I flew home this past Saturday morning to make it to a potluck at my 104 year old great uncle’s senior citizen’s home. On his wall is a letter signed by George W. Bush wishing him a happy 102nd birthday.
On Sunday, I made an 18lb turkey and a pumpkin pie from a recent Cook’s Illustrated recipe.
I’m flying down to San Diego tomorrow for Thanksgiving, part 2.5.
Here’s a little snap shot from seat 17A of Jamaica Bay on Saturday morning, taken with the new (replacement) point and shoot.
My camera shutter died. It was somewhat of a spectacular failure. I was shooting a picture, the camera made a “ka-krunk” noise and the viewfinder has half blocked out. I pulled the lens off and out falls the mirror. Looks like the adhesive that holds the mirror to the reflex plane failed. Hopefully Canon won’t charge me as it only has about 30,000 actuations on it.
Before my camera died, it took a picture of an alligator at the Baltimore Aquarium.
Dear blog, I wrote in you very infrequently in the past 2 months, but I thought about you alot. Here are some thigns I might have written about had I written in you:
That’s just the stuff on my Gcal. I wonder what I did that I can’t remember?
Here’s some dolphin tail.
Montauk is awesome. I tripped out there a few weekends ago. This photo is from Montauk, but not reflective of the experience. Don’t worry, I’ll write about it in a sec….
The peak of Mauna Kea is the #1 best location of earth for star gazing and astronomical research due to it’s great distance from any major city, extreme elevation and clear weather 90% of the year. The Mauna Kea tour also included awesome star gazing.
The visitor’s center at night. All lights on the mountain are red to minimize light pollution.
The Milky Way. The red on the ground was caused by the red interior lights of the tour van.
Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on earth as measured from its base (which is actually the ocean floor) to its summit. I’m not quite sure how Mt. Everest doesn’t have underwater height included as well to maintain it as the tallest moutain as well as the highest point on earth.
I heard about a bus tour (yeah, lame, not normally my first choice, but given time constriants) that drives you from sea level in Kailua Kona to the peak of Mauna Kea (13,795 ft) and back down in about 8 hours. The “bus” actually turned out to be a highly modified mini bus with raised suspension, 4×4 tires, skid plates, and some possible engine modifications like a larger intercooler and oil cooler. It seemed a bit overkill at first until we reached the end of the pavement where the smooth highway turned into a washboarded, up-to-18%-grade dirt road that provides access to the many observatories peached atop the summit. The buses also do several trips a week so they’ve gotta be pretty tough.
At the visitor’s center (9,200 ft), botanists are trying to cultivate the Silversword plant. It’s very near extinction for several confounding reasons: It only grows on the slopes of Mauna Kea and Haleakala between 3000 and 10000 feet, its flowers blossom only once after they’ve grown between 5 and 20 years and also require cross pollenation (insects transferring pollen) leaving scientists with a pretty tough task of forcing the plants to make babies. Aside from that, they’re probably the prettiest plant I’ve ever seen. In person, the leaves looked like shimmery white icles.
I also borrowed/stole our new HD camera from work (Canon HV10, quite awesome). Here it is remembering the sunset for me. More videos to come…
Beaches on the Big Island. The locals say that Kauna’oa aka the Mauna Kea beach is by far the best beach. It has great snorkeling on both ends of the beach and soft soft white sand that gently runs into the ocean. It was so good, I drove 45 minutes a couple hours (the opposite direction of the airport) before my flight home just to enjoy it one last time.
Kekaha Kai State Park. I saw what looked to be the makings of an awesome sunset, so, while driving down the highway, I pulled off into what turned off onto what happened to be a 4 wheel drive beach access road. 2 miles and a couple scrapes on the under carraige of the Hertz Toyota Solara convertible later and I was at a completely isolated locals beach enjoying the sunset.
Twitter Says My Yelp ReviewsGreg Takayama © 2004 - 2010
