Fourth Blogiversary!

I think it was bad timing for me to start this blog the day after my birthday. Two celebrations back to back always seems excessive. Ah well, that's how it is. This blog has now been my home on the internet for four years. The same length of time that I was in college. Makes me feel old, as if that birthday yesterday wasn't enough.

My blogging frequency has dropped off considerably over the past year. My blog reading has also become a lot less frequent. Some of that is because many of the blogger friends I made at my blogging peak 2-3 years ago have been blogging a lot less, too, but it's also that I've found other ways to distract myself. Real life activities start to encroach on internet activities. Really, most of my blogging was done when I should have been working, so I guess I've just become a little better at doing what I'm supposed to (though this post itself proves there are exceptions).

I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep this up, given changing priorities and new "distractions." I expect I'll keep on like this for a little while: dropping by once or twice a month to post about something that interests me or something fun I've done in Hawaii, and checking in on other blogs once in a while as well. I'll also be around Twitter, which is a bit easier to take because of the small dose size.

But I'm not willing to give up this online life of mine yet. The ability to find so many cool people with shared interests is one of the great things about the internet. In a way, I started this blog four years ago because I didn't feel like there were enough people like me, and I wanted to be recognized. But over the years I have found so many people like me. None exactly like me, but people with significant overlaps. I'm pleased and proud to find myself a member of such a community.

The relationships I've made online are also a special sort of relationship. People I know solely online can't know me in quite the same way people who know me in person do--how I sound carrying a conversation, or my immediate reaction to certain situations--but with the partial anonymity that the internet provides, I feel more free to share certain things here than I do in real life. People who have read this blog know some things about me no one I know in person knows. Maybe some day I'll meet a blog friend in real life. Not sure what would happen then.

Anyway, I'd better stop with all this sentimentality. In celebration of four years of blogging, I'm going to do something I haven't done on this blog before...

Me with an ancient Hawaiian petroglyph on the Big Island last year.

There. Sorry there's a hat. You know, it was actually quite hard to find an interesting photo of me without sunglasses. I do live in Hawaii, after all.

Three cubed

Today is my 27th birthday. I'd like to say "I've never felt this old before," but then--duh!--I've never been this old before. The same can be said for any person at any time. But I'm more averse to turning 27 than I have been to turning any previous age. Honestly, it's mainly because I'm kicking myself for never getting a certain vaccine that is only supposed to be given up to age 26 (not entirely my fault--I told my doctor I wanted it and she forgot, and I called her back once and she forgot again...but I still could have tried harder). Hopefully it will never matter, but just to have something like that which I am TOO OLD FOR NOW is kind of making me depressed. I'm over the hill. Also some of the depression may be from the fact that my boyfriend isn't here, but my mom is (and starting to drive me nuts), and I have to work today. Plus, there's no way this birthday will be as amazing as last year's. I guess it's kind of hard to live up to diving with dolphins and manta rays.

Anyway, it's my birthday, and a friend gave me cupcakes at school which I went around and shared with other friends. My mom gave me a pair of earrings. And tonight I'm going to Town--that's the name of the restaurant. It's a nice restaurant that uses fresh, local, organic ingredients, and it's supposed to be really good. So I'm excited about that, at least.

My dad sent me an email this morning pointing out that it's been 19 years since my last birthday was a perfect cube, and it'll be 37 years until my next perfect-cube birthday. In honor of that mathematical trivia, here's a photo of me when I was 8 (not on my birthday, but the first day of 3rd grade :)

For the record my mom made me that dress, and I loved it. It had a swirly skirt. This is one of the photos where I think I look most like my mom, too.

And just for fun, here's another photo of me from about that age. You can't see it because of the poor angle, but that sweatshirt was my first article of clothing to have an otter on it. And I rocked that hat.

Here's to having more nice photos (or whatever they'll have--holos?) of me at 64!

Big Island Trip: Hanaunau diving

I've already documented the sad tale of the breaking of my camera during our first dive on this trip to the Big Island. The good news is that there's a good probability that the warranty people will replace the camera (maybe even in the beautiful turquoise blue that my original camera was), as they told me they would and had me mail it in and everything. The bad news was that I didn't get photos of my two amazing dives with dolphins and manta rays the next day.

The photos I did take at Hanaunau (as a snorkel/dive spot, sometimes referred to as "Two-Step") before my camera flooded weren't great. The camera broke about 20 minutes into the dive, and we seemed to see a lot less in that time than we'd seen the previous year while snorkeling. Besides, it was a cloudy afternoon; less light to begin with means less light--and less color--underwater. Still, I feel I owe it to my lovely camera to share the photos it so valiantly took on its last expedition.

This is a lower resolution photo because it's actually a still from a video I took. It just gives a nice picture of just how much live coral there is at this spot, and how many textures it has.


That's a moray! The Housemate snapped this photo.


Just because it amuses me, I have to include the Angry Mermaid photo again.

I was trying to tell the Housemate to stop taking photos of me while I was clearing my mask of water. I wasn't THAT angry, but it did scare him, poor guy.

Here's a much friendlier mermaid.


And another photo of fish and coral.


That's it. Soon after that photo was taken, the camera started vibrating in my hands, and the screen started fuzzing out. We swam the camera into shore and handed it off to the Housemate's brother on the beach. Fortunately, the photos that were already taken remained intact.

Last but not least: See photos from Waikoloa, a beach resort that also happens to have a petroglyph field. Seeing as my camera was broken, those photos are all taken with the Housemate's camera.

Back to Big Island Trip master link page

Big Island Trip: Waipio Valley beach

After the hot, tiring hike down into Waipio Valley, we were relieved to spend an hour or so relaxing on the gorgeous black sand beach.

The weather was pretty perfect that day. The Housemate enjoyed checking out the waves. Farther down the beach, there was a wave suitable for surfing.


The Housemate's brother and niece walk down to a part of the beach that isn't quite so pebbly.


The nephew plays in the waves at the shoreline, as he is wont to do.


The effect of the black sand under the water was rather enchanting.


When I realized that a thin film of water left by a recently receded wave created a mirror over the black sand, I went a little crazy with the camera. I can't decide which photo I like the best, so I'll just throw a bunch at you. Click for larger versions.

The choppy water here is from the river outflow over the beach.


Rock, clouds, approaching wave.


I love the patterns created in the sand by water running around rocks.


Good thing there were lots of fluffy clouds that day.


A bunch of rocks with sand wake patterns.


Sky, cliff, ocean, and black-sand mirror.


Help me out: Which of the "mirror" photos do you like the best?

Edit: OK, here's two more. It's actually the same photo, but cropped differently...


Meteorites...



Coming up next: The few diving photos I managed to get before my camera broke.

Back to Big Island Trip master link page

Big Island Trip: Waipio Valley hike

The Housemate's brother had heard about a hike down into Waipio Valley from a friend of his. A steep road descends into a secluded valley on the Big Island's north shore. Most of the valley is private property. At the head of the valley is the tallest waterfall on the island. At the other end, a black sand beach. The hike wasn't supposed to be very long, maybe an hour. Sounded like a good idea at the time.

The hike descends from the ridge into the valley 1000 feet below in the span of a mile. While that's not a long hike, the often 45-degree slope is pretty brutal, especially in the hot sun. Going down into the valley, you have to be careful not to start running down the slope, because you could get out of control and take a tumble. The walk is jarring to the joints. Coming out, it's like hiking up a mile-long staircase. We went down with the whole family. The Housemate's brother had the little girl in a child backpack. The Housemate carried the four-year-old in his arms for part of the way. Going down it was manageable (if somewhat painful for certain people involved), but I don't know how we would have made it out if the Housemate's brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew hadn't hitched a ride with the cars driving up out of the valley. Yes, it was a road we were hiking down into the valley, but because of the steepness of the slope, only four-wheel-drive vehicles can drive down. The Housemate and I hiked the whole way, and I was pretty red faced by the end. Now that I've done it once, I'd be happy to rent a Jeep next time. If you want to go with young children, a four-wheel-drive vehicle is a must.

That said, I'm really glad we did the hike, because it was gorgeous! This was the view of the valley and beach from the ridge, where we ate our lunch.


From the hike down into the valley. I'm not sure you can tell just how steep it is from the picture, but it was intense. Back in the valley, you can see some small taro farms.


The opposite ridge, and some nice marshy vegetation.


Before we saw where it was (it wasn't visible from the ridge lookout), we'd planned to go all the way to the waterfall. But that is a long way, and involves a lot of hiking through private property. Once down in the valley, we passed some hikers who described the path their friends were taking to the waterfall: Follow the stream, you'll have to wade waist-deep in the stream for a hundred yards or so, then you'll see where you climb out over the rocks on the other side... Basically, it was totally infeasible with the children, and probably not what we wanted even if it had just been the adults. We enjoyed the view of the waterfall from the valley road.

It's kind of interesting how there's clearly a second waterfall path carved out of the rock. I wondered whether it would sometimes have two waterfalls if there was enough rainfall, or if the second was just an older path and the river had for whatever reason been slightly diverted from it.

Since we couldn't go all the way to the waterfall, at least we could go to the beach! It was a beautiful black sand beach, the nicest one I've been to, with soft sand and very few people (given the remote location, that was to be expected). I think the Housemate took this shot.

I took a LOT of photos on the beach, so I'll make them a separate post.

After the strenuous hike out of the valley, the Housemate and I were rewarded with a beautiful view of the valley, a bit before sunset.


The Housemate took a photo of it with his camera:


Next: Photos from the Waipio black sand beach.

Back to Big Island Trip master link page

Big Island Trip: Banyans, Kua Bay, and Mauna Kea

The Housemate and I took a week-long summer vacation on the Big Island in July. We stayed with his brother, who lives in Kailua-Kona with his wife and two little children.

Our first day there, the swell was good, so the Housemate took the opportunity to go surfing with his brother. The beach wasn't good for swimming, though, so the rest of us just hung out on the beach under a shady tree.

The Housemate's four-year-old nephew collects rocks and coral bits by the water.


A turtle! Shame it didn't put its head above the water, but I think it's still recognizable.


The second day, we went to a beach that was great for swimming: Kua Bay Beach Park. The sand is soft and light, and the water is the perfect, glittering, crystal-clear green the brochures tell you it's supposed to be.


While the Housemate's nephew liked to stay on the beach, running in and out of the gently crashing waves, his 18-month-old niece LOVED boogie boarding with her father.


She was having a great time there.


That night, we went to the Mauna Kea Observatory Visitor Center. On top of the 14,000-ft (4200-m) volcano sits a collection of powerful telescopes that capture important astronomical images. Those telescopes, though, don't have eyepieces and instead feed directly into computers. So aside from appreciating how large the telescopes are, there isn't much to see at the peak. Furthermore, at 14,000 ft, people acclimated to sea level would likely find themselves impaired by the thin air--not able to see straight, feeling ill, and such. Thus, the visitor center sits down the mountain at a comfortable 9000 ft.

9000 ft (2750 m) is still quite high. While at sea level in Kona the temperature was around 80F (27C), at the Visitor Center it was about 49F (9C). This is REALLY cold by Hawaii standards--in Honolulu, a day that doesn't pass 75F is cold, and a night that dips below 65F is downright freezing. Luckily we'd seen on their website how cold it would be, and I wore the warmest clothes I'd brought: a light sweatshirt and jeans. I would have preferred a fleece jacket. Needless to say, the gift shop there made an absolute killing on Cup O'Noodles and hot chocolate mix.

The presentation someone made (armed with powerful laser pointer) was a bit disappointing, concentrating on pointing out the constellations in the zodiac rather than providing interesting astronomical information (the one exception: an explanation of Omega Centauri). But they had about a dozen telescopes set up and focused on various interesting things in the night sky. I tried to snap a few photos with my camera, but given the difficulty of lining up the shots, and the fact that there were often people waiting in a line behind me, I didn't get that many. Here are a couple:

Guess which planet this is. Through the telescope, we could see maybe four of its moons, but the camera only got the rings. Still recognizable, though.


Moon so bright.


Less exposed, so you can see the detail a bit better.


I'm not sure I'm anxious to go back to the Mauna Kea Observatory, but I'm glad I went. I wish that the staff there were a bit more knowledgeable, but I saw some cool things, and they had interesting videos playing inside the building. It makes a good evening trip.

Coming up next: The best photos from our trip, which came the next day when we hiked into Waipio Valley.

Back to Big Island Trip master link page

Random photos from around the island

I'm still sorting through my photos from the Big Island, but in the meanwhile, here are some random photos from O'ahu.

This was taken at White Plains beach park, west of Honolulu. The beach is very nice, but it was the sky that impressed me that day.


These are a couple views of the Waikiki skyline as seen from our house, during two different sunsets. I love how that one building catches the light when the sun gets low.




The Housemate and I visited a friend of his who was staying at the Ko Olina Resort at the beginning of the summer. We got a nice tour of the area at sunset. While walking on the beach, I also got to meet the tiniest puppy (like six inches long--it could have been kidnapped by a squirrel). It was so cute and fluffy, and it licked my hand with its tiny tongue, but somehow I didn't snap a picture of it, which I still regret. The sunset was beautiful, though.

My Hawaiian research cruise: Sunrise vs. Sunset

Some people have strong opinions of whether they prefer sunsets or sunrises, but I've always liked both. Truth is, though, I see a lot more sunsets than sunrises; I'm not usually awake before the sun comes up. On the research cruise, however, my midnight to noon shift forced me to be awake--and usually out on deck--during the sunrise. Sunset was right after dinner, so I'd always catch it as well. And I always had my camera on hand.

In this post, my photos of sunrises and sunsets face off against each other. I had some photos in previous posts of Moloka'i at sunrise, the Big Island at sunset, etc., but the photos here must have the sky at sunrise or sunset as their primary subject and purpose.

Which one will win? Sunrise, or sunset?

Round 1:

Sunrise


Sunset


Round 2:

Sunrise


Sunset


Round 3:

Sunrise


Sunset


Round 4:

Sunrise


Sunset


Round 5:

Sunrise


Sunset


So who won (either round-by-round, or overall)? Tell me what you think in the comments!