Today was long, wet, and glorious. I was at the shore bright and early to rent a solo kayak and paddle across Kealakekua Bay to the Captain Cook monument for when he was flayed by the natives after one of his guys stole a canoe. The monument is both British soil and DLNR land; my impression is that DLNR is the Hawaiian equivalent of like BIA or rez ( Read more... )

Even at the higher elevations of the coffee farm, the morning skies are clear and I can tour through the coffee plants and the Bermuda grass and the sunflowers with Posse the farm dog as my guide. Two of the hired hands are recent escapees from Columbus and I can easily pass a good hour over breakfast with them, complaining about city life and ( Read more... )

The nice thing about being on mainland time is that I can better approximate farm hours, up with the rooster call and to bed with the coqui song. My West Hawaii Today warned me to watch out for Iron Man triathletes training on the highways so I will certainly do that because the pavement here seems excellent and the roads are very high quality ( Read more... )

I went to HAWAII with several goals: to read a few books, get a tan, visit a volcano, snorkel with dolphins. Typically I don’t like things that dull you (tropical vacations, reality tv, dope) but a gentle week at some of the nation’s best beaches with nobody to answer to seemed somehow a perfect way to end the summer and celebrate my birthday and ( Read more... )

For the second half of a glorious anniversary Raging Madness, we rented a (slightly fetishistic Asian motif) cabin in Girdwood, the Tahoe of the Kenai peninsula for the purposes of ultra-chillaxation. Instead of the dread feral rabbits of Valdez, everyone in Girdwood has an enormous dog and all the garbage bins are bearproofed (although there are ( Read more... )

For Raging Madness X we went big, on a multi-day sea kayaking trip in southeast Alaska from the islands in Prince William Sound to Columbia Glacier. In true RM style the adventure started in the airport, where Geoff’s flight to Sea-Tac had been delayed causing a cascade of missed connections, but every group member was on their phone or pleading ( Read more... )

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For our final full day in Bangkok I had the superb breakfast buffet and a gentle hour with the International Herald Tribune while Danny got a massage from a Thai ingénue as powerful as she was attractive who managed to break his rule about only squat older Honduran women being able to be forceful enough about their deep tissue treatments. The ( Read more... )

Welcome to Bangkok, city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world (etc etc)... It is the second most expensive city I have ever been to in Southeast Asia* and a punch in the face if you try and absorb it all at once. The first afternoon we got there we had sushi at the ( Read more... )

A full wet morning of sea kayaking around the cliff islands and through the mangrove swamps, although low tide prevented us getting too deep in the root tangle. We are lie-down-cave-kayaking experts, and once again I appreciated a day off from bicycling outside my Boston comfort zone of invigorating cold and plenty of traffic but at least no hills ( Read more... )