Mauna Kea - Hawaii

Despite the lunar landscape below, it's not the moon. If I had actually escaped the Earth's gravity and found myself in in outerspace, I feel I would get more attention than this barely read blog would provide. Hopefully, I would make the news, maybe right after the latest on Brangelina's latest adoption.
But no, that isn't the moon though it is getting up there. It's just under 14,000 feet, or just under about one 90,000th of the distance between the Earth and the moon. In astronomical terms, it's tiny. However, in human terms that is really freakin high.
High like Dave Chappelle in Half Baked high.

Ok, so maybe not high like that. Maybe not quite Mount Everest High. Or maybe it is. See the picture is from the top of Mauna Kea, highest point on Earth if you are measuring from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. If I were reading someone brag about reaching the highest point on Earth with that measurement, my first thought would be to question the validity of the 'from the bottom of the Pacific' qualifier. That's like winning your age group in a 5K in which you were the only participant. Not that something like that ever happened to me... However, I am not here to brag about reaching the top of Mauna Kea. I am here to tell you I am lucky that I got down from way up there.

The road to the top of Mauna Kea is a long and winding one. Not too many people live near there. The interior of the Big Island is sparsely populated and is mostly split into large ranches. The Saddle Road traverses the Big Island and serves as the only access to reach the road leading to the summit. The first portion of the road leading to the summit is relatively well maintained since it leads to the Mauna Kea Observatory which hosts several multinational astronomical observatories.

However, the paved road stops at the visitor's center which is still about 5,000 feet short, elevation wise, from the summit. The signs from there all recommend 4-Wheel drive vehicles, but since when does Pics of Me in Front of Stuff let signs stop slow it down?

Never!

Well at least never when it relates to reaching one of the highest points on Earth.

That's right, do not recommend things to me via sign in Hawaii because I am just going to ignore them. And so ignoring recommendations designed for my and CP's safety, we plowed forward on a harrowing ride up the last 5,000 feet in elevation. The ride up the dirt road, which would have taken maybe 15 to 20 minutes had it been paved or not at 10,000 plus feet without guardrails, was a harrowing 45 minute trip. It was an incredibly scenic ride up the mountain, but I would be lying if I told you I was looking any way but forward while gripping the wheel with white knuckles.

Getting your rental car stuck on the 'World's Tallest Mountain' is not a good way to spend your vacation. And once we maneuvered off the dirt road to where the paved road started again we almost did!
From the summit, several observatories are...observable..in the distance and naturally we were compelled to try and reach them. However, at 14,000 feet going up a hill is not an easy proposition for a 4-cylinder Dodge Avenger. Whether it was the thin air, my inability to keep my foot firmly planted on the gas pedal, or the 230 lbs of dude behind the wheel the tiny car just could not make it up down the valley and up the next hill to that distant observatory. To add a little more excitement to the trip, I could not force the car up the hill down which we had come.

Think it's easy to push a car up the side of a mountain?

It's not, I learned the hard way.

Fortunately, when the the vehicle lost 230 lbs, CP was able to inch the car up the original hill and aim the car back downhill towards safety or at least towards the windy guardrail-less road and eventually the safety of our hotel.

World's Most Scenic Urinal - The Hotel Kona - Kealakekua, HI

I apologize if you navigated to www.picsofmeinfrontofstuff.blogspot.com yesterday and saw there was no weekly update. I am also somewhat unnerved.

Who are you mystery reader?!

Mystery reader or otherwise, if you follow me down this pink walkway, I will show you another reason men have it better than women. Yes, women may live longer but in general the world is tilted in favor of men. Don't blame me, I am just stating the facts.


One of those advantages is being able to stand and urinate. It is pretty great. The world is our urinal. Just take a long walk through Central Park and I am willing to guarantee you'll eventually see some dude taking a leak. Despite all of its tinkling glory, sometimes you get tired of staring straight ahead at the wall directly in front of the urinal. It's urinal etiquette. Here are some basic rules if you do not know them already.

At the Kona Hotel, you get a lot more than a blank wall to stare at.

You get this.

It's pretty fantastic.
So where's the gender inequity?
You do not get such a nice view if you have to sit down to pee.


I guess that also applies if you need to go number 2.
Fortunately, at this pit stop it was number 1 the whole way.

It's a good to be a man.

Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park - Hawai'i National Park, HI

In 1864 Jules Verne wrote the classic science fiction story A Journey to the Center of Earth describing the voyage of a German professor, his nephew, and their guide through the interior of our planet. Film adaptations released in 1959 and 2008 starred Pat Boone and Brendan Fraser, respectively, gave visual detail to the story featuring strange creatures and exciting backdrops. While Verne's description of the Earth's interior was incorrect and he knew this to be so, his book was still very educational because he featured living creatures in different sections of the interior related to their era of existence in geological time.

That's right, the dinosaur at 0:27 actually relates back to the story!


Despite the statement near the beginning of the trailer, the book IS science fiction.
If you were to manage to dig far enough, 5 km under the ocean or up to 50 km on dry land, you would not hit dinosaurs no matter how awesome that would be.

Could you imagine digging and digging and digging and...digging...and...digging (50 km is really deep)...and...

BAM...DINOSAURS!

But sadly, this not to be. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program is close to breaking through the Earth's crust and reaching the Moho. Unfortunately, the Moho does not stand for Motherhonking dinosaurs but rather Mohorovicic discontinuity, a region of the upper mantle that borders the crust. Of course, we all know we do not need to dig to see what is really in the center of the Earth. Sometimes the inside comes out all on its own. On the outside the inside is called lava. On the inside it's called magma and you would not believe how much time I just spent on a fruitless search for a video clip of Dr. Evil saying 'liquid hot magma'. Where the crust ruptures and allows the magma to become the lava and also allows for the escape of gas and ash, you get a volcano which despite the heat and danger seems to attract curious onlookers. Maybe a volcano is the geological equivalent of a car accident on the Garden State Parkway-anyone nearby is required by a law of nature to stop and gawk.

The following 2 images are equivalent...

Regardless of a volcano's traffic equivalent, a location once deemed sacred to the original inhabitants of Hawaii is now a national park protected from development and commercialization that would undoubtedly happen in a movie starring the late Jim Varney, aka Ernet P. Worrell ala Ernest Goes to Camp. Unfortunately, Mr. Varney has passed away and there never will be the opportunity for Aloha, Ernest or Ernest Gets Lei'd.



As a poor replacement I present Kyle the star of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff. On a dreary day in Hawaii, that's right, dreary even in Hawaii, CP and I took the drive around the Big Island of Hawaii to Volcanoes National Park. The rainy weather limited visibility and led to lots of views like the one below of the Kiluea Iki, a large crater near the summit of Kiluea through which you can hike. Or you could just stare at the craters vastness from the overlook like we did.

Quite a view.

Reminds me of Maine.

However, CP and I did not let a little Hawaiian rain ruin our sightseeing adventure and we explored the park as much as we could considering a large portion of Crater Rim Drive was closed due to high levels of sulfur dioxide. A little poisonous gas could and would not deter me from my duty as the proprietor of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff. Possibly more interesting, at least stucturally, than the giant hole in the ground was the Thurston Lava Tube which was a short walk from the Kiluea Iki Overlook.

It's the gaping dark hole in the foliage behind us.

Lava tubes are conduits through which lava flows during the eruption of a volcano. When the volcano becomes dormant and the lava cools and leaves the conduit, the tubes become cave-like channels. The Thurston Lava Tube is a brief, dim walk through geology. The tube was discovered in 1913 by Lorrin Thurston and it is tough for me to imagine someone walking blindly into what must have been total darkness. Wandering through cave darkness in what surely was wilderness in 1913 speaks either to Mr. Thurston's bravery or foolishness. Wilderness, even Hawaiian wilderness, is unforgiving and compound that with the unpredictability of volcanoes and I can not help but find Mr. Thurston a little crazy for entering this tube over 85 years ago. Still, without his foolishness, the natural wonder that is the lava tube may never have been discovered.

CP says 'Thanks, Lorrin!'

So do the thousands of tourists who follow in your path every day.

Aside from the clear devastation due to the volcanic activity, the last seen in 1959, Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park is a lush tropical forest. The combination of the overabundance of life in the surrounding rain forest and devastation due to past eruptions is a compelling sight. When it's time, nothing stands in the way of the Earth's fury and 40 years later we can all see the devastation of that fury. Huge craters and lava tubes serve as reminders for what we should always remember. Even nature has not been able to recover in almost half a century of time. It makes me feel small and weak in comparison.

Then again so does Ryan Howard.

I go see him all the time.

Shaka Resaurant, Southernmost Bar in the US - Na'alehu, Hawaii

If you have not noticed by now, Frequent Reader, Pics of Me in Front of Stuff is stuck in a Hawaii rut. Maybe it is not fair to call anything related to Hawaii a rut. Rut has such a negative connotation and there is little if anything negative that can be written about Hawaii in this little corner of the blogosphere. Hawaii was, is, and always will be paradise. You get in a rut in Nebraska or Arizona or New Jersey, not Hawaii. A rut is a usual or fixed practice especially a monotonous one.
Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii...maybe that is a rut even if it is a pretty damn good rut. Considering how poorly the Phillies are playing of late (8-2 to the Nationals, guys? Really?! The Nationals?!), I could use some positive feelings. Maybe a nice positive rut is what I need.
Rut or not, for the 4th post in a row Pics of Me in Front of Stuff features another special locale in Hawaii - Shaka Restaurant in Na'alehu, Hawaii.

Let's never confuse Pics of Me in Front of Stuff with Zagat's. While we agree on who makes the best Fast Food burger in NJ, Wendy's, there is little else I could bring to the conversation regarding food critiques. Food critics will describe atmosphere and service and different undertone and overtones of flavor. Bouquets and other bullshit descriptions. My feeling? I like food, it's delicious. I ate a fresh pear for the first time on Monday. No need to deny it, nothing added on that subject from this blog.

All I can say is that I was there.

But how many of those critics can say they have a low point in lattitude as far as American restaurants go? Who among them has drank a Kona Brewery beer in just such a special place?

I have!

Then again, if you go to the southernmost bar in the US how could you not drink a beer there? Obviously there are good reasons not to, but none of them necessarily apply to me. As often as I visit breweries and as often as I describe them on Pics of Me in Front of Stuff, I better drink a beer at Shaka Restaurant or hang up my blog writing shoes. Since I am barefoot, maybe I already hung them up or maybe it has just been a long day and I am trying to relax. Maybe those shoes are some kind of metaphors that I just can not complete. Maybe I will cut this train of maybes off right now.

Maybe.

My overuse of the word maybe aside, CP & I stopped at Shaka Restaurant following my finish in the Kona Half-Marathon and after our visit to South Point. CP felt this was an excellent opportunity for what readers of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff really want: live video of me.

So here I am at Shaka Restaurant reporting on my experience at the Kona Half Marathon.

Wow, I look tired.

Kona Brewing Co. Brewery and Pub - Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Liquid Aloha in Paradise.

You can't beat it.

That's not dissimilar from Paul Giamatti racing me. (i.e. he can't beat me)

In February 1995, a father and son began to live their dream by brewing fresh local beers in Kailua-Kona on the big island of Hawaii. On Valentine's Day of 1995 they combined liquid paradise with real paradise with the release of Big Wave Golden Ale and Fire Rock Pale Ale to the 50th state. The rest is history which you can read on their website.

Just be sure to navigate back to this page and finish reading this post.

Our hotel being within walking distance of the brewery and my propensity for visiting the birth places of beer meant only one thing - Pics of Me in Front of Stuff visiting Kona Brewery. Considering that all beer is brewed with the same four ingredients - yeast, hops, grain, and water - it is interesting that Pics of Me in Front of Stuff is always looking for new breweries to visit. Beer has the exact same ingredients as bread. The beer brewing process is much different than the bread baking process but both provide live giving sustenance from those 4 basic ingredients. For brewing, malted grain (usually barley or wheat) is made into mash by crushing the grain and mixing the resulting grist with hot water. During this mashing process enzymes from the malt break down the grain's starches into sugars which will eventually be converted to alcohol via the fermentation process. Following mashing, the grains are filtered from the liquid which is known as a wort. The wort is boiled with hops and moved to a fermentation vessel where yeast is added. Aging with yeast produces carbon dioxide and everyone's favorite beer component, alcohol. For more detail regarding the brewing process check out Wikipedia.

The beer eventually makes it into kegs or bottles. Interestingly, drinking beer from a bottle in Hawaii, even Kona Brewing Co beer, means you are drinking beer from the mainland. Shipping bottles to Hawaii, filling them with beer, and then shipping them back to the mainland is not cost effective. Bottled Kona beer is brewed either in Oregon or New Hampshire and then distributed to the rest of the country including Hawaii.

Kona Brewery only fills kegs in Hawaii.

Imagine hearing that beer lesson above from a tour guide, like Jesse below, every few months when you find a new brewery to visit.

Would you keep visiting breweries?

Even if they were not in Hawaii?

The answer should be an emphatic yes because where there are brewery tours there is free beer just like these.

All of the beers were quite good, though I am not a distinguished beer critic so you do not need to take my word for it. Visit Hawaii. Since I have joined the real world and can afford better beer and I tend to drink it or at least I think I do. Beer costs at least $5 a pint in north Jersey/NYC so paying an extra $1 for good beer is no longer a significant issue. The Lavaman Red Ale was a popular choice in most of the island eateries at which CP and I ate. Duke's Blond Ale was light and would taste very good after a long hot day of working in Paradise. My favorite was the Pipeline Porter, a darker heavier beer, but not too heavy that I felt like I had to chew my beer. It is definitely drinkable in Hawaii but not a beach beer.

Free beer, especially good free beer, especially good free beer in Hawaii always equals a good time.

Let's be honest, beer and Hawaii separately are fantastic. Combine them and the results are nearly mind-blowing.

Even if your chief photographer gets distracted by a mongoose.