Channel Currents

Wednesday morning we got up early and headed to Hanauma Bay. It’s a protected (read: admission fee and mandatory movie viewing) reef system on a beach 10 miles from Waikiki. In the center of the inner reef is a channel (marked with buoys) that leads out to an outer reef that is more exposed to the open ocean. Kelly agreed to my idea of swimming out there right away and exploring in the deeper, choppier water before we got tired in the inner reef. Enacting my plan, we swam out through the coral and past the buoys very fast, later it would become clear it was too fast. Bobbing up and down in the choppy ocean, I looked around and saw we were some 150 yards from the buoys we had JUST swum across, and that there were zero other snorkelers out in the open ocean with us. Did I mention we didn’t have fins? Despite jokes to the contrary, my large feet do not act like fins in and of themselves.



Kelly said she was already out further than she was comfortable with, and we started swimming back toward the buoys. We were making very slow progress, as there was a strong current going out to sea, which belied the swells rolling into shore. It was at this point I remembered the description of channel currents from our “Snorkel Kauai” book. Water rushes to shore through the channel and over the surrounding coral, as the high wave/swell is able to get over the coral. But when it flows back out to sea without that high wave/swell, all the water flows back out through the channel. More water flowing out the channel than in the channel means a strong current pulling out to sea.

Kelly was not making fast progress towards the buoys, and popped up to tell me “I’m panicking a bit.” I coached her to relax, take deep breaths, and make long, deliberate strokes, with mini-rests in between (I was behind her and had noticed it seemed like she was thrashing a bit). She tried flipping onto her back and swimming that way. I should mention that I was never panicked during any of this. Our situation was indeed a bit scary, but Hanauma Bay is well lifeguarded. I knew even if we were in trouble, we wouldn’t actually be in trouble. Speaking of, I looked back toward shore and saw a lifeguard paddling on his board straight toward us. I alerted Kelly, who despite being freaked out by our situation, was disturbed the lifeguard was having to come save us. Kelly turned back on her stomach (though without her snorkel), and tried again to fight the current, with me behind her. I had just gotten to the point of considering linking arms and trying to help her swim in that way. I tried it for a brief second…bad idea…it doesn’t work. I’m still not sure what the best strategy is for helping someone in a situation like that. It would have taken most all my strength to fight the current myself. I think the solution is to not get into that situation in the first place.

The lifeguard arrived very calm, had Kelly put in her snorkel, and had us grip the back of his board with one hand and swim with the other (and kick), while he paddled on the board. We made it safely through the buoys, then swam to shore to rest and regroup, before heading back out to explore the INNER reef. Kelly is still very embarrassed about us needing to be saved. She thinks it’s a typical dumb tourist thing to do (which it is). In fact, she was leery of me writing about it here. But my blog answers to no one. No one! Actually, I think it’s cute that she’s so embarrassed about it, and am willing to risk her wrath when she reads this. Love you, babe!

Kelly disagreed, but I thought it was the best snorkeling of our trip. I have one major reason: the fish were unafraid of humans. Big fish, small fish, all the same creatures we had seen on Kauai (and in larger number), but now we were swimming feet and sometimes inches from them. I could reach out my hand, and the fish would stay put, allowing me to almost graze their tails before they would leisurely swim on. I could get close enough to the large parrotfish to hear the crunching sound it makes when eating the outer layer of goodies off the coral.

That afternoon Kelly poked around Waikiki’s shops while I wrote and read in the shade of the hotel pool. I could tell you about how Kelly popped an Ambien and slept soundly on the plane while I continuously contorted by legs and torso yet failed to find comfort. Or I could tell you at 6am the next morning we arrived back in L.A. to find my car’s battery had died. But that would steal focus from what I wish to leave you with, which is that our Hawaiian vacation was relaxing and enjoyable. Now there’s something that was easy to predict.

Aloha.

On Accountability and Surfing

Honolulu is a pit. Okay, that’s strong wording, but stray two minutes outside Waikiki, and you could be in any (non-vacation) city. Big buildings, traffic, annoyances. Kudos to my dad for suggesting no more than a few days here, and to fly to a different island for a portion of the trip (our original plan was to just visit Oahu). That being said, Waikiki is very nice, though uber-touristy. The place is crawling with Japanese. All the menus and flyer handouts have Japanese on them, and there are sushi restaurants everywhere. At one point it struck me that in the era of the Pearl Harbor bombing, seeing hordes of Japanese in Hawaii would have sparked a very different reaction. Kind of gives a glimmer of hope we could someday be taking our vacations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Man, that’s hard to imagine.

In Oahu, we stayed at the Waikiki Marriott, which had a nice ocean view (at first they tried to stick us in what I call a binocular ocean view room, but we asked to be moved). It’s a large whoop-de-doo kind of hotel with a shopping complex, pools, and restaurants. Last night, we ate at the on-site, Zagat rated sushi restaurant, which was 50% off on Mondays if you get there early enough. We got there early enough. Delicious.

Tuesday morning we headed to Pearl Harbor. We poked around the museum there, but didn’t do the video and memorial tour (the main attraction), as the wait was over 2 hours and would have chewed up half our only full day in Oahu. I don’t feel much connection to World War II or the Pearl Harbor attack, but I was interested that the museum had some models, pictures, and info of the Japanese commanders, warships, and terms. It seems obvious that the museum would have that, but somehow I imagined the museum would only focus on America’s side of the story.

It was also interesting to me that the admiral in charge of Pearl Harbor was held fully accountable for the attack, even though some say there was intelligence of an impending Japanese attack he was not privy to. I only caught a couple of minutes of the video on the admiral, but the fact that he was held accountable is interesting to me for 2 reasons:

1. I’ve just read a book on the unpredictable, outlier “Black Swan” event that is easy to spot (and lay blame for) only after the fact. I have a lot of sympathy for that admiral, who was likely a scapegoat for not predicting something that someone would have been very LUCKY to have predicted.

2. The top man was held accountable in American chain of command! The admiral of the Pearl Harbor fleet was dishonorably discharged. His career was ended in a heartbeat. What a different America existed in 1941. Abu Ghraib? A few bad apples. Katrina? Doin’ a heck of a job, Brownie, here’s a medal. The list is tragically much longer than that. Perhaps the most ironic current-day bastardization of accountability is that the man who chose to locate the emergency response center in the World Trade Center, after having been told by experts to put it underground (and not in a building that had already been bombed by terrorists), is now a leading presidential candidate precisely BECAUSE the attack he helped cripple our response to came to pass (the man is Rudy Giuliani). To quote from my new favorite book (“The Black Swan”), “Everybody knows that you need more prevention than treatment, but few reward acts of prevention.”

The waves roll into Waikiki Beach slowly and eventually. There are tons of them crashing at any time – out at sea, close to shore, everywhere. From an elevated height (our Marriott balcony), I could see multiple sets of waves heading into shore, staggered at identical intervals like airplanes queued to land at LAX. The waves seem to be in a constant state of crashing, allowing surfers to ride them all the way into shore (or until they lose momentum). Seeing all this, I decided Waikiki would be a perfect place to try surfing. Having lived in San Diego most all my life, it’s sort of sad it took Honolulu to get me to try surfing, but whatever. I signed up for a $40 group lesson.



After 3 minutes on shore showing us how to go from stomach to knees to feet, 3 of us paddled out on long boards behind our instructor. The instructor, by the way, was a little too cool for school, providing minimal instruction in that you-already-get-this-right? sort of way. But it sort of worked out for the 3 of us, as we all stood up and surfed on our very first wave try. I only “caught” a few more waves after that first success, and I could never duplicate my beginner’s luck. On subsequent waves, I was off balance by the time I stood, and just jumped/fell off when the surfing was supposed to commence. The last half hour was spent frustratingly trying to catch waves and failing. I think the swell was dying off, as Kelly confirmed she saw from the shore.





Let me say, surfing is fricking exhausting. I had no idea. I’ve been boogey boarding and bodysurfing my whole life. But surfing cuts out your lower body from the propulsion equation, leaving only a tiny muscle in the upper tricep/shoulder area to do all the paddling. That muscle reached exhaustion in about 3 minutes, and it was basically will power that kept me going after that. Also, I underestimated how different a longboard is from a boogey board. I can turn my boogey board 180 degrees in a heartbeat. A longboard is more like a dinghy. You have to plan ahead of time when turning that sucker around. And, at least at Waikiki, you have to already have a good velocity going when the wave reaches you. All of this means more exhaustion. After about 90 minutes, I collapsed on the beach and began to count my (until then unnoticed) numerous minor injuries. They were:

Portion of left index fingernail torn off
Lower, inner thighs and stomach rubbed raw into rash
Nipples rubbed raw
Skin on big toe torn off
Blister on palm of hand

I limped back to the hotel.



That night, Kelly and I went to a rotating bar atop Waikiki and had a drink, then moved on to a different bar with live Hula music for another. We walked the main drag of Waikiki, buzzing a bit from vodka and rum. Our bodies and minds were fully in sync with the slow speed of Hawaiian living. We were relaxed, we were close, we were probably both a little excited to get back home. It was a perfect last night of our vacation.

On Guava, Company Policy, and Airport Security

Monday was our flight to Oahu, but that wasn’t going to stop us from enjoying our last day on Kauai. We went back to Tunnels, for another great experience that included sighting a white-tipped reef shark.

Before the airport, we stopped by a guava farm, where they have a store that sells all kinds of guava products, except the one everyone really wants, which is guava jelly. The guy said they can never keep up with demand, and are always out of it. I told Kelly they’re idiots and should raise the price of their jelly until they can keep up with demand, which led to a discussion about free markets versus the “fairness” of socialism. My take on guava is that is smells better than it tastes, which is ironically also my take on socialism.



Checking into the Kauai airport, Kelly and I ran into a problem we experienced previously on our original Continental flight out of L.A. We decided to pack one large bag to check, holding both of our stuff. With both of our clothes, snorkel gear, books, etc, the bag weighs about 55 lbs. Both Continental and Aloha Airlines have policies that no bag can weigh more than 50 lbs without incurring a $25 fee. Having already failed at Continental to explain our situation in a way that allowed for an exception to be made, I foolishly tried again at Aloha.

Me: “You see, my wife and I packed one large bag together. If we had put the same stuff into two bags, the total weight would have been the same (actually, slightly heavier due to the extra bag), but you would have allowed that onto the plane no problem.”

Aloha: “Yes, but each bag must be under 50 lbs.”

Me: “Oh, right, yes, I totally understand the policy. I’m saying that policy is nonsensical, because from a total weight perspective (the reduction of which is the only reason I can think of for the policy), our bringing two bags instead of the one we brought would have been MORE total weight on Aloha’s plane.”

Aloha: “Yes, but your bag weighs more than 50 lbs, which is over the limit.”

Me: “Who’s on first?”

Aloha: “This one goes to 11.”

Not wanting to pay the $25 overweight fee on principle, I take out a plastic trash bag we had packed, and Kelly and I start loading it with our snorkel gear, some shoes, and whatever else necessary to bring the bag under 50 lbs (the same crap incurs no fine in a carry-on, crowded overhead bins be damned). Cut to 10 minutes later at security, where the plastic bag is flagged for having our newly purchased bottle of sunscreen in it. So we had to ditch a full bottle of $12 sunscreen so that everyone can feel safe on our plane. Now I start to spiral into righteous indignation (not out loud) and start scribbling thoughts feverishly as we wait for our plane. Let’s review America’s safety record, shall we?

Event 1: September 11, 2001
Security Enhancement : Locking cockpit doors, air marshalls, lots of other added security measures
Prevents: Event 1 only

Event 2: Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber
Security Enhancement: All shoes
must go through x-ray
Prevents: Event 2 only

Event 3: Attempt to blow up planes with liquids on carry-ons
Security Enhancement: Severe limitations on carry-on liquids
Prevents: Event 3 only

Can you finish this sequence?

Obviously, Event 4 will exploit a not-yet-thought-of security hole, yet nobody in the security department has thought through our event-leads-to-hyper-specific-response cycle enough to realize it doesn’t make us any safer. An example: Richard Reid had a bomb in his shoe, so now all shoes have to go through x-ray. What if Richard Reid had strapped a bomb to the inside of his underwear? Are we going to strip search everyone? Actually, there’s a much more significant (and fundamental) flaw exposed by this example. Why when someone wears a shoe bomb onto a plane do we then assume that the next bomb is likely to be in a shoe? The 9/11 Commission Report concluded American intelligence suffered from a “failure of imagination” that failed to predict the possibility of 9/11 . I don’t know about you, but I think 9/11 would have taken quite a bit more imagination to predict than extrapolating from shoes to underwear. In the minds of aviation security watchdogs, bombs are more likely to be in shoes because in the recent past, one guy had a bomb in his shoe and zero guys had a bomb in their underwear. But it is precisely because now shoes go through x-ray and undees don’t that the next terrorist will be known as the Underwear Bomber. But just relax, everyone, the Hawaiian Tropic is safely in the garbage.

Tunnels Redeems Itself

Sunday morning we headed back to Tunnels Beach for a second try at what was supposed to be Kauai’s best snorkel spot. We were rewarded. In the morning, with the tide low and water calm as a bath, visibility was terrific, and we saw all kinds of creatures. Just off the coast of Tunnels is a quarter mile stretch of reef, ranging from 5’ to 50’ deep. There are all kinds of nooks and structures to see, each teeming with fish.



The highlight was our second turtle sighting of the trip. This one was much bigger than the first we saw at Lehua, and I got really close to him for a picture. Kelly has the honor of this turtle spotting. She found it after hanging out near a reef where she saw bubbles emerging through the cracks. The turtles sleep in there overnight and then emerge in the morning (note: it’s possible I just made that up). The turtle is the only creature in the ocean that will not alter its behavior no matter what you do. You can thrash in the water, you can swim up to them; it doesn’t matter, they are going to keep the same leisurely pace as if you were never there. They would make great European waiters.



We had lunch, a latte, and a smoothie at a sandwich shop, where we were served delicious food over the counter by snotty 14 year old girls. “Can I have a Panini with a side of scorn on the job?” Kauai in general has horrible service. There are exceptions, but many service industry workers are teenage girls, and it seems there’s nobody around to instill the basics of good service. It’s so hard to find good help these days on sparsely populated tropical islands.

We found one of the service exceptions that night at a restaurant in Hanalei. Really friendly service, great food, and a Hawaiian guitar duo that sounded really great. Some local Hawaiian women (and one of the band members) got up to Hula to some of the songs. For me this was the best dinner experience we had on Kauai, which I’m sure was not at all influenced by the fact that we came straight from a bar where I was poured a tropical drink that was way too strong.

Emma’s Bath and the Black Swan

Saturday morning we headed down the path to our secluded beach for a morning snorkel. It was low tide, and we couldn’t get out as far as we wanted, but we did see some cool fish as we floated across the shallow coral. We vowed to come back when it was high tide (though we never made it back).





Having been out and about constantly for the past few days, we decided to just hang out in our condo and read/write in the afternoon, which was very relaxing. I would have thought I would miss the internet like crazy, but I didn’t. It just goes to show how bad humans can be at predicting things. My travel reading is a book called “The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” It’s fascinating stuff, all about how we are horrible at predicting future events, but never realize it, since after the events we look back and convince ourselves it was, in fact, predictable. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but a principal one is that our memories are reconstructed each time we “remember”. There is no accurate ticker tape to go back to and check what we were really aware of at a given time. For instance, many people look back on the internet bubble of the late 90s, convinced they knew at the time it was a bubble about to burst. While a SMALL number of analysts actually did envision the internet bubble bursting before it did, the vast majority of people (myself included) and financial “analysts” were convinced we were in a new era where old rules didn’t apply. To everybody looking back on it, the crash seems like an obvious result, and we humans naturally impose today’s obviousness on yesterday’s memory. This phenomenon causes us to underestimate the randomness and unpredictability of life - we remember ourselves predicting more than we did. The “Swans” author is not shocked that we make these errors, but is amazed that we never catch on and realize we keep making the same error over and over again. One thing to think about: why do the majority of people still listen to and believe in the financial analysts (the supposed experts) that were SO wrong about the internet bubble, when it was so costly to be wrong?

In the afternoon, we headed over to Queen Emma’s Bath, which is an oval shaped swimming hole protected from the ocean by a natural formation of lava rocks. The guide book gave it an A for snorkeling, but it was crap. The water was all silty, making for poor visibility. It actually felt more like a pool than the ocean, which would have been cool if it were clean and uncrowded, but it was neither. The long hike down to the bath was worthwhile, however, as the rocks throughout the area were swimming with turtles, who had showed up for their afternoon algae feast. They come up for air every minute or so, when you can catch them with your camera.









That night, we headed into Hanalei for an early dinner of delicious pizza (again) followed by shave ice. When selecting a shave ice establishment, make sure their machine shaves from a solid ice block. Some places just feed ice cubes into an ice crusher, yielding a snow cone effect. It doesn’t hold the syrup as well, and it’s not as good as the cloud-like airiness of correctly shaved ice. Once I figured that out, I would shake my head in pity whenever I saw someone with an inferior shave ice in hand. Poor bastards. Also, the best flavor is (artificial) guava.

After dinner, we headed to the Hanalei Bay resort for a drink. Pulling into the parking lot, there was a guy manning the entrance, whom the car in front of us stopped to get instructions from. When it was our turn, we pulled up and said we wanted to have a drink at the bar, to which he replied, “Okay, go ahead and park.” I couldn’t come up with what we could have told him that would have resulted in a different response. I laughed out loud that it was this guy’s job to state the obvious. I’m sure he was recently promoted into his current job after having done such a good job handing out soap and paper towels at the local upscale nightclub. Yeah, cause that deserves a tip.

The bar at the Hanalei Bay Resort fits perfectly into Kauai’s landscape. It’s an open-air bar tucked into a little rainforest, with trickling water pools, colorful birds darting between the greenery, and a 50-foot canoe running diagonally along the entire ceiling. Almost as soon as we sat down, it started raining, then pouring. Kelly and I noted the serendipity of our having just missed getting soaked, yet being able to enjoy the rainforest atmosphere in all its glory. We drank Lava Flows and Mudslides while the blues rock band played.

Rain Forest and Poipu

Friday morning, we drove to the rain forest at Kokee State Park. Basically, you ascend (by car) through a series of beautiful lookouts. At the top, about 4000 feet up, we hiked a trail (that kept getting muddier) as fog and rain constantly shifted overhead. The view of the canyon below went from visible to invisible as the weather changed by the minute.















That afternoon, we headed to Poipu, the most popular beach destination on Kauai. Poipu is just like I remember it from when my family and I stayed there in 1991. It feels like a different island from the north, as the sun in Poipu seems to shine in a much brighter way. It’s a lot more touristy than the north, but not in a bad way. It has everything: bodysurfing for the teens, a wading pool for the kids, and booze and sunshine for adults.

I went bodysurfing at Brennekes Beach…for about 10 minutes, until I caught a wave I wished I hadn’t. Basically, the wave rode me. I was thinking of coming in anyway, when Kelly flagged me out of the water. She had found some turtles feeding on the rocks right next to where I was bodysurfing. It was a religious experience for Kelly. She loves her some turtles, let me tell you.





That night we had dinner just outside Princeville at a nice open-air restaurant. After our drink but before dinner, Kelly started moving her upper torso back and forth, and her arms up and down while chanting “High-uh-ho-uh, high-uh-ho-uh.” It was immediately obvious (to me) that she was doing a rain dance, as Kelly loves the rain and we hadn’t seen any (at sea level) on our trip yet, which is unusual, especially for the north. As soon as she started chanting, it began to rain – I kid you not. Kelly helped alleviate my disbelief when she reminded me that she is, in fact, part Cherokee. We made it past sundown before falling asleep, but not by much.

Na Pali and Lehua

As soon as we arrived at our condo, we had booked a boat tour to see the Na Pali coast and snorkel at Lehua Island. Thursday morning at 4:30am, we left our condo for the hour-long drive to the south of the island to catch our boat. We left well before the sun came up, and the stars were out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen stars as bright and as all emcompassing as they were that night. Kelly and I vowed to get up super early again to watch them on a morning we didn’t have to drive, but they never came out again like that. Some combination of moon configuration and cloud absence conspired that one time for star perfection.

The tour of the Na Pali coast was pretty cool. There were some beaches that are only accessible by kayak with hippies doing yoga on them. We came across a large group of spinner dolphins, which swam right beside our boat.









The boat then set off for Lehua, an island about an hour’s boat ride from Kauai. Either Lehua or the island next to it is private, bought by some super-religious folks who wanted a controlled (read: non-pagan) environment for their daughters to grow up in. I’m not sure how the daughters turned out, but the snorkling off Lehua was great. The spot we anchored at had a reef formation (as well as a mini-cave) that sloped down the side of the island, so there were spots a few feet deep all the way down to perhaps 100 to 150 feet deep. That spot probably had the best visibility of any water I’ve ever been in. You could easily see all the way to the bottom of the deepest part (the guides said at Lehua 80 feet visibility is a bad day). A highlight was when out of the clear blue swam a green turtle. He swam up for a picture, then mozied (turtles mozy) on by. We also saw the monk seal that we were told usually hangs out there, swimming about 60 feet below the surface. There are 30 monk seals in the Kauai area (out of some 1300 total remaining worldwide), and our guide explained they’re endangered and probably won’t be there in another 15 years.



As we were pulling out of the snorkel spot, the captain came on the megaphone and said, “Whale shark…guys…whale shark.” His voice was at normal volume, but contained a subdued excitement. Still, the captain had been pointing out various marine life all day, so I wasn’t sure if it was significant or not. I realized it was a big deal from the crew’s reaction. As soon as the announcement was made, their faces showed urgency, and they rushed ahead of all the guests (whom they had previously been waiting on hand and foot) to get to the bow of the ship. I headed to the bow myself, and after the captain explained it was 1.5 boat lengths in front of us on the left, I saw it: a gigantic gray blob just below the surface of the water. I knew it was a whale shark from the announcement, but my mind categorized it as a whale, as that is the only category of necessary size in which I could place it. It turned around and swam to the back of our boat. When I turned around, I saw 3 crew members already in the water with masks on, surrounding the behemoth. They each were petting it, and one grabbed its back fin and briefly rode it. They started hollering for guests to toss them their waterproof cameras for pictures, which a lucky few did (I was late). As the crew climbed into the boat, the captain said the guests could get in the water for a once in a lifetime experience. Kelly, I, and 3 others grabbed our masks and scampered into the water behind the only crew member who hadn’t yet been in the water with it. I was just behind the crew member, and swam out to where he was positioned (I was the first to get there). Under the water, he pointed to the shark. I saw the spots along the thin part leading to the tail, and could make out the gigantic gray blob of his entire form. I had grabbed my camera, but I wasn’t close enough for a shot that would show anything. By the time everyone else got to where the instructor was, the shark had moved on. Damn! I would love to have pet it.

It turns out spotting a whale shark is extremely rare. Each crew member had seen them an average of 3 times in their careers, and the last spotting for each averaged 1 to 2 years ago. So we were extremely lucky to have come upon one that day. As you may have guessed, whale sharks are a filter fish, don’t have teeth, and aren’t dangerous (tell that to the krill). Though once I saw the 3 crew members dive in on a moment’s notice, I knew it was harmless without having to be told. Kelly and I kept wondering what would have happened if that shark had shown up moments before and we had swum upon it during our snorkel hour. Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the ocean. This one was 30 feet long and “whale-like” is the only way I can do justice to the girth. Would we have panicked? Thrashed and swum away? One thing is for sure, an effeminate scream would have been heard from the end of my snorkel.



The hour-long boat ride back was an “E ticket ride”, as the captain explained, then realized most people don’t know what that means anymore. The open ocean had gotten rough, and we bounced through the waves to get home. When a particularly big swell would come along, the captain would have to lay off the throttle momentarily, before ramping it back up again. I made the mistake of trying to grab a cookie from the counter and get back to my seat. I lost my footing, but hurt nothing but my pride.

That night, we picked up an unbelievably good pizza from Pizza Hanalei and went to sleep before the sun went down. We were exhausted.