The last two weeks have been taken up with preparation for visitors, entertaining visitors, and wind-down from visitors. Mom & Jim were here for 10 days, for which I used vacation time. We toured this island, did an overnight to Maui, and spent a lot of time hoping for better weather. All in all I had a great time, despite the clouds, and I'm pretty sure they did too. We certainly ate a lot of food.

My Friday and Saturday have been spent catching up on manini things around the house and at work. I made no progress on the bigger projects on my list, but a lot of little things got done. I have another visitor coming in less than two weeks, and I really need to get a grip on these projects before she arrives so we can just relax and have a good time.

Mentally, I'm still stuck in March. I don't really have a concept of it being May -- much less mid-May -- at all. I have less than two handsful of weeks left here. There are still a few Hawaii-specific things that I would like to do before I leave, including getting on a surfboard and making a fool of myself. At least I made it to the top of Diamond Head two weekends ago. I would have seriously regretted not having done that, had I not. Here are some pics:



This is what you see after climbing 50-some steps and working your way through a dark tunnel that takes a dogleg at its exit. The photo doesn't reflect the steepness very well. I opted to take a little rest before tackling this flight (which was followed by another tunnel and then two flights sprial staircase in the pitch dark).

But you're rewarded with this when you emerge from the structure at the top of the spiral:



This is the Diamond Head end of Waikiki; it's mostly condos and private clubs, but one or two of those are hotels. The surf was breaking pretty well that day. Climb a little higher up (what the hell, you've made it this far) and you get this:



Kapiolani Park is the green space in the lower left. The high rises of Waikiki follow the coast, with downtown in the distance. The far distance on the left shows the Waianae mountain range. To get to the North Shore, you drive through that low spot to the right of the Waianaes. The range on the right is the Koolau range. At the 10 o'clock position to the green structure are the high rises of the Kapiolani neighborhood; in the 3 o'clock position are the Kapahulu and part of the Kaimuki neighborhoods. The deep valley with the visible vertical ridges is Manoa Valley, where I live (right about at the point where the houses disappear from view behind the closer ridge, which is St. Louis Heights).

Look off to the east and you get a nice view of the lighthouse and the windsurfing breaks off Diamond Head Beach:



From the ground you can tell there's a lot of reef out there, but it's so much more evident from 700-some feet in the air.

I'm so very glad I made the climb to the top.
-----

There are minor updates to the bio page, at the urgings of a new correspondent who noted that it was a bit out of date. Good intentions for tweaking the rest of the site abound, but who knows when I'll get to it.
- posted by Lori @ 4:17:00 AM | permanent link | |