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.