sam in kaneohe's photostream

This morning I woke up at 4:00am to catch the 5:15am flight to the island of Moloka'i with two friends. The three of us rented a beat up car and quickly drove up north to the top of the sea cliffs that overlook the Kalaupapa Peninsula, site of the world's most remote semi-abandoned former leper colony. Hiking the three miles down the cliffs' 26 switchback trail took about an hour, and at the bottom we toured the leper colony. Did you know leprosy is now know as Hansen's disease? That during the 19th-century it was a crime to be a leper in most countries? That a leper colony is properly known as a leprosarium?

The peninsula itself is roughly at sea level, but the cliffs that separate it from the rest of the island are the tallest sea cliffs in the world and isolate it perfectly from the rest of the island. I took this photo from the eastern edge of the nine-square-mile peninsula. This tiny rock island is called Okala, and the sea cliffs are visible on the right.

After we hiked back up the trail (and after we ran into a feral goat running down the cliffs) we saw some enormous rainbows and visited Papuhaku Beach, the longest beach on the Hawai'ian islands. Driving the fifteen miles between the cliffs and the beach we saw no more than ten cars, and the beach itself was almost deserted. We did pick up a copy of the Moloka'i newspaper, though, and on the front page was an article about the beaching of the very same whale that I saw autopsied a while back.

I've now been lucky enough to visit all of the major Hawai'ian islands except Lana'i (the ultra-exclusive island where Bill Gates was married), and Moloka'i is definitely my favorite.

This marks the last photo of the photoblog, as I flew from Moloka'i to Honolulu to Portland, and am posting this from my laptop in my kitchen in Oregon. Thanks for reading.

Last day on O'ahu. We went to the famous Swap Meet at Aloha Stadium in the morning, where I fought mightily with the temptation to buy a ukulele. From other staff members this summer I'd learned to play a few songs, and it occurred to me that it would be a lot easier to bring a ukulele to New York with me in the fall than it will be to bring my guitar. But it also occurred to me that ukuleles are kind of expensive, and that I had no way to get one home except by checking it as luggage, which might damage it and which definitely would cost even more.

After that we ended up on the north shore and spent some time at Waimea Bay, one of the famous triple-crown surfing beachs (which all have tiny waves in the off-season, the summer). This is a photo of the sunset from Waimea. Clouds tend to collect on the north-eastern horizon off O'ahu, so most of the sunsets I've seen from the north shore have looked a little bit like this, with the setting sun making Jacob's ladders above and below fat, hanging clouds.

This sign is a synecdoche for one way in which parts of Hawai'i remind me of rural Oregon. What is "Boston-style" pizza? Signs like this in Hawai'i remind me of rural Oregon, where being not quite in-the-know about the rest of the world is a mark of local pride. This encourages folks to remain faithful to their traditions and lifestyles, as well as to their communities, I think (I hope). But when intercourse with the outside world is required (perhaps when you decide to open a pizza shop), it sometimes leads to a bit of silliness. And probably also some bad pizza. The shave ice restaurant next door, however, is amazing; my shave ice was half lychee and half li hing mui, with ice cream and azuki beans.

With my new job as an RA instead of an office worker, my final airport shift on the kids' final departure day was a breeze. Instead of spending twelve hours directing human traffic, I dropped two kids off, took a few photos, and left. No sweat.

I also calculated that I have spent more than a full day of my life in the Honolulu airport. This is probably more time than I've spent in any other airport in the world, maybe even including the Portland airport. Favorite spots: the airplane that hangs from the ceiling in terminal 7, the Pages & Pages bookstore near gate 12, Island Air/Mokulele Airlines terminal (which is the size of my shoe).

Here are some of the pali that you can see from our campus. I took this photo in the early morning when the angle of the light exaggerates the crenulation of the mountain side. The bottom of the frame shows the tops of the trees on our campus, and just above them on the far left side you can see two small tunnels that I believe are part of the H3, the newest of Hawai'i's three interstate highways. (Hawai'i has more miles of interstate highway than Rhode Island does.) The stretch of the H3 on the far side of those tunnels was the most expensive-to-build stretch of highway in the interstate system, and includes a second, mile-long, tunnel