappening

Going round in Kona Town (pt3)

Part 3 of the Big Island Trilogy, continued from Going Down in Waipio Town

As is probably clear by now, this blog is directed toward we twenty-somethings looking for genuine, unique, and preferably unprocessed travel revelry.  Being on the Big Island, a relatively rural, quiet paradise, I enjoy my cowriter's revelations on life in the center of the universe (also known as SoCal).  I know what to expect when I visit this Fall: hipness, happinenness, or hopeless, glorified pursuit of the former based on TV depictions of what life could be like, if we were only a little hotter or cooler.

I value my friend and colleague's depictions, his inside-looking-out perspective on the most popularized place in the world (It's as close as I will ever get to living like the peeps on Entourage, with all its fiction/reality hybrid style-it makes me want to move to LA now and start my own acting career) cause you really can't judge a place by its reality TV.  Matter of fact, these reality shows are destroying reality, because they are causing real people to act like reality shows, which are a bunch of fluffy, semi-scripted, dramatized garbage (am I quoting Ryan, or is that my own idea, can't remember?)  Point is, we all have these ideas about places, and many of them are a long way from reality.

My current expertise is the Big Island, an interesting little microcosm that I didn't really know a thing about until I made plans to move out.  Being Hawaii, it is mostly characterized (and confused with) Oahu (another island in the state of Hawaii.)  Oahu is where Honolulu is (the biggest city in the State of Hawaii) and Waikiki is the infamous hub of tourism within greater Honolulu.  These areas, like certain sections of SoCal and LA, are but a narrow slice of the pie that is Hawaii, but make up most peoples' mental picture.  Oahu may be the most populated and popularized part of Hawaii, but it is not real Hawaii.  For those of you haoles looking for a Cancunesque, cater-to-the-tourists while snuffing out local culture vacation, go to Oahu, or Lahaina; there are more tourists than locals in these places, and you can find your Outback's and Lousi Vitton's so you feel right at home.

For those of you that are over that scene and like to have a few travel stories that aren't straight out of the advertisements, try the Big Island, Hawaii.  Now in the last decade or so, Kona did add a Costco, a Wal-mart, and even a frickin Outback, but Hawaii (the island in the State of Hawaii) remains a wild, varied, and unprocessed alternative to stripmall style vacationing.

So for all you club-dependant youngsters, chain-store suckled oldsters, and vacation in a box believing boomers, it's time to step outside of the box, and create a trip that is a little more rugged, a little less predictable.  On the Big Island fishing and camping take precedent over dressing up and spending money at trendy clubs, secret, salt and pepper beaches are more common than overrun, bleached white sand stretches, and you are better off in a 4x4 than the stupid convertible Mustang that even I am tempted to rent when on vacation.  Another perk (if you give a shit about cultural integrity) is that the Big Island is still Hawaiian, as opposed to Haoled out investor-fest.  The development is currently starting to creep in more and more, but there are still swaths of open, baren lava land and beaches where you may only see one other couple for hours.  One bumper sticker explains many locals thoughts on the matter: "Keep Kona Country".

The benefits to the current state of things are many: you can still find riduculously good local food (see Pine Tree's Cafe in an earlier article) and Hawaiian People still have a say in what goes where (with the inevitable exceptions of areas where money won the hearts and minds of the land owners).  There is also a decent amount of ancient Hawaiian Culture preserved here.  Whether it be an ancient Heiau (Hawaiian Temple, some of which were used for sacrifice) in Kohala, or Pu'uhonua o' Honaunau in Kealakekua (an ancient Place of Refuge for those that broke sacred Kapu law, or even those escaping interisland war) the Hawaiian's have managed to hold onto a lot more of thier culture than any Native American tribe on the mainland, and it is goddamn refreshing to see.  Despite the car dealerships, McDonalds, and heaps of hotels, when you come to Big Island, whether it be to visit or live, you can't change the place, you can only adapt to living Hawaiian Style.

Of course there are the inevitable challenges to living on a big black rock surrounded by ocean, and populated by polynesians and over-compensated haoles.  One is that things on the Big Island happen a little more slowly.  In many cases this is good-no worries and whatnot-but when it comes to building a road, one has to wonder how it can take 2-years to widen a 4 mile stretch of Highway.  I won't soon forget watching one guy dig a ditch, while another sprayed a hose, and the remaining five simpy watched with irrational interest.  But if you're traveling, and escaping the deadlines and details of some drudgery called a career, the pace may give you peace.  You won't see as many people running the rat race, or if they are, they at least do it with a surf session in between races.  The only traffic is because of the slow construction, but even that is nominal compared to 99% of cities in the world.  Plus, it's hard to be stressed in traffic when you are staring at azure ocean to your right, and snow-capped Mauna Kea to your left; it is interesting to see people going 30 on the highway and smiling.  People let you turn in front of them, you can lounge in the restaraunts, and everyday around 4pm there is a mini-celebration called pau hana, or finish work.

The second mini-challenge is some locals really enjoy scrapping.  By scrapping, I mean brawling, or fighting, or battling, whatever you want to call it.  I even remember back at Oregon State, some of the post-2am brawls were instigated by Hawaiian Boyz.  Is it racist to say that fighting is part of thier cultural history?  I think not.  I have seen bar-closing fights at least 5 of the 10 times I stayed at Lulu's til close.  Big, Beefy Boys, goin at it.  "Like a lght," I heard one guy, possible a Samoan, not Hawaiian, say after he knocked another smaller dude out.  Scary to watch sometimes, though rarely are people maimed or killed.  It's almost accepted, and rarely stopped by cops since half the time they know them, and are more likely to say what up to the fighter than arrest him.  Nepotism runs deep.  The good news? A) Fists are a lot less dangerous than guns, knives, or gangs, all of which are probably present somewhere on this Island, but not out in the open. B) If you don't stay out til 2am at the bars, you probably will never have to deal with any of this!  I have never heard of a visitor getting robbed, attacked, or fucked with in any way.  So compared to a lot of places, this place is still the peaceful land of Aloha that most hope for.

Most of your time should be spent exploring the land anyway, not wandering the bars full of local dudes giving you stink eye.  The true glory of the island can be found in the unique local joints, and the multitudinous destinations away from the urban centers.  If you read the previous two blogs, you know a little about downtown, so we will leave that out, and you already know my favorite surf spot.  The good news is Kona is a drop in the bucket of magma that is the big Island.  If you are an avid reader, you also are well versed in Mauna Kea lore.  So let's start with the simplest, yet most inriguing part of this mass of volcanos, the Kohala Coast.  To find the best beaches, you have to talk to a local, and they will tell you how to get there, but here is a list of the chillest places.

1) 69's.  Yep, 69's just like the position.  I love the reactions I get when I tell people that yes, this is the beach you should take your kids.  Tucked away fromt the crowds, and in the midst of a brilliant network of 4x4 roads, is a little gem for chillin and tippin a few back, or snorkeling, or both.  You can even find the nudie beach if you look close...just follow the skin.

2) Kiholo Bay.  You will see it a dozen times from the highway before you figure out how to actually get down there, and again, it helps to have a truck.  Not only to the sea turtles run rampant in this crescent of blue water, but you may also find Queen's Bath.  Imagine a small cave, in this case a lava tube, filled with fresh water from a stream.  If you are brave, you can swim all the way to the back, spelunking and swimming at the same time in nearly pure, tepid waters.  Again, ask a local how to get there.

3) Ke'ei.  Yep Ke'ei.  The last surfari we took to Ke'ei was rugged.  The beach is near an old Hawaiian village, and fronted by old-school Hawaiian shacks, complete with sturdy, towering palm trees.  The break is nasty, as the water depth goes from forty feet to four feet in 2 seconds, so the wave is a sucking, pitching mess that is hard to read.  After chilling in this South Pacific wonderland with our frosty beverages, we got hungry, and in native fasion, knocked down, ripped open, and consumed a perfectly fresh coconut with nothing but a few rocks shells as tools.  True Island living is hard to beat.

4) Kua Bay.  Ok, this one is not rugged, but it is sick.  It was while body surfing in these bright waters and watching Hawaiian Spinner dolphins flip and twist like aquatic ice-skaters that I decided I was going to make this my home.  One of my favorite memories of Kua is skim boarding (poorly) for a few hours, and then taking a break to pound cupfulls of Kava with some friends that I happened to run into.  One other pro/con of this land is that you get to know people quickly, and run into them often.  We are a little displaced Island family sometimes, almost like exchange students in a land that was once foreign, but now familiar, and friendly.

So if you want the norm, go to Honolulu, or Lahaina, or someother oversold city with all the amenites that your pampered traveler can't go without.  But when you are ready to barbeque between surf session on a undeveloped strech of white, 4x4 into the rugged reaches of newborn lava fields, or discover your own little snorkel haven that hasn't been stepped on by a million ignorant city folk before you, book you ticket to Kona, rent a jeep, pack the cooler, and come join the Ohana.  Aloha still lives on the Big Island.

Going down in Waipio Town (Kona part 2)

Continued from Going Down in Kona Town

I have managed to live a very unmaterialistic life, doing my best to avoid the draw of the next hot thing, or expensive cars and toys-the fucking planned obsolescence cycle of American consumerism drives me crazy as a migrating bird returning to a clear-cut forest homeland (youtube "Where things come from" and check a crazy video). Things never seem to be as necessary as they sometimes seem, and goddamn "they" (read "we") certainly are getting better at selling us (read "them") things. Matter of fact, the fact that I do not currently have any sort of iPod or gaming device makes me wonder how I continue living without crumpling into a little ball of unconsumptive garbage, my essence steaming away and combining with processed chemicals to form a super-soul-chemical, capable of destroying human cells.

Point is, I bought a fairly new SUV truck from a used car dealership for sticker. Yeah, a 5-mile-a-gallon, ecosystem-destroying mess of engineering ineptitude. In reality, it is a 2001 Xterra, and gets closer to 17-miles a gallon, and is a smooth-riding, well-suspended, adventure machine. The point is, I committed two dire sins, purchasing an SUV, and getting myself into the depreciation madness that is a car from the dealership, yet I love it...

All right, I don't always love it, but as we cruised down Waipio in 4-low, passing the tourists bustling their butts up and down the steep road, I smiled as I looked across the valley at the opposite wall. Pololu is the hiking valley, if you ever travel here, but rent the Jeep for the rest of the island. Uphill traffic has the right of way, rightly so, so we scoured the road below as we passed the one-way sections and eased by sweaty walkers. I trusted my brakes, and the engine did some of the work, and in 10 minutes we were on the muddy valley floor, in the middle of a river valley jungle.

We opted for the rugged route first and went left at the bottom toward the back of the valley, which is shaped roughly like a lower-case y, and over the first shallow cross-road waterways. The grasses and Taro patches turned into Banyan, Papaya, and Mango trees, among scattered O'hia, but all was green. Some of the trees here had probably watched over Kamehaha in his 18th century youth, and fed from the same waterfall-fed streams that the Taro patches drew life from. We motored easily along the narrow, but smooth, road, until we got to the first river.

One of the other sweet ways to explore Waipio is on Horseback, preferably on Na'alapa Stables, and not their competitor. Their stables are located right next to the first river crossing, and tucked quaintly into the mostly-pristine forest. It is this first canopy of trees that my sister Norah, Sarah, and Juliette once came face-to-face with a semi-wild mule trotting along the road. The road slopes steeply down into the shallow river, flattens for 25 feet, and then climbs up the opposite side. We rambled through the water, and continued along the root road, crowded in by lush ferns and fallen branches.

The real adventure begins at the first river crossing where the exit is not visible. I won't soon forget the first rush of plowing into the shallow stream with enough momentum to make it through deep spots, and out the assumed other side. These rivers are the roadways of the tough local population that make this secluded land their home, so I was not venturing in complete abandon. Every so often, we would come upon the private driveway of a local, and catch sight of the simple housing of a Taro farmer. The kids we saw were naked, and muddy in that felicitous, organic way, and maybe 75% of the vehicles looked to be in 100% working order. The valley dwellers can’t avoid that subtle feeling of trashiness, with their half-built homes and farmyards; despite my hippie roots I won’t lie. On the same plane, they defy modern social judgment just by being who they are and where they are. Waipio is to Hawaii what the Big Island is to the Mainland: simpler, and harder for outsiders to understand. We sacrifice convenience for raw natural wonder; not a new idea, just one that is harder and harder to come by. My yellow truck seemed gaudy amongst these mildly misty valleys and towering green waterfalls.
The final river is the deepest, but we had to go through, since I’d done it once before, and we were already over halfway to the back of the valley. This crossing was mild, only 2-foot deep, but the first time water had gone over my hood causing concern over my engines health, which turned out to be unfounded. After a nervous exploratory pause, we crossed the final river and hit the end of the reasonable driving road, and turned around. Though it had taken us only twenty minutes, we’d navigated into the crux of this damp blanket of foliage. I killed the car, and we listed to the squawks and creaks of Waipio’s historic microcosm, trying to soak up some of the vitality surrounding us. We snapped a few final shots, and retraced our path back toward the beach road.
The second jewel of Waipio is the black sand beach where the rivulets converge, and flow into the shore break in one wide, river-stoned organic mass. It is here that the North and East swells break onto the volcanic sand in thick, turbulent faces. This is the first beach where, while body boarding, I swallowed water and freaked at not being able to breath for a minute. I also watched a surfer get stung by a man-o-war, and Shawn get sucked down shore in the river current. With the final addition of murky-water shark potential, suffice it to say this is not the best swimming beach.
But the energy here is worth all the blue water in the world. Pops and I walked out onto the slightly windy beach where I have sat for an hour and built a drip castle, and done yoga on previous trips. Today we just wandered in silence, watching the gray swells build, peak, and tip over into totally rideable rights. No one was out today, so we just watched the powerful waves for a while, before heading back to the truck. We were headed to the airport to pick up my dad’s oldest friend, his fellow veteran Billy Ship.
The way back up is possibly more fun, since it involves more gas than brake, and at moments all you can see is the sky. We buzzed back to Kona to find out that Billie’s flight was delayed, so we killed time eating Pine Trees, and then surfing Pine Trees, and watching the sky go orange, then pink, then gray, before Bill finally landed and called. We probably watched him fly over our heads from our spot near the aiport.
That night we decided to go out to our new favorite spot, The Fishhopper, and get 25% off the fare since Shawn’s girl Cheridan, a Fishhopper server, would accompany us. I won’t go into detail, but all five of our specials were top of the mornin’. The prime rib, pako-crusted Mahi, pasta Isabella, and egg roll, sashimi, and oyster appetizers were “fucking awesome” to paraphrase Shawn. We spent some ridiculously small amount of money (or should I say the adults did) and shared some chocolate cake to finish the night. I couldn’t avoid the post-meal smoke, and we all agreed that meal was Fishhoppalicious. It was the end of a great day of west-side Big Island Adventure, and tomorrow was our snorkel trip. Living in paradise does have its benefits.

Continued in Going Round in Kona Town

Going Down in Kona Town

Going Down in Kona Town

After my pops and I had expereinced Pine Trees Cafe, and surfed Mahaiulas, we settled in at the house a bit. I gave him my room and bed and posted up on the futon in the living room, which I really didn't mind. As it neared 8, we decided it was time to get a bite to eat in the infamous Kona town.

Kona can be described as a vastly scaled down step-cousin to Honolulu and Waikiki. The main difference is population, as Kona only has 40,000 year-round residents. The biggest similarities being that it is right on the ocean, and lined with restaraunts, snorkel depot's, real estate and time share booths, and tourists. Especially when the big cruise ships anchor in Kailua Bay (when they are in, they are twice as tall as the next largest structure on land), Ali'i is lined with croc-wearing mainlanders, seemingly perpetually lost Japanese tourists, and a spattering of local kids cruising in thier lifted Toyotas, or lingering by the pier. Kona is definitely the step cousin, as they have some of the same features of the larger Waikiki, or maybe Kahalui, the whole operation is a little more tenuous, and variable, whether it be restaurants changing hands every few years, or simply closing down due to unpredictable revenues (Hooters lasted just over a year before it couldn't pay its $30,000 oceanside rent--a departure that did not cause too many locals to shed anything close to a tear.)

I didn't know exactly which establishment in the Coconut Grove I was going to subject my dad to. Lulu's is your standard open-air alcohol-saturated 'restaurant', and other than its great view, and decent food, is kinda skanky. Hard Rock is played out pointless, though also decent, and we weren't about to get gouged at some shitily run, overpriced joint like Rio's or Don the Beachcombers no matter how good the view. I should give these places some credit, as I have had some dank meals, its just one of those things where you know people who have worked there, so the tropical facade can't hide the roach problems or lack of real character.

There are good places, like Huggo's, and Thai Rin, and Fishhopper too, but we wanted something unique. By chance, we walked into a nearly vacant Ohana III's, a Korean Karaoke bar that serves $3 schooner of Kona Brew, and no-nonsense 40 something Korean cougers who serve both as waitresses, and entertainment, whether it be thier attempts at english, or spontaneous shimmies to the more upbeat Karaoke songs. This Tuesday we were the only guests, so there was no Karaoke, and they changed the TV station from a Korean soap, to basketball as we sat at the bar. One of the ladies took our order, shouted it in shrill Korean to the kitchen, and then proceeded to flirt with my dad (are they cougars if they hit on adult men too?)

The draw of the place is the food (at least for me, my roommate's girlfriend likes it because she can sing 4 songs in a row, and all the local boys just love it more and more). When you order Kalbi Short Ribs, and Korean Spicy Wings as my dad and I did, you don't just get meat. While you wait, they bring the most ridiculous assortment of delicious sides I have ever seen. First etemame, and then the tiny plates of marinated onions, seaweed, kim chee, mixed steamed veggies, and cold noodles. Sifting through the samples is half the fun of the meal. When the meat came, I was stoked to bite into slightly crispy, sweetly spicy wings, and my dad's short ribs were thin, perfectly tender triangles of meat. We talked about life, and work, and family some more, and by the time I licked my fingers and knocked back the last of my 20 oz Longboard Lager, we were more than satisfied. At this point is was 3 am in my dad's body, so we got him home and rested.

The next day we headed north, to the famous Waipio Valley for the morning. This has always been one of my favorite places on the Island both because I get to use my four-wheel-drive the whole time, and because it is a still-intact chunk of Hawaiian History. Hawaii is the newest Island, so its cliffs are the least-eroded, providing for the deepest valleys and highest waterfalls (the highest almost 1200 feet top to bottom.) This is also tha land of Taro, the staple food of Polynesions for centuries, and grown in rice-paddy looking patches irrigated by diverted section of the small river flowing along the valley floor into the ocean. None of the ramshackle homes on the valley floor are on the grid, so solar, hydro, and catchment water collection are standard features.

The access road is about an hour and a half from Kona, and getting there takes one from the Lava fields of Kohala (where its hot and all the resorts are built) up and over drizzly Waimea (also know legally as Kamuela, and not to be confused with Waimea Bay, Oahu, or Waimea, Kauai.) Eventually you reach Honoka'a, a rad little town that seems to have established the perfect balance between being truly local kine, and still having a few things for the tourists. I decided to take us to the famous Tex drive-in to sample the equally famous Malasadas, or Portugese doughnuts, often with fruit filling.

We finally found the right road in the small town, asking some grubby gas station attendant that reminded me of me when I used to work at BP back in Astoria, OR some 10 years ago. We didn't drive through, but did get a taste both of a hot, fresh malasada (think Krispy Kream without the deep-fry, preservatives, and automation--these are for real). My Hawaiian burger was perfect (I think the bun was Taro bread) and for some reason reminded me of the Kahuna burger that Samuel L. Jackson took a bite of before blasting the unlucky lads in Pulp Fiction. Pops got the Mahi burger, which in this part of the country is understandably impeccable.

We finished off our fries as we headed to Waipio. The road starts at the lookout on the east side of the valley, usually full of tourists that didn't realize they should have sprung for the 4x4 on the big island, and who are either oggling the nexus of valley and open ocean to the north, or preparing to walk down the steep mile-long road.

I stopped, ate some Nicorette as to avoid dissappointing my dad by smoking, and we took a brief gander of our destination: the black sand beach 1,000 feet below. We got back in starship superstar, put it in four-low, and began our descent down the 25% grade road, that disallows anything but 4x4s and pedestrians.  I tilted my seat back a notch or two, and down we went, dense green foliage to the left, and acres of green Taro stretching across the river valley floor to our right.

Silverback in My Blood (pops part 2)

(Continued from Surfing for Pops )

Two days later, I sat in the same line up, with my pops, who'd flown in only a few hours before. I picked him up outside the Kona Airport, as he was finishing the final pages of Anna Karenina (sic), still wearing his Baltimore outfit of slacks and a shirt, jacket tucked under his arm. He'd flown some 12 hours, on two flights, to reach the tarmac arrival area, and step out into the mild Kona warmth. My, dad is about 5' 9" and slightly round, with a mustache, and happy smile. He stands as an interesting blend of life experience and personal history: a war vet, former hippie, one-time Reagan-supporter, upper-middle-class family man, displaced family man (a crazy time of job-loss), and ever-valiant Husband and father, to my mom, sister, and I. He was always, and still is 5'9"though, so I’ve got three inches on him, as does my mom, and sister’s taller by inch too. He's used to looking up to hug his family.

After a quick bag drop-off at the house - catching up quickly on family, politics, finances - we wasted no time in heading to makai to Pine Tree's Café, for a bite of ono local grindz. Pine Tree's is a glorious gift of mana from heaven, disguised as high-ceilinged, polished metal-style, local miracle of food production. The fare can best be judged by just one day’s specials:

Pork watercress stir-fry, Indonesian chicken w/ peanut sauce, fresh-caught salmon w/ mango chutney sauce, tofu salad, mahi or ono salad with vinaigrette, Reuben sandwich with Fries or Salad, Ono or salmon poke, Chicken salad sandwich with seafood chowder, t-bone with shrimp and potatoes, rib-eye with grilled mushroom and onions, Chicken Long rice, Lomi Salmon, and short rib mix plate…

I won't even list them all, because it will just make your mouth water too much. Point is, Pops' first meal was the most authentic Kalua Pig-Cabbage, Lomi Salmon, and Teri Chicken Mix Plate in town, complete with two-scoop rice and mac salad. Sooo dank. I stuck with my grilled Mahi sandwich, deluxe, w/ Swiss, which combined with Mai Ploy sauce, and a touch of Sirirachi, is a legend in its own right. We decided to follow our $18-dollar island meal with a surf trip up Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway just north of Pine Trees (a restaurant and a surf spot), to the fabled Mahaiulas. Our timing was oddly parallel to my earlier trip that week with Gena, just approaching 5pm. The slow sun was partially shaded by the vog caused by Kilauea’s current flow, some 80 miles to our east.

As we bumbled down the lava road, I couldn't help but think that Regina was 28 when her dad got sick, and 29 when she said goodbye; I was currently 27. I looked at my dad, and wondered about his health. Seemed like a strong fucker, fluffy gray body hair and all, and most of his head hair. By the looks of it, I have Silverback in my blood. Hmmm. But he swore to his good health, didn’t drink or smoke, and played racquetball regularly. Am I delusional to think that when I am in my 50’s, I will have no belly? We shall see. I do eat like some rabid, opportunistic animal sometimes, maybe a squirrel, or our now-local mongooses. If my metabolism ever slows, I could be in trouble. Still, my dad donned his new, mesh-lined, but orchid-print black and white board shorts, and prepared to enter the warm central Pacific with his son.

I was still blue boarding, and pops ended up on the old pink Morey Boogie board our old female roommate had left behind. We fitted some of my fins on his wide feet, and together we were a motley family duo, him East-Coast-winter white, and me with my tourist board, and sporting some surf shades a tourist had left with me upon his departure. The vog kept the sea from sparkling, but it still had the sea-green (literally, like the crayon) of Hawaiian waters. We hit the water via the small sand entry, and started toward my favorite spit of lava to see what we could find.

I wonder sometimes if I have been so fortunate with the whole family situation for some reason, or if all that shit is chance. Whether someday, I too will learn the lesson of early family death, or somehow become a victim of life’s ends and view the perceived tragedy from some higher plane. There doesn't seem to be much logic to who, when or how, but I could say nearly half my friends have experienced some sort of close family member death. With no order or reason people I care about lost people they care about to the whole spectrum of grand finales, which most of us know will come to us eventually.

You wonder if it is a matter of fate, choice, luck, chance. You know, can you only be so lucky so long, and then tragedy has to strike? Of course there is no for-sure answer, but is it morbid to think about such troublesome things I think not, as they are clearly a part of our life, a potentially deeper part of our life: how we deal with death. For now we were fully alive, on another adventure to a once strange land, packing it in for the time being.

After settling in just outside the impact zone, just days before, Regina and I watched the waves shape up, clean up, a bit, and start forming into predictable cascades from the marker rock crumbling steadily east and south as they rolled over the bathymetry below. By the time I got bear to the take-off area, overzealous with excitement, I immediately turned and caught a little peaker just after it started breaking. The joy of Mahaiulas is it is a very forgiving wave- though I was late, the face of the wave hung just back of breaking fully for an extra moment as I got out in front and looked for a bottom turn.

The wave allowed me sweep through the bottom, and back up to the top portion for a slightly accelerated second section, dropping down again. As the wave shifts over a deep spot a surfer can turn back toward the left for a spell, and then back right for a clean, soft, nose-experimenting, section. As I finally hit the channel, I could only look at the sky with my arms out as the board began to sink. I back dove with glee into the water, and came up to see Regina on the next wave, planning along right ahead of the whitewash, grinning slightly. Suffice it to say, it was a blessed moment. We spent the rest of the afternoon, right up to the last pink of sunset, trading twenty second rides on the most pleasant surges on the pacific, a perfect celebration to her family..

Somehow, this Sunday, with my father was turning out much the same, not in terms of memorial, but swell conditions. One other rider and I chatted sporadically as the swell just began to pick up. The same evening calm was starting to settle as the 30 something long boarding dude and I waited and positioned for the next set. By random coincidence, his family lived in Baltimore, and he went to Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR. Fucking tiny world. We thought we saw something on the horizon, and lo and frickin’ behold the point started to pick up. Just a little at first, and then those swells that you can actually see outside, and try and predict exactly where they'll break. I ended up in the right spot for one, and paddled forward a few times before the mellow but solid face picked up my tail and sent me off, pop, stand, yeah, slicing and dicing, or at least it felt that way. I knew the wave was probably only a four-foot face, but it was fun, and I instinctually hoped my dad was watching. He'd never seen me surf, but asked about it regularly. His favorite story, of course, was the board-breaking double-overhead day where I abandoned all pride and actually yelled for help, before getting out of the break zone. I came into the channel, and finally caught sight of him some 100-feet toward shore, kicking his AARP ass away and making slow, but steady progress. I gave him thumbs up, and waited for his return. For a moment, I actually worried about him. What if he had a heart attack, or somehow swallowed some water due to fatigue. The notion was odd to me, as, most of my life, he'd been the worrier, the one concerned for my safety. I have to say it was the first time I wanted to make sure I was responsible with him, as his tour guide, and surf-instructor. Funny stuff, and he was probably more capable than my fears presumed. He'd grown up in Long Beach, in the seventies, and bodysurfed and boogie-boarded for years on his way home from work at the LB post office. I saw the pictures-my hippie-ass parents used to hike, and run 10K's, and eat veggie-style meals more wholesome and real than all the fake Wal-Mart Natural bullshit or organic riffraff produced by the food giants of today.

But shit, someday I'll be the 60 something, hopefully, and look back at the good old days of aught eight, and how good we had it back then. I got a little sentimental and said a prayer thanking God for my pops. I had said a prayer after my best wave the Friday before, but thanking God for my life, and for Gena's Dad sending us such fun waves to play in. I started paddling out to wait for the next set, hoping pops was getting the same vicarious satisfaction that he got through high school soccer and wrestling so many years before. I looked back to check on him one more time, and then looked out to the horizon for the next wave.

Surfing for Pops

Surfing for Pops,

It was pretty chopped out, really, both with big blobs of water, and tiny ripples across their surface caused by the onshore winds. We’d already stopped at Kiholo Bay, and decided against the blown out, low-tide knee-high sets, and continued south to Mahaiula’s. This little slice of paradise was my favorite spot from the very first session six months earlier, and the same was true for my partner in crime Regina, who’d been out only once before to surf, but knew the State Park well. It’s a rough couple miles over a late 1800s pahoehoe lava flow to get down to the parking lot, and then either a long or a short path through the trees to one of two super-simple picnic areas on the crescent of white sand. The whole beach is lined in a small coconut grove, and low shrubs created by the fishponds, and stands out as a little oasis amongst the stretch of black lava on the Kohala coast. There are plenty of beaches in Hawaii, but some just have that innate tropical vibration that makes you realize where you are and smile; Mahaiulas put a grin on both our faces every time.

We parked and wandered down the wide sandy path toward shore, passing the remnants of an ancient fish pond on our left and a grove of Acacia trees on the right. The waves looked small from the highway, but we were determined to paddle out whether or not we caught anything, mostly because we had a specific purpose for stopping here on our way back from Waikoloa up north: to spread some ashes.. Today was her Dad’s 2nd anniversary since succumbing to lung cancer soon after diagnosis, and this was a place he would want to be on such an occasion.

By the time we transfered the boards onto the top of the Xterra and got down to the lower lot, it was 4:20, and we partook as the waves looked disappointingly docile; Wednesday’s swell seemed to have faded. We waxed our boards, stretched, and pushed off the small bit of sandy shore onto our stomachs to start the long paddle out to the long right hand, breaking off a 300 meter point of lava that created the bay. We headed north, me on my only remaining board after a breakage and a theft, a 8-foot Costco Blue Board, and Gena on her dank 9’ 2” South Point. The south end of the bay was fairly mellow as usual, protected by a barely submerged plateau of pahoehoe to our west.  No waves broke here, but the water sloshed and sloped as we paddled out. We kept our eyes out for rogue swell, but at this point surfing was secondary, the real mission was to spread the remains of her dad, and uncle, matter of fact, in this beautiful, nearly deserted, blue-water bay. The Ziploc bag that her family traveled in lay snug in the pocket of my boardshorts. We rested about halfway out, straddled the boards, and stretched our arms, gazing at our surroundings. Kilauea volcano was smoking on the other side of the island, but the voggy cloud cover did not diminish the power of the place. We spotted only 4 or 5 people at the northern edge of the beach, but were the only people out in the water. A mild but steady Kona wind came in from the west, and the sun shone through in spots, casting its rays upwards through the clouds and down onto the ocean at the same time.

“This looks like a good spot, before we get out too far.”

“Yeah, this is good.” I passed her the Ziploc bag, and slowly maneuvered upwind.

“Yeah, they loved this spot. Especially Mak’s (Makalawena, just to the south), but this whole area.” She said as she looked around at our setting, and removed the first Ziploc bag from the second. She looked at the bag as she reached in.

“Man, you guys are both so missed,” she spoke to her father and uncle. “Your’re here though, aren’t you guys? Of course you are.”

She’d shown me the last picture of them together back in the car, right before diagnosis, and they looked so healthy. Twin Filipino boys, her dad with a 'stache, chillin’ on a couple chairs with Gena in the middle. It was one of those, quicker-than you can think things, first her dad, and then a year later his twin brother. She said her uncle kind of gave up after he lost his brother, and that was that.  I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a parent, or sibling for that matter, and hope I never find out for a long time.  I could sense the unspoken thoughts Gena must have had: Why aren't you here in person!

She faced downwind, and threw some of ashes out over the water, and then shook the rest into the sea. The fine particles caught the wind, and danced away toward shore in a cloud. Some of the denser bits scattered one the surface of the green water, and stayed there, stuck in the surface tension of the sea, drifting slowly away in the infinite combination of ripples. She tucked the bags aside, paused for a moment, and then dove off her board into the clear water, surprising me a bit. Two seconds later, she resurfaced, face to the sky, under the ashes on the water.

“Ah! Now you guys are all around me.” She smiled, pushing her dark hair back, and floating face up.
I was speechless for a moment, overwhelmed by the whole moment. I’d never met either of these men, but I’d know Gena long enough to know that they were important, strong, and good people in her life. They had Big Island Roots, living in southern Hawaii for decades before massive development had even started. Gena bathed in the spirit of her family, her roots, as Hawaiian people did daily in these same Kona waters. I thought of my father, and my roots, and wondered where I would take him, under the same circumstances. Gena sighed and smiled.

“Ok, then.” She passed me back the baggies, and we continued to paddle to the North, toward the point, and the small islet of rock that marked the middle break zone. It still looked small so we headed to our right, hoping for some inside stuff, when a wave broke near the marker rock. The first set started coming in behind it.

My world surfing map is newborn, but I still offer a theory: Pound for pound, the Big Island offers some of the best year-round surfing opportunity in the world. Here’s my rationale. Obviously Oahu has bigger, more immaculate wave-making power, and for the cream of the crop, there is only one shore to be on. But for an amateur, much less a beginner, it is a non-issue (there has to be a latin word for that). Not only would the wave do a kookie frosh in, but the no-name may never even make it through the lineup to get in position. I speak, again, not from personal experience, but the simple facts I have gained via dozens upon dozens of video clips, movies, and mag articles: the North Shore is fuckin’ crowded.

The remaining crown jewels in the modern surfing globe are of course, Southern and Central Cali, and Western Oz, both of which seemingly succumb to the same great paradox: the best known waves are the most popularized, and therefore the most crowded waves. Most of us aren’t ready for that shit yet, those Pipeline bombs, or the local hierarchies. And I can’t imagine choosing LA or Sydney to establish ones' surfing career, as a very small fish in a huge pond. Metropolitan surf zones are less desirable due to sheer population, not to mention water quality. I hear they are cleaning up SoCal, but I still can’t imagine the parts per million of miscellaneous shit in the waters surrounding our great cities, nor can the normal man find the purity of a 2 man line-up in those best-known locales. Further, only below the tropic of cancer do surfers live without ever owning a wet suit. The rashy is optional, and the water is clean and clear.

There aren’t so many people on this Big Island, my new homeland in the Pacific, only some 150,000, around 37 per square mile. The best known breaks in Kona - Banyans, Lymans, Kahaluu - max out at 25 people between 2 wave options; not solo-surfing, but still manageable if you are patient and decent. Our first advantage that must be mentioned is our shear size, larger in square miles than all the other islands combined, and probably close as far as miles of surfable coastline. Top to bottom, left to right, there are few places with more than our nearly 400 miles of coastline. Hawaii surf books boast some 47 surf spots, clearly unable to count every surfable break on the Isle. From Pine Trees on the far west end of Keahole Point, to Cape Kumukahi on the east point of Puna, and from Upolu up North, down to South Point, the whole island is exposed to some sort of swell. The furthest an epic swell can be from any point on the island is three hours, so a truly dedicated rider can track and chase the results of every storm, no matter its angle of attack. I can’t even say how many times I have seen massive orange and red blobs crash into the east side, while only the tiniest remnant s show in Kona or Kohala on the west side. Were it in my nature and capacity, I could be in Hilo in 2.5 hours riding at Richardson’s, or Milioli’I, but gas is high, and I have a job and a girlfriend. Just as often, North Pacific lows send a shot of energy from the NW, yet we’re stuck in the wave shadow of Oahu and Maui. Even though I rarely venture more than 0 minutes, I am able to ride at least 4 days a week, most weeks, at one of four West side breaks.

And despite the fact that we are 2500 miles from mainland, Hawaii still has all the amenities of modern living, making it, in my opinion, the perfect balance of tropical seclusion, and basic consumer options.  I can go to my job at the Hilton up north and earn enough to save a little, and then take my truck to a nearly hidden swath of white amongst the expanse of black lava desert.  Don’t tell anyone about Mahaiula’s by the way, as it has got to be one of the best rights on the Island. It needs a straight winter west, or a solid NW, and nothing really happens until the waves reach 2-3 foot Hawaiian, around shoulder high, but when it delivers, it's worth the wait. They are always relatively thick waves - long period swells break nicely there - but never seem as nasty as some of the reefs at the same size. The water is a deep blue, somewhat opaque, so you’re spared the joy of staring at the misshapen seafloor close below your feet. It is a deeper water break than most of the rest of the pahoehoe and a’a flows that make up the west-side breaks. There are of course plenty of lava heads four feet down, but overall the depth causes the wave to roll, rarely going top to bottom, but still capable of propelling the rider swiftly along the two main sections, and then into the channel. As the swell gets bigger, the wave peaks at an outer reef, and then even has one further, outer break when it’s heaving. Those waves will have to be explored on another day, maybe a story about the first broken board. This afternoon the slightly choppy swell was just starting to peak and topple into over into friendly, fairly smooth rights. We looked at each other in mild amazement at our timing, and paddled toward the inside take-off area.

Continued in Silverback in my Blood

Mauna Kea conclusion

Continued from Mauna Kea, Part 2

Shawn mediated an excited round of introductions, and we moved from the entryway into the towering space-age dome of the NASA infared scope. Shawn began friendly inquisitions into the history of the facility, but the inebriants got the best of his vocabulary.

“So, when exactly was this resurrected?” He inquired in his salesy, furrowed-brow voice. He meant erected, but Neil got the point and talked about the multi-million dollar project, commenced in the late eighties. We looked around at the large canisters of condensed gas, bulks of wires, and huge tracks that allowed the 100-ton optics to swivel and slide as needed. The apparatus above us, angling up and out at 45 degrees to peer through a rectangular opening in the dome, feeds light onto an immaculately curved mirror, which in turn focuses the light into various ‘attachments’ designed to interpret and display the data in a decipherable form. At one point we thought we were hallucinating, spinning out under the bubble of human ingenuity; we looked at each other warily, wondering if the dome had just swiveled left a few degrees, altering its gaze on the dimming sky.

“I am feeling a little funny, but did the room just move?” Terri inquired calmly, eying the dome overhead.

We’d all sensed something, but at this point the elevation buzz was palpable. We looked at our hands to make sure we were in one piece.

“Yeah, it’s tracking,” Neil informed us. “We're following a group of stars known as qj-104. Right now we have the Sub millimeter attachment on, so we are getting readings on the microwave energy from the system. It’s about 150 million light years away.”

“So what’s it like residing in such elevation?” Shawn pressed, momentarily very interested. I watched his eyes wander from Neil’s words, off to the side, and then up the high sweep of the dome, around, down, and then back to Neil’s answer. Shawn nodded, focusing at intervals.

We took a peak into the control room, which was pretty much what you imagine a control room in a 20 year old telescope looks like: technologically updated, but mildly haphazard. Pictures, posters, spectrographs, and cartoon cutouts decorated the cement walls, and a formidable array of computer screens, but mostly wires and controls, covered most of the 2 long desktops. We even met Neil’s coworker, Debbie, an equally nerdy, but very nice, student of physics (what does one call one who practices physics, lo, not a physician) and I grabbed a few bookmarks from the info stand, glancing at Neil for approval. He nodded, still answering another one of Shawn’s well-meaning questions. After we learned as much as our heads would hold, we pulled our various thin coats to our cheeks, and dashed back into the wind-whipped nothingness outside. Again, our senses were assaulted with warming-shelf-orange sunlight casting long shadows while it hung over pulled-cotton clouds. Our exposed skin was quickly blushed with chill, and all the while the gusting air swirled in our ears and pattered our eyelids.
Yet we youngsters remained outside. Our glowing star was still above the Pacific horizon, yet it had now sunk below the sea of clouds that flowed from mid-mountain out to the horizon; thin but unblemished, except near its southern edge, where some earth formation caused the whole mass to lift up in perfect mimic of the oceanic surf miles below. A sweeping, hovering, skyscape; the panoramic picture is labeled “cloudwave” on my computer, and captures the formationss desire for a shore to break on, perhaps to complete the grand imitation of its blue cousin below.

And the sun slipped lower, it pierced upward through the sea of clouds to glance off a spherical telescope housing. The white-painted Keck scopes pressed their faces into the light gallantly, and the silver cylinders nearby glinted like dull mirrors. Now the light from the two-part sunset was playing tricks again, or just getting creative: the oranges and soft tropical yellows ebbed into a dusky upstroke of green. Not the fabled green flash of sunset lore, but the odd effect of varying densities of atmosphere observable from such great heights. I describe it to the tourists that inquire about the summit, but only pictures will hold the coloration as fact.

The finale, of course, did not disappoint. Here were those aggressive pinks of the tropics glowed across our island, adding their effect to everything not in shadow, so that we glanced at one another’s pastel faces in amazement. As we turned 180 degrees, the round white moon beamed it’s childlike approval, comfortable looking over our shoulders from a high spot in the dark blue eastern sky. We smiled back and took a few pictures, and retreated into the truck, joining our comrades in the still, quiet warmth of front row seats at nature’s own drive-in movie. Soon thereafter, the reality of night set in, and we thought it better to use the last 20 minutes of light to guide our jagged, snaking path home. From inside the tinted windows, we bid farewell to the final moments of red-gray horizon, and left the paved observatory complex.

“That was fucking awesome. That was like one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen ever. That was so cool.” Shawn announced, speaking for most of us, maybe all of us, as we 4 lowed it into the dusky gray canyon.

“That was very nice,” Terri confirmed, “Thank you so much for taking us up here.”

“Yeah baby, that was awesome.”

“Really beautiful, just beautiful.”

Yeah.

As we continued downward, Terri had herself a bit of a burp.

“Uh oh. Excuse me there.”

Three minutes, and 1,000 feet lower, she had another.

“Oh, my. It must be the elevation. Excuse me.”

“It’s all good Terri, burp as much as you need. The air is escaping,” we all encouraged. Whether the burping was caused by the descent for sure, we still don’t know, but it was wonderfully entertaining.

“Uurp. Oh my, there’s the mark. We must have gone down another 1,000 feet.” Terri joshed. Her spirit was incorrigible, she was incorrigible. Putting up with all of our antics, especially those of the more inebriated, she remained as cheerful as ever.

“Are you hands tingling at all? I think my hands were a little numb there for a while.” Was my favorite Terri line. 14,000 feet can easily have an effect on the human body, and Terri had nary mentioned any symptoms till now, on our way down. We all started to feel that we were getting a little more oxygen to the brain as we descended, and after a dozen or so plowed-rock switchbacks, we were back down to the smooth pavement of the visitor center.

We pulled into the parking lot for a smoke and pee break, figuring the dim red lighting outside must be to limit the light pollution. We piled out into the night, stretching and sighing, and got our first real look at the night sky. Near the dark horizon, the closest and largest stars out-shown the bright glow of our own cigarettes, each dancing at different intensities, but all so clear in the blue-black. The middle of the sky was brushed white with the density of our galaxy, nearly washing out the few common constellations hidden among the multitudes.

A few other descendants chatted in Japanese and English nearby, but otherwise, our tribe was alone in the pristine, shimmering wilderness. We couldn’t spot a cloud, and the intensity of the stars' untainted light was only outstripped by our nearby moon. Our still-chilly, but pristine, clime allowed for one final silent shout of gratitude to the great mountain, the great sky, the gods, the givers of life, the spirit in the stars, the beauty of our capacity to understand beauty. We spun in the parking lot like kids, with our heads back, hypnotized by the infinity enveloping us, hugging the sky. And inevitably we bid farewell to our shrine, our church of earth and space energy, and succumbed to the familiar security of our comforting inventions. Starship superstar cruised down the final, trying stretch of saddle road, down, down, down the mountain, 6,000 feet, still rocky, at 5000, the ohia and shrubs return, and by 4,000, we are passing through some sort of eucalyptus and red dirt terrain, signifying that we are near Parker Ranch again. And as the highway junction comes into view, we turn up the CD just a touch, adjust the heat, and accelerated our automobile home, away from our desolate mountain, our sacred volcano, our daily companion. We drive away from the peak, but we never really leave at all. Tomorrow the sun will warm Mauna Kea's Eastern side, and we will be there to watch and welcome her morning silhouette once again.

Mauna Kea 2

Continued from Mauna Kea 1

Shawn and I both work with tourists, so we are expected to be able to give sound advice to those exploring Hawaii for the first time. We both knew that past the visitor center at 9,000 feet Mauna Kea Road was a steep, unpaved ascent. At elevations above 7,000 feet, the atmosphere is thinner, so at-risk travelers, such as pregnant, sick, or ailing parties are advised not to go to the peak. As we turned left up the steepest part of the mountain, nervous excitement kicked in and we discussed our plan. We would pause for a bit at the visitor center to aclimatize, and then progress to the peak just before sunset, and watch the sun sneak behind clouds hanging thousands of feet below us. As a precaution, we agreed to turn back if anyone felt any ill effects from the height. We referenced our trusty blue book (The Big Island Revealed, a mainstay of exploring The Big Island) and realized we were heading up a mountain much higher than either Mt. Bachelor or Mt Hood (11,249 ft, Oregon’s tallest) back home, two peaks we spent ample time snowboarding down every winter.

Yet we were headed up with only the few light jackets we had brought along from the mainland, and a 4x4. The weather was sunny and clear, but we knew such heights would have their own weather-presumably very chilly. We climbed at about a 10% grade, losing perspective of the girth of the mountain as we became part of it. Up into the naked sun, chilly arctic air in the open windows, squeezing pictures of the morphing landscape and the ancient hill ahead.

At 9,000 feet we hit the small visitor center and pulled our yellow truck over to scope it out. The one story building serves as information center and station for a few small telescopes, but it is also strategically placed to help visitor acclimate to the elevation. Park Rangers recommend at least 30 minutes to let your body get used to the thin atmosphere. Quite honestly, all of us were starting to feel a bit loopy. I distinctly remember running across the road to the top of a dirt mound, excited like a little kid, and then really feeling spacey from my brief exertion. Good times, and free. Shawn’s already-uninhibited mood was only magnified.

“Dude, we’re at 9,000 feet. This is crazy, man. It’s like woooowooowoo.” (A quick send-up to the movie "Airheads").

“If we start to feel ill, we’re coming back down, right?” Anna quietly questioned.

“Absolutely.”

“Shit you guys are gonna' be fine. Breathe.” Shawn demonstrated with a lung-filling inhale.

“My hands do feel a little funny, but I think we’ll be ok,” Terri decided as we moseyed toward the visitor center. Most of us were too anxious or disoriented or both to pay much attention to the info video, and a $4 donation to the volunteer-run facility was too much for repackaged M&Ms, even if they were in a pretty bag and labeled ‘asteroid chips’. Hmmm. The tour bus’, seemingly all Japanese, began dispensing the down jackets and bento boxes to the foreign tourists gathered in the parking lot, many with highly advance digital recording equipment of some kind or another. It was a wonder, I thought, that they would use such advanced means to capture such magnificent events as their 8-year-old’s consumption of a Bento box. We noticed that some of the visitors used the hot water provided to heat their instant noodles. Genius. Shawn ate his Chicken Salad from Matsuyama's market, Sara and I ate our salad, and after another smoke break, we were ready for the final climb; a ‘surge’ if you will.

The Blue Book, and Shawn, both recommended 4-low to climb the un-paved, rocky washboard ascent, so we figured out how to get into the proper gear, and turned our slightly light-headed car right. The sun, and our watches said it was six p.m., and we had only a few miles left to climb the final 5,000 feet; we’d synchronized our ascent with a 7:25 August sunset. The pavement ended almost immediately, and we settled into a comfortable 10 –15 mph low-gear crawl, nose to the sky. Outside, the trees slowly shrunk, and bent, pointing the way of the wind, and the earth experimented with brand new red, black, and brown colors in piles of earth. Certain areas looked like a Martian spacescape, maybe even home to an alien life form that lived in conical, gravelly mounds of varying sizes. We knew the collections of cylinders were old cinder cones where gas and other volcanic byproducts exploded out of the earth. When you see the artist’s renderings of Kilauea (Hawaii’s lone active volcano) from Mark Twain’s time, with the lava-squirting out all over the place like some pre-Cambrian flashback, you’d think they’re exaggerating, but you can see that this too was once a spouting, spewing active beast as recently as 3,500 years ago. Now it is in what is called post-shield phase, and is actually sinking it’s massive self into the seafloor.

The road was wide enough, and fairly tolerable, disregarding intense swaths of high-amplitude washboard ruts that shimmied the truck sideways a few nauseating inches. The hoary rock sent up a dust as it ground into fine powder under the hundreds of ascending and descending tires. Two main companies, Mauna Kea Summit Adventures, and Hawaii Forest and Trail, along with a few smaller businesses and the aforementioned Japanese tour groups shuttle visitor to the top in their four-wheel-drive vans every evening. I have knocked around the idea of bustling a few travelers up in my truck for a fee, but I may let it be in the end. The current relationship between commerce, and this spiritually sacred Hawaiian place, remains symbiotic: the State gains revenue from every vanload of googley-eyed globetrekkers, and the masses gain reverence for a deserving monument to the creative powers of mother earth, or at least are thrust into a world with mounds and crests so alien, skies and cloudscapes so glorious, elevations and evidences so deliriously stunning, that any right-minded individual, no matter his religious facilities would stand to be at least temporarily reverent.

All was swell until the road zagged left, facing us westward into the direct, setting sun. Utterly blinded by the ghastly, unfiltered photons, we arranged visors and sunglasses to try and some small visual of the next switchback. I ignorantly squirted the plain water in my wiper reservoir on the dirty, dusty windshield, and the destroyed our last hopes of regaining any image of the road ahead.
“Four Japanese tourists just died on this road last month. Their brakes went out and they flew off the cliff. I think their car caught on fire,” Shawn was kind enough to inform us.

For safeties sake, we pulled over at one of the few turnouts for a Clorox wipes windshield moment, wiping the dusty mud from our view. Though the outside air was easily below freezing with the wind chill, we couldn’t help but stand outside the truck and stare in awe at our lifeless, rocky surroundings. Standing on the plowed, fist-sized chunks of hoary, porous rock, the substrate for our road, we leaned into the wind and gazed south; below, the mountain rolled and bulged, dipping below an inlet of clouds, before reappearing in the distance, as the yellowish, hulking slope of Mauna Loa. We stood in silence to ogle the expanse of burnt red cinder cones below, the quiet unbroken except by cold, gusty winds splashing their thin air into our ears. Hawaiian people credit the land between these two landmarks as the home to spirits, and we let them flow all around us. The mountain had transformed itself again.
As we rounded the final haripin and pulled onto smooth black pavement, four or five of the Martian spheres-on -tands rose up in front of us. Here a shiny silver near-orb six stories high, and there a pair of towering, white circular monoliths. They were, arguably, foreign spacecraft, but these devices were constructed here on earth, though far from here, before being arduously shipped to Hawaii, and trucked to the summit for final assembly. Twelve, in total, the world-class telescopes mark the summit of Mauna Kea, so placed because of the thin atmosphere, relatively good weather, and proximity to the equator. We’d read about the infrared scopes, the millimeter scopes, and the twin Keck telescopes, the largest in the world, capturing space-data from as far back as 180 million light years. The oldest telescope, now run by the University of Hawaii, was built in 1968, the year before we landed on the moon. The most advanced, and recent addition, the Keck Observatories, are so powerful they interpret radiation from stars that by all means may already be deceased, galaxies that may have dissipated eons ago, and matter and anti-matter that may be from the time of the big bang. I slowed almost to a stop, amidst a collective “Whoa”. To the west, the sun was creeping ever closer to the clouds, which would act as our horizon, while to the east, the clear, near-full moon hung over the reflective ball of NASA’s infrared telescope. The combination of this slightly citrus skyscape, and our lack of oxygen, made us feel like we’d altered our consciousness; we were now on top of the world.

Anna was fairly quiet as we took the right fork in the road, whereas Sara and I kept finding amazing things to point out to one another.

“Look at that one, it’s moving!” She noticed, and sure enough, one of the unnamed orbs was, slowly and silently, turning its rectangular opening to allow its optic mechanations to star toward some distant point of interest. I tend to get a little spiritual in places of such power, and soon enough we were stopped on a rise near the NASA infrared scope, and I had to step out into the bracing cold. The brisk, whistling wind only added to the energy of the mountaintop, reverberating with earthly, spiritual history and cosmic, alien influence. We know the ancient Hawaiians sensed a godly presence here among these dormant chimnies, once a home to the magnificent Pele. It is said that traveling between the mountains was avoided, as they were the place of spirits. If any phantoms, any phenomenon, any unknowable realities exist among us, there should be no better place of residence than the shadows of these desolate towers.

While Sara and I found a comfortable cement slab to sit on and observe and record the panorama, Shawn was busy causing mildly-drunken mischief. The wind and eerie evening light added to the already disorienting effect of the elevation, and we didn’t really notice Shawn poking around the nearby telescope. Next thing we knew, he had slipped in the big metal doors and disappeared into the base of the structure, which can best be compared to the solid rock spheres, usually of variegated types and held in place by a cylindrical stand (you’ll find them on the shelf of your nearest hippie stores). In essence they're only metal and five expanded orders of magnitude. Sara and I just shook our heads and laughed as Shawn snuck into the ‘stand’ part of the structure. It was just after six, and the heavenly hues began to evolve into dependable pastels that marked the magical evening hour of morphing refraction; that nightly performance, that elicits as many exquisite elements as any symphony orchestra; the evening drama that is both more dramatic and more fulfilling than even the grandest theater. Wisps of kaiapua, or sky blossoms, hung high out to sea, but the majority of the cloudscape was below us. Our digital videos and pics show what can only be described as a green evervescence, hovering over the white sea of clouds. What an unexpected twist in this God-authored plot, now, throwing such unexpected colors as emerald, and thinning out the atmosphere to alter the contrast, all the while bringing a slow dusk over us like a hood from behind, and letting the moon and stars hang just out of sight, overhead, while they rehearse for their fast-approaching first act. Lost in this pleasant admiration of the western horizon, a voice came to us through the gusting wind.

“Hey, you guys. Hey guys… here!”

We turned our heads to see Shawn shouting and motioning from the doorway he had recently entered. We later found out that he had run into a staff scientist while sneaking around inside the telescope.
“Am I supposed to be here?” He’d asked.

“No. Were closed. Visiting hours stop at 4.”

“Oh.”

“Well, you probably shouldn’t be in here. I am pretty bored,” Pause for effect, “You wanna' look around?” Neil, the scientist, had offered. Apparently running the 2-man station at the top of a lifeless volcano had its dull moments, and we were lucky enough to be there to break up the monotony. I rounded up Terri and Anna from the warmth of the Xterra, and we crunched across the small parking lot to entrance. The quiet, and relative warmth of the cement facility were welcomed relief from the bustling chill. We were going in.(To be concluded in Mauna Kea Conclusion)

Mauna Kea 1

Mauna Kea
By
William Burdette
7/15/07

On the big Island of Hawaii, size is a relative matter. Whether it be wave size, fish size, or mountain size, claims of grandiose proportions are commonplace, so it is always important to get the details: are you measuring the face or the back of the wave, did you have a witness to your fish, and where do you start when measuring a mountain? The Hawaiian Islands were formed by the Hawaiian ‘hot-spot’ under the pacific plate, slowly, eruption by eruption, over the last 10 million years, leaving behind 7 main islands varying in height. In the far Northwest in the unpopulated Leeward Isles, a small atoll called Kure is the truly oldest remain of the volcanic chain, but of the main, Southeastern Island’s Kauai is eldest. Hawaii, my current home, is the largest, newest, and aptly nicknamed, Big Island, as it is bigger than the rest of the chain combined. Looking down at the mid-pacific chain from great heights, one can observe the progression of aged volcanic peaks; the older, and more pulverized, are shallow, soft, and sandy. The newest mounts have the youngest land, and they stand tall and dark, teaming with lava flows as recent as today, and old as 800,000 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world recognize, and are drawn to the powerful beauty of these violently created tropical lands.
What is lesser known is that two of the five towers of earth that make up the remote volcanic Isle of Hawaii are the largest mountains in the world: Mauna Kea (White mountain) and Mauna Loa (Long mountain). I know, I know, you’ve heard other stakes claimed on the purported top of the world, so we better look deeper. When you are talking story, as it’s called in Hawaii, you can’t believe everything you hear.

Mauna Kea, a dormant shield volcano that first made an appearance above sea level some 400,000 years ago, is 33,769 feet from its base to its peak, almost 4,000 feet taller than Everest. Can you believe it? The discrepancy arises in the details-20,000 feet of Mauna Kea’s grand stature are under salty blue pacific, leaving just under 14,000 competitive feet above sea level-still more than enough to create its own weather, and leave the summit of the beast spending most of its time above the clouds. When the peak is clear in the morning, it looms over all the land and can easily be seen from nearby Maui, 80 miles away across the ‘Alenuiha’ha Channel.

Mauna Loa truly is long, created more recently by layer upon layer of slow-moving A’a (sharp and jagged) and Pahoehoe (smooth, and even) lava flows. Though 200 feet the junior to its once fiery neighbor, Mauna Loa’s shallow slope to the sea floor, caused by billions of tons of erupting magma, gives it a land volume of 19,000 cubic miles, making it the largest volume mountain in the world. So, Mt. Everest may be the champion in the miles-above-sea-level category, but there are other leagues of mountainous competition.

Like the stately and majestic Everest, the top of Mauna Kea truly is a visual and meteorological wonder. The peak boasts a blanket of snow during the winter months, while during the same season relatively warm, towering blue swells of pacific break on the reef miles below. Traditional Hawaiians are storied to have raced dozens of miles from the alpine zone with snow, attempting to reach the beach and dive into the waves with a snowball intact. Nowadays some locals play the same game with the help of lifted 4x4’s. The most extreme even take the risk of snowboarding over unforgiving lava fields, sometimes hiding under only a few sweet feet of snow. This tropical anomaly makies it possible to snowboard, skateboard, and surf in the same day, completing the island’s board sport triune.
Both mountains reach halfway up through the densest six miles of earth’s atmosphere, and because of Hawaii’s proximity to the equator, and relatively stable weather and climate, Mauna Kea is the chosen roost for thirteen world-class telescopes. Astronomer and physicist teams from the US, Japan, England, and Australia, US Universities, and NASA maintain and manipulate these scopes to capture the clearest celestial images taken from anywhere on earth. This is where they get those pictures of space worthy of publication (along with satellite images). As the scopes absorb and interpret a multitude of light, and radiation readings, they create images of vast mega-complexes of stars that can later be joined together to create the surreal images of blossoming nebulas, exploding stars, and spiraling ational Geographic. As much of the work is automated, the staff’s job consists of a lot of monitoring and maintaining. None of these scientists, responsible for tracking the depths of the universe, are allowed to stay up at the peak alone, due to the health hazards posed by such elevations. As most mountain-dwellers know, air has mass, like the ocean, and higher elevations have a thinner atmosphere, rendering less absorbed oxygen. The human body can adjust, but the risk of elevation sickness is never absent above 9,000 feet. Much of the data analysis and project planning takes place in nearby Waimea, nestled at a comfortable 4,000 feet in the valley between Mauna Kea, and northwesterly Kohala.
We set off to explore these shadowy precipices on a clear Tuesday afternoon. Though Kona is our new home, and we have gazed at the peak everyday on our way to work, it isn’t until a tourist inquires about the getting to the top of that towering mountain that you start to seriously consider a few things. Namely,what is going on up there at that summit? Can you really drive up all the way, right up to the top? How crazy are these roads, really? And, might I die driving up a 14,000 foot volcano? I invested in, if you can use that word for buying a truck, a 4x4 Nissan X-terra. It is a small SUV with full four low, and was partially sold to me because it was going to be able to handle roads and locations that I was yet to come to know. Mauna Kea was one of those sacred 4-wheel-drive locales, so we decided that taking my friend Shawn’s mom, who was visiting from Oregon, to the summit was a worthy excuse for making the trip. Her slightly more ‘experienced’ friend Terri had flown out from her retirement community in Arizona, and would join us as well.

We rallied the troops (In this case myself, my girlfriend Sara, my roommate Shawn, a relatively recent addition to the Kona scene, and Shawn’s mom, Anna, and her friend Terri, from Eugene, and Phoenix, respectively). All in all we had nearly four generations on board, all with very little clue of what to expect, except that it was an extremely summitous, voluptuous, mountainous mountain, and we would need warm cloths and close-toed shoes. As trips to paradise rarely involve packing coats, I rummaged up the few windbreakers and fleeces we had, stuffed them in a co-op bag, along with some mittens I’d tucked away for just this occasion. I even found my Bolivian Alpaca wool hat, purportedly woven by living-wage native workers in Bolivia’s own elevations. By 3 pm, we were packed and loaded in the truck. In Hawaii, your often headed either Makai, toward the water, or Mauka, up the mountain. We turned right out of the driveway onto the high road, headed Mauka.

After a quick stop at Matsuyama’s Store for water, snacks, and a smoke, we were ready. Sara deferred shotgun to Terri, who has got to be the funnest and freest grandma I know. Though she is 50 years senior to we twenty-somethings, she had just braved the turbulent Hawaiian waters and snorkeled her first snork that same morning! I heard she even shot down the slide off the side of the snorkel boat. Rockin’, for a chronologically abundant woman like Terri. Snorkel cruises are a must when you’re vacationing on the Islands, and most companies open the breakfast bar, and the bar bar, as soon as you get out to sea. This can be as early as 8 am, but your sunshine and activity levels (and possible your internal, mainland clocks), tell you it is much later. After gazing at the seas for a while, it seems logical to sip on a cocktail. One sometimes leads to two and it’s easy to imbibe a handful of drinks before noon, without meaning to, and turn the whole venture into a little more of a morning-time party. Shawn had just had such a morning and was possibly the most excited to head off to rugged, uncharted, mountain territory. Shawn, still buzzed from the morning cocktails, sat in the back with his Mom and Sara, and I sat up front with Terri in Shotgun.

“Going to Mauna Kea, driving up a volcano,” Shawn sang spontaneously, his volume a bit above normal. Terri had been dealing with his antics all morning, and paid him only partial attention.
“Thank you for driving, William,” She said with a glint in her eye, “I’m really excited. I sure like hanging out with you young people.”
“Well Terri, we’re glad you’re here,” I offered, looking back at Sara and smiling at the whole scenario, “This is going to be quite an adventure. 14,000 ft up into the atmosphere.”
“You should have seen her on the slide today, man,” Shawn informed us, “It was awesome, I made her go down it. Aren’t you glad I made you go down it, Terri?”
“What’s that?”
Shawn poked his head up between the seats
“Aren’t you glad I made you go down the slide, Terri. Wasn’t that awesome?”
“Oh yes, the slide. I didn’t think this old lady was up to it, but I did it. Whoop, splash!” Terri gestured her path down the slide and into the ocean. “It was scary, but fun.”

She strapped her small frame into the X-Terra seatbelt, and now replete with snacks and supplies, we were off.

“This is gonna be fucking awesome!” Sean explained as we drove up, then down, then, up hwy 180, away from Kona, first climbing, then descending and leaving the western side of less-famous Hualalai, our 8,000 foot volcano, circling northeast toward the entrance to the ‘saddle’ running west to east between Mauna Kea, and Southerly Mauna Loa.

The west side of Hawaii really only has two real highways, the upper Highway, which is mauka and the lower which is makai. We headed northeast on the upper highway, over brown and relatively new (1800’s flows), black lava desert, populated with mildly prosperous O’hio stands, and sturdy sage-looking shrubs. We climbed steadily for a while, flanked by blasted lava walls to our right, and the remnants of a brushfire to the left, rolling down to the ocean. This steppe climate zone reminds me of our own high desert back in Oregon, complete with the seasonal fires that are part of the ecological cycle. As we continued north, shadowy plains took the place of the thin O’hio forests, and we soon descended past Waikoloa Road, which connects the upper road to Waikoloa on lower road, near the ocean. The mountain pass between Mauna Kea and the northernmost Kohala volcano, funnels trade winds from the east, out across the lava plain to the west blowing away the afternoon clouds that form as warm ocean air climbs the mountain slopes and cools. The resulting near-perfect weather on the Kohala Coast has attracted a handful of resorts of varying age and scale, including the largest mega-resort on the big Island, the 64-acre Hilton Waikola. Along with the construction of multi-million dollar homes, the resort industry accounts for a majority of living wage jobs on the island, and some Hilo residents, 80 miles away on the eastern shore, commute over to make ends meet. Such is the fate of many an island nation, as capitalism and paradise collide.

A few miles past Waikoloa Road, but still south of Waimea Town, we peeled off to the right, onto the third almost-highway that leads east across the island, to Hilo: Saddle Road. Waimea town, a completely different place than Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, was once the center of the Parker Ranch, and arguably the birthplace of the still extant Paniolos, or Hawaiian cowboys. Now augmented into several smaller ranches, and annexed here and there by the government for military purposes North Kohala is still cattle land; it was fitting that we headed inland onto the ‘saddle’ from the heart of this cowboy country.

Saddle Road is a unique beast. Though it is technically the shortest distance between Kona, the biggest town on the west side and Hilo, the biggest on the east, the entire western half of the road is a big pile of crap. The road twists and turns and climbs up the “saddle’ between the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, before peaking, and descending into Hilo. The Hilo side is shiny and new (though the Kona side is the cash cow of the island, the Hilo side is the county seat, so some suspect favoritism) but the Kona side is a treacherous, army road dressed up as a highway. To be fair, the western half is being bypassed by a brand new route, but currently, it is a ridiculous piece of work to behold, especially to an outsider.
“This road is crazy,” was Sara’s assessment. And it was. The outside of each lane looked like something off a bad Brooklyn street, crumpled and bumpy, but flanked by fields of erupted rock and gaunt O’hio trees instead of parked cars, and pedestrians. Someone had, however, taken the time to repave the middle of the route, making it effectively a one-way road. The line in the middle was comical at times, since trying to squeeze two cars through past at full speed was suicide, but it served as a good guideline for one vehicle, almost like a monorail.
“Maybe we should go a little slower,” remarked Anna, Sean’s pleasant, and truly one of a kind, Buddhist mother. I was tearing along at 45 on this often-frightening afterthought of a highway. Sean thought differently about decelerating.

“No fuckin' way, he’s fine. Just stay in the middle and watch out for other cars. You got it”
It’s always good to get advice from people that spent the morning drinking Mai Tai’s, and Lava flows

“You could slow down a little bit, but I feel safe with you driving, William,” Terri commented with a decisive smile. I glanced over, realizing that this whole adventure was way outside her normal comfort zone, and at this point, she was just holding on for the ride; what a trooper. I slowed down a bit. Sean and Sara continued their heated debate on race relations and equality as I avoided the largest potholes and watched for the rare oncoming car.

“I’m not prejudice against anyone, how can you say it is ok to be racist against me,” Sean challenged in that 4-beer voice.

“It’s not ok to be racist for anyone, it is just different…”

“So it’s ok if people judge me and call me haole’ but I shouldn’t say shit? Is that what you are saying? That’s bullshit.”

The combination of tremulous roads and heated opinion soon became too much.
We decided to call a truce as we neared the now-infamous Mauna Kea road we had read about on our drive, the beginning of our ascent to the peak of Mauna Kea. We were now climbing nearer toward the misty clouds, surrounded by extinct cinder cones and low, windblown shrubs. While ogling the landscape, debating civics, and avoiding decrepit shoulders, we had climbed over 4,000 feet, leaving the arid (chapparal) of Kohala behind. Now the landscape was rockier, cooler, and thinner. We stopped and got out for a stretch break at Mauna Kea State park, at the bottom of Mauna Kea road, and air reminded me of the cool, late-fall San Bernadino Mountains in California-the whole area could have been mistaken for a SoCal mountainside. There were even some stunted, pine-looking trees reminiscent of ponderosas. We had already passed through three climate zones, and we were only halfway there. It was just after 4pm, 3 hours to sunset. (To be continued on Mauna Kea pt. 2)