Here is a post I've had laying around for months!
but first, a colletion of the latest creepy crawlies. I've got a lot of pictures of bugs. I think because they stand still for so long, and they easily get an emotional response.
Anyway, here is a small brown scorpion that Beth thinks she maimed, but didn't kill,
and here it, or maybe its friend, is about a week later, hung up in the web of this slight spider. I would like to know what happened here.
The parrots have returned to the lot next door! I haven't seen them for months! Though loud, they are fun to look at. They are sensitive to the presence of people, and will leave as soon as they notice you. Their return corresponds with the neighbors moving out of the front house... there is a joke in here somewhere, though it seems kind of harsh... something about only enough space for one flock of squawking half wits.
I feel compelled to write edgier things in my blog, after reading the
bike snob yesterday-- pretty funny and cynical view of cycling. Highly recommended. I'm still learning about the corners of the internet that many of you probably discovered years ago.
This morning, I drove to Waimea to help with a "bike rodeo:" a fun event to get kids on their bikes and teach them some riding skills. This is with PATH, and this event was for preschoolers. Super fun. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures, but imagine 20 little kids zooming around on an array of bikes, some with training wheels, some without, some tricycles, a scooter. We taught them about helmets, then had them do things like ride in a figure eight, or weave between cones. Fun. Some of them were pretty good on their bikes. Some of them could already skid their tires with their coaster brakes, which seems to be a fun skill for any age kid. A bit of a problem with the middle schoolers-- they really want to skid their bikes, and we want them to have fun, but we'd rather not have to buy new tires...
It was also a gorgeous morning in Kohala. I could clearly see Haleakala on Maui in front of me the whole drive, Kohala was pretty, green, and lush, Mauna Kea was brown and pock marked, Hualalai had a lazy bit of haze hanging around the summit, and Mauna Loa's gentle slope was looming behind me in the south. Pu'u Wa'awa'a was a bright green mole on the back of Hualalai. This reminded me that I have pictures from a trip up Pu'u Wa'awa'a a few months ago. Here's the story:
This was in early March, and our friend Kara was visiting from Volcano. The hike took us three or four hours, and was up gravel roads for most of the way. Pu'u Wa'awa'a means "many-furrowed hill," and although I don't have a good picture to prove it, I can attest, this hill is furrowed. It is pretty to view from the highway, especially Mamalahoa, the "upper road." I'll get a photo for you sometime. It sits on the flanks of Hualalai, and is about 100,000 years old, erupted at the end of the main phase of volcanism on Hualalai. It is a cinder and pumice cone resulting from a trachyite eruption; all this means that the lava that flowed here was thicker and more explosive than most Hawaiian lava. The viscosity made the cinder cone and related flows unusually steep and produced some interesting rocks not often seen in Hawaii. (since moving here, I am always on the lookout for rocks that are not basalt or coral. Just wait 'till I tell you about the
sedimentary rocks I found last week!! Oh boy, there's one to wait for! very funny. you'll be impressed).
In sum, we had to climb it.
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| Beth with obsidian: volcanic glass (my precious!) |
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| readin maps at the quarry |
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| a large native mamane tree, near the top. most get munched by livestock or feral ungulates. |
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| fun to explore a pumice quarry in the pyroclastic beds. |
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| The blustery solitude of the North Summit: oft dreamed of, only visited by the swarthiest of mountaineers. |
I posted more pictures from this trip on my picassa page, including some of the mountains I was talking about.
The sun stayed lower on the way out, and we made it safely above the cliffs before it got too hot. 
