March 17, 2008

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY

Before I came to Hawaii, I was reading my Guide Book one day and came across the fact that there's a St. Patty's Day parade in Honolulu. I was flabbergasted. It seemed just a little out of character for Hawaii, but sure enough, there IS a parade, albeit a small one. (I think Fonda and Johnstown have more in their parades) It sounded like it was going to be huge... Let's see, there were old cars, about two floats, the Marine Color Guard, the Marine Band, two school bands, the Red Hat Society Ladies, some bagpipers (which I completely missed), not necessarily in that order, and the Honolulu bicycle police bringing up the rear.

Chelsea and I got to the starting point about an hour ahead of time--that's where we got the best pictures... especially of the cars. I love the hood ornament on this MG.

I think these two men were bagpipers, but as I said, I completely missed them. Chelsea said they were first to begin the parade and at that point I was down the line a little photographing cars.

There were a lot of these gals and they sure looked like they were having a good time.

Marine Color Guard. Just sooo awesome!

Marine Band. They sounded awesome--sent chills up and down my arms. They got much applause along the route. Disappointingly, there were no other military bands in the parade.

Love the details.

One of the school bands was from Texas--their uniforms were jeans and white T-shirts with a Texas logo on them. Just a little different from the uniforms in Fonda. The other band was from Mobile, Alabama and their uniforms were black button down shirts with parrots all over and red shorts. They looked very cool, but compared to the Marines their deportment was severely lacking. Actually compared to Fonda their deportment was lacking. Oh well....

So what's it like watching the St. Patty's Day parade in Hawaii--hot! with a nice view of the ocean in the background and the ocean breeze accompaning the music. Not too shabby. Watch the parade then jump in the ocean to cool off!

Aloha

Sunday, Mar 16, 2008

Today was church. Pastor was away and one of the elders gave the message. He's a Navy chaplain. Great message. He can give Chris a run for his money when talking. I'm exhausted every time he gives a message, but he's great.


Came home, baked some peanut butter cookies with Kisses and then it was time to return for Bible study and dinner.

Very nice day, weather was awesome. My time here is getting shorter by the day. Only two more Sundays here--I'm sad.


Aloha

Saturday, Mar. 15, 2008

BACK TO THE TEMPLE

Yesterday I decided to go back to the Japanese Temple we had visited a few weeks ago. It was the perfect place to do some infrared shooting. So even though it was cloudy here, I headed out in the hopes that it would be sunny on the windward side of the island. No such luck!

I started out taking color shots, thinking I would just wait and see if the sun would make an appearance. When it finally looked like it was getting brighter, I got the infrared camera out, and low and behold, even though the lcd screen said my battery was okay, it wasn't. So I took out my spare set of batteries and they were no good too. Sigh. But I was comforted by the fact that the sun never really shone brightly the whole time I was there, and the infrared shots wouldn't have been any good anyway.

I spent quite a bit of time just wandering around looking for details and having a blast. Below are some of the results.

By the way, just a reminder that if you'd like to leave a comment, just click on "comment" at the end of the post. Check back because I'll probably reply. Also, I've started a flickr site that will probably have a larger selection of images. If you'd like to go there, the address is flickr.com/photos/paikii2

I have honu duty this afternoon, so you can look forward to more turtle and sunset images. Aloha

Thursday, Mar. 13, 2008

A Little Catching Up

Let's back up to the beginning of the trip to Kauai. Chelsea and I got to the airport in plenty of time, so we were able to take our time and feel relaxed about the trip. The flight over was an uneventful half-hour. As we were getting off the plane she said, "oh, by the way, I thought I should tell you that I don't know the name of our motel. I left the paper home." No problem! Sounds just like something I would do. She assured me that she had all the info on her laptop and all we had to do was find a Starbucks and get online. Okay.

While we were going through the process of getting the rental car, the attendant asked what motel we were staying at so she could put the info into the computer. Chelsea and I just looked at each other and shrugged. Either the attendant had a good sense of humor or she just wanted to get rid of us fast, cause she went ahead and processed our paperwork and let us get on the shuttle bus.

So the bus driver helped us off the bus with our bags and said that we should just wait here because someone would drive the car over and give us the keys. We weren't in any rush, so that was fine, until 45 minutes later I decided to go inside and see what was holding things up. The girl looked a little panic-stricken when I told her we'd been waiting 45 minutes--she went to the key board, found the key, walked outside and pointed in the complete opposite direction to our car. hmmmm

After asking for directions to the nearest Starbucks, we headed out, glad to finally be on our way, when Chelsea calmly informed me that she just realized that she had forgotten to get her tripod off the luggage carosel and we had to go back to the airport to get it. Okay, no problem. So, in order not to have to park and pay, I circled around about three times, verrrry, verrrry slowly and voila, there she was. Well now, we were ready to go, I hoped.

We found the Starbucks, she got online and found the name of the motel. We programed the trusty GPS and away we went, happy that we might finally be able to check in. Happy that is, until we turned down the grungy street toward the motel. (Chelsea booked the motel online, and you know how that goes--the photos show a quaint little establishment, with charming rooms and lots of ambiance--sure thing!) Well, it turned out to be not too bad. It was clean and secure and bright and breezy and we didn't have to park on the road. And it was very charming to be awakened by the rooster across the road each morning.

It wasn't check in time, which we knew but we hoped they'd let us in if the room was already cleaned. It was and they did and we dropped off our luggage. That's where we found out about going to the "grand canyon of Hawaii".

So I've already posted about Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was our check-out day and there really wasn't anything on our agenda, so we decided to take a ride up to the north shore again so I could get some shots of a taro field with my infrared camera.

Let me digress one more time. The night before, while in the motel, I was cleaning my lenses and fiddling with the camera, when I decided to see how a long exposure hand-held would look. This is the result. Pretty funky! I'm going to have to try that some more with other compositions.

While driving back toward Lihue (airport location) we passed a small surf shop with a row of surfboards outside the shop. We turned around and parked and spent about 1/2 hour photographing surfboards. These are some of my favorite images of the three days.

We said our goodbyes and I headed over to Leah's place. I stayed there last night so that I could be there early in the morning to take her to get her wisdom teeth pulled. She looked a little done-in when they wheeled her out in the wheel chair, they even took her all the way down to the car so she wouldn't have to walk--I don't think she could have. We got her prescriptions, went back to her place and she began her recuperation.

I think I've caught you up on all the news, so Aloha for tonight.

Wednesday, Mar 12, 2008

LIGHTHOUSE

Yesterday Chelsea and I got a late start, which I think I mentioned yesterday, but it was just as well because...there's basically one road on this island which goes almost all the way around except for an area on the northwest where the terrain is too swampy and they never persued putting in a road. So once you've traveled the road around the island, you've pretty much seen it all. That's not to mention all the hiking areas and little side trips--none of which we were interested in doing.

It's really beautiful here though, a lot like riding around New England except with differen foliage. We discovered that there are three lighthouses on Kauai, so before we headed to the north shore, we tried to locate the two in the southeastern area. We found them okay, but they are just towers with lights on them and we couldn't get very close to them anyway.

So we headed north--we were going to go to the end of the road where there was supposed to be an awesome lookout. On the way we digressed to the lighthouse just to get an idea of where it is and what we could expect at sundown. There is a lookout to see the lighthouse from a really nice perspective, but the path to the lighthouse is only open from 10-4. It's a good thing we stopped when we did, we took the road to the entrance and were able to get right up close, but naturally there were all kinds of people walking around.

The image below is an experiment with my lensbaby. Makes most of the image out of focus with one small spot (hopefully) in focus. Kind of a fun lens to use, but pretty tricky.

The shot below is from the lighthouse area looking off to the side along the coast obviously. Really beautiful, but pretty voggy again.

We decided to head up the road to see the overlookand then come back at sunset for the lighthouse. Along the way, in order to use up some more time, we stopped at a small "mall" area--specialty shops and some eating establishments. We had lunch and then walked around for about 20 minutes, which is all it took. I was blown away by the prices of the products... a little too upscale for me. But in our walk we came across this bird. We waited and waited for it to come back down on it's perch, but it seemed compelled to hang unside down and chew on a metal chain, so this is the best I could get. Beautiful bird.

So, it was finally time to head back to the lighthouse for sunset. It was well worth it and it's a good thing we got there when we did. The sun was great for a while, then went behind a bank of clouds and the light became very dull. I'm really happy with this image.

When the light got bad and we could tell it wouldn't improve, we headed back to the motel. We were both beat by then anyway. It was a good day.

Aloha

Tuesday, Mar 11, 2008

HELLO KAUAI

Just a couple of photos today, I wanted to post just to try and keep things up-to-date. I'm sitting in a Starbucks with my friend right now, in Kauai. We arrived yesterday morning and got a pretty slow start to the day. But we did manage to see some beautiful sights even though they were "vogged" in. (like fogged-in, but instead of moisture in the air, it's particles from volcanic ash). So the sky looked kind of dreary and our photos of the scenes looked "dirty", not just etherial like it does with fog.

When we arrived at the motel we asked someone if there was something that was a "must see" and she told us to head over to "the grand canyon of Hawaii". So we got out our trusty map and did just that. It was down an 18 mile twisty, narrow, although paved, road. The ride was beautiful, a lot like riding around New England. At about mile 11, there is a lookout for the "grand canyon". The view was beautiful and I can imagine what it would look like if the sky and air conditions were clear.

We continued on to the end of the road, and there was another awesome view overlooking he ocean. Again it was voggy and a little disappointing, but the potential is exciting.

The image below was doctored and you can still see how hazy it looks. The section in the upper left of the image is really ocean, not sky.

Well, we're going to head off to a lighthouse today and try to catch a sunset up at the north shore.

Aloah for this morning.

Friday, Mar 7, 2008

Aloha from Laniakea Beach

I had honu duty this morning. When the other volunteer and I got there, there weren't any honu on the beach and that was a first for me. So we just stood in the shade and watched the people watching the honu swimming around in the surf. If there are people at the water's edge, the honu won't come out, so we finally had to put the red rope out in an arc so they would have a clear space to climb onto the beach. But before we did that, I managed to get a few shots of one honu swimming around.

It's so fun watching the expressions on the people whey they first see the turtles, and then when one is coming or going, everyone gets so excited. The whole time I was there this morning there were only two honu on the beach, and one didn't stay very long.



Before this big guy decided to leave, I managed to get a bunch of good shots, but I'll bore you with only this one.

And there he goes, back into his playground.

The other volunteer that was on early-shift duty with me is from NJ, and she's almost done with a 7 week stay on Oahu. We seemed to get along really well, so when we were getting ready to leave I asked her if she would like to stop in Haleiwa for a "shave ice". Haleiwa is a small, historic town not too far from the turtle beach. There are a bunch of galleries, shops & restaurants there, and many places that make shave ice. But this one "general store" has the best. Shave ice is like a snow cone, but the ice is shaved instead of like it is in a snowcone. You can get up to three different flavors and you can get a scoop of home-made vanilla ice-cream in the bottom if you want. Is that even something one would have to think about? Very yummy.

This is Maryann with her shave ice.

After leaving Haleiwa, I stopped at the Dole Plantation for the first time since arriving here. I didn't get a pineapple ice cream because I had already had my treat, but I wandered around the shop and the grounds and got a few pictures.

There were a couple of these sign posts, but I thought this one was particularly interesting with the Antarctica arrow. I guess that's just in case one is getting tired of the 80 degree weather and feels the need to experience a change in climate for a while.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

A Miracle! God's Handiwork.

Today I just stayed around the house to catch up on things, computer stuff and housework, and I ran a few errands later in the afternoon. But yesterday....

My friend Chelsea is about 4 months pregnant and she had an ultrasound scheduled for yesterday. She was really excited about it since she was going to find out the gender of the baby--if the baby cooperated, of course. Last week I asked her if she'd like company and she was very greatful to have me go with her. It's a boy... See the pictures of the miracle below

Naturally I cried a little. Just watching that little heart beat and seeing him put his finger in his mouth. How awesome!

Well, we went and had lunch then she headed home so she could call and email everyone in the world that she knew. I headed over to the house of the family that is moving off island in April. Yesterday was their deadline for vacating the house, and there was still a lot of work to do--Laurie offered to pay me, but that wasn't necessary. I spent the entire afternoon there and by the time I left I was beat.

Let me tell you a little about their house. To begin with, it's beautiful. It has a really nice sized living room, kitchen with family area off to the side, 1/2 bath and master bedroom with full bathroom downstairs. Upstairs there are three bedrooms and another full bath. There is a small yard with a hot tub. The garage is probably considered a 1 1/2 car garage. It's in a suburban area where all the houses are pretty close to one another. They're asking--get prepared!!! a mere $649,000. Oh well, not in my budget this year.

I stopped at the library for a movie, came home, walked the dog, answered emails and then crashed and watched my movie.

Tomorrow (Friday) I have honu duty again. Aloha for now.

Sunday, Mar. 2, 2008

THE NEW CAR

Last weekend, Leah went out and bought a car. Wow, I've never even done that. Pretty gutsy if you ask me. It's a beauty and she's very happy with it. I've already forgotten what kind it is and what year it is, but it only has about 50 thousand miles on it.

Can't even attribute that low mileage to being on the island. I estimate that by the time I turn my car in at the rental place on April 2, there will be at least 3,000 miles on it (remember when I got it, it only had 5 miles), and I don't even have to drive it back and forth to work every day. The miles add up fast.

The parking lot is the one for the school where our church meets.

After church today, we headed over to the home of one of the families for a fellowship lunch. It was nice, as it always is when we can get together for a casual event. Because there is no way to refridgerate the food during church, the church actually provided the food (catered) so that people wouldn't have to go home to get their things before going to the host home. Everyone just hung around for a while and visited. I finally realized I needed to leave.

I was scheduled to attend a mini-photoshop session in Honolulu at 4 pm. and I knew it would take a while to get there. Well it sure did. The traffic was crazy, but I finally got there only a few minutes late. The session was good. It was held in a screened-in lanai, so we were really outdoors doing an indoor thing. Very, very nice!

Aloah for now.