Potlatch!

Some of you may remember the first league team that Taryn created way back when, in what, 2002?


I have such fond memories of that team even though we only won probably one game the whole season. My favorite memories include: JT getting into fist fights in the end zone, the yellow team guy giving me a concussion, and Coach Steve. Chuck mentioned recently that almost everyone on the team are doctors now! We've come a long way (perhaps...)

With that in mind, I am very excited to announce a mini-reunion of sorts of the Orange Jail Team of yore. Taryn has put together a new team, the 30 year old Virgins! Some of the old team, plus some other Tucson folks and their random friends, get to play together this weekend at perhaps the biggest frisbee tournament in the country, Potlatch. The competition should be pretty fierce, but I have heard that it is mostly about having fun. So, off I go, north to Seattle tonight on a red-eye flight! It will be my first time off the islands since I moved here. As an added bonus: Miss Meg will be in Seattle too! Party, party, party! And hopefully no concussions...

Hot rail, hot rail!

One of the things I miss about Tucson is the sound of the train whistle at night and in the early morning. Oahu used to have a working railroad, the Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L) shown above, built in 1889. The train was primarily used for the transporation of pineapple and sugar cane from the inland to the port. During WWII, the train was used to transport troops across the island, but was used little after 1947. In 1972, it closed down all remaining operations.

Now the city is proposing to develop a light rail system, which at the cost of $3-4 billion has a lot of people talking about the future of transportation in Hawaii. When you come to visit, you will realize that the transportation in and around Honolulu is a mess. The highways were all built around the already developed city, and it is easily one of the most confusing and difficult places to drive in the country. For instance, the airport is approximately 10 miles from our house. On a good day, it will take 20 minutes to drive there. On a bad day (like the day we had to catch our plane to the Big Island) it can take 1 1/2 hours. There are just too many cars here and not enough road. I have heard that during tsunumi warnings, there are more cars than roads, so people end up just sitting in their cars waiting for the big wave to come take them away...

With more housing developments outside of town, and more people commuting into town for work, the light rail system makes sense. But where will the money come from? I don't know enough about it yet to have any sort of opinion, but I just wanted to bring up the topic to see if anyone has any ideas.

Have a great weekend! Kyle is away for a week, so I am going camping with Anna in Kualoa valley where they shot Jurassic Park and the tv show Lost. So exciting!!

Back to reality...

The Big Island trip was amazing! Above is a picture of the Ohia tree growing in 1984 lava (courtesy of Carolina). We walked for a mile on this to get to our car after 7 miles of uphill climbing with 40 pound packs! But what fun it was to reach the car, full of ice cold budweisers and fresh papaya.

Unfortunately, I am swamped this week with work, so I will most likely have to wait to post details and pictures. In the meantime, Carolina has already downloaded her pics from the trip which can be found here. Enjoy!

Big Island Bound

Tomorrow we are off to the Big Island to meet up with Brian and Carolina and do some serious backpacking. And by serious, I mean hiking on a volcano! Our rough itinerary of where we are going is on the map above. Pictures to follow the trip.

Love is in the air...

Presenting the future Dr. Mr. and Dr. Mrs. Dacks! Smiles abound! He asked her this morning on a beautiful summer day on top of Diamondhead! How romantic! Congratulations!

They are now the 4th couple we know to get engaged this year. I see lots of weddings in our future....

Here's the real picture, in case you want to actually see the view:

An accidental visit from Sam!

I have been meaning to update the blog, but things got hectic this week. Last Saturday, we were playing our last regular season game of the league frisbee, when I get a call from Sam, my brother. He is always flying somewhere in the world with the Air Force, and often times, they stop in Hawaii on their way to far off lands. This means that I actually get to see my brother more now than I ever did when I lived on the mainland. On this trip, he was supposed to come Sunday, gas up a jet on Monday, and leave by Tuesday. But, luckily for us, one of the jets was broken for three days. So instead of a quick visit, we got to spend some quality sibling time together. I also got to show Sam that Oahu is not just Hickam Air Force Base and Waikiki. We spent the week cruising around, basically going around the entire island except the Leeward side. His favorite part was the mountains, as we took him up to our favorite picnicking and grilling spot on top of St. Louis Heights. Here's a picture of us with Diamondhead in the background:

We also got to go snorkeling with the turtles at Shark's Cove, where we also took Ryan when he visited. It was more beautiful this time, and we saw 5 turtles, and touched the backs of 2. Sam's plane finally was fixed on Friday, so we had our final goodbyes after breakfast at Wailana Coffee House, our new favorite place to eat pancakes covered with coconut syrup! Yesterday was the Spring League Ultimate championships, where I am proud to announce, Team Brazil won the Beer (Loser's) Bracket! We were last place in the regular season, so this was quite a feat!


Back to the grind today, as I will have to work on a Sunday to get prepared for taking off to the Big Island next Saturday. Penny and Dacks come on Tuesday, which means cleaning the house and getting Gaffney ready for the kennel as well today. Ah well, I live in Hawaii, right? No complaints!