Rylan Swim

Rylan has graduated from swim class. He took the Infant Swim Resource program for about six weeks. They had classes in Aina Haina and Joni took him there every morning for a 10 minute session in the pool with the ISR instructor. For weeks it seemed we were just torturing our Baby Rylan. In the end he made a dramatic improvement and now swims well – well for a 22 month old anyway, its not like he is going to set any world records yet. As a graduation test they threw him in the pool with his clothes on; he had to make it back to the edge of the pool unaided. No problem. This is a video of us a few weeks later at the Palolo Valley pool. Based on the number of views on You Tube maybe a bunch of you have watched this already, but here it is again…


What you don’t see in the video is how well he can float on his back. He does that thing where he flips over to catch a breath of air as he swims. Once he started to get tired he spends more and more time on his back catching his breath. This video shows a short rest, he can float on his back for minutes at a time (never tested how long he can sustain it). He uses these swimming skills to get away from us and avoid soap during his bath. When the soap comes out he get as much of his body under the water as he can to avoid the cleaning – which is odd because he likes being clean. When he lies on his back his ears are well under water – he likes this because of the way things sound, he will start singing and yelling just to hear how it sounds underwater.

The only problem with swimming at the city pools is that they don’t allow jumping in from the side, which is one of Rylan’s favorite things to do. We typically do it a few time and see how long we can get away with it before the life guard comes over and scolds us.

Had another first this weekend with Rylan. At least it seemed like a first – he played pretend. He handed me imaginary items at the dinner table. It started by him handing me his plastic animals one at a time, then when he ran out of those, he paused and then just pretended to pick up something with his fingers and hand it off to me. I would put the imaginary thing away and he would reach for another and give it to me. This went on for some time and he asked for them back after awhile. I would pretend to give them back and then he would get all excited. He has done a few other things like this since then that seems to indicate a new part of his brain becoming active. Always entertaining.

At the same dinner table, in a diner in Kihei, Maui the day after Thanksgiving, Rylan would only eat fries if I stuck them on the sword of his Indiana Jones-like plastic swashbuckler action figure. He calls the action figure Daddy. He would stick the loaded sword in his mouth and eat the fries like that. What ever it takes to get food into him. Maybe he will eat enough to grow hair some day.

Animals

Long time no post. As usual for this year, work has been hectic. Put together a group of photos taken in August and September with Rylan visiting animals. The first one is from the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki where they have a number of relatively exotic animals, including a penguin:


His favorite animal is a cow. He can't get enough Mooooooo. Here Rylan visits a cow at the Honolulu zoo (I think that's where it is):


On Kauai we ate at an old restaraunt in Lihue/Puhi for Jodie and Ron's wedding that had a horse ride through the old plantation. Didn't go on the ride but Rylan and I got to feed the horse:


And our favorite animal, the rooster:

Actually, as you can tell from Rylan's face, roosters are not our favorite. A rooster moved into our nice quiet neighborhood about a month ago or so. He took up residence in a tree across the street and woke us up every morning at 5am and again at 6am. This was when I was traveling for the TMT project and was always very tired. I wanted to deep fry that rooster every morning. I was not alone, all the neighbors felt the same way about the rooster, but no one seemed to have an answer.

So I borrowed Jayden’s airsoft gun and scouted out that rooster’s roost. Joni, Joel, and I put on our camo outfits and drew a bead on that rooster. I hit him square with the gun but he flew off with Joni giving chase. The bird took shelter under a bush down the street. I couldn’t get the gun ready to fire again so I took out the machete and took a swing at him. But he had too much life left in him and he ran off at the last moment before the blade severed his head from his body.

The whole neighborhood rejoiced that next morning though because the rooster did not sound off at 5am. For a few days all was quiet and everyone hoped that the rooster had suffered a fatal blow and crawled off and passed away after I hit him with the airsoft gun.

There was not a peaceful third morning though. The rooster was back. He moved to the other side of the house and decided 4:30, 5:30, and 6:10am were more appropriate times to sound off. This inspired neighbor Hector to get involved in the hunt and I obtained a more powerful pellet gun from Michael. Hector and I would prowl around various back yards before the sun came up searching for that damn rooster. The rooster would always take off just before we could draw a bead on him and take a shot. He was one smart rooster: as soon as we got near he would stop crowing, as soon as we pointed the gun in his direction he would take flight, and every night he would change his roost just enough so we couldn’t find him.

A couple times I did get a shot off and hit him. Each time he would get quiet for a few days again. But he always came back. Now it seems like he has slowly faded away. I made one last shot at him that hurt him, a few days later neighbor Bob got his hands on him but couldn’t get a good grip, and a few other run ins seem to have taught him to keep his big beak shut. I still think he will come back and haunt us so we continue to maintain a trap borrowed from North Shore Michael in another neighbor’s back yard. The hunt continues…

Memorial Day

For Memorial Day I worked around the house most of the day and got out the American flag from my Grandfather Hayes' funeral a few years back. He served in North Africa and Europe during WWII. He was a railroad guy so I don't think he ever saw the front lines, but was right behind it. When he passed away a few years ago he was placed in the Massachusetts National Cemetery in a military funeral. This is actually the first time we flew the flag. It was hard to find a place for it because it is so big; the only place it worked was the hooks I have for hanging Christmas lights outside. Guess we need to invest in a flag pole for next year. Anyway, the flag is still a beautiful thing and this one has a special significance for us. Felt good to finally fly it, if only for a day. Still my reluctance to be overly patriotic remains. If presidential candidates and their wives get in trouble for this then I guess I can too. Here are the photos from the holiday afternoon.

This was the entire family gathered for the holiday. I didn't consiously pick the got karma shirt when I woke up in the morning but consiously left it on for the photos.

This one worked out well. It uses the other prop for the photo shoot - the gas can on the wall in the background. Rylan did his job and started to march.

Rylan with Joni, being very American.

Unrelated to Memorial Day but a nice shot form the morning after the holiday.

Detect a Leak

So being on the Sierra Club (SC) Executive Committee has a few perks, or rather responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to attend certain events and be a face for SC. I volunteered to do this for the Detect-a-Leak Week event. Detect a leak week is something the Honolulu Board of Water Supply started and SC has supported for a number of years. The idea is to raise awareness and get people to fix leaking faucets and such to save water. O‘ahu has a fairly tight water budget. Being a small volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific we can’t just import water from the Colorado River. So conservation is a good thing and SC supports conservation and the proper management of watershed areas to promote groundwater recharge. We have some desalination pilot projects but nothing too big. It seems too expensive to do large scale desalination, especially when conservation can solve many/all of our problems. Funny thing is that there are these businesses the sell desalinated deep ocean sea water. They are located at and get their deep cold sea water from the National Energy Laboratory of Hawai‘i Authority (NELHA), desalinate it and then sell it in Japan.

SC also supports transit, but doesn’t talk about it too much. I think the rest of the SC Executive Committee see transit as sort of a double edged sword and want to avoid being too supportive of the project or the Mayor. Obviously I like the project and thing SC should support it, regardless of how they feel about the mayor on other issues. It took a long time to get the Executive Committee to agree that I could speak at a pro-rail rally, provided I just identify myself as a SC member, not an Executive Committee member. So I spoke at the rally and gave the SC spiel and whooped up the crowd. Actually, I didn’t do too much whooping because right after me they had a few local radio DJs come up and take care of that.

Anyway here are a few photos from the Detect-a-Leak Week ceremonies – the political photo-ops.

Here I am with the City Council. My representative is the woman (Ann Kobayashi) behind and to the right of me. She is running for mayor now and orchestrated her announcement to run for major in such as way as only one guy, her friend apparently (Duke Bainum), was able to submit paperwork to run to replace her. The guy most people wanted to run (Kirk Caldwell) did not get his paper work in on time so we do not have a choice in the election. Silly.

So here we are with the major. The "we" is the Board of Water Supply people and representatives from other organizations and business supporting the Detect-a-Leak event. The major is the tall guy in the middle.

The Pang-Cordero Wedding

We went to a wedding between Joni's high school friend Jodie Pang and surfer friend Ron Cordero. It was a great event and seemed to go off without a hitch - no sprinklers going off and soaking everyone, or someone forgetting the ring, or anything like that. One weekend the actually ceremony was performed on a small and relatively under utilized Kauai beach with a small lunch party at a restaurant after the ceremony. Actually, come to think of it, there was a little altercation on Kauai because a home owner along the beach where the ceremony was performed got pissed because he didn't want us walking over his property as we went from the beach to our cars. Didn't seem to be a big deal to me but he was insistent and called the police. It was an odd situation but seemed to be over before the police arrived. There has been a lot of news recently about weddings on the beach and how permits are necessary. This situation seemed to illustrate why permits for such things are probably not such a bad idea – provided the permit considers the beach access question.

The following weekend was a bigger party on Oahu. The photos below are from the Oahu party at a golf course on the windward side on August 19, 2008.

Val Loh took this shot, and the others. Nice to have a professional on hand.

Rylan was running around with the other kids. Of cource the outdoors was the biggest attraction for the kids and Rylan was always trying to get out. Him and his snot nose aching for release. Another thing he learned at the party was what microphones are for. He made his own announcements a few times during the Oahu party and since then has always begged to get at the microphone when ever he sees one.

Playing peak-a-boo under mom's dress.

Point Panic

It has been some time since we got around the posting anything. Sorry to people that had built up some expectations that we would continue at the pace we started. Probably don’t need to say that I’ve been really busy, primarily with work. But I have managed to sneak away a few times here and there to catch a wave or two. The surf this summer continue to be much better than the last few summers. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to get the board to the beach very often. Here are a few shots of me at Point Panic bodysurfing – something I can do on the bike ride to the office in the morning or at lunch, or anytime I can sneak away for that matter. Everyone once in a while things just pile up to the point you got to run away to the ocean, I'm sure you understand. More posts coming soon (I hope).


Those first two are same wave back on June 5. This guy James takes photos every day, either at Sandy's or Point Panic. He puts the photos up on Shutterfly so you can check them out if you see him on the beach. This last photo is from August 17.

Demas-Hahn Wedding

Monday, May 12, 2008 was the big day for Joni's cousin Myra Hahn and long time man Chris Demas. Joni helped prepare for the wedding and was a bridesmaid. It was a great time out at Paradise Cove Luau in Ko Olina. I guess something has to go wrong at every wedding, and this one was no exception. Things were humming along just as they should until, just before dinner started, the sprinklers came on and soaked anyone already sitting down and half the dinner tables. Luckily the Hayes' were outside the strike zone. The place had to move and reset the tables once they figured out how to turn the sprinklers off. It seemed to turn out ok in the end because the bridal party got free drinks after that. Here are some photos:

This is the happily married family.


Here we have all the Fernandez children together. All were part of the wedding and Joel even sang a song to open the ceremony.


The next generation of Fernandez were on hand too (except the eldest, Jordan).


We were all looking good but didn't take many photos of ourselves so this is the best we got. My bad posture while trying to hold Rylan and my appetizer plate in one hand and hide my wine glass with the other hand makes me look fat. My new haircut didn't make up for all that. Joni looks great though.


Rylan was made to pose with other babies at the party of course. He got a good look at the future here.

Mothers Day

Back on May 11, we celebrated mothers day with the rest of America. It took some work because so many people were in town for the big wedding the next day. Joni, Rylan, and I went down the street to Waiole Tea House for breakfast and had a nice meal there without having to cook anything.

After that we walked home and visited the neighbors, including Rylan’s surrogate grandma, grandma Venegas and auntie Christa. Rylan brought them plumeria flowers. In the end Rylan made grandma Venegas help him down the stairs because he is practicing going up and down stairs without having to sit down on each step. He is getting good at that. In fact he is becoming a good climber in general - he can go up all the ladders at the park without assistance. Most of those are the half-rainbow shape with small round rungs that kids can climb to reach platforms and slides. It is unnerving to watch sometime because toward the end when the ladders become more horizontal he has both hands and one foot on the same rung for a moment.

Anyway, that is about all we did for mother's day. After the morning activities our attention turned back to the wedding - Joni participated in the rehearsal and I managed the bbq following the rehearsal. Here is a shot of grandma Venegas with Rylan:

Ixoras that are fragrant

My Ixora odorata has finally started to really flower. It is a beautiful plant with a great sweet fragrance that fills the air near it. For comparison I've included some of the other fragrant ixoras I have in the yard.

This is the prize Ixora odorata. It has very long flower stems and takes some time to open up, but is worth the wait. This is a native of Madagascar, or so I've been told. Besides the great fragrence, the leaves are a big beautiful green. All these ixoras can get fairly big so I need to prune them after they flower.


This is Ixora fragrans according to the people I bought it from. The fragrence is not nearly as nice as the odorata but nicer than the finlaysonlanum. The flowers bunch up to create a snowball like look but when they die they don't fall off; therefore, the bush is sort of ugly unless you go clip all the dead flowers off. The leaves are also not the best.


And finally the Ixora finlaysonlanum or something like that. It has many of the same problems as the fragrans but I think the fragrence is even more sour.

Star Fruit Flower

Mid may and the the star fruit tree started to flower. Will see if that translates to October and November fruit.

Mountain Apple Flower

Few photos of our Mountain Apple tree in bloom. This tree gets going about this time of year and the apples will be along soon. The flowers are beautiful and as the parts fall off it is like pink snow on the ground. Saw a number of bees on the flowers, which is a good sign considering that bees have been on a major decline recently due to the mites. A few months ago there were almost no bees even with significant flowers in bloom, now we have carpenter bees and also regular honey bees. Not sure where these honey bees are coming from but could be from friend Michael Kliks across the valley who has a number of bee boxes in his yard.

You can see a bee in this shot of the flowers in the tree.

This is the ground around (include wheel of wheelbarrow) under the tree.

April/May Family events

A few weeks ago now (4-22-08) we met up with Joni’s uncle Gerry who lives in the Philippines and was in town on a drug rep junket – Gerry is an oncology surgeon or something like that. We were only able to share a drink with him down at his Waikiki hotel. Officially Gerry is a second uncle or something but because he is the same age as Joel he has been more like a cousin to them. Anyway, here is a photo of us around the pool bar.


Rylan has had a cold on and off for the last few weeks so has not been at his best. Still, we have managed to spend a good amount of time trolling the neighborhood parks, visiting friends, and having a good time. One Sunday (4-27-08) we all went to the Japanese Cultural Center for their Keike Festival a week in advance of Kids Day. There used to be separate holidays for boys and girls but now it has been combined to one Kids Day – this is all in Japan by the way, Hawai‘i has just adopted the holiday. Had a good time checking it all out; bought a fish kite to fly on Kids Day and Rylan did a hand print and then the volunteers at the festival drew Kanji characters of his name and other symbols over the hand prints. Looks very cool.

This is a typical scene as we walk from the park/Safeway back home. On the stroller is our umbrella, toys we bought at the Manoa Hongwanji (Buddhist temple) rummage sale, and an orchid we bought at the orchid show in Noelani school.

The following weekend we were working hard to prepare for Joni’s parents to arrive along with the rest of the wedding party. Joni’s friend Myra got married this weekend so the weekend before Joni was working to prepare for that. Unfortunately Joni’s parents had to cancel their visit but are doing fine in Las Vegas. I worked on getting the grass planted in the side yard but we found time to enjoy a bbq at Michael and Lynn’s on Saturday (5-3-08). They are adopting a baby from a former Soviet republic – Kazakhstan I believe, they leave this week to pick up a 1-year old son – so we had a lot to talk about regarding their preparations. Rylan baby-proof checked their house by climbing and pulling on everything. On Sunday we had a party of co-workers and others at the house. We ate beef-roll, aka Jaba roll, and had a great time.

Here Rylan hangs out on the stones in our side yard. I removed all the soil and sand between the rocks and put in new soil that the new grass should grow in well, rather than the junk sand the old grass never liked.
Because of the gap between the stones Rylan was very cautious about crossing from stone to stone.

At the party Rylan was quite the little begger boy. He always kuddles up with Val and he was rewarded with corn at the party.

After getting corn from Val he would go next door and slurp some of Dave's water. He had to stand on his tip toes to get it.

Monday (5-5-08) was Kids Day. For whatever reason fish are the symbol for boys and it is tradition to fly a fish kite for each boy in your family on Boys Day.
Here Rylan flies his own fish kite in our yard while wearing his Japanese outfit given to him by Matt and Chizuko.

Late April Surf Chronicles

It has been awhile since I caught up on posting so I'm going to break it up a bit. This one is all about surf.

Weekend of April 28: Friday was really the start of the fun for me. I got up early and met Michael at his place at 5:15 and we made for Silva Channels with short boards. We were the first out and I got the first wave. It was as good as I have ever seen Silva’s – 3 to 5 and glassy, lining up outside and deep and you could make the sections; it looked like a video of a perfect mystical Indo wave. We got a bunch of waves before the crowd grew and saw friends/better surfers get deep barrels. Back at Michaels we traded up to the 12 footer guns and went out-the-back – 6 to 10 feet and perfect. After a few quick ones I watched Michael paddle into a big one; watching from the back I thought he was toast multiple times so it was completely unexpected when he popped out way down the line hooting. As he paddled back out the clone of his wave swung in and I caught it – stayed high and tried to make the section the way Michael did but as the wave formed up it looked doubtful so I peeled over the top after a nice run. On the way out Michael gave me 50:50 that I would have made the wave – bad odds for a wave that size. All that and got to work before 10:30.

The rest of the weekend surf adventure took place on Sunday morning when Ryan and I drove up north. Sitting in the parking lot at Uppers we saw Michael and Bobby paddle over and start shredding – Michael pulled into a close out barrel and Bobby pulled his usual radical moves. We joined the action and had a great time. Michael and Bobby witnessed me get something between a head dip and a full barrel on a nice right and after they left I scored a real left barrel. At the start of the session there were about 8 people out (including an exotic 6 foot tall model in a very skimpy bikini), but by the end it was just Ryan and I. Joni also reports getting some good surf all weekend at 3s in Waikiki.

Week of April 28: There was a nice south swell through most of the week. Never got as good as the previous south swell, but still plenty of fun waves. Both Joni and I scored some good waves. Surfed the regular spots. Was good to see the old regulars come out again. One guy that surfs Inbetweens all the time reported a good trip to the Mentawai Islands off Sumatra in Indo – he said even in the off season there is great surf there. Same guy is off to the Maldives this summer. Lucky devil.

This is the photo the surf-internet photographer took of me at Alii Beach on April 20 (I believe that is the right date). I'm kooking out on a small wave, but at least it is a nice clear photo. I actually managed to slide down this wave and get a decent ride.

Kokūa and the first south swell

Another busy weekend has come to a close. Highlights this weekend were the first south swell of the year and the Kokūa Festival. The surf actually started picking up as early as Wednesday and held through Saturday, when the surf started to pickup on the North Shore. So I surfed Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, Joni surfed Thursday, and we both surfed Saturday (thanks to Joel for watching Rylan that morning). No broken boards or other problems, just good head-high south swell 10 minutes from the house. I surfed at Flys and Inbetweens with light crowds at both spots. After work Rylan and I spent an hour or so watching the waves at Point Panic, where I usually body surf. Seems like everywhere you go these days there are guys taking photos of the surf and selling them online. I rarely surf where these guys are set up because I like the less crowded spots. When Rylan and I were watching the waves on Friday this guy was there so you can see what we saw here. Then, the same guy was on the beach when I surfed Hale‘iwa on Sunday morning. Hale‘iwa was the only place looking good on the North Shore that morning, and even that was not great. I was sitting inside of the crowd and just grabbing some nice short rights and he snapped a few of me (photos 354-357 and 366 on this page). On that page you can also see shots of SUPers (stand-up paddlers) who where going after the bigger ones at Avalanche. Most of these photographers seem to inhabit the most popular spots and mainly take photos of the biggest waves. Seems to me if they really wanted to make some money they would go to the less popular spots and snap shot of any and all. The way it is now the best surfers get photographed all the time but probably only buy one photo a year while all the rest that would buy any decent photo of themselves surfing never get photographed. I guess they are doing Ok or they would change their methods without my input. To encourage his efforts of photographing me kooking out I might buy one of his photos.

The Kokūa Festival was a fun time. We got there late so only really heard Dave Mathews and Jack Johnson. All the booths in the back were interesting to visit too. Jack is good but has never really done it for me. A friend had bought the tickets but then decided not to go so we went in their place. The seats were great because (a) we actually had seats, not lawn space, and (b) the seats were on the side near a patch of grass where people were not sitting. Rylan enjoyed walking around the seat area and grass and got in some funky dancing. As always he was a big hit with others nearby.

Joni also took Rylan to a party on Sunday and when she got home I took Rylan over to Ray’s place for dinner. Thanks to Nancy, Morgan and company for cooking up a good dinner and we hope Ray has a good summer back in Iowa.

This shot was taken during the week when Joni went to a local sandwich place for lunch. Rylan sat on the window sill during lunch and then stood on it after lunch. Val was nervous about it but mom kept backing up to get a good shot.

Rylan made himself comfortable at the concert and fell in love with his sustainable non-lead-based paint wood car toy purchased at the Organic Keiki booth. You can also see Matt and Yvette sitting next to Joni - they are the ones that went through the hassle of buying the tickets.

The girls sitting in front of us enjoyed Rylan. He ended up standing on their seats and they cheered his moves. You can see Jack Johnson, well a blur of him, in the lights in the background.

In work news, the transit project continues to be on the front page on a regular basis. Over the weekend there was an article about how it would look and how many trees it would effect. Then today the Stop Rail Now people got a front page article about their cause and wanting to let the people vote on the issue. Their ballot question seems to be: “Honolulu mass transit shall not include trains or rail transit.” Their better option: High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes. What a bunch of idiots. I hope none of you guys sign their petition. If you want to know why they are idiots make a comment on this blog and next week I’ll expound on it. Lukily the Honolulu Advertiser editorial staff agree with me - the day after running Stop Rail Now on the front page they had this and previously they said this about selecting steel wheel technology over other technologies.

Joel moves in

Sunday night again. Joni's brother Joel is now our housemate. Good to have a mate again. With Rylan the boys already outnumbered the girls, now us guys have a third vote, and maybe finally enough to hold the majority. Joel just finished his training in Mississippi for the Air Force Reserve and is looks like he has been aiming high for some time. Anyway, we have been looking forward to his arrival for some time. He loves Rylan and will help us when he can. For instance, he will be picking up Rylan from school after work tomorrow. A huge help.

Joni got back from Las Vegas and reported having a great time. Rylan loved seeing his grandparents but the report is that while there he developed the bad habit of climbing on top of everything and once there throwing whatever was there before him as far as he could. Good work if you can get it. We have a few photos from the Las Vegas adventure:

Here Rylan makes a perfect toss to Grandma and he isn't even standing on something.

Out with grandpa.

First time in the snow. The only warm clothes he has are PJs so thats what he wore.

As a continuation of the Earth Day/Month theme of last week – on Saturday I went down and assisted in the Manoa Stream cleanup and armored catfish roundup. Most of the people that helped roundup catfish were from the Honolulu Aquarium Society or some such thing. Funny, because their less thoughtful brethren were probably the ones that released this fish into the stream. It was good fun and we scoped up 250 pounds of catfish. It seemed like a small dent because we only cleaned about ½ mile of stream and I’m sure we left behind plenty of small ones. Still, people reported that the numbers were well down from last year, which was the inaugural roundup. It made us feel good anyway.

During the last week I help represent the Honolulu Transit project at a Major Town Hall Meeting in Kailua. Other projects at the meeting included the new curbside recycling program – yes Honolulu is finally getting curbside recycling (Manoa gets it in November 2008) – and the other project was stormwater pollution prevention. A photograph including me was actually in the stormwater presentation because I have previously participated in the quarterly Manoa Stream cleanup, which is put on by a great group called Malama O Manoa. Anyway, not many people showed up at the town hall meeting but I did convince one guy that building double decker freeways would be more expensive and disruptive than building a transit system, so it was all worth it. One person at the event was wearing a Washington University in St. Louis shirt and reported that my alma mater has its own transit stop on the St. Louis transit and the system works great.

So later on Saturday Joni, Rylan, and I went down to the Waikiki Aquarium for their Earth Month celebration. This is the place where Joni and I were married for those that remember that – almost 4 years ago now. Unfortunately we were too late for the Earth Month events but still enjoyed the beautiful setting and nice displays. Rylan had just visited an aquarium in Las Vegas but seemed to really enjoy the Waikiki one because he could get his hands wet in the tide pool. Snapped a few photos there:

The puffer fish had some strange attraction to Rylan.

On the walk back to the car Rylan took an interest in the water fountains. He likes anything involving water and this just really pleased him. Here he claps after we turn the water on and off.

Then here is a video of Rylan playing with his new toy from Joel. Rylan has really enjoyed playing with these "doggy cars" as we call them. He has gone back to them repeatedly and pushes them and stickes them together and really plays with them rather than just fingering and throwing them. Anyway, this concrete wall in our yard has the perfect slope and they roll down nicely, which Rylan really enjoys. You may be able to see Joni in the background talking with the neighbors.


Hope you all had a great weekend too. Aloha for now...

Blue Planet Summit

Joni and Rylan were out of town this weekend, so no photos of Rylan the weekend. Joni and Rylan went to visit Fernandez grandparents. So, I had the house to myself, a bachelor weekend. Just so happened that old friend Adam Browning from SF was visiting for the Blue Planet Summit – a global energy summit with people from around the world that work in the field of alternative energy and global warming. I didn't know anything about it and neither did Adam before he got out here. But, hey, if someone invites Adam to Hawai‘i for 5 days and pays for everything, he says yes.

First I have to say that I had planned to work on the house quite a bit this weekend – trying to paint the foyer. As of today the progress is good, but not complete. More on that latter. So, Saturday Adam calls and we plan to get together in the afternoon for a west-side surf. I frantically work on the house project as Adam calls and says there are other people at the summit that would like to join us. I say fine, we can fit 6 people in the CRV. At 3 I show up at the Ihilani Resort in Ko‘Olina with three boards on the roof. The summit crew walks out and jumps in. I only knew Adam, who sat in the way back where there are no seats. As we drove to Mākaha he introduced me to the others:

• Steve Schneider – Stanford climatology prof., member of the IPCC (which won the other half of the Nobel Peace Prize won by Al Gore), and member of the National Academy of Science since 2002. Note: Dad was Academy class of '98 and after he read this said Steve is a hero - something I don't think I've heard him say about anyone else.


• Andrew Revkin – New York Times columnist/author (The Burning Season) focused on global warming and climate, manager of the Dot Earth blog on the New York Times website.


• Adrienne Dreiss – Board Member of family's George & Cynthia Mitchell Foundation and director of their Texas Energy and Climate Change Program.


• Anna Rose – Founder of Australian Youth Climate Coalition, among other things.

So, it was a motley crew. Adam, by the way, is the co-founder and executive director of the Vote Solar Initiate, so he belongs in this group. On the drive we didn’t see much surf and the discussion was more about the global environment and the fact that with six people in the CRV we were getting great gas mileage. But I knew there would be surf at Mākaha.

As usual the beach was packed, both on the sand and in the water. Adam and I left the environmental lobby near the life guard stand and made for the nice looking 3 to 5 footers rolling onto the reef. Caught a nice long ride but of course someone dropped in on me down the line and insisted on sharing the rest of the wave. Every once in a while a real set would come in. I could see this one coming and thought I might score. Staying in the pit and paddling out instead of scrambling for the shoulder as other did I hoped for the best. The wave peaked a little too early, catching me inside. I tried to duck it but was just under the lip and felt the board buckle as the wave unloaded, so I just let it go. Sure enough, the board was busted. It was an old board but still surprising because I build them tough and had never broken a board before.

Adam helped me in after the set past and the environmental lobby was a buzz over the action as I made my way to shore. Luckily I had the third board still in the car and took that out. In the end it was just too crowded and we caught one more in.

Back at the hotel the founder of the Blue Planet Foundation, Henk Rogers, was hosting a party for the summit people. Adam said it was cool for me to come along so I crashed that party and meet more great people, including Denis Hayes, the guy that coordinated the first Earth Day. Didn’t get to say more than hi to him though. Also at the party was Jeff Mikulina, Sierra Club Hawai‘i Chapter Director; FYI – I was just elected to the executive committee of the O‘ahu Sierra Club. Adam and others had enjoyed talking with Jeff during the summit and were particularly fond of one of Jeff's sayings: "Hawai‘i is one supertanker away from being Amish." Had great wine and food, so much great wine that I crashed in Adam’s room instead of driving home.

In the morning Adam bought me breakfast before we drove out to Mā‘ili for some more surf. Waves at Mā‘ili were much smaller but far less crowded than Mākaha the day before and we had a great time. Caught a bunch of mostly 2 footers but they were all walling up and rocketing along. Adam was setting up deep and being the goofy foot had plenty of good views of long walled up sections and nearly got into a few little barrels. His favorite move was turning up the wave and launching over the lip just before the close out – a few times he got a good 10 feet in the air with that maneuver. And the best part, no one broke into our car!

On the way back we picked up Adrienne and went back to the house. Managed to get the two visitors to help with the foyer project, which was great because tacking up 13 foot long batons on the ceiling is a job I would not have been able to do without them. The three of us got into a good rhythm and banged the job out fairly quickly despite the constant rain. Here are a few photos of us in action:

As you can see I had sanded all the wood, about four weeks ago when Joni and Rylan were on Maui. I had removed all the batons during the sanding because they were termite eaten and cracked. This is us putting up the last new ceiling baton. You can see the new batons on the wall behind us because they are much lighter than the older boards behind.

Everyone got a turn with the nail gun.

I gave the visitors the afternoon off; they went to Waikīkī and I stayed back to keep working on the smaller parts of the project – nailing up shorter vertical batons, caulking all the joints and gaps (with brother-in-law Joel’s help), and fishing wire and cable. Overall good progress, but had wanted to get primer on this weekend and didn’t get to that. Maybe next weekend.

So, thanks to all for helping with the house project this weekend and special thanks to Adam for inviting me to the summit wrap up party.

Avik Turns 1

Well, the weekend ends. Rylan just went to sleep and now we sit back and remember another hectic weekend. We had great fun - the entire family hiked Manoa Falls trail, Jim went out and partied on Saturday night, and we all went to Avik's first birthday party. We have photos from everything except Jim's night out, which happily went undocumented, until this brief description. Ernest, Matt and I went to the Red Elephant to hear Yasuko Hayakawa, a pianist from Japan, play with local guys DeShannon Higa and Abe Lagrimas. Good jazz stuff in a nice place with maybe 75 other people. Abe is our old favorite from when Doug and I used to see him when he was still in high school. At this show he played vibes and he, and the rest of the band, sounded great. They recorded the entire show so we will have it on CD some time. We then went to The Dragon Upstairs, a nice place down the street, where the band showed up for an afterparty and more tunes. I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but pizza and a japanese surf band were involved.

Ok, here are some photos and commentary on the rest of the weekend...

First thing on Saturday morning we had to harvest a bunch of bananas. Here Rylan enjoys the spoils.

Later in the day we rode the bikes up to the Manoa Falls trail head and set off.

This is after the hike is over. Rylan had not hiked enough yet and was still running around up until we strapped him back into the bike seat.

First thing on Sunday Rylan ate cereal on the steps with mom. He does this every other morning with dad, but this morning dad was still recovering from Saturday night.

Here is Avik - the son of coworker Lawrence and his wife Chetna, but I always spell that wrong. He was surprizingly in control during the cupcake consumption.

Because there were so many adults and the area was contained the parents got to relax a little too.

Rylan is already working the ladies in the crowd. Here he holds a flower for Elise. Actually, he ran right on by Elise and tried to eat it.

Well that is it for this weekend. Rylan still is not talking, but is getting closer, perhaps. If anyone want high quality versions of the photos just let us know, medium quality is available through this site. Leave a comment so we know you are actually looking at our blog. Thanks everyone. Aloha...