DIAMOND HEAD

I had breakfast this morning at the Hau Tree Lanai located at the foot of Diamond Head with Terry Surles, #2 man at the Desert Research Insititute of the University of Reno.  As usual, we solved most of the problems of the world and each enjoyed a Bloody Mary and a glass of cabernet sauvignon.

My selection was a loco moco, something I try here and there to determine which restaurant makes the best.  I cannot recommend this dish for it has about the highest cholesterol weight of any meal known to man.  Sure foie gras has a higher concentration, but loco mocos are known for humongousness.  When various meats are grilled, a huge amount of waste oil is collected.  Guess what is used to make the gravy for loco moco?   For the price and taste, Cafe 100 in Hilo still makes the best, for this is where this concoction was perhaps invented...or more probably it was at Lincoln Grill, also in Hilo, where the charge in 1949 was 25 cents.  It cost $18 at Hau Tree Lanai, but corn beef hash, a sausage and some kind of cutlet augments the hamburger.  You can still "dine" at Cafe 100, but Lincoln Grill closed almost half a century ago.  The spam loco moco below is a more recent enhancement to further exacerbate your cholesterol level:

Oh, why is this called loco moco?  George Okimoto was one of the first to try it and he was a crazy football player.  Loco means crazy, and moco was just a convenient rhyme.

Terry then had to rush to the airport to return to Reno as the #1 is in the hospital.  Terry's wife, Sally Benson, is Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University.

My trek to the top of Diamond Head began with a brisk walk of an hour to get from the Kaimana Beach Hotel to the Diamond Head Crater entrance, all uphill.  Then the real hike began, about another 45 minutes, which was not as easy as I thought it would be.   There is a steep stairway of 74 concrete steps, a 225-foot long narrow tunnel, a 99 step steep stairway, and worse, interspersed was a series of rough trail walks.  Most definitely, you would not want to do this when it rains.  What kept me going was a sufficient number of sweaty morbidly obese people returning down the same trail.

I took a photo of a yellow Ilima.  There is also an orange Ilima, which is made into a Royal Lei.

A few don'ts:  slippers are a no-no, water is not required as there is a snack wagon at the beginning of the climb, and a flashilight is not needed for everything is lighted.  Wear a hat.  Unfortunately the wind tossed mine down the slopes at the top, where I had come to toss Pearl's ashes.  She kept telling me that the view was spectacular.  YES, I'VE LIVE IN HAWAII SINCE 1940 AND THIS WAS MY VERY FIRST TREK TO THE DIAMOND HEAD LOOKOUT!  And my first view was, indeed, breathtaking:

I show the photo immediately above because that is the Ala Wai Golf Course, where I will play tomorrow.  For the record, the shot below is towards the north, showing a nice concrete walkway, which is not a common convenience:

You start at the 200 foot level and get to the summit, which is at 761 feet.  Oahu is roughly 3 million years old, and Diamond Head was formed around 300,000 years ago.  The Hawaiian name is Leahi, probably meaning forehead of an ahi (yellow-fin tuna), but British sailors found some calcite crystals in the rocks along the slope and thought they found diamond:  thus, Diamond Head.

You see some interesting sights when you take a hike.  Here is, I guess, the campaign headquarters of Ron Paul, and if you magnify that decal to the right, it has something to do with the National Rifle Association:

Upon my return to Craigside, an egret welcomed me home:

Just another Sunday in Honolulu.

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PEARL'S ASHES: Chapter 15--Diamond Head

Pearl and I have never together walked to the top of the Diamond Head lookout.  She had been there twice, with zero for me.  So on 4 December 2011 I went mainly because I had brunch with Terry Surles at Hau Tree Lanai, located on the slopes of this crater, and I promised Pearl that I would someday make it to the top.  I had an $18 loco moco and indicated that the first such dish served 68 years ago was at Lincoln Grill in Hilo for 25 cents.

To quote myself:

My trek to the top of Diamond Head began with a brisk walk of an hour to get from the Kaimana Beach Hotel to the Diamond Head Crater entrance, all uphill.  Then the real hike began, about another 45 minutes, which was not as easy as I thought it would be.   There is a steep stairway of 74 concrete steps, a 225-foot long narrow tunnel, a 99 step steep stairway, and worse, interspersed was a series of rough trail walks.  Most definitely, you would not want to do this when it rains.  What kept me going was a sufficient number of sweaty morbidly obese people returning down the same trail. 

On the way up I took a photo of a yellow ilima flower.  There are various colors growing from an assortment of ground plants and shrubs, but they are all related (Sida fall).  The orange version was once only for royalty, and a good one takes 1000 flowers.

Some guidelines say bring drinking water and a flashlight.  Nah, there are snack wagons at the entrance and it is lighted all the way.

The island of Oahu was formed roughly 3 million years ago and Diamond Head itself is only 300,000 years old.  Interestingly enough, it was reported only an hour ago that an early form of us, Homo sapiens, was recently unearthed 300,000 years ago in Morocco, of all places.

The Hawaiian name for Diamond Head is Leahi (forehead of a yellow fin tuna),  but the popular name was coined when British sailors found some calcite crystals along the slope and though they had found diamonds.

You start at the 200 foot level, hiking up to an elevation of 761 feet.  This is the north scene, but do not be too encouraged by the path and railing, for there are portions not so perfectly walkable.

The view from the top was spectacular:

That's skinny Waikiki Beach, and the tiny pink structure is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.  Here is where I tossed Pearl's gel cap, #28, and lost my hat.  It can get windy up there.  

On the way down I passed Ron Paul's campaign headquarters.  In 2011 he was running for president.  Note the decal of the National Rifle Association also on the window.

When I returned to Craigside (my earlier home of 32 years, for I moved into 15 Craigside three years ago), an egret welcomed me home:

Next week, La Mer and House Without a Key.

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BEST BENTOS IN PARADISE

More than a third of a century ago I was toiling in the U.S. Senate and promised myself that when I returned to Hawaii I would have bento lunch at the beach every Friday.  Well, that did not quite happen, but since I've retired, I've had many a bento lunch at the beach, or, at least with a spectacular view of the ocean.

As an authority on this subject, here are, first, my honorable mentions:

• Diamond Head Market and Grill:  slightly more expensive with limited options.
• Sumo Ramen and Curry (Market City):  nice combinations and filling.
• Various chicken outlets:
• Mitsuken  Okazu and Catering:  very special garlic chicken
• Kentucky Fried Chicken:  maybe still the best chicken
• Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen:  nostalgic food from Baton Rouge
• Hamburger
• Teddy's Bigger Burgers:  bigger and good, but expensive and time consuming
• W & M Bar-B-Q Burger:  cheap and tasty, but of poor quality
• the national chains

I might add that my lists are restricted to the path from home/university to Ala Wai Golf Course because I tend to enjoy my meal at the Diamond Head Lookout where you can park and view the surfers below and Magic Island, where I wheel a recliner under a coconut tree and also watch the surfers, plus Diamond Head.  I think Diamond Head was a must when I was dreaming back then in DC.

So here are my favorites, probably in this order:

• Rainbow Drive Inn and, next door, Hawaii's Favorite Kitchens:  I like their spaghetti with hot dog, great for carbo-loading, which is something I don't need, and HFK's BBQ chicken (so large that it sticks out of the container):

• Zippy's:  the chili moco is nutritionally lethal, but delicious:

You get:

• 1st Layer: White Rice
• 2nd Layer: Mayo’-based “Secret Mac Salad Sauce”
• 3rd Layer: (1) Hamburger Patty
• 4th Layer: Zippy’s Chili (classic only)
• 5th Layer with Fried Eggs

• L&L Drive-Inn:  Each L&L can be slightly different.  There is something about the one located in Market City that draws me back.  There is a special umaminess that comes through.  Here is their garlic ahi:

• Don Quixote:  this is a lower-end Japanese department store and features a wide range of fast food options, plus their own plate lunch specials.  One bento in particular comes from U-Choice Inn, their roast and cold (not shown here) duck special on rice with bok choy:

Of course, if I prematurely die of almost any ailment, high on the list of causes would be the food from these take-out restaurants above.  Oh, I might add that I need to drink something, and, as water is too bland, soda is bad for you, diet soda is worse, and even juices are now questioned, I have some kind of beer.  You need to be careful, because in most beach locations alcohol is prohibited.  So I shield the bottle and use a straw.  I tend to drink Mickey's because I find a whole bottle too much for lunch, and the cover can be screwed  back on.  Plus the bottle is short.  A whole bottle of beer means my blood alcohol level remains below 0.02, and half a bottle, less than 0.01.  The legal limit is 0.08, and would take almost 4 beers (or four 5-ounce glasses of wine or four 1.5 ounces of scotches).  If all this occurs in two hours,  you can subtract 0.03.  Click here for details.

Finally, the key criteria to make my Best Bentos in Paradise list are:  tasty cuisine, ease of parking with quick in-out service within 5 minutes and a fabulous view.  Here is the scene from my Diamond Head location:

On Magic Island, there is, of course, Diamond Head, and the people walking by (note bird man):

Tomorrow my blog will feature:  HAVE YOU EVER HAD A $300 JAPANESE MEAL IN HONOLULU?  There is Vintage Cave, of course, and you can read about one of my adventures there.  But have you heard of Teppanyaki Ginza Sumikawa (Onodera)?  New...expensive...great???...we'll see.

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Very unusual, but there are no ocean storms:

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ABOUT DIAMOND HEAD

From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

         DAY  USA  WORLD    Brazil    India    South Africa

2020

June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82

July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572

Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130

Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82

Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85

Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118

Dec    30       3880    14748       1224       299      465

2021

Jan     14      4142     15512       1151        189     712

Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398

Mar      2       1989     9490        1726       110      194

April     6        906    11787         4211       631       37

May     4        853     13667        3025      3786      59 

June    1        287    10637         2346      3205      95

 July    7         251      8440        1595        817      411

Aug     4         656    10120        1118        532      423 

Sept   22      2228      9326          839        279     124

Oct      6       2102      8255          543       315       59

Nov    3        1436      7830         186        458       23

Dec     1       1633      8475          266        477       28

2022

Jan     7        2025      6729         148         285     140

Feb     2        2990   12012          946        991      175

Mar     2        1778     7756          335         173       28 

Apr     1          439      4056          290          52       12

May    5          225      2404         151            ?        64

June    2         216      1413         130           10        31

July    6           316      1627         335           35       12 

Aug    4           311       2138         258          70         ?

Sep    1          272       1732         174            ?         ?

Oct     6          281       1305         119            9         ?

Nov    3          167         980           16            ?         ?

        25            88         985           71             3        ?  

Dec    3          149       1029         131            3         ?

          8          194       1320         104             6       86

        15          147       1295         124             4         ?

        22          289       1637         165             9         ? 

        28          296       1768         337             2         ?

Jan    4          346       1534         207             ?         ?

         5           220       1611         183             ?         ? 

       12           270       1470         128             ?         ?

       19           225       1775         480             ?         ?

        26          351       1361           92             1         7

Feb    1          221       1261         126             ?         ?

          8          329         999           50             2         ?

        15          211         999         132             1         ?

        22          177       1016         312             1         ? 

Mar    1          119         618           81             1         ?

Summary:

• Most new deaths yesterday.
• #1  Germany  135
• #2  USA  119
• #3  Brazil  81
• #5  Japan  67
• #6  Taiwan  40
• World  618 
• Most new cases yesterday.
• #1  Germany 24,875
• #2  Brazil  14,706
• #3  Japan  14,524
• #7  USA  9,706

But daily numbers are spotty.  So here are some weekly totals.

• Deaths in the past 7 days. (per million population in parentheses)
• #1  Brazil  1018 (5)
• #2  USA  980 (3)
• #3  Germany  595 (7)
• #19  Australia  38 (2)
• World  5385  (0.1....but many countries don't even bother to report accurately, so this number is not close to being realistic)
• New Cases in the past 7 days. (per million population in parentheses)
• #1  Germany  125,034 (1491)
• #2  USA  100,031 (299)
• #3  Taiwan  88,774 (3716)
• #14  Australia  8,883 (341)
• World 841,777  (105)
• I include Australia, as our next trip beginning Sunday is to Sydney.  About new cases in the past 7 days, we will stop through the following sites in BOLD on our cruise back to Honolulu.  Note how prominently they are positioned for cyclone season, to be highlighted at the end of this posting.
• #1    Austria  4392
• #2    Taiwan  3716
• #5    New Zealand  1588
• #6    Germany  1491
• #16  Japan  699
• #26  Australia  341
• #28  USA  299
• #61  Samoa  64
• #76  New Caledonia  17
• #81  Fiji  14

Looking back at the table above, you would think that the pandemic is over.  There are now more seasonal flu deaths/day than covid.  So for all practical purposes, there does not seem to be any reason to prolong this state of anxiety.  

Unfortunately, not unlike Japan and several countries of the Orient that in the first year or two escaped getting too many cases, then during the past few months completely reversed the picture by leading the world in new cases and deaths, something similar has happened to my seniors' community.  

• We almost totally escaped getting infected during the first three years, except for a couple of minor outbreaks.  
• However, we have during the past month joined the Japan/South Korea/Taiwan group by suddenly becoming maybe the world epicenter....in terms of cases/capita.  It's disarming to walk past those apartments with these scary signs on the doors of those so infected.  However, I don't think any resident has actually died, which is remarkable, as the average age here must be in the mid-80s.  Why this is happening is alarming because just about every resident and staff member here has had all five shots, including the Omicron booster.
• Won't mention any numbers, but my fear is that I am a few days away from leaving Hawaii for my trip to Australia, from where I catch a 53-day cruise back to Honolulu.  We can't board the ship if we are infected, and we don't have any cruise insurance.  
• We won't know our fate until the day before departure from Sydney when we take a covid test.

With that uncertainty, I today post on Diamond Head.

The iconic image of Hawaii is Diamond Head, shown on  my masthead.  I've had numerous postings about this extinct volcano, although maybe dormant might be more accurate.  Here is the story of this landmark.

• Located just at the outskirts of Waikiki and a little more than two miles from the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus.
• A walk to the top, 12 years ago.
• I've had a hundred bentos at the Diamond Head lookout.  Here is one of 8 years ago. And two years later where I talk about the Amelia Earhart rock monument.

I live on Oahu, said to have formed 3-4 million years ago.  

• Diamond Head is probably not even 500,000 years old, perhaps as young as 200,000, and is known to Hawaiians as Leahi, mainly because the summit resembles the forehead (lae) of the ahi fish.
• However in 1825 British sailors found sparkling volcanic calcite crystals in the sand and mistook them for diamonds.  So a new name, Diamond Head.
• 
  Thus came the second Hawaiian name, Kaimana Hila.  Kaimana means diamond, while hila is a hill.  
• Charles King in 1916 composed Kaimana Hila, and as many Hawaiian songs tended to feature this term near the end, until this moment, I thought kaimana hila was something like "here is now the end of the music."

So I took an outing to Diamond Head.  I first stopped by Hawaii's Favorite Kitchens (left of Rainbow Drive) to pick up a rotisserie chicken bento, and by mistake got a lot of macaroni salad.  Then drove up to the view spot.

My bento:

I have quite a view from where I was enjoying my meal.

A few feet from where I was parked is the Amelia Earhart rock memorial, and looking mauka (toward the mountain), you can see the top of Diamond Head, which is 560 feet high.

You can of course drive to the other side of this crater and walk up.  A healthy climb, and I think visitors now need to made an advance reservation.  Parking costs $10 and there is an entrance fee of $5/person.  I went in 2011 and took this photo.

There are two ocean storms  in the region where our Seabourn Odyssey will go.  Cyclone Judy (right) was a Category 5, and has dropped to a 4, but caused havoc on Vanuatu.  Cyclone Kevin will strengthen to at least Category 3, and will follow the same path over Vanuatu.

Our Seabourn Odyssey will leave Cairns on March 27, visit New Caledonia, then go on to Fiji, followed by Samoa.

One final video, for we will begin our trip in Australia.

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