Filed under: Film, Sport, Surf | Tags: elvis, endless summer, laird hamilton, monster waves, riding giants
I’m not sure if it is possible to make a bad surf movie, given the subject matter. By surf movie, I am, of course, not referring to the ones from the 50s intermittently starring Elvis, though they had their charms. Those were beach movies. I’m talking about the genre of rambling surf documentaries initiated by Endless Summer.
Among its class, Riding Giants is above average. Given the subject matter – monster wave riding – the action is killer. I appreciated it for the well-executed history of surfing through to what the film presents as its natural end: the continued search for a bigger wave. Maybe a bit too much focus on Laird Hamilton, with no disrespect intended to what he’s accomplished.
Filed under: Activities, Family, Hawaii, Kids, Sport | Tags: AYSO, goal, soccer dad
I have officially joined the “soccer dad” demographic. Today was Taiyo’s first game in the AYSO five-year old league. Unfortunately the other team had one of those kids with two older brothers who play soccer, so he shredded Taiyo’s team’s defense like lettuce. However, I am proud to report that Taiyo represented with two goals of his own. It just so happened that one of those was in his own net…
Filed under: Gadgets, Hawaii, Sport, Surf | Tags: granny, kimo's, robert august, surfboard
I am now an official member of Hawaiian society.
Not because I registered to vote here – which I did recently, as if my vote will count in an overwhelmingly pro-Obama state – but because I stopped shelling out ludicrous amounts of cash for board rentals and bought my own. Come to think of it, they probably wouldn’t have allowed me to vote if they knew I was not a surfboard owner; I am now legit.
The purchase did not come easily, which was a surprise to me. I would have thought buying a board in Hawaii was like shooting fish in a barrel. I should clarify: it is easy to find new boards, of course. I was looking for a used long board for a decent price. One of the reasons this is not a buyers market, I would guess, is that serious surfers collect boards like guitarists amass stockpiles of guitars.
So there I was, scouring Craigslist and the local shops, and coming up with nothing. All I was looking for was a ten-foot-plus beater for around $300. Then we heard about a place called Kimo’s Surf Hut located in Kailua. So we drove over for a a few hours of sun on Lanikai, a superb and somewhat secluded beach, and stopped in at Kimo’s on the way back to Honolulu.
As soon as I stepped into the shop I knew I had come the right place. Kimo’s son immediately showed me a couple boards that fit my criteria. Then his younger brother came and told him Kimo had one that had just come in that was perfect for me. I walked back out into the sun and there it was lying out on a couple of wooden workbenches: an old, yellowing 11-foot epoxy Robert August longboard by Surftech.
It’s about the most dinged up piece of junk you can imagine, but it still floats, and for a guy who still surfs like a granny, it is choice.
Filed under: Activities, Hawaii, Sport | Tags: frisbee, polar bears, sports, ultimate
If you are reading the title of this post and thinking, “The ultimate what?” then you are in need of a serious education.
Ultimate frisbee is perhaps the ultimate sport, combining, as it does, the best of football, basketball and soccer with high-flying frisbee action. The only reason it has not shot to international prominence is that it is perpetually the sport of choice of the slacker, and enjoys a reputation as such. However, when played by experienced and athletic performers, the sport truly rises to levels of excitement that have potential far beyond the semi-underground place where the it resides today.
Like the ping-pong tables of our youth, frisbee has always been there, ever-present, under-respected.
I was introduced to ultimate in college, via the disorganized pickup game, and the slightly more organized intramural game. Later on in Tokyo I played pickup games in Yoyogi Park on weekends, but as the kids came my involvement gradually trailed off. Here in Honolulu I’ve gotten more involved than I ever have, joining the Hawaii Ultimate fall league. The folks in the league are pretty serious about the game, and I’m actually learning plays and formations for the first time in my life. The team I’m on, Polar Bears for Pipelines, is 3-1, but I’ve started to discover that there are differences between what I was able to do five years ago and now. It now takes me a whole week to recover from the hamstring strains and calf pulls that seem to slow me up in each and every game.
Filed under: Random, Sport | Tags: Bolt, Olympics, Phelps, record, Speedo, suspicious
In my personal views, I waver between blind optimism and cold cynicism. The pendular sway between the two poles is in my blood; I am American to the core. Sad to say that watching the Olympics, the cynical side got the better of me.
Let me begin expressing this short, uninformed opinion with a disclaimer: I have neither the time nor inclination to do the research to back up my views. What follows is purely based on “gut” instinct and vague recollections of stuff I read. This should be fun.
What I’d like to address is all the record-breaking going on at the games, in particular in swimming. Yes, there were some amazing individual performances, most notably Michael Phelps. And I do believe that these performances were mostly a testament to the amazing fortitude of the athletes.
But, come on! Almost every other final a world record? I know the Olympic stage brings out the best in the best, but it all just seemed a bit excessive. In the accounts I read, there were generally two explanations for the rash of records falling (in swimming): super-high-tech swimsuits and advanced “training methods.” OK, a swimsuit can shave how many seconds off a time? Is it even a matter of seconds? Still, every major media outlet went in depth (straight from the Speedo press release) on the suits, breaking down the physics for us armchair sportsmen. But I don’t recall seeing a single bit of ink spilled on the topic of those “training methods.” Were they too proprietary, too much a highly kept secret?
Or, are “training methods,” as I have learned from the tall tales of BALCO, a euphemism for performance enhancing substances? There, I said it. No disrespect to the athletes, but the rate and margins of record-breaking strained this sportsfan’s threadbare credulity.
As one of the NBC announcers put it after watching Bolt gallop to two insane victories in the 100 and 200, and I paraphrase, “I only hope test results will show his performance was clean.”
Snorkeling is to scuba diving as body boarding is to surfing. It is the sport of the casual enthusiast versus a passionate commitment. And yet, just as body boarding has gained cred through the existence of a pro circuit dedicated to its most intense practitioners, snorkeling also has a lot to be said in its favor. For one thing, it is low maintenance, low budget. A five dollar rental and you are swimming with the fishes for a day. Pull over the car, strap on the plastic gear that, while intended for benign interactions with nature, in a few years will be dumped at sea, and enter the mirror world of water. That, in my book, is a price of admission that bests Disneyland any day of the week.
I am not a snorkeling fanatic by any means, or even a frequent snorkeler. So I don’t really have much to compare the snorkeling wonderland of Shark’s Cove to. But it must be pretty decent to attract the scuba set, who you can see laboring on shore with their heavy tanks and troublesome bodysuits, and gliding beneath you like henchmen in a James Bond movie.
The crazy thing about the cove is it starts at ankle deep and by about fifteen feet out you are airborne, gazing down at the canyons of coral below. Like all of the coral I have seen off Oahu so far, it is not in good shape, but the abundance of marine life more than makes up for it. We glided about for an hour that felt to me like twenty minutes. I’d wax poetic about the varieties of fish species if I hadn’t failed my Intro to Marine Biology class back in college. Just imagine the calming effect that that giant fishtank in your doctor’s office has on you and magnify that by about a thousand. There are also some caves that you can swim through if your lungs and balls are big enough. We took a pass. I think it is the kind of thing someone needs to show you.
When our friend Grant committed to visiting us at the end of last month, I started to freak. Grant likes nature. Grant hates tourist traps. Grant is a free spirit. What the hell are we going to do with him for six days in Waikiki?
Running through my still limited knowledge of the island and what it has to offer, I thought back fondly on the Manoa Falls hike we did. But that hike, while dense with lush rainforest, is short and well-traveled. If a hike was to go on the agenda, it needed to be a little wilder, a little more challenging.
My outdoorsy co-worker was able to recommend a few, and handed me his copy of Stewart Ball’s classic tome on Oahu hikes. Leafing through the pages the legendary Lanipo hike caught my eye, but the night before I wussed out and decided on the easier, shorter and more popular Kuli’ou’ou Ridge.
The hike starts out with a series of long switchbacks up the valley. We made a quick start to put some distance between ourselves and the group of pre-teens in matching yellow shirts that was assembling at the trailhead with their parents. The foliage is not nearly as spectacular or diverse as you find in Manoa, but the views looking back down the valley make up for it. Midway up the trail flattens through a few groves of Cook pines, which make you feel like you are wrapped up in a cocoon of green mesh – a nice, kind of mysterious sensation, but one that doesn’t necessarily feel distinctly Hawaiian. After that, the trail steepens over too many exposed roots – wet exposed roots that took me out once on the way down. The trees gradually thin out and then you are up some stairs installed to prevent erosion on the ascent to the ridgeline.
The views of the windward side are well worth the price of admission: rippled green peaks undulating gently to the north and south and green, sparsely populated flats extending out to the ocean. We hiked a little ways up the ridge – again, to escape the tweenies that were hot on our tails – and, in fact, it looks like you could go pretty far in both directions along it. If you had the cajones, and weren’t wearing a pair of worn out New Balances as hiking shoes.
All in all, a perfect half-day hike for the occasional trekker.
So ten years of advancement in bike design just passed me by while living in Japan. I did see the occasional high-end road machine zip by, usually gaijin-owned, but in the land of mama-cherries, never had much interaction with anything more advanced than single-gear, basket-mounted neighborhood cruisers. Man was I missing out.
With gas prices rising and my beltline expanding, there was never a better time than now to get back in the saddle. Honolulu is such a small city, I am surprised more people don’t take advantage of pedal power. I guess people are starting to, though, judging by what the bike shop pros are saying.
With my recent history of riding bikes designed in circa 1975, I didn’t have much knowledge to go on in making an informed purchase. I did know that I didn’t want to buy the crap they sell in Walmart. That was a good starting point. Then, by chance, I lunched with a friend whose boyfriend works in The Bike Shop. That’s right, they have the cajones to call themselves simply the bike shop. The store seemed to be staffed by former bike messengers and failed downhill racers (aside from the owner, who resembled the Simpsons comic book guy) – slightly intimidating to a novice like me, but also quite knowledgeable.
They steered me toward the Crosstrail, by Specialized, an entry-level hybrid that is perfect for commuting and light trail riding. I swapped out the trail tires for some kevlar-lined fatties that are built for speed but can handle the potholes and grassy shortcuts that abound in this neck of the woods. The attention to detail and functional beauty in every part of the bike, from the grips to the saddle to the gearshifters just blows me away. The frame is light and super-solid, the ride smooth and powerful.
All day long I sit in my office like a schoolboy waiting for the day to end so I can enjoy my bikeride home.
