Island Breeze Luau - King Kamehameha Hotel - Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Before the complaint department inbox is filled, I want to apologize. I know Thursday morning came and went with no updates on Pics of Me in Front of Stuff. I apologize to all of my readers.

Both of you, I am sorry.

And now, on with the show...

According to the EPA, by way of Chacha, the average person eats 50 to 200 mg per day. Over the average American life expectancy, 77.7 in 2006 years according to the Center for Disease Control, the average American eats 3.545.062 mg of dirt. For those of you not into SI units, that is 7.82 lbs.

At the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton, NJ, if you and a partner can eat a cheeseburger that big in 90 minutes or less you get it for free.

Now just imagine if that was dirt!

So where am I going with this?
Does any of this have to do with Paul Giamatti?
Aside from Paulie boy getting some extra dirt in his diet from eating my dust in the foot race to which I have challenged him, all of this dirt talk refers to exactly what you think it does:

Dinner!

Even better, dinner in Hawaii!

No, we did not eat dirt for dinner as delicious as that may sound. In case you have never been to a luau, and shame on you if you have not, the traditional way to cook the traditional pig made by men in traditional Hawaiian garb is in an imu, an underground oven. The pig is actually referred to as kalua puna, which actually translates to pig cooked in an underground oven.

Where else but a luau does cooking dinner involve a shovel?
Where else would it cost as much as it did in Hawaii?

The pig was delicious, regardless of the dirt content or price, and it went well with the open bar especially all of the mai tais.

Don't we look happy about the pig and booze?

Following the removal of dinner from the ground and our consumption of it and at the instant the open bar stopped flowing booze, the dancing started. Unlike other nights that might have featured open bars or copious amounts of alcohol consumption, I was not involved in the dancing. I left it to the professionals.

They all had nicer tans than me.

The dances spanned the gamut of the Polynesian Islands and I have a number of pictures of each. I will not try to describe the dances or from which island each of them came possibly due to my advancing age and/or the mai tais.

Here's a picture of some flashy outfits which may or may not have come from Tahiti.

My personal favorite was the Haka which comes from the Maori of New Zealand and shows up about a minute into the video below.

You may have seen the New Zealand Rugby team do it before a match.

Like many luaus or at least the two I have been to, the dancing show concluded with a fire dancer. Nothing quite caps a night like a guy dancing around with a flaming spear.

The dancing and eating aside, the luau helped provide an entertaining evening on a lovely night in Hawaii. It is more than likely, every night in Hawaii is lovely. The warm equatorial sun, the gorgeous coast, the beautiful landscape, the sunsets, and the mai tais all added up to make the trip there with my CP feel like paradise on Earth.

Now I will start working on next week's post to prevent another mishap like today's!

South Point - Hawaii

It is clear from my previous post, that I might not be a great runner
...or even a good runner
...or even a below average runner, but I managed to finish a half marathon in Hawaii.
You can imagine that I was pretty tired.
No need to to imagine, I'll tell you, I was pooped.
But has being tired ever stopped me from driving off to see new stuff and get my picture taken in front of it?
Well, yes, it has, but all of those times were not in Hawaii.
Therefore, not long after the race, having watched the end of the US Soccer team's defeat at the hands (or feet) of Brazil I poured myself into the driver's seat of our rental car and headed south from the hotel to the southern most point in the United States, appropriately named South Point.


You can see below that all of Hawaii is further south than the rest of the US, including Key West.

View Larger Map
That's right, Key West, you are not so big and bad after all.
South Point dominates Key West in latitude like I would dominate Paul Giamatti in a footrace.

How could I not beat that guy? John Adams was built for speed even less than I was and I do not wear one of those goofy wigs.
Name the time and place, Giamatti.
My strange obsession with racing Paul Giamatti aside, South Point was quite a long drive. I sat wearily in the drivers seat and I must have driven as well as we passed through the countryside on the big island of Hawaii. Though dissimilar in location and climate, the Hawaiian countryside reminds me of my rural upbringing in southeast central Pennsylvania. Imagine Lancaster County minus the Amish. Now consider the same pastoral setting not only lacking in horse and buggies but also featuring a beach nearby and lots of Hawaiians.
There are some windmills as well.


The windmill farms were in sight as we approached South Point on a poorly maintained country road. The road wound through the country side and eventually ended in a section only accessible with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, which I was too thrifty to rent. Luckily, that section of road was short and despite my extreme fatigue (remember I had finished a half-marathon earlier that day) we were able to march from the car down the dusty, rough road to the southern most point in the United States.

Here we are!
Suck it, Key West!

If you can believe it, which I am sure you can, the southern most place in this country is quite a scenic place.

After all, it is Hawaii.

From the winding roads to the beaches to the huge windmills capturing the breeze blowing in from the coast, South Point was not only the southern most point in the US, but also one of the most beautiful.

Don't I look happy to be there?!

Maybe I look a little grumpy...
Did I mention I finished a half-marathon that morning?

Kona Half-Marathon - Kona, Hawaii

It's easy to smile while standing at the finish line before a half-marathon especially when said half-marathon is in Hawaii.

My smile is partially due to the excitement at being in Hawaii but also in relief and pride. The relief was from having reached my fundraising goal of $5600 as a member of Team Challenge, the endurance training program run by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America. I spent 4 months running around central Jersey with the other members of Team NJ, all of whom were preparing for the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon which was about 2 weeks after and $1400 cheaper than the Kona Half Marathon aka my race. I was helped in my training knowing I was raising money for a disease (ulcerative colitis) my mother has suffered from for over 20 years. My original plan was to run the race and drink the great wine with my Team Challenge teammates and otherwise enjoy the Northern California wine country.

Picture Paul Giamatti in a bright orange singlet!

I like to think I am in better shape than Mr. Giamatti.
Want to race, Paul?
Consider that an open challenge.
You're going down, Giamatti.
But I digress...

Like many plans, mine involving running and drinking wine on the left coast was interrupted. I do not know how many other plans are laid to waste by the Hungarian Orthodox blessing of a marriage outside Indiana, PA but mine was and therefore I decided to continue my training and fundraising with a short deadline and higher goal to go to Hawaii.
My backup plan was Hawaii...
Life is rough...

My life is certainly not difficult, but the 13.1 miles of Kona Half-Marathon wiped the smile from the above pictures right off my face. If you look below, the half-marathon was an out-and-back 6.5 mile course which started off along a scenic coastline for the first 5 miles but the turned around behind a Home Depot.

I finished the race in 2 hours and 35 minutes, well off the pace I had hoped to set. I managed to run the first 7 to 8 miles, but after that my running was sporadic at best. I have a number of excuses including but not limited to starting off too fast and running by myself, but I will save those because they do not really matter. I am not a competitive half-marathoner (or runner or athlete and have not been since November 16, 2002) and so I am just glad that I finished. I will try to do better if I run another half-marathon.

I did the best I could.

You can see I have something close to resembling a smile on my face below.

Then again, maybe that is just a look of utter exhaustion.

Regardless of what the look on my face means, I managed to finish. I raised a large sum of money for an excellent cause and I know the people who matter most were proud of what I did.