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.