Go Westie: Part 2

Admittedly, our posting pace has been flagging recently. Unfortunately, your beloved today's blogspot crew has been engaged occupationally and otherwise of late. However, to bridge the blog gap, here are some excerpts from an unfinished, relatively unedited travel piece I started ages ago. It's about a trip around the outside of Hawaii's big island in a white Westfalia pop-top.

Continuing from where we left off, your intrepid explorers pick up their ride...

"WHITEY"

After catching the Hele-On, a free shuttle bus ($1 per piece of luggage) that travels from the Western Kona side of the big island to Hilo Town in the East, we picked up our transportation in depot parking lot. There we met Gary Berg, proprietor of GB adventures, his wife, and blonde, surfer-haired son.

Gary is a man with an entrepreneurial plan. Gary is part of that neo-hippy, post-boomer generation that manages to reconcile hippy ideals and a commercial sensibility with a clean moral slate. Gary deals in vans. He owns a fleet of four VW campers, which he strives hard to keep in perfect running condition. He offers 24 hour roadside service should anything go awry. The man knows his Westies. Once we`d finished the paperwork, he went step by step through each feature with us. He showed us how to spin the passenger seat around so we could eat our dinner round table style. He reminded us to switch off the propane in transit so as to avoid being found asphyxiated roadside. He demonstrated the delicate art of bringing in the canvas pop-top so as to avoid any damage yet make sure that nary a flap is showing. He handed us our VW instruction manual, Big Island map, and the keys to “Whitey,” and kindly wished us well on our way.

HILO TOWN

Hilo is by far the largest community on the Eastern side of the island with a population of 40,000 and its own Walmart. Kamehameha Avenue, the town’s main tourist strip, has a small town Americana feel to it. That morning, the residents were doing their shopping and mingling with a smattering of tourists at the local farmer’s market. The locals tended to focus on the local produce—mangos, papaya, Maui sweet onions, and the like—while the tourists picked their way through bags of Kona coffee, bouquets of indigenous flowers, and “Hawaiian Bikini Inspector” tank-tops.

PUNALU’U

Once we’d gassed up and purchased alcohol, ahi tuna fillets ($3.99 a pound!), and other assorted groceries, we steered our 1988 Volkswagen Westfalia South and headed for our first destination, Punalu’u Beach. Punalu’u is renowned for two things—it’s bizarre, black, lava-borne sand and the endangered sea turtles that lay their eggs there. When we pulled into the crowded lot, we saw Punalu’u’s third feature—the non-indigenous tour buses that congregate there. Dozens of tourists, mostly American and Japanese had just offloaded in the parking lot. As we strolled down the beach, my bare feet and I came to the realization that black sand, for all its novelty, is really not so much sand as it is tiny, jagged, lava rocks. The faint scent of volcanic ash wafting through our nostrils, we made our way down to the beach to where the sea turtles were supposed to be.

There they were: two vaguely annoyed-looking hawksbill sea turtles sitting in the middle of a barren patch of black sand, mostly ignorant of the small circle of tourists that were alternately gawking or snapping photos of their beady-eyed visages. One thing that one discovers quickly about Hawaii is that it’s not particularly shy or subtle about its natural beauty. Hawaii’s natural wonders aren’t squirreled away under rocks, but rather on full, out in the open, explicit display at nearly all times. Dolphins swim along the coastline. Giant palms and ferns dot the roadside. One need only dip a snorkelled head into the water to spot yellow tang and angel fish darting behind finger coral.



We left the hawksbills to their 15 minutes of fame and made for the opposite end of the beach to survey the campsites. It was a sad lot. The few tents that were up were being buffeted about by the wind and were mere footsteps from the public bathroom and picnic area, on one side, and the crowded parking lot, on the other. We decided camping next to buses and Buicks was for dudes in pickups and the birds, and drove north along the coast in search of something a little more private.

To be continued...

Go Westie: Part 1

Admittedly, our posting pace has been flagging recently. Unfortunately, your beloved today's blogspot crew has been engaged occupationally and otherwise of late. However, to bridge the blog gap, here are some excerpts from an unfinished, relatively unedited travel piece I started ages ago. It's about a trip around the outside of Hawaii's big island in a white Westfalia pop-top.

Mahalo.


HILO, HAWAII— I had seen the travel commercials and heard the tales from resort-friendly acquaintances. I had expectations of Hawaii.

I expected to see acres of sunburned flesh. I thought I’d swim in kidney-shaped pools under false waterfalls, frolicking in adults-only grottoes with either overfriendly or overly uncomfortable strangers. I was ready to snorkel in false lagoons ringed by false beaches and filled with multitudinous varieties of tropical fish, eels, and sea turtles. With a little web research, I learned that I had two in-resort transportation options other than my trusty flip-flops. I could make use of the resort’s track-constrained fleet of Swiss-made river boats. Or I could take the monorail. That’s right, the monorail. I knew that my hotel lobby would contain not one, but two sad-looking but well-trained show parrots, which would perform on command, but otherwise largely ignore the almost constant harassment from newly-arrived guests. I knew that Day-glo sunglasses, thong bikinis, Swe-Thai massage, fourteen dollar Ahi burgers with taro chips, luaus, an army of professional smiles, silk shirts, and all too many leis were in the offing.

I expected and took part in all of the above during my three odd days spent at this empire on the edge, this gated community of septuagenarian bliss on the coast, the Waikoloa Hilton.

And then I broke free.

After three days of pre-ordained pleasure and passivity, Me and my two travelling companions were prepared to take on Hawaii`s big island the way it was meant to be done— in a Volkswagen Camper van.



Our plan was simple. We aimed to circumnavigate the isle in five days, hit most of the major sights, and end up back in Hilo in time to lose the van and catch our flight home. The circumnavigation is no epic feat. In fact, the whole circuit can be completed in less than a day of straight driving, but that wouldn’t have fit with the Hawaiian ethos of our mission. We wanted to take our time, to take it easy. In the parlance of the local surf scene, to hang loose. We booked most of our camping permits ahead of time, mostly out of fear of having to beat out the hordes of holidaymakers that populated the Hawaii of my pre-trip imagination. We carefully plotted each site to minimize travel time, but at about $20 per permit, and with a bed on wheels, we weren`t too bothered.

To be continued...

The Shuffle: E-Day Blues

As you well know, dear readers, music is for mood-making. Regardless of the situation, the dramatic tension could be increased, the libido stoked, the bus ride made a teeny bit more bearable, if only the right backing tracks are available. With this in mind, Today’s Blogspot brings you our recurring series of situational mini-mixes: The Shuffle.

Up next: The E-day Blues.

Drink The Haterade: Laker Haters Unite!

Like the Bedouins, David, and the Vietnamese before them, last night the Houston Rockets knocked off the favourite. For one glorious night Yao's wonky knee and the ball's beneficent bounces held up and the evil yellow and gold empire went down. In honour of that monumental victory and this week's topic, courtesy of the NBA's premier mixtape master, Today's Snowjob brings you Yinka Dare's Kobe Loser mix.

Because there's no such thing as too much Shep

Sure, the boomers had Walter Cronkite reporting on the Tet offensive from the august halls of the CBS newsroom. We have Shepard Smith on Youtube narrating a live truck chase for ten glorious minutes. If this doesn't galvanize today's youth, then probably nothing ever will.

TSJ Enemies: Myspace

"A place for friends"?



Perhaps. But moreso, a place for charlatans, pederasts and terrible, terrible web design.

Let's forget for the moment that social networking sites can undermine the value of interpersonal relationships and foster a distorted version of the social self. Surely, stalwart reader, neither you nor I are so easily betrayed. Can you think of any social gatherings wherein there are preachings of the redeeming and unfaltering friendship of a single ubiquitous being?



Besides him?



Correct. How unfair is it to promise an attention-starved teen that someone as ostensibly nice as Tom will always be their friend? Tom never gets too busy with his girlfriend for you; he never goes backpacking in Europe, leaving you behind for the summer; he never ditches you for the cool group. You might yourself never get a single add, yet there is one unifying being that all your 'spaced friends share, and embracing him with love and compassion will surely deliver just rewards (your new friend might have cute other friends! Four million of them!)

Let us pray. Oh Tom Anderson, what is your true and unbiased age, and does the truth have anything to do with why you never change your profile pic? Were you really an 80's era computer-cowboy, like Jonny Lee Miller in "Hackers"? Did you really found Myspace? (I could link to this story...but do you care? Thought so.)

Speaketh unto to us, Tom, for one should expect to find intelligence in your design, yet scrutinize as I try, I see none! I look upon this pagan idolatry, and, in faith, I see chaste space and function:



yet here: Gomorrah!



Was this done out of benevolence and foresight, or blind, cruel chance, like a swamp thing out of the primordial ooze? It's difficult to keep faith sometimes, when there is na'er a sign from the administration, besides occasional useless homepage changes.

Tom Anderson: when we creep our friends, we creep with innocence and naivety, and it is up to the Great Designer to guide us and steer us upon a Path: what is to be clicked, and what is to be viewed; what is a call to action versus useless fine print; who is our new friend versus an ad for lonely girls in our city. Within the twitsphere, we are but stumbling, blind lepers with credit cards, bound to make horrible mistakes with our purchasing power, lest some simple interface directives guide us through the valley, like the dim aisle lights in airline safety videos.

I can recall another time when humankind was left to organize their own information. It was called the Tower of motherflipping Babel. Also, Thai full moon parties.



So fill your space with caution. The makers have left the building, and are busy with the next IPO.