The Real Hawaii

ant farm one-by-one

2009-06-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

it starts small, the size of an ant

then there is a trail of ants, leading to a faucet or a crumb

then there is nothing

then, one day, a line of ants appears. they march in a dotted line above the door trim, from door, to door, to door. you connect the dots, follow the line from kitchen to hall to other side of hall to hall closet to extra pillows.

some ants are on the pillows. Hmmm.

you move a box or two to try to see where they are going, and suddenly they are covering your arm and planning to hike all over you. you've found it, the ant farm.

Ours was a keyboard box, with an extra and unneeded keyboard stored quietly in the hall closet for about a month. The perfectly round holes in the box must have seemed to the ants like it was built just for them by Frank Lloyd Wright. They had found their mecca.

Too bad the spot they had chosen contained a delete button. Some premonition caused a few of the army use the escape button instead, so we will meet again.

How do you tell one ukulele song from another?

2009-01-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

Answer: By the title.

The uke is common here, you can hear kids thrumming on it as they sit around, and for the life of me, the songs do all sound the same.

Until I heard this guy bring the instrument to life:

Rats

2008-12-30T05:57:00.000-08:00

We still have rats in our house and my latest encounter was when one was crunching the turkey juice from the bottom of the oven. I went over to the oven with a broom and Jack, opened the door, no rat. I looked in the lower drawer, no rat. I closed everything and put the oven on Clean.
A little later I heard a loud “Bang!” Since it was the wee hours of the morning that this was happening, I turned on the ceiling fan and did the only sane thing I could think of: go back to bed.

The next morning, there was no telling odor or splatter-pattern ashes in the oven, no pile of ashes either. Last night the rat sat and watched me in the easy chair, just staring at me until I’d turn to look at it. David said it was begging for treats.

None of the ladies in the knitting group are eating my potluck baked goods. I even tried telling them that I got stuff at the grocery store, but they won’t touch it. That’ll teach me to tell everything I know.

Millions of Millipedes

2008-11-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

I call them curly worms because when you touch them, they roll into a perfect spiral. It is an amazing feature, well designed, and rock solid when you roll them. It makes very little sense in a survival capacity, unless preventing the loss of one of your thousand legs is your highest priority. But not much about these bugs is understandable to me.

Three years ago we had an infestation of millipedes that had me thinking we had bought a house on a bug thoroughfare. I remember Phil howling in frustration at the number of bugs surrounding him in bed and everywhere in the house.

And let me tell you, a thousand legs is tickly. When a millipede climbs into bed with you, you don't really feel it cruising up alongside your leg until it "stands" on tiptoe and kind of taps around like Mr. Magoo trying to find a door... in your leg. It's a friendly knock, not a bite, not malicious in any way. And it's aggravating as heck. Then multiply it. And put it in your hair. And then along your arms, torso, hands, feet...

And multiply it.

For a couple of months now, our carpet has looked like the pacific arena for a millipede flotilla. One night I got up to turn off lights (life with teens) and counted 49 millipedes cruising the floor. They assume the same general trajectory for some reason, and seem to have a plan of attack.

For all their legs, unlike centipedes, they don't race around. Maybe their knees knock or there is a leg-length to body ratio involved here. They smell reminiscent of creosote, and David discovered that some creature (weasels? foxes? I forget) in the wild will rub itself with them to keep mosquitoes away. Well, isn't that good news? We don't have to deal with mosquitoes if we'll just sidle up to our tiny bullet trains on chorus line legs.

In our sleep, we can hear the plink of millipedes who have lost their grip climbing the aluminum sliding door frame, or the glass of the bathroom mirror, or the ceiling.

Each night David gives himself curly worm detail every fifteen minutes or so. He taps the troops to make them curl, then gathers them on a scoop, and hurls them out the door. We both secretly hope that the flight or landing does them in, but can't bring ourselves to actually do the deed. Well, except for flushing them. This provides us with nightmare material since they apparently survive just fine under water and pretty much cruise the commode once tossed in. They signal a thousand tiny shaka while they swim around like, "Yo! Water." We have tried keeping count as David hunts. Each night we stop in the thirties somewhere early in the evening. Who really cares, after all?

What I am hoping is that this too will end. It ended three years ago when I didn't think it would. I know now that it's not local to our house, since our favorite walking trail/street is littered with the remains of roadkill millipedes.

I also remember from three years ago that about a month after relief came from millipedes, we had a series of months that were filled with tiny black flies that got into everything, peppering the sink with black dots. Is this what to expect next?

As I write this, a millipede is cruising the top of the sofa while another just rounded a corner on a seat cushion. One dropped from the ceiling onto our footrest with a thwack, about a foot away from my cup of tea. A millipede aligns itself with the edge of the remote control and then disembarks. Several millipedes were milling around on the floor, and have since disappeared in the vicinity of under my chair. I find myself scratching my head reflexively, then my back. This time, I'm not so sure it will ever end. There are so many of them!

Prop Preparations

2008-07-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

I spent this morning in the very heart of the illusion of Hawaii: at one of the upper-end resorts for breakfast.

My dad gave me gift certificates to the place at Christmastime, which I happen to know a friend bought for him because the friend and I chatted about it. Why has it taken me this long to use the gifts, and why did my dad give them away in the first place? Because the resorts are at the heart of the lie about what is paradise.

Breakfast: I ordered lilikoi iced tea (passion fruit juice and tea mixed) and a fresh fruit plate with yogurt. The waitress and waiters were all in their attire, in the attitude of servility, but the illusion was falling apart all around them. Like watching magicians expose themselves, I watched as this resort maintained its smoke and mirrors. First, the tea was foggy (rancid), so I ordered coffee (hey, I'm using gift certificates… and may want to use them up on one trip.) The coffee came French Press style, but I could sense that we were dressing up Maxwell House. Sure enough, it was as I predicted. Just north of Kona, for $8 a cup you cannot buy good coffee.

The fresh fruit plate came, and because of rising fuel expenses, it was (AT LAST!) a combination of fine tropical fruits. Typically the resorts bring in melons, berries, and bananas from Mexico. This time, I got fresh mango, papaya, and pineapple in a generous portion. It's the first sign that the fuel crisis could bring positive change. The fruit plate was supposed to be served with yogurt. My waitress was busy using a plastic bar cup with soapy solution and a toothbrush to scrub off bird and gekko poop from the woven chairs. I interrupted her absorbing work to ask if maybe they were out of yogurt. She came back with a plastic container of Meadow Gold and put it on the table for me with much apology. Nice. And no spoon.

To my left, tree trimmers were dropping fronds with bases wider than the worker's hands, crashing to the ground with a whack as I sat there with other visitors, a few feet away.

Apparently, the sound system had been giving them trouble as well, since a variety of old standby Hawaiian music drifted off and on, in and out of the milieu. At one point, a song about ancient warriors conquering the islands and "what would the Alii think of the islands now?" came into play, and I wondered how it all got this crazy. A song written to question all that presently surrounded me was being used to test a sound system for a Disney production of "Day in Hawaii." My head was spinning.

So, I paid for my $25 fruits, took my leave of the restaurant, and headed for whatever was next. I ended up in a lounge in the same resort, Koa floors and railing surrounding me. The art on the wall was made by a friend and printmaker in town, and I'm sure that many of the elements in the work came from our shop. At last, some sort of human connection came into form. The music playing as ambience, "Kohala", is what I would call Hawaiian massage music. Very mellow and idealistic view-inducing.

I watched as a man stood on a ladder and polished the copper tiki torch housings. As the mowers, weed eaters, and frond shredders whirred outside the elevated and empty lanai, I wondered about what we're polishing. I thought about the illusion. You can't really trick people with a dirty mirror. What are we trying to hide? What do we want to see? Why don't we want to see things as they are?

Welcome to High Maintenance Land

2008-06-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

We probably have pretty low crime rates in Hawaii, I don't know the statistics, but if so, I think I know why: nothing lasts here.

With the heat and moisture, everything you might treasure becomes organic in no time. There are the termites for the wood things, the rust for metals (even stainless steel rusts here), moths for the fibers, earthquakes for glass and china, and mold, mildew, rats and mice for everything else. Just try and hang on to something, anything, in the tropics.

Dust to dust.

It's hell, if you have just a few things you want to last for your kids or grandkids. Not an option: everything must go.

Or it's heavenly if you long for an uncluttered existence. Hoarding, storing, and collecting do not pay off. It's a very utilitarian climate with high incentive for keeping things flowing -- today.

how the otherworldly can become normal

2008-06-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

I was shocked into a realization of my exotic life by a call from a surveyor last night. The woman calling was clearly from the Sowuth. I pictured tiny flowers on her huge blouse, and tight stretch pants.

Me... I was in the middle of frying sweet potato (putaytuh) chips. I felt an urge to tell her about my day, about how I was standing in my kitchen in a wetsuit from swimming in the ocean just a while before, and how I was headed out to my hammock with my beer in a minute to watch the sun go down. These are my everyday things.

Something about the genteel voice on the other end helped me to realize how far I've sailed from the domesticated creature I once was. And I'm glad of it. If Pele is creative and destructive, my life in her shadow reflects her power by the old me burning away and the new me forming right before my eyes.

Living on fresh rock, some of it only days old and some of it a hundred or so years old, requires new roots from a person.

the visitors

2008-06-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

While we have our share of plaid bermuda shorts, dark knee socks in sandals, and camera-slings to decorate our drives, the really interesting tourists are the ones in stealth mode.

Wearing normal clothes and eating at a normal restaurant, the people around me seem to get it that Hawaii is just another place with life as usual. Until last night, when the illusion was burst by a young woman looking at a menu and asking, "Would it be too weird for me to order pork in Hawaii?"

Huh?

Let's draw some conclusions, and please add any other possibilities that come to mind:

Hawaii doesn't seem to have pigs (it does), so pork must be imported (it is)
The woman was Jewish and was escaping a kosher life on this vacation
Pigs aren't indigenous to Hawaii (are they?) so she thinks she should have a taro pizza
Hawaii is special in such a mysterious way that one must eat accordingly

You tell me!

Predator and Prey

2008-05-09T13:17:00.001-07:00

We have family who traveled to Maui for vacation, and since we'd rather just hop islands for our vacations than to go anywhere else (where else is there to go when you live in paradise... except Las Vegas?), we went to Maui to meet them for a three day visit.

Day one, we get our rental car, find our B&B, and are too early to check in. We contact the family, and meet them at a beach, changing into swimsuits in the restroom. 45 minutes later, we go to our car and head for the B&B. As I pull out my bag, I ask David if he has the laptop bag. "No, is it with your purse?"

"Where's my purse?"

We spend a good ten minutes in denial, checking under seats, in the boot, the door pockets, glove box and console for items that would never fit there. We have been burgled.

In a daze of shock, we got to our room to call the police and credit cards. David set down his pack and realized t00 that he was one pack short, his camera back pack was also stolen. They didn't however, get David's wallet that was in with his clothes... a mercy that became more profound as the days progressed.

I tell the B&B owner about the burglary and we get the usual, "How stupid are you?" stuff and she throws in some bonus comments, "Well, it happens everywhere, all over the world. At least it's the minor crimes here, you know, not the shootings."

When the officer came to take our report, all he knew to say was, "We see this all the time. It's how folks make a living." Well, gee, officer, if I knew I was going to support the local economy without having a say as to how, I'm not sure I'd have participated. Bullshit: it's how folks support their drug habits.

Well, we had just started our visit, and the bad guys weren't going to win, so we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and theater performance at the generosity of the family, and would go get cash the next day.

Day two. We comb the beach area for any sign of our bags, tossed license, knitting, something. In the scouring, we saw the underbelly of Maui. Labyrinths of aquaducts and culverts feed onto the beaches, making a veritable highway for criminal escape. The trash and dumpsters were fruitless, more or less, as were the hovels we found inside the beach hedges and caves. We did, however find two other peoples' bags.

After thoroughly washing our hands, we headed out again to get cash.

The bank we could use was a sister to ours, loosely affiliated. David went to get the cash since he had an ID still, and I went to window shop. He came back moments later saying that my name was the first name on the account, so he couldn't withdraw any money. However, his name was on the savings account, so if I could figure out a way to transfer money there, that would make it possible for him to get us some cash. We did it, and drove back to meet up with the family after they had their submarine ride (which we had to miss for lack of funds and time). They wanted to take us to a luau that evening, and since David's never been to one, we were excited by the idea of the entertainment. The food was outstanding, and the dancers were good. I couldn't help it, though, looking at the lines of young people and wondering which of them might know of or have helped with the burglary.

I finally got it out of my head that the hula wasn't a line up, and good thing I did, too. It turned out that none of those folks could have been dancing at the same time as breaking into our B&B, which we discovered upon our return.

We ran into the B&B owners the next morning, whom I couldn't raise the night before, and told them of the break in. After exclaiming that we seemed to be the cause of all of this, the husband informed us that the wind sometimes pushes the blinds and then they push out the screen. I had told him that the screen was pushed IN at the corner, and bent up. Either the blinds grabbed the corner of the screen and insisted it come in, the house was possessed, or our hosts were not able to process their security issue. I said, "We're going to try and get a flight out today. I've had enough." The wife, however, didn't seem to be at peace with the hubby's answers, and I wanted to assure her, "Well, it happens everywhere, all over the world. At least it's the minor crimes here, you know, not the shootings." But I was tired of passing around meanness.

We contacted the airlines and tried to change to an earlier flight. The flights were available, it would cost us, and just as I was finishing up I learned that I can't pay the fee in cash at the counter later. No new tickets. So, I tried to find out what we would need to do for me to get on a plane without ID, and then we decided to drive back to the airport to buy our way off of this island.

We drove back to the town, to buy new tickets... for which they wanted double what they said on the telephone a half hour before. I got hot tears in my eyes, and said to David, "I'm tired of being ripped off by Maui, the corporations included." I looked at the man trying to screw us and said, "NO." He looked at me and I said again, "No, we are going home on a flight today, and you are not going to charge me more than I was told on the telephone."

After he sought help from a neighboring counter person, he found us seats and the price turned out to be the same as quoted, and he started to be nicer. That's when I lost it and had to go cry: someone on Maui was being nice.

They call Maui the Valley Isle. I think I'll call it the Valley Girl. It's full of stupid people who give retarded answers to life's difficulties and don't have a lick of compassion.

On the flight home, we had a lay-over on Oahu. I went to the lounge for some wine, and the woman insisted I show my ID. David growled at her, "Just give ME the wine." and showed his ID.

It feels as though the world has gone mad.

Rats

2008-05-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

It's the wee hours of the morning in Kona. The distant surf rips its velcro along the shore; something rumbles like an earthquake, a dog barks into the jungle, and the chirruping continues to the left and the right of my house.

At first (okay, for going on six years), I thought the noise was crickets. Maybe they were a little wetter in Hawaii and sounded warblier due to moisture differences.

When we had some rats in the house, I started to notice a change in the crickets' songs in the nights when a rat would carry home a sticky trap, slapping every wall and barrier on its way. Slowly it dawned on me that my flock o' crickets was actually a pack o' rats. Yech.

They're singing right now, out in the dark on the lava rock wall (they love to nest in the rock walls). I think one is looking in the window and telling the others what I'm doing. Maybe it's telling another, "Okay, she's not looking. Carry out the saucepot now." I hope that I'm not the saucepot.

Tomorrow I must launch my next phase in the battle for turf. I regret the death that, hopefully, will ensue because I hate for anything to have to die over boundaries. But the creep factor is pretty high when in the night you hear a watery chorus and know that they've figured out how to get in and out of your house.

Open doors seem to help. Last night we were settling down for the evening, and a field mouse cruised in the door. "Yo." David and Jack gave him a circuit of chase. The mouse clearly knows the lay of the land in here.

Our friends Michael and John have One of Those houses up north on this island. It's luxury living with open spaces and doors that all open to no doors, no walls, and the breezes play through the house.

Apparently, so do the mice. On our tour of the place, I was gratified to see a sticky trap in the hall. Why would I be so glad to see someone else has my struggle? Because mousery loves company.

Transient Society

2008-04-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

There are the known travellers, the Snow Birds, who come to Hawaii in the winter months where their first homeland is difficult to tolerate. You expect these friendships to be seasonal and have to make a choice of how attached you wish to be to these irregular friends. I choose to be fully attached. Often, I see my snow bird friends more regularly than my neighbors. It's just geography.

I wonder how the people who grew up here and live here their whole lives view the snow birds. Or worse, the people who talk like they'll never leave paradise and move out three years later for a number of reasons. Hawaiians, both full-blooded and by birth on the islands, are notoriously welcoming. In fact, there are times when I think they'd prefer mainlanders to remain visitors rather than landowners, since prices keep getting shot out of sight. But still, I could learn from the open-armed welcomes that folks here give.

Due to the various things I've written about in this blog, we have made and lost many friends here. Most move away due to issues of health, wealth, or children. The inconsistent medical care, the vog, the allergies... they drive some away. The cost of living removes others. The poor education system and the drug problems are the clincher for many. For whatever reason, Hawaii is not the paradise that many people believe it to be.

We want to put down roots here. We want to know people across years as well as across states. We've been gypsies long enough to know that wherever we go, there we are. But it's really difficult living in a place that expels people by its nature. You want your friends to stay. You want to solve their difficulties and help them to be able to live here. But it's really no different than anywhere. We are a transient society, and there are always good reasons to move.

We keep seeking out all the good reasons to stay, vog permitting!

vog

2008-04-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

When I first came to Hawaii, I remembered best the air. When you step off of the airplane, it's like a warm embrace, a hug from the atmosphere. I love the warm moist air of Hawaii.

Lately, however, the vog has added some substance to the hug. Instead of a vaporous embrace, it's more like working your way through a crowd. The air is substantial these days since the volcano is spewing masses of gasses into the mix. That is what volcanoes do. Some folks have expressed a wish that they (the government?) would do something about it.

So while they are sleeping on the job, we have to figure out how to live with puffy itchy eyes, black silt on everything, coughs and sniffles, itching, sore throats, grey skies, sometimes a hint of sulphur in the scent (when the nose can scent anything), and a general malaise of being that is making everyone move very slowly.

Ah, paradise.

seeds

2008-01-21T20:27:00.000-08:00

Things grow in Hawaii. The timetable for growth is different than on the mainland. The scale is also different. Let me elaborate...

There aren't really planting seasons here. We had a tomato plant for a year growing at the side of the house. It also reached around another side of the house, spanning the distance between a lanai door and a garage door forty feet away. It was a cherry tomato plant, and a climber. It climbed into the jalousy windows, throughout the shoe rack, tried to ride David's bicycle, and took over the area along the walk. The kids were constantly trying to fight back the thing just to use the sidewalk along the house to get in. And Oh, the Tomatoes!

Eventually, the beast had to be removed. It was too lanky, too awkward to retain. The house needed to be uncovered.

Two volunteer tomato plants came up later. One is already producing and showing early signs of spread. I really should prune it. But Oh, the Tomatoes!

In Hawaii, scheffelera plants grow to the height of old oak trees. Poinsettas cover hillsides. Palms spring up like weeds. One mexican fan palm volunteered itself outside our front wall. I thought that was a beautiful addition, until it became a threat to the wall and sidewalk access. A neighbor apparently allowed one such palm to grow on her sidewalk strip, later having to cut it down since it was shoving away a streetlight. The trunk was 24" wide in six month's growing time.

Fenceposts grow grasses. Our rain gutter regularly sprouts. The stop sign at Border's book store is topped with a vine of bouganvilla that grew up through it's metal post.

This is all magic for me, a self-professed brown thumb. The first tomato plant was a survivor of a gardening fit that overtook me with peppers, squash, cucumbers, and the said tomatoes. I managed to kill all the others, but the tomato made it.

I've also tried to kill some plants here without success. Weeds are obvious offenders. In Hawaii, impatiens are considered almost a weed, springing up wherever they want. The nurseries still sell them in pots, though. We have a ficus tree that is taking over the back fence and rock wall. I cut it to a stub and poured roundup all over the remains. It was a tree again in a few months. My neighbor says I have to drill the trunk and pour salt into the holes to get the thing to stop rooting into the rock wall.

Today in Lowe's I passed the seed aisle. It's Spring somewhere, after all, and in a place of eternal Spring we participate in the seasons as if also ruled by them. I bought a tray for sprouting and an assortment of seeds for herbs. My plan is to attempt the sprouting in the controlled environment of the tray with only some of the seeds from each packet. If (when?) that fails, I will sprinkle the seeds on the ground where they might grow, still saving some. If that fails, I will give the rest to David and ask him to put them in the ground somewhere hidden from my care.

In my fifteen years of ranching in New Mexico, I have attempted gardening each year, a million times each summer. Every once in a while I got to eat something from my labors. Most the time, I just had to burn the field and start over. The tomato plant success has me hooked. If I manage to grow the herbs, I may just try again on some more foods.

Did I mention that I planted a banana tree and we have the fruit ripening on our lanai window ledge? I also planted a fig tree, ate two figs from it in two years, and watched an entire crop fall off this year. Friends say that I need to prune the fig severely. Oy! It dropped all its leaves once already, causing me to think I'd done it again, but glory be, it grew some more leaves. Why would I cut it?!

How amazing a packet of seeds is to me. For a dollar and some I have purchased a little pocket of tomorrows, of pure potential, of food and flavor and the most common sort of magic: growing things.

Cane Spiders

2008-01-01T21:57:00.001-08:00

Cane spiders. I used to photograph them, wondrous creatures of epic size, out on the lanai of a home we rented on a visit to the islands. Ah, the wonder, Oh, how exotic. I never dreamed I’d be living amongst them. Part of the aftershock of moving to Hawaii and the “I can’t believe we actually live here.” is the next step in recovering a sense of reality, “I can’t believe that people have been living with these things. How do they do it?”

When a cane spider is in the house, you know it by the elastic cord that connected a ceiling light fixture with a chair, and now with you. When the cane spiders move into your garden, you are restricted from certain areas by a force field that only a machete can really clear. Otherwise, you’re in for a vertical trampoline experience that certainly includes residual threads dangling from your hair.

I’ve wondered if I could stop using hair styling products and simply get all my locks into place, then back into a web to hold everything in place for the day. It would probably be a great hair net, if it didn’t remove my hair when I tried to go on to work. There would also be the problem of gathering other items in the hair web during the day, like dust, food particles, small children, and electric scooters. I wonder how the webs would work on the end of a swiffer. It would probably pick up the furniture to move it so you could dust.

I’m all for trying to live amiably with my neighbors, whether human or otherwise. They may not, however, move in with us. When a website springs up in the house, I search out the culprit. Then I tell my husband where it is. We used to try to shoo them outside to their domain. That’s like trying to put electricity back into the socket. Now, he goes in with a magazine or a novel to smash the beast. Slamming noises are followed by a silence. If he comes out without the literature and I still hear smashing noises, it means the spider has the tome.

By now you know how to find my house. It’s the one with what looks at first glance like laundry strung about at random, but turns out to be a collection of webs that are full with hair, swiffer covers, the head off of a weedeater, outdated magazines, a toilet brush, and butterflied paperback novels.

more vermin

2007-06-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

There are a few non-tickling terrorists on the island.

Cane spiders are really big spiders with black and yellow stripes. The look of them is enough to scare you, although they are harmless. Their webs will one day be the new unbreakable fiber of choice for clothing that never wears out.

Slugs are bigger and more plentiful here, I think. They also pop in a disgusting way when you forget your slippahs and walk on one at night. No forget da slippahs.

Mice and rats. We live on the edge of the jungle. Civilization skirts the other edge of the jungle, but between them and us is a swath of wilderness sufficient to house rodentia. The field mice are so cute. Mrs. Brisby and the gang don't bother me much. In fact, I was willing to live with her, but she got pretty brash and was begging from the table beside the dog on the morning before a big sleepover with eight teenage girls. We decided to put out sticky traps. Fifteen mice later, the mickocide was over... or so we thought. One little sleepover guest had a bandaid on her finger the next morning from when she tried to free yet another mouse from the glue and the ungrateful thing bit her.

Once we cleared out the little guys (the mice, not the girls), the big ones moved in. They would run along the garage door rail and up into the attic. One nested in the linen closet and stared down the dog and me late at night when we tried to shoo it outside. Another moved down the window screen in a weird silhouette backed by a moonlit sidewalk, disappearing behind the refrigerator except for scuttling noises when I turned on the light. They would leave patches of grey hair in the rat-sized glue traps, along with hate notes and vile warnings scratched into the surface. But we couldn't catch 'em.

Until last night. Last night a rat got stuck right in our bathroom trap, and it dragged the plastic tray over the tile floor, flopping and scratching all night. Sometimes I would hear its watery chirping noises to the other similar noises outside (I had thought all this time that this noise was from crickets. It is a chorus of rats...) Sometimes this one just screamed. I didn't want to deal with it while it was in high energy. I waited and then fell asleep, having imagined it to have grown to the size of the bathroom itself, with only one paw stuck in the trap so it couldn't turn the door handle to come out and slap me with the glue trap...

In the morning, there it was. It wasn't ugly like many rats. It was a beautiful huge mouse with a really long tail. David was sweet enough to wrestle it to the ground, hog tie it, and drag it out to the rubbish. Isn't the trash barrel supposed to be rat heaven?

ants

2007-06-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here blogging about the Real Hawaii, how it ain't all paradise, but I struggle to be convincing. It's lovely here. It really is a dream place to live. (And then the qualifications come pouring in: dream place once you figure out how to afford the electricity, gas, and grocery prices; find somewhere that you can pay for to live; find a way to make an honest living that doesn't eat up all the time you'd hope to spend on the beach or in the water....)

And as I'm telling about the climate, the variety, I feel a tickle on my shoulder. It's a little tickle. If Eskimos have a gazillion words for snow, Hawaiians should have that many for the feeling of various bug tickles.

There's the Phantom Tickle (the worst of all). It moves around, sometimes bites, and has no resolution of a known etiology. Onset and relief are indeterminate.

There's the Ant Tickle. Take a pencil and move one of your arm hairs back and forth. That's an ant tickle. If you're not holding a pencil and moving your hairs, there's an ant on you.

There's the Centipede Tickle. If corn cobs had fingers to drum on you lightly, that's what it would feel like to be climbed by a centipede. This tickle is sometimes followed by a screaming pain in the vicinity of the previous 10,000 finger massage.

There's the Scorpion Tickle. I don't know... never had it, but they're bound to crawl on you, right?

There's the Kona Kruiser Tickle. Cockroaches the size of trophy Medjool Dates move very quickly, so the tickle is more like a panicked rush across your body. Although harmless, the karmic wave of anxiety from both the bug and yourself leaves a trail of electric residual tickle like no other. The world suddenly seems hurried.

There's the Ant Tickle. This one is so common that it should really be listed between each of the others, as a representation of frequency of occurrence.

There's the Fly or Mosquito Tickle. This are so rare in Hawaii that it has led many to tout Hawaii as bug free. It's a lie. There are bugs, but just fewer nagging flocks of flies and mosquitoes than what you'd get on a mainland summer day. The mosquitoes are clumsy enough here that they rarely can sneak up on you like on the mainland. You feel them bumping into you like you're a sliding glass door and they're looking for a way out.

There's the Gekko Tickle. While technically not a bug and not a tickle, this sensation is weird enough to merit an attempt at description. Take a cold hotdog and slap it on your arm. That's the gekko landing on you. Then take the Kona Kruiser Tickle and add rubber boots for the rest of the effect. What a rush! No matter how much you love the lizards, it'll get a howl out of you when they land and run off of you.

For a taste of the complete relaxation that a night or two of paradise can give you, simply mix only one or two of the above tickles with a relentless humid heat. Five minutes is sufficient to feed the Phantom Tickle generator and to wake the next morning with that "I've just slept in hell" look.

weather or not

2007-06-01T19:20:00.001-07:00

We're tossing around the idea of buying some land with friends and all building our homes near each other. Talk about choosing your neighbors!

The place I'd like best is called Kaloko. When I first came to live on the Big Island, I came here from a huge ranch in New Mexico (10,000 acres, with neighboring ranches as large or much larger.) All that to say that I was accustomed to elbow room.

Hawaii is compact. Not like Japan, I hear, but cozy. You don't want to bend over at the same time in this town, 'cause we all live pretty close and something could get bumped. So, coming from lots of air space to an island led me to what I called Cabin Fever, and later heard someone call it Rock Fever. Whatever fever it was, it got me bad. I searched maps for any road that led away from civilization. I found one (there are many, but I didn't find them yet). It was the road up into Kaloko.

It's a rainforest trek right up from the desert heat of Kona. All of a sudden, you're in the woods, and then you're in fog, and then you're up there with the bird noises and clouds below you. It's magical.

Within 30 minutes of where I now live and sizzle in the Kona heat, I could potentially be living in the 65's and wearing the things I've knitted for mainland family or trips. That's Hawaii and the weather here for you. There are so many climate zones and regions that vary both by altitude and geography. You can find it all here, if you know where to look (and are willing to pay for the more popular of it.)

I wonder, would living in a cool elevation change my love of Hawaii and the air that feels like a hug? Would the humidity moulder my affections? And what bugs prefer the higher climes, where my centipedes and scorpions (hopefully) will not go?

The hammock at the beach

2006-10-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

On the Big Island of Hawaii, actual sand beaches are few and far between. The bulk of the island is volcanic rock, and therefore the shoreline is also rock. Oahu has more years under its belt, so it has a more approachable shoreline. It's not necessarily an attractive shoreline, and where it is beautiful (North Shore), it is also potentially very dangerous. The islands are a melange of small, chance beaches that are both beautiful and either wildly inaccessible or overpopulated.

Even the rocky shoreline has its dangers when uninformed viewers get taken to sea by a rogue wave.

There are tame beaches in Hawaii, just like there are tame tigers in magic shows. Stay aware!

The reality of the shoreline in Hawaii is that the ocean demands as much respect as the volcanoes. Use your best safety and caution, then the endless seas here are an approachable beauty.

The freshest ocean on the planet

2006-10-30T22:28:00.000-08:00

With miles upon miles of sea surrounding the land, Hawaii must have the freshest ocean on the planet. That is the illusion.

Something happens at shorelines where land, water, humans, and varying temperatures collide. At this writing, a family friend is in Hilo's hospital with one arm amputated and her chances of survival very slim from a flesh-eating bacteria. (Author's note: the woman died within two days, after further amputation.) She picked up the bacteria in an open wound while bathing in ocean-fed, volcano-heated tide pools. It sounds science-fiction bizarre to me that this could happen -- in our day and age with environmental awareness, cures for leprosy, and healing for gangrene that someone could in one day go unconscious, lose one arm, and possibly die. From swimming in paradise.

I think this is a freak accident until my husband googles it and finds 875 documented cases of a flesh-eating "virus" in the Hawaiian Islands. Shark attacks and rogue waves, both of which can be avoided, are the media-friendly threats in Hawaii. It seems like no one's talking about our flesh-eating bacteria.

Freshest air on the planet

2006-10-30T22:22:00.000-08:00

With miles upon miles of sea surrounding the land, Hawaii must have the freshest air on the planet. This is an illusion.

When a mountain formation traps air, it traps the air that is available in its vicinity. For the Big Island of Hawaii, that air includes volcanic fog, also known as vog. Known in LA as smog, vog has the same unpleasant respiratory effects as any air "pollution."

On all the islands, the air carries a bit of the sea in it, leaving a film on glass (vertical and horizontal) and destroying metals.

Ceiling fan blades grow grey mohawks on their leading edges every two to three months. The ambitious don't let it get built up beyond 1/4" thick. The distracted find that the blades eventually clean themselves by flinging a fuzzy grey strip out onto surfaces in the room, causing quite a stir in the centipede-fearing among us.

Earthquake this morning

2006-10-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

We had an earthquake in Kona this morning. This is how the earthquake was for me.

I was driving away from Starbuck’s with my traditional Sunday morning drive-through cuppa joe and heading to the shop early. My vehicle started to fishtail and jump, the road rippling off to the left while I jittered to the right. I got the vehicle under control, braked and pulled over, thinking I must have blown out two tires. I stepped out, circled the vehicle, and found nothing wrong. The streets were still dead because it was early for a Sunday. As I got back in the vehicle, it shook like a wet dog. My first thought was maybe it is time to lose some weight. But then I tried to shake it like that again, and realized that my body mass was not yet sufficient to move an SUV like that.

My next clue was the traffic lights which were bobbing and swaying differently from the trees in the breeze. That’s when the light went on. Actually, the traffic lights were out, but I figured out it must have been an earthquake. I went to see David where he was setting up for the morning, and he had experienced the same sort of drive as mine, the lightweight backside of the pickup lifting and screeching back down as the road jumped under his moving vehicle. He saw people watching him and thought he was experiencing truck problems until he saw some training triathletes staggering on the roadside and a runner fell down.

We both checked in with each other and a few people nearby, and it seemed like the quake was as mild as we had experienced it in the vehicles. I went on to the shop and David continued his work at the airfield. Our kids woke up to the quake. They went with Cindy to a friends’ house and hung out there.

Once I opened the shop, it started to sink in that this was quite a shake. The power was out and the phones were down, so I sent a silent SOS to David. A few minutes later, David walked in the shop. I was worried about being able to open on time... which is silly now that I realize it took three of us four hours to get everything out of the grips of gravity. With all the mess and far-flung products, we had only a handful of damaged goods and a few dents in displays. We did some business, and cleaned, and some time after noon I looked at David and said, “I’m wiped out!” Since no one had entered for a few hours, we closed the shop, grabbed the kids, and came home.

I tried to take a nap and started to think What If. What if the quake had happened with a full shop? It would have been a terrifying racket, pitch black in the warehouse where there are no windows, and a floor covered in a pick-up-stix-like array of art materials. Upstairs, whole racks of paint tubes were toppled over and canvases blocked the walkway. Or what if the road had been moving in heavy traffic like our rush hours? What if Costco had been open and the high shelves of products stacked on palettes... And then I made myself stop. None of that had happened.

I decided to go for a swim, since things looked quiet down at the pier after the weird start to the day. On my drive, I saw the ancient rock wall along Queen K highway with spots where the once-intricate stone network was now toppled into random mounds and seemed to whisper that all rooms are ruins. Washes of rubble and large boulders sat on the shoulder of the road like morse-code in longs and shorts. The roadway had the eerie quiet of a scolded classroom. Most shops remained closed (Wal-Mart opened at 5:30 this evening).

The ocean was weird, too. The waves were slappy and random. Even now, in the dark, the usual ebb and flow of wave noise is replaced by a constant shooshing like a windstorm in aspen. It was as if the ocean were angry with the island for suddenly being wishy-washy after all this time of being the solid one that the sea could cling to without worry of the land’s moving. Very few triathletes were training in the water today. It was difficult to swim. Bobbing in the meringue of water was stimulating. As I stepped back up to the pier, I saw a small handwritten note taped to a bike post which said “beach closed today until clear from tsunami risk.” Oh.

At home, our teacup collection is entirely intact. Plastic mugs are shattered. The damage was very random. Our glass cake plate on the fridge was in place. One of six halogen track lights was dislodged and shattered. Some paintings were still up, some down. All of the books in our headboard were spewed free, as were all the bath products in both showers. Pete, my brother in Waimea, had tiles come off the face of his fireplace, and my folks in Hilo had broken jars of liquid foods to clean up as well as damage to some treasured sculptures. I haven’t yet heard of anyone who was hurt.

Drying Out

2005-07-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

Otis introduced himself to me indirectly. A woman with a New York laugh, all bedecked in black tropical shorts and wearing rhinestoned, many-angled glasses with gradient-shade lenses pulls up a chair two seats down from me at the breakfast bar at Durty Jake’s. She lets out a small whoop and stands, shaking her newspaper.

“A gecko,” she explains with a little laugh.

He stalks her some more, peeking above the back counter rim and advancing on her once again.

“He likes you!” I laugh.

He advances boldly, moving toward her condensation-coated drinking glass.

“Oh, he’s thirsty,” I realize aloud.

Sure enough, he begins licking the side of her glass. He continues even while she reaches in the glass for an ice cube. She tosses the cube to his side, and he runs the other way. She picks up the ice, tosses it near him again, he runs back to the first spot. She picks it up… sets it near the glass and it’s only a matter of seconds before he runs to the ice cube and begins licking. He looks up to her with grateful lizard eyes, cute. She regresses to baby talk and he resumes drinking. Once satisfied, he darts off and leaps up onto a nearby pillar. He watches while I write all about him, supervising with distant approval. I look again; he’s gone.

Otis returned another day for a refresher from a pool of condensation off of my water glass. It was my husband’s first visit to Durty Jake’s, and I had just told him the remarkable story of Otis’ boldness.

I watched the chartreuse lizard lapping from the ring of water. The electric rings of light blue around his black eyes matched his many-sized blue freckles. This time I watched his tongue, a dark maroon strip scooping into a soup-spoon as he touched the water.

Another day, as I was leaving from our breakfast at Durty Jake’s, I heard the background sound of a louder conversation.

“How you get dat ting ‘way from me?” A woman’s voice asked her dining companion. I didn’t quite hear the words as I walked toward the exit, choosing my zig-zag path from the restaurant (around the chairs, mind you, not due to the contents of my breakfast). Again, this time a little louder came the request, “How you get dat ting ‘way from me?” Again, I just didn’t really notice.

Until, that is, a hand clasped over my wrist and pulled me in the general direction of the voice, now a bit higher in pitch than the first two times. Pleading eyes looked at me, and I was embarrassed to realize that the requests one and two were made to me. Here came number three, in a mezzo-soprano vibrato, “How you get dat ting ‘way from me?” She glanced quickly at her tropical drink in a lovely margarita-style glass.

At its base lay Otis, lapping up the condensation like a tiny wet-vac. I smiled at my buddy, and assured her, “Oh, he’s harmless. That’s Otis. He gets thirsty. Besides, if we get him away, he’ll just come back. He’ll leave on his own in just a minute.”

My mothering tone drew out the little girl tone in the woman, and the voice went up to falsetto, “How you get dat ting ‘way from me?”

Clearly, I had missed the point. It didn’t matter that the lizard was okay. This woman was not okay, and she was in need of help. She looked at the gecko like she was seeing the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Which I suppose she was, as far as monsters in this paradise go. I feel much more concern about monstrous creatures here that sting, like scorpions or king-size centipedes. But for all intents and purposes, Otis had already bitten her, if not just threatening to do so. We shooed him away as best we could, and went on about our business. I hope he had the sense to do the same.

Native Tongues

2005-01-26T23:35:00.000-08:00

The Hawaiian language has a sacred ring to it. There’s a dignity and resonance, maybe from all those vowels, that makes it sound prayerful. When I look up a word in the Hawaiian dictionary, I often find that the same word can have opposing meanings. Like “bad” nowadays can mean “good” when a kid says it, I suppose. It reminds me of the joke about the thermos. When you put the hot things in there hot, they come out hot. When you put the cold things in there cold, they come out cold. How does it know?

Nonverbal language is by far the easiest for all of us to learn. I’ve read statistics that range from 82% to 95% of our entire spoken message as carried by body language. That’s probably how you know what meaning to take from a word in Hawaiian: by how the person’s body says it. That’s probably also how you know when someone is lying to you in any language, whether you want to believe it yourself or not.

I know enough of several languages to get myself in a pickle just about anywhere. I have a knack for languages, but I forget to learn anything really useful. I know how to say key in German, muscles in Ndebele, tired in French, ocean in Hawaiian (and the state fish), handsome in Italian, snake in Shona, blue sky in Spanish, yes in Japanese, and no in Russian. Never once in my travels did I pause to learn the word for bathroom. But you can be sure that I found them. Now there’s a statistic for you about body language. When my sister asked for directions to eat a toilet in Austria, her body language helped her snickering listener to direct her to find a toilet.
In Mexico, I sat down to a nice breakfast and was just finishing my cuppa when my waiter asked me, in Spanish, to stand up. I understood the gestures, and stood, while a diminutive man from the ranks came and stood beside me. All the men working there started to giggle, exchanging jokes in Spanish, looking at our extremes in height as the world’s funniest contrast. I smiled and laughed, hoping that the jests were not about him being weaned, and understanding the process if not the content. I felt a little sorry for the short guy, but then I guessed he was feeling a length of sorry for the tall gal. Somehow in the body language we both knew that we don’t take it too seriously. So, we laughed.

My German is halting and I have to search for the right word. I make up weird sentences to use my limited vocabulary and still express an idea. I’m sunk if someone uses a word that’s new to me. But this is not the case for the truly bilingual. They flow between languages as if it were a natural thing to do. Which, in their lives, it is. It makes them look very clever, in my opinion, and I yearn to know another language thoroughly. But if English is the most global, how do you pick which one to make a second?

Waikiki is a great place to watch people flow easily and rapidly between languages. The hotel desk clerks give the same directions in English or Japanese throughout the day. I watch from a distance the hand movements. I could be a Russian and still go where directed. I wouldn’t know why I was going there, or what to look for, but I could get there. These fluidly bilingual folks amaze me.

Any small child who speaks a language that’s foreign to me sounds like a genius. No matter how I go through the logic, my language seems like it’s the easy one, but that kid has learned a whole other language. How do they know? The learning window for languages to be truly natural to a child are in the early years, around age two. Barring that exposure to a second language, most of us have to learn it in school. I’m glad that our children are learning Hawaiian in the schools. It’s a smart thing to do, as well as a brush with the sacred.

Driving with Aloha

2004-10-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Aloha may have been misunderstood and manipulated at times. In the context of driving, however, it’s a great influence. Driving with Aloha makes it possible for me to enter an endless stream of traffic, and to offer that same opportunity to others. It also makes it possible for me to walk across a busy street. It has been the Aloha that made it possible for me to learn our streets without going home in a puddle of tears or a bundle of angry knots.

Coming from the mainland, it’s tougher for folks to catch on to what’s happening. The idea of road courtesy is foreign and a bit idealistic, it seems. They have to be shown by patient example. I’ve even had Aloha extended to me when I didn’t extend Aloha. Several times, I haven’t seen a pedestrian or vehicle because the rear view mirror or widow frame blocked them from my view until I passed. Rather than giving me the Hollywood Hello or scowling at me, those folks have smiled as I passed on by in my oblivion. Now that’s Aloha.

Granted, there are times when it can become a problem. If I’m turning left, and I wave a person to my left to come ahead and enter my lane of traffic from the intersection, I need to be darn sure that no one behind me has decided to go around me. I’ve stood at a crosswalk where a car refused to move until I crossed. I didn’t want to cross the street, but they wouldn’t go unless I did. That’s much less problematic than being plowed down in a crosswalk; I’m not complaining. I just have to request Aloha from another vehicle to get back across the street.

It’s nice to experience the awareness that we are all in this thing together. We’re all trying to get somewhere, hopefully in a short period of time, and no one is an obstacle to that objective. Compared to the bumper car derby of the mainland, driving on the islands is a congenial event.
Driving with Aloha means extending patience and making some allowances. It’s defensive driving with a smile. I wish it would catch on elsewhere. Nowadays it’s a good idea to handle our buckets of bolts with care. Generally, the contents are under pressure.

Speed Limits

2003-03-26T23:33:00.000-08:00

Getting slowed down after driving on the mainland for a few years takes a bit of practice. I’ve never been one to go much above the speed limit on purpose just because I don’t like the tension. This isn’t a goodie-two-shoes kind of choice. It’s a quality of life choice. By slowing down, I have found that I am able to slow down in many aspects of an otherwise harried existence.

On two lane highways, such a choice isn’t much of an issue. Folks can always pass me. On one lane roads, however, there develops a tension between my freedom to choose and another’s freedom to push. Driving on Windward Oahu or up the Kohala coast of the Big Island inevitably develops into the pushing scenario. I just put on the cruise control and do my best defensive driving when the kamikaze passes start. I find myself squelching a constant temptation to go much faster in order to detach my pursuer from the rear bumper. That illusion got dashed when I followed friends up the highway at a speed much over my usual (we were driving in tandem, and I didn’t want to lose them). Behind me clung a follower, at a high rate of speed. I realized then that it wouldn’t matter how fast I drove. For some it would never be fast enough. I might as well slow back down and relax.

My kids took the slowing down process pretty hard. Going from 75 on wide open highways on the mainland to 35 on curving islands roads felt like we’d just shifted into the low-walking gear range. My preteen son chewed up an entire backseat just getting adjusted.

My older brother is the one who taught me the value of chilling. I wonder if the insurance companies have him in the male driving statistics. As a young adult, I would ride with him and feel a sense of peace, no matter the traffic conditions. He just wasn’t going to let himself get in a rush. He would point out a car doing a gazillion lane changes in rush hour, and we would observe who made it there first. Each time, we all made it there together.

It’s not that I don’t get in a rush. It’s more like I make myself conscious of the rush, and rate it on a global-importance scale before I let it do the driving. If it’s a rushing kind of emergency, I can always hail one of those flashing light screaming vehicles and have the road cleared for my needs. Otherwise, I just flow.

The greatest challenge to the flow philosophy is when there is no flow: rush hour. I don’t have any mental miracle cure for that one. Some ideas include repetitions of the Serenity Prayer, purchasing a bicycle, or listening to meditation tapes. A good book isn’t a good idea, unless it’s on tape. I have filed my nails. But that has its inherent risks from using both hands for the activity and the necessity of looking away from the road.

I did get a speeding ticket once, by the way. I was driving a new-to-me Toyota Camry. Some really fine music was playing, the car was smooth, and the road was straight and wide. Just as I reached to turn down the favorite song, I saw the flashing red lights in my rear view mirror. I looked down to see that I had gone twenty over the limit without realizing it. I profusely apologized to the officer who had to write me the ticket for not monitoring myself. What a bummer of a duty. He looked at me with a good measure of distrust. “It’s the nice ones that fight you in court,” my police-wife friend later told me. Double bummer.

I love driving fast. The absolute best part of flying is the take off. It’s the only time I can go that fast on the ground without first training as a race-car driver. I just don’t want to let that love drive me. It’s probably a waste of a good car for me to get that Maserati I’ve been eyeing.

Signs of the times

2003-01-26T23:32:00.000-08:00

There are sufficient oldtimers on the islands to help explain the signage on the roads. Oahu Highway signs tell you once, and only once, if your targeted destination lies ahead. The sign will list the name of the place, and an arrow showing you to keep driving. That’s it. Clearly, the sign means, “Your destination is ahead of you.” Good enough. Since you never see another sign, you can be flippant and just choose an exit, or you can keep driving and await further light. This light may come from the sunset as you drive into it. If, however, you decide that you must have missed the sign for your turn and manage to reverse direction, you will find along that roadway a sign stating the name of your destination, and an arrow showing you to keep driving. Come sunrise, you get the idea that they don’t give warnings on Oahu, the one sign is the only tip you’re going to get. This is easily solved, however, by driving with your eye on the left hand rear view mirror. You need to be adept at reading in reverse. If you get your sign, and keep driving, you can watch in your mirror for the same sign on the other side of the highway. You then know that your place is somewhere off one of the exits between those two signs. Besides, when find your place once, you know where it is. Then you’re an oldtimer and the road department has saved hundreds in superfluous signs (except on right turns in Honolulu.)

Maui has done well with its signage, and so far has proved the easiest island for me to navigate. In a few spots, their signs block each other from view until you are quite near them, but I’d call that a very minor fault. When you’re giving me directions, too much information is better than too little.

Kona has its doozy with the sign at the Y near Kainaliu that shows “Keauhou” and an arrow directed toward Holualoa. Keauhou as most newcomers know it is not on that turn. Signs are supposed to be placed to help the untrained. Now, my understanding is that there is a Keauhou Mauka that this sign intends (as told to me by an oldtimer). I’m sorry, but neither the sign nor the explanation are helpful to travelers.

Best of all is the practice of putting street names under signs for upcoming intersections, like we have on Alii Drive. We forget once we get to know a place that others still need to find their way around too. If we don’t want our Aloha driving patience stretched to snapping, we could always give visitors some help by giving clear direction. By way of this article, I give a hearty thank you to all who showed patience while I learned the lay of the land.

Hilo is a close second to Honolulu with restrictive and convoluted navigation, but the signs in Hilo are much clearer and larger to read. When you really want to get to somewhere in Hilo, do like a vulture and circle. You can do big circles, or little circles, but eventually, you’ll come across a way to get there from here. Once your circles are no bigger than a Hilo city block, you can consider yourself and oldtimer.

Everyone gets their turn

2002-01-26T23:31:00.000-08:00

I’m a Big Islander, staying in Honolulu this week. Being in Honolulu always inspires me to write about driving around the islands. Driving, successfully, through Honolulu is a magical slight of hand, eye, and foot like nothing the world’s magicians have yet attempted. The first trick is the need for an aerial perspective to really understand the lay of the land. The second trick is to forget that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Once you get the bird’s eye view (from a map, for example), come back to earth and prepare to get where you’re headed by heading in the opposite direction. Many times. If you are on Street A, and one block up on Street B is your target, do not think you only need make a simple turn. There are no simple turns in Honolulu. There are signs to assist in clarifying how turns most safely can be made. Unfortunately, unless you’re an Evelyn Wood graduate as well as eagle-eyed, you’re going to need to park next to the signs to know the guidelines.

I parked in just such a situation this morning, intending a right turn, when I found a sign with approximately 30 words on it about the right turn rules at this corner. I know that the car behind me was frustrated, even though the light was still red for us. I just didn’t know if I could turn. The bold type said No Right Turn On Red. Okay. The right turn essay that followed, however, started with “unless…” and continued in a well-developed expository essay complete with introductory paragraphs, at least three points to consider in the body of the text (at this point our light is green, but I am afraid there is surely a green light guideline buried in this sign waiting for my comprehension), and a concluding paragraph. The person behind me went politely around. Thank goodness for driving with Aloha. When I understood the sign sufficiently, the light changed to red, and I waited for traffic to clear before I turned… which occurred only when I got the next green light.

If Honolulu right turns are moody at every corner, the left turns are whimsical. There are certain times of the day when you can actually completely lose the left turn lane, and any left turn options, for a distance just shy of one hundred miles. This sent me into a spin, literally, when I finally figured out that three right turns equals one left turn. Imagine all the reading! I don’t need to go to Border’s anymore for material to brush up, I just need to try to get somewhere in Honolulu. If your child is reading slowly, you might think about putting her behind the driver’s wheel in Honolulu and her reading rate will surely triple. I know that mine has.

But I was going to tell you about going from Street A to Street B, parallel streets, one block apart. First take all the streets named after royalty, arrange them alphabetically, and omit the ones starting with K. This leaves three streets, which happen to all be right turns from your location. Take them all, go two blocks, and there you are: Street B. Sadly, however, you will need to sail right past it since Street B does not allow any turns. You have to find one of the two villages of termination of that street, where at last it fizzles out due to blue rock, a volcanic mound, or some such, and there you may gain access to the targeted boulevard. Or better yet, the road will end at the ocean and since you're now at the beach, forget the drive and get your feet wet for a while.