January 11, 2010 RRR #2

Just a little bit more Rambling this morning. Revisited the place BK took me to before. AHA!! I remembered to bring my camera. Going to put a couple of shots in here and see how it goes. This is going to be an experiment in how to do things. You won’t believe how many goofy things I have done to get this far, I’m pretty sure I can’t duplicate it again. The whole purpose of this drill in photo manipulations is to make a very valid point I figured out while taking these photos. Number one do not fall in while doing shooting your pictures unless you want to see what you would look like without skin and flesh. Photo on the right is the tide coming in and the one on the left is it rushing out again I’m pretty sure a couple of trips being drug in and out of this lava would have you being a good candidate for one of those skeletons you always see in the doctor’s office. This is a perfect example of undertow that your Mother always warned you about. It’s a shame that I can’t put in sound effects with these photos, they were quite impressive. I guess you could do your own. Look at the photo and go WHOOSH as loud as you can, if you could put in a little BOOM at the same time it would be pretty close. Okay cross your fingers I’m going for another photo or two. What are the odds that I can do this twice? I don’t know about you but the suspense is killing me. How about that? It surprised the heck out of me also. Now for step two, getting the text to wrap around the photos. I’ve tried something and its not working. Going to plan B, now the real question is do I have a plan B? For some reason or another it worked on one of the photos why not the second one?? Going to plan C. Plan C is in the works now only time and a few more words will tell the Tale. ( Didn’t work) Plan D. Well again the suspense is terrible. Whoops, may have to panic and get BK to help me. Well she came in here like Mighty Mouse and saved the day, that is if you are old enough to remember the old cartoon. Remember the song he sang as he rushed in to kick the bad guys ass? (I HAVE COME TO SAVE THE DAY, MIGHTY MOUSE IS ON HIS WAS) Now if you were a bad guy you more then likely wouldn’t worry all that much if a mouse showed up and offered to kick your ass. Big mistake, Mighty Mouse could knock you into next week. Plan D with BK playing Mighty Mouse has done the trick so I can tell you about the two photos of the cracked Lava. I think that an earthquake in the days gone by came and it broke off as you see. These pieces that you are looking at are bigger then a school bus and you can see they would fit perfectly together if you had a super, big guy ( I suggest a giant) with some super glue he could stick her back together again just like she was seventeen million one hundred and sixteen years ago on Sept 17th around noon I believe. The earthquake theory is quite valid, we have had a few of them while I have been here. BK is someone used to them and gets a chuckle at me running around like a chicken with his head cut off when one occurs. We had one about six months ago, I think it was in the 5.3 on the Richter scale range. It was quite a ways out in the Pacific so we just rocked and rolled here. But about a week later we made a trip to the other side of the Island and on the way we could see scars in the earth where some low rises had lost part of their slope and slid down the hill. Not a biggie unless you happened to be standing on the rise when it decided to go south with you. Then after you got yourself cleaned up and some new undies, you could tell your buddies that you weren’t scared a bit. Well I think this will do the trick for Roaming ‘Round Ramblings for now. Stay tuned and next time I will tell you the story of the terrible frog that has invaded Hawaii. What the heck I will tell you about him now. He has the innocent name of coqui, he is from Puerto Rica I believe. He has arrived and made his presents known in a big way. Since he has no natural enemies here, he has proceeded to multiply like mad. He is only about an inch in diameter and pretty common looking when you finally find one ( They hide in the crooks of trees, palms, grass, behind your rake, etc. They have one small annoying habit, they say their name (co-Key) approximately one hundred thousand times a night. The decimal level is really up there and since there are about a hundred of the things per acre (or at least it seems like it) they can make sleeping a little tricky. Now this may sound a little goofy or perhaps a little cruel, but I have been known to go out in my underwear with a flashlight and a BB gun and inspect a bush for ten minutes to find one that is croaking under the bedroom window. When I find one I take particular and gleeful enjoyment in sticking the BB gun close to his pointed little head and watching him fly end over end through the air as I put an end to his lustful cries for a little girl frog so they can make more coquis. I’m not sure how to spell their names, but since this is a family G rated Rambling I will not go into any great details on the various names that I have used in describing my personal opinion of what their names should be. Needless to say they are making more little coquis a heck of a lot faster then I’m able to execute them, I think the only answer is for Moses to show up and do one of his get rid of the plague tricks. Since no one has heard from him for a long time, I’m not holding my breath. But if you should happen to run into him, please tell him to come to Hawaii and give us a hand. We are not holding any of his people but we could make him a good deal on some wild goats and pigs, which Hawaii has to many of also. Easy to recognize him, he has long hair and a beard and dresses real funny. Never mind, we have many of these guys here already. See you later with a thrilling? chapter of Roaming ‘Round Rambling. DISCLAIMER (READ AT YOUR OWN RISK) NO EFFORT IS MADE TO MAKE THIS CORRECT IN GRAMMAR ETC.

January 2, 2010 RRR #1

Dear Family and who every else I decide to send this to. Just a bunch of rambling thoughts in my head this morning and I’m not going to worry too much about punctuation, spelling etc. since this smart aleck computer is fixing things as fast as I screw them up. I may have BK go over this when I’m done; she is quite a whiz in English. She has taken on the unenviable task of trying to smarten me up some.
BK took me to a place Thursday that was like being on the moon, also one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and a very scary place that I would love to know the complete history of. Things have happened at this place that defies description. It’s a big Lava flow that ran into the Ocean many eons ago. Really thick Lava, the interesting thing is it has broken into giant chunks that look like they have broken off with an earthquake and are laying at odd angles, standing above them you can see that they would fit together and make a whole if a super giant came along with a giant tube of super glue and wanted to reassemble them. I think the earth was really rocking and rolling when this lava flow broke up like it did. Well anyhow this place had everything, tidal pools with all kinds of little creatures in it, blow holes where the waves are hitting and shooting straight up making this marvelous sound. Of course I didn’t have my camera with me. I will go back and get some photos of that for sure, will try and post them on AOL or face book and try and share with you what the place looks like. Do not stumble and fall while walking on this type lava, I don’t think there are enough band aids in the world to patch up all the little boo boo’s you would have, pretty rough stuff with thousands of jagged edges. Some lava is smooth and looks like cake batter that you just stirred and some of it is rougher then a cob. They might only be a matter of inches away from each other, different eruptions I assume. Found some plants growing on the Lava up on Mauna Kea the other day, took some photo’s maybe I will be able to send some with this.
Next rambling!!! DRIVING IN HAWAII The people here surprise the dickens out of you, very seldom do you run across someone that is in a super hurry, they just kind of drift along at their own pace, example of: you are on at a cross street wanting to get on the four lane highway, to do so you have to make a left turn across two lanes and merge into the traffic going the other way. There are a line of cars on the highway wanting to turn left also; you are never going to be able to make this work. No problem people stop and wave you across, no honking of horns, no one finger salutes, just the way it is done. The people here consider stop signs as a suggestion only, you have the option of stopping or just driving into traffic and everyone will make a hole for you, the problem is you never know which one of these options the driver is going to take, so whatever else you do in Hawaii while driving keep a sharp look out for option 2. Police cars, they don’t have any (or very rare) you are a policeman here you drive the family sedan with a blue light stuck on the top. When he is taking his family to Wal-Mart puts the blue light in the trunk I guess. So you never know if the guy driving a Honda Civic behind you might be a policeman or just another guy on the road with you. The Big Island where we live basically has one road that goes around the perimeter of the Island and everything else just kind of feeds off it to go to little towns etc and the highest speed you can legally go is 55 miles an hour on the whole Island, maybe have ten miles of four lane road in the whole place, it is in the major towns so you can’t go over 45 miles an hour there, so buying a muscle car or a fancy sports car that can do 140 miles an hour really doesn’t make much sense here. Buy one with good suspension, they are not the most talented road builders here, have a big dip or something in the road, fix it? Heck no! Put up a sign that tells people there is a dip and problem fixed. Enough rambling for now, see you all later.