Mountains and Islands

Adventure!  That's what my buddy Kathie and I had today.  We traveled to Kaimu, to The Kalapana Cafe.  It may well be the best burger you can get on this island.  The end of the road was quiet.  There were a few monks with shaved heads milling about in loud, yellow and orange robes. One girl in a bikini advertised the perils of mis-stepping on the lava when so clad, a nice strawberry on her thigh and a bleeding knee.  A few tourists, a local or two.  A dog curled up in the corner by our table.  We disturbed her nap when we sat down, so she sauntered over to another, unoccupied corner.  Papayas were ripening on the trees that grew out of the gravel adjacent to the place.  Coconut palms, noni and mango trees lined the parking lot. Kalapana Cafe may be the only burger joint in the world with outdoor seating and fresh orchids to accent each table.  We ate a satisfying, all-American lunch, then meandered out onto the pahoehoe ourselves, not wearing bikinis, thankful for red cinder dus...

Ah blissful ignorance!  A year ago, I had no problem launching into a new project, typing away for hours on end, tiny springs in my fingers, a story teller telling a story, welling with confidence.  No misgivings.  No reticence.  I was good and I knew it.  I had been accepted to a program, goll - dernit and my mother and friends had been telling me I was awesome for half a century.  Now, I know better.  I have been trained to recognize crap when I read it, and when I write it.  I can still spend hours piling words onto a page, only to see them for what they are; a rambling, aimless heap of dung.  There's no story in this effort and there may never be.  It's words, sentences, paragraphs, lying around haphazard, like Jenga blocks after somebody gets cocky and pulls too hard, or too slow, and the tower crumbles.  Some of the sentences are good, no doubt, but it will take Herculean effort and no small amount of luck to assemble and re-write it all into something readable.   So ...

Four miles in 45 minutes, 12 seconds today on the guinea pig wheel, aka the treadmill.  Woohoo!  My sneakers were like tiny rockets, flames blasting from their heels.  Smoke billowed up from the rubber conveyor.  Smokin'!   As it turns out, I lost three pounds at the residency.  Makes me rethink my diet strategy.  Move over Jenny Craig.  Outa the way Weight Watchers.  No exercise, extreme sleep deprivation, college cafeteria food, tables sprinkled with mini-candy bars, occasional cookies, plenty of carrot cake and ample amounts of alcohol consumed well into the wee hours - that's the ticket. Follow that with a train ride and three days eating hunks of halibut as big as your head, wash them down with heavy ale and those pounds just melt away.   As I read the job postings for English Composition and Creative Writing instructors at colleges across the country, I can't help notice one glaring element they all have in common; college teaching experience required.  I have teachin...

Ron and I took a quick trip to town for out third fleecing of the week by Hilo grocers.  We were out of TP and diesel for the convertible (aka the tractor) and needed tofu for the stir fry he wants to make tonight, so we loaded the trash and the reusable shopping bags into the car and headed for town.  Stopping at the Glenwood transfer station to unload the trunk of rubbish (no trash service here, folks) we proceeded on to an otherwise uneventful if hot, muggy and wallet-emptying sojourn.  Our highlight came in the form of a woman, older than Delaware, walking at the speed of frozen syrup, out of the store and along the sidewalk as we walked in.  She was wearing an orange and yellow flowered smock, black and white checkered capris and a floppy hat that seemed to weigh her head down on one side, cocking it to the left.  She passed us and was just far enough to be out of earshot when Ron said,  "Now that's an outfit." He leaned toward me as he said it, talking out of the s...

There's a tiny rash under my left nostril that's been bugging me for weeks now, so I traveled the coast to Honoka'a Town to see the doctor.  He gave it his best guess, shrugged, prescribed some ointment and sent me on my merry way.  I expected the journey to be rainy and it was, but only in short, bursts and squalls.  For the most part, it was nice.  No big surf in the ocean. No great gale force winds. It was just a day, and a descent one at that.  Felecia has fizzled and veered northward toward O'ahu and Maui.    Tex Fine Foods provided lunch; kalua cabbage wrap, sweet potato chips and a malasada to bring home for dessert later on tonight.  Love Tex.   The island seems quiet these days.  Maybe it's because the prospect of the now dwindled storm put a damper on things.  Maybe tourism is down a little more again this month.  Traffic was light along the highway.  Tex was not so busy.  Service was fast. I had the radio tuned to a local radio station as I headed back th...

I don't like hurricanes.  I don't like the threat of hurricanes.  I'm not keen on tropical storms, either.  That's what they say Felicia will be when it finally comes a knockin .'  Right now, however, she's classified as category four, which is no slight breeze.  Felecia is approaching from the southeast, which means it will hit our island first.  Now, if you look at a globe, you can see that the Hawaiian Islands, the most isolated archipelago on earth, is but a speck on the vast Pacific Ocean.  You'd think the odds of us being hit by a hurricane are roughly the same as someone winning the Powerball lottery.  The thing is, someone always eventually wins that lottery, even at a bajillion to one.  So too do hurricanes, given enough shots at it, eventually hit these islands.  The last big hit was Iniki , which nearly wiped Kauai off the planet We've had a few near misses since then.  There are no hurricanes in Colorado.  I'll take my chances with a n...

Charlie the chicken.  I've taken to calling him Chuck instead.  Charlie rhymes with Harley, which is one of the cat's names.  Chuck rhymes with cluck which is what roosters do.  They also crow.  Roosters crow at dawn, of course.  They belt it out whenever they hear other roosters crowing from however far away.  They crow if a car speeds by or a bird sings in a nearby tree of a bee buzzes overhead or for whatever the hell reason and whenever they jolly well feel like it.  Ron finds this endearing.  He has already told me at least a dozen times not to get too attached. "They don't live very long, you know," he says. "He's a rooster," I say.  "I'm just sayin'," he says.  "I wouldn't get too attached." "He has a tiny head and an enormous body by comparison and he poops on the driveway and crows all damn day," I say. "He's a good boy," Ron says.  "He seems to like bananas." "He...