It has been fun 2009, I hate to see you go. In fact, I am not really sure where you went. Maybe it was the booze. Maybe I was busy. Maybe it was a combination of both. Now that it is almost the end of 2009 and many best of the decade specials are appearing it's time to review the best, the worst, and the unrecorded of 2009. I would like to note that the first decade of the 21st century started in 2001 and lasts until 2010. I am not sure what decade is ending with 2009 since 2000 was actually part of both the 20th Century and the 1990s. Aside from that, couldn't we celebrate the best of the decade every year since there were 9 previous years? I guess it could be said for every arbitrary 365 days and thereby my 2009 year in review would quickly become pointless. So forget most of what I just said and read what accompanies the pictures below.
I am sitting in the parlor of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff Manor watching the Temple Owls play in their first bowl game in 30 years, listening to the wind howl outside, and marveling at how Al Golden, Temple's football coach is dressed in a shirt and tie with no coat. My 2010 New Year's resolutions should include being as Bad-Ass as Al Golden. Being more bad-ass, in a good way, should be in everyone's New Year's Resolutions.
Just like the end and like most of the years I have existed, my 2009 started off with a lot of football.
I watched it in Baltimore with This Guy and Mets Fan.
Finally, there is the overriding goal of Pics of Me in Front of Stuff - visiting all 50 states. The journey started off a bit slow this year, not reaching Maine until after Memorial Day. Hawaii was already cleared off the list when I visited over the summer. Fortunately, CP and I took a road trip through the Southeast US at the beginning of December. The event is still undocumented on Pics of Me in Front of Stuff, but if you think Hawaii was thoroughly described wait until you start hearing about exciting places like Birmingham, Alabama and Hamburg, Arkansas!
Here's a preview of the whirlwind roadtrip I drug CP on to start off December. This trip helped me reach states 28 through 32. That leaves 18 to go with just under 2 years to accomplish it. You can imagine what next year's road trip looks like.
View Larger Map With that said, the year is coming to an end and we at Pics of Me in Front of Stuff would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year. Look for bigger and better things in 2010!
So what's your feeling regarding another post about Hawaii, guys?
That looks like 3 affirmatives...or maybe one giant thumbs up along with one drunken smile and one...well, I don't know what that is. But really, it does not matter what that picture is. It is my blog and I will post whatever the hell I want. It's Pics of ME in Front of Stuff and this is the second post in a row that I have made this statement, so I must really mean it. It's my blog, I do what I want.
Whateva, I do what I want!
And what I want to do...no, need to do is another blog about my recent trip to Hawaii. So maybe June is not so recent. Once again, see above regarding to whom this blog belongs. This really is the chronologically the last story since shortly after this last excursion CP and I returned our rental car and boarded a plane back to the mainland US. Regular readers should know, I do not let chronology slow me down. I recently listened to A Brief History of Time recently so maybe I will just find a black hole send me wherever in time I really feel like going. I had one long painful excursion back to a much less beautiful place than Hawaii following this trip to the beach, what's a few light years trying to get to the nearest black hole? Thinking about it makes me want to build a time machine and tell my past self to just forget about the job in New Jersey and stay in Paradise. Would I trade a chance to tap away at the keyboard in my small apartment in New Jersey for a chance to stay in Paradise for a long, long time?
Maybe.
I might have to think long an hard about it. If I reallwanted to just stay in Hawaii, wouldn't I? Maybe the siren songs of family and friends and security and stability were far too great for me to overcome and remain on the Big Island. It is hard to know for sure, but I am in Jersey and Hawaii is a long flight away. I was not sure I would get back a second time but I made it. Who's to say there will not be a third time?
But back to the subject at hand... Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park is to Hawaii what Colonial Williamsburg, Old Bedford Village, and/or Daniel Boone Homestead are to Virginia; Bedford County, PA; and Birdsboro, PA; respectively. I might be slightly East Coast biased in my comparisons, but you probably get the idea from the Colonial Williamsburg. You getting the idea is not going to prevent me from stating the obvious: Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park is a monument to Hawaiian heritage. Until the 19th Century, this beach was a place of refuge for defeated warriors, non-combatants, and those who broke a kapu, an ancient law. Pu'uhonua is Hawaiian for place of refuge and this one was protected by a massive wall. Massive might not describe just how big the damn thing was. S ee it below, it's a big one. The grounds inside the massive wall once housed palaces and temples of Hawaiian royalty, some of which are reconstructed for visitors to ogle at today. Some of those structures are pictured above. Scroll back up and look at it.
The grounds were also guarded by several tikis. They may seem intimidating, but clearly they did not scare off CP and me.
They were slightly more intimidating than Paul Giamatti. It takes a lot more than the star of Lady in the Water to slow me down. So CP and I continued to explore the lovely grounds. Eventually, we stumbled upon a rock that was one of Mark Twain's favorite spots to sit and contemplate life. As another luminary of literature, I felt compelled to sit there. Saying we stumbled upon it is a bit a stretch, it's listed in the brochure. Calling myself a literature luminary...well, that might be a bit of a stretch, too. Either way, I sat there.
Soon after that we left. We left and went back to New Jersey. :-( Only one more Hawaii post left.
Despite protests from some readers, I am not quite done with Hawaii. Supposedly, giving the people what they want is the way to go. Youe way right away is what Burger King would say, but I am not about to let some weirdo determine the direction Pics of ME in Front of Stuff is going. I will type about my visits to New York City to see the Phillies play the Mets or the excitement in Atlantic City when I am damn good and ready to get there. Right now I am breaking down my vacation to Hawaii because I am sure most of my readers, aka CP and I, want to read about how awesome Hawaii was. You just need to sit tight and hold out for the misadventures in which you are included to be featured. Do not worry, buddy, it will be here soon enough. I only have so much time to blog with the job taking up so much of my time.
With that min-diatribe out of the way, back to Hawaii. In case you missed it, unknown and/or known readers, we visited Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on an overcast cloudy day. Visibility was low, part of the park was closed to visitors due to high levels of sulfure dioxide, and we were time limited due to big volcano attraction closing that evening. The big attraction was the fact that the lava is still flowing into the ocean and constantly increasing the size of the Big Island. The lava flow is at the end of Highway 130 in Hawai'i County on the southeast tip. The viewing area is open to arrivals from 5PM to 8PM and closes at 10PM. Thanks to a tip from a friendly park ranger at the national park, we learned the best time to view the lava is in the evening.
In the past, visitors were able to walk relatively close to the lava so long as they remembered to bring their close-toed shoes, water, and a flashlight. That has changed due to a large portion of lava rock that extended into the ocean collapsed. Instead of being able to walk as near to the lava as safety allowed, we were penned in by ropes and saw horses the locals had erected for the safety of visitors about a mile away from where the lava enters the ocean. Lava is slower moving than Paul Giamatti, but due to its extreme heat danger is never far away.
Did you think I forgot about my challenge, Paulie-Boy?
You can't scare me with that Charlie Manson beard.
While there were opportunities to ride a boat very close to the lava, the boat rides were expensive and we settled for watching the steam-plume rise in the distance.
That is probably the best picture of the lava flow I have. I do have 20 or so more with which CP and I bored our families. If you really want to see them you will probably have to come visit. That or look for CP on Facebook. So for a few hours we stood with many other onlookers and watched the steam plume into the sky. We visited Hawai'i too late to get a closer view of the lava, but unlike other signs posting warnings with my best interests, I decided not to ignore the regulations of the lava viewing point.
We did manage to take this picture. And do I really need more than that?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
Hello! You probably know me, but imaybe not. I don't take sports as seriously as I ued to. I have goals and if I remember to write about them you'll see when I accomplish them.
