One of the highlights of our trip to Hawaii was Pearl Harbor. The old battleship, the USS Missouri is not berthed there and serves as a floating museum just down the harbor from the USS Arizona memorial. I would have loved to tour the Missouri but we were on a tour and didn’t have enough time. So maybe next time.
Brother Bob – all dressed up and the Mighty Mo’
I had actually been on the deck of the Missouri before. Way back in 1986 when it was recommissioned in San Francisco after being modernized with cruise missiles and other modern armament. You see my brother Bob was on the original crew after the refitting. I got to walk across the teak deck and view the plaque commemorating the exact spot where Japan signed the surrender of World War II. I think Bob served on the ship for three or four years and went around the world several times. I don’t think he was on the ship when it served in the first Gulf War. He was and is proud to have served on such a famous ship.
Sorry for the tilt
So, it was kind of nice to see the ship preserved and not salvaged and used to make Kias and Walmart trinkets. Instead it looks to me that it is guarding the USS Arizona Memorial.
Here’s me all dressed up and about 30 pounds lighter.
Uncle Bob again
So, I hope to see it up close and personal next time.
I finally made it to a Tulsa Tough Bike Race and Crybaby Hill today (Sunday). I’ve missed out in past years but this was my year.
Tulsa Tough is a series of bike races held in Tulsa every June. It has grown and grown. It includes everything from a “Townie Ride” open to everybody to amateur and professional level criterium events. A criterium race, I’m told from Wikipedia, is a race on a short course consisting of closed off city streets. The race is a set number of laps. In other words they go around and around.
The formal name for the Crybaby Hill event is the “River Parks Criterium.” It is brutal. The riders start on Riverside drive and go for a short while and then climb up a steep hill and then make a right turn and then back down to Riverside drive down a very steep hill and then a greater than 90 degree turn. And then they repeat the lap, over and over. It looks brutal. Check this Tulsa World link for the story behind the Tulsa Tough races and Crybaby Hill.
They have classes all the way from youth to old guys and gals and professional levels. All sorts of very skinny yet muscular people speaking foreign languages this week in Tulsa.
Crybaby Hill is also a party. Check here for the origin of the name (if you didn’t before). Basically people get to the top of the hill and cheer the riders on.
I left today before it really got crazy. Next year I’m staying for the whole thing.
People wear strange outfits to the event.
In between laps the contractor handing the portapotties was racing to finish the installation. Everybody was yelling “clear the way for the *******. The orange lines are where the spectators are supposed to stay behind. They had to put those in because in years past, from what I’m told, the gap the riders could ride through got narrower and narrower as the day went on.
My favorite sign. Take that Westboro Baptist so called Church. The guys in the striped shirts are the supposed to keep everybody behind the orange lines. They enjoy their jobs.
The theme was “Under the Sea” so I guess that makes this guy King Neptune or something.
I’m not sure what she was supposed to be.
And some more characters. Notice the baby’s for sale. This is Crybaby Hill after all.
This is a brief video of the scene at the top of the hill where the riders are just about tuckered out and the crowd is cheering them on with cowbells, whistles, sirens and beer.
And this is a video at the bottom of the hill where they have to make a greater than 90 degree right turn on a steep downhill. You’d better have a precise line and good brakes to get through this unscathed.
Anyway a good time was had by all. And bikes were raced.
Hot weather means less people running and cycling on the Trails.
While we were in Hawaii the weather here in Tulsa got hot. We are now approaching full blown summer weather. Last Wednesday I went for a run after work in the 96F heat. I know how to run in the heat. Run slow, which comes naturally to me, carry water, take lots of breaks and listen to your body is what I do.
With the construction of a gathering place going on, running is limited on the east side so I cross over to the west side of the river. With all the rain we have had the river is up and there are lots more fishermen that what I normally see. I don’t know what they are fishing for but they are hard at it.
I found a little cross stuck in the ground. A memorial to somebody obviously. I don’t know who and there were no names. I say a little prayer for peace to whoever put it there and move on.
The main function of Tulsa Power Station is to bolster the rate base. I think it is the last unit on and the first one off during the summertime heat loads. It sure seems to fire up during smog alerts in the summer.
I only went about a mile and a half down the river to the PSO Tulsa Power Station and went down to the long forgotten kayak run (now visited only by geocachers I think) to where you can right down on the river.
180 degree panorma
The river is up several feet and was pretty wild. It would be easy to drown in this water if you were not careful.
A 12 second video of the water. Loud and fast. Thank goodness and the Corps of Engineers for Keystone Dam upstream of Tulsa or things could really be interesting. Tulsa used to have bad flooding way back when before the dam was put in.
Running back I got this subtle reflection of the river of a condo across the way. You can tell why we call northeast Oklahoma “Green Country.” Everything is greening up this year with all the rain we have had.
The shadows are longer. Time to go home, shower, eat dinner and down a cold one ( or two.)
Before our trip to Hawaii I asked my facebook pals for recommendations for vacation books. Anne from the UK recommended Alan Brennert’s Moloka’i. It is set in Hawaii in the early 1900’s. It sounded good to me so I loaded it up on the old Kindle and read it while on vacation.
It is a novel about a girl, Rachel Kalama, living in Honolulu in a very loving, extended family. All that changes dramatically when she is suspected of having leprosy and is separated from her family and is sent to a leper colony on the island of Moloka’i. The book is about her life there and I don’t want to give anything away but I loved this book. It is about life and death and making a life where you are. It describes terrible cruelty and great love. It has cultural references to the islander’s religion and describes some of the history and effects that the missionaries had on the island.
I give it five stars out of five. I had never heard of Alan Brennert before and I will be reading more of his work.
Today was my 9/80 day off and we didn’t have anything planned so after I mowed the yard and everybody got cleaned up we went to see Jurassic World.
As you can tell we sprung for the 3D version. Same price as the regular version. We can’t just walk by a bargain you know. Anyways, on the movie.
Jurassic World is a Dinosaur Theme Park on an island near Costa Rica. This theme park has real dinosaurs and they have had a problem because you know at first people love dinosaurs then you know after a couple of visits it is like, “I’m all dinosaured out. They are boring.” So the corporate owners of the theme park can’t just recreate actual dinosaurs that existed at one time, they have to do a little genetic engineering to make a super dino. Bigger, louder, meaner, cooler. Well maybe they went one step to far with the Indominous Rex. He is not only bigger, louder, meaner, and cooler but they big guy is very smart also. Smart but not in a good way. He is smart like in a devious and mean way. Just as smart but not as devious and mean as a banker.
I’m not going to give you a summary of the story line. Who cares about that. The movie is about dinosaurs. I will tell you that there is some amazing creatures and effects in this movie. The dino’s look great. Especially when you see them chomping on people and there is lots of that. When they are not chomping on people, they are stomping on them. Other things the movie has are really really bad guys and mad scientists, one kind of semi hot kiss, and one gratuitous cuss word. I mean come on guys, cut the curse word, and make the kiss a little hotter to get the PG rating. Or keep the kiss the same and raise the hem on Bryce Dallas Howard‘s skirt by about six inches. My fifth grade teacher, Misses Conger in Price, Utah wore shorter skirts than Ms. Howard’s. Or show some cleavage or something. Cuss words don’t do a thing for me personally. Not like short skirts or cleavage does anyway.
Funny thing about Ms. Howard. She is the daughter of Ron Howard and her middle name is Dallas because that is where she was conceived. Oh seriously, come on. You know how many suburbs are around Dallas? Richardson, Garland, Flower Mound, Arlington, and Plano among many others. How do we know she wasn’t conceived in Plano, then she would be Bryce Plano Howard. These Hollywood people, why do they think we give a flip where they were conceived?
Ms Howard plays Claire, a really uptight corporate executive with the company who owns Jurassic Park, hence the dowdy clothes. As the movie goes along she loosens up a little bit and her skirt develops a slit and she gets more and more sweaty and her attitude loosens up a little bit. Attitudes tend to loosen up when your butt has been saved and her’s is saved by Owen, played by Chris Pratt. Owen is some sort of ex Navy commando type who is not afraid of anything. Son Logan thinks Pratt should be the next Indiana Jones and I agree with him. Pratt did a great job in this movie. Witty one liners and close escapes plus he is a dinosaur trainer.
I hope that I didn’t give away too much. I give this movie five stars out of five. Check out the movie’s web site Jurassic World. It is set up like a real theme park’s web site and is a lot of fun.
We just got back from our vacation to Hawaii last weekend. On our last day we ventured to Pearl Harbor and took the Navy launch over to the USS Arizona to pay our respects to not only the Sailors and Marines who died on the ship that day but to all who died for our country and their families.
It is a very somber and sobering experience visiting the Arizona. I’ll never forget it. It was such a pretty day when we visited and it was hard to imagine the death and destruction that came that day.
On our recent vacation to Hawaii, Heather arranged for a private tour of the Big Island. Our guide Paul met us at the ship dock and off we went to see among other things Volcanoes National Park.
Paul was not only a good guy, he also knew how to take a photograph without getting all goofy with the camera. Amazing the number of people who can’t hold the camera still and point it in the right direction.
Much of the park looks like the moon. There are lava flows everywhere. Some not that old. Amazing to me because this is what the birth of land looks like. Hawaii is certainly a land of contrasts from jungles to ultra arid areas like this, often not that far apart from each other.
A little oddity when the lava overtakes trees, the tree cools the lava but eventually the tree burns away and leaves a hole in the lava.
We went over to the Jagger Museum which overlooks Kilauea, a volcano that has been fairly active in recent months. It was steaming really good. You couldn’t see that much so we crowded into the museum to watch the webcame and some videos. Very spectacular stuff. You sure get a sense of a lot of power contained, barely within the earth. It was all very exciting to be around.
This is a video of the eruption of Kilauea in late April. Nothing too spectacular but it does give a sense of the energy involved.
This is a video from a few years ago showing lava from Kilauea entering the sea and making the Big Island of Hawaii just a little bigger. I love the dynamic of the hot lava entering the very violent sea. I’d love to see that live except I wouldn’t like bouncing around the ocean in a little boat.
Check out the USGS web cam for the Kilauea Volcano.
And if you love our National Parks you are not alone. We love these parks and they are overwhelmed by our love. I’m not sure what to do about it but we need to invest in these parks so that others will be able to see them.
We saw and experienced lots of things in Hawaii and I took lots of photos. Something like that just overwhelms me because what do I do with it all? So I’m just going to take bite sizes out of it. One of the prettiest things on the trip was the Napali Coast of Kauai which we sailed on our last night. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen and we got to see it from our room. We sailed past it during evening golden hour which made it that much better.
The coast is reachable only on foot or by boat. That is one of the things I learned about Hawaii, that much of the islands is very remote and wild. I found the islands to be magical. The clouds that seem to aways hover over the mountains and the soft light and pleasant climate all converge to seem such a paradise. Plus the people are very nice, from the crowded traffic in Honolulu where no matter how congested traffic was somebody let you in to so many helpful and friendly people who didn’t necessarily have to be helpful and friendly.
Anyways, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the trip. Bear with me.
We got back from our Hawaiian vacation Sunday morning.
We had lots of fun, saw a lot, and did a lot, and I took lots of pics.
Action shot of Logan and I.
I’m sorting through it all so I’ll be posting more later. These are from a day early on where we rented a car and went beach hopping and exploring on the west and north shores of Oahu.
We are going to be out of touch for two weeks. I have the Skywatch Friday linky’s all set up so I hope that I made no mistakes and apologize profusely if I did.
