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.