Wednesday, October 31

We had a little earthquake last night but it wasn’t anything spectacular at our house and it didn’t freak out the dogs.  I got up and walked Rufus down 17th to Market only to have a reporter shove a camera in my face to see if I had any comments about Halloween in the Castro this year..  I was in my pajamas.  I had bedhead and I was barely awake I declined comment.  At the end of my walk I finally came up with a good quote:

“Halloween shouldn’t be about shooting and stabbing.  It should be about dressing up like a whore, getting piss drunk, and having sex with a guy dressed up like a sailor.  Wait– no, that’s Fleet Week.”

But alas, no cameras were around when my funny woke up.  I got ready and headed out Corbett to Portola to Woodside to Dewey to Taravel and then down to the ocean.  I came up the Great Highway and took Geary up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor.  The sun was just starting to come up:

Here I am illuminated by my freakish tan:

I headed down Lake to Arguello to California to Jordan to Euclid to Presidio to Post to Kearny to Bush and into work.  I had to run over to Union Square in the morning and I took a few pics.  This is Grant Street from Geary looking South.  You can see the Humboldt Bank building dome rising in the background.

This building is at Grant and Geary.  It’s being renovated and its glass sheath is completely new.  I love, love, love it.

This is the view down Geary street to Market:

Over lunch I headed home as I almost always do.  They’re finally getting rid of the horrible Teal paint job on the historic portion of the Gay and Lesbian Center at Octavia and Market.  You can vote for either a lavender or a beige color scheme.  I like both of them but prefer the beige because I think it will wear better at the car traffic heavy site of Octavia and Market.  Practically anything will look better than the current paint job which looks like they stopped after applying primer.

This billboard at Noe and Market is advertising a gay themed flight from SFO to Sydney for Gay Mardi Gras.  Here’s what I wrote about this site on an aviation enthusiasts web site, the you in my statement referring to the reader and not anybody in particular

“I guess I like it, although I don’t know about the “raging swirl of
pink” part. That sounds like something unpleasant you came back from
the gay mardi gras with that might require a penicillin shot and maybe
a topical cream to treat, you filthy little minx.”

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Tuesday, October 30

I only got about two hours of sleep last night because I was still on Hawaii time and also because Rufus, my precious puppy, is afraid of the heat and every time it clicked on he started crying and I didn’t figure this out until almost 2AM.  I managed to crawl out of bed at 5 and get on my bike, which I’d missed almost as much as the dogs, and I headed out Corbett to Portola to Woodside to Dewey to Taravel and out to the ocean and then I rode up Ocean Beach to Carbrillo and took it to Arguello and then McCallister to Parker to Golden Gate.  I found this piece of Tudor-liciousness at Central and Golden Gate:

It’s two units now but I’ll bet it used to be one.  The side view was even better but I didn’t get a shot of that.  Here’s me with my freakshow tan I got in Hawaii:

Then disaster struck  My camera fell out of my backpack while I was coming down Golden Gate.  With all of my vacation photos still on it.  Which really, really sucked.  I didn’t figure out it was missing until Golden Gate and Hyde at which point I retraced my steps and looked for it but to no avail.  It was gone.  I moped my way down Golden Gate to market and then into work.  When I got into work I checked Craigslist and unbelievably someone had found my camera.  I e-mailed him and a half hour later I was heading over to his office to pick it up.  And he wouldn’t even let me kick him some reward money.  Unbelievable.  Here he is:  Kevin, the nicest, honestest man in San Francisco:

PS if I would have known he was this hot I probably would have arranged to pick up the camera at his house….

I didn’t get out of work until late so I rode right up Market home.

Bike Mileage:
Today                            28.3
Week to date                 28.3
Month to date              753.9

Monday, October 29

We got up and got packed to go.  Sigh.  I
love Hawaii and as much as I love San Francisco, I wouldn’t mind living
in Honolulu one little bit.  We walked around for a few minutes before
we left for the airport.

Two happy faces from Mr. Poe.  The second is his “Poodle face”.  Yes,
he picked up his toothiest grin from my dear, departed Poodle Ashley. 
On him, it was known as his “bacon face”.

 

Here we are at the entrance of the Royal Hawaiian waiting for the van to take us to the airport:

  

Honolulu
Airport is really, really cool.  There’s tons of different airlines,
lots of cool heavies, and the airport itself is really beautiful. 
Well, maybe not the check in counter. 

When we got through security the first thing I saw was this Korean 777-200.  I love KAL livery. Very pretty.

Honolulu
has terrible food choices and the Chinese food I ate should have come
with a written apology.  “Dear Customer.  We’re sorry our food sucks so
hard.  But we realize it’s either us or Burger King so why should we
bother?  Try to enjoy your shitty, shitty meal.  Maybe some hot mustard
will help disguise the taste.”

A Delta 767(400?) with an Omni
International DC-10 behind it and a Japan Airlines 747 behind that. 
The Omni DC-10 was probably a troop charter and I couldn’t get a good
shot of it

Hawaiian 767-300′s.  Hawaiian has a beautiful livery and one of my favorite:

Japan Airlines 747′s.  I don’t think this is a -400′s because it
doesn’t have winglets.  JAL has 7 -300′s and I think this is one of
those:

JAL 747-400

United 777-200A

There’s a beautiful, large garden at HNL between two of the terminals that you can go into! 

United 777-200A’s

Northwest Airlines A330′s.  NWA has both -300′s and -200′s in their fleet.  I think this one might be a -300

I think this is a -200

American
Airlines 757-200′s.  They’ve got winglets!  Which is pretty recent.  I
thought AA sent larger aircraft into HNL and I’m wondering if this is
because it’s the off season or whether it’s because AA is trying to
improve the numbers on the notoriously low yielding Hawaiian traffic:

An ATA 737-800

A fedex MD-11.  My favorite aircraft!  Not too many of them in passenger use anymore.  Sigh. 

I made my way over to my gate which is in the old terminal which is
really, really neat.  It’s was build in the 1962.  You can real a
little more about it here. 
It hasn’t been redone as much as the old Pan Am Worldport at JFK and it
really takes you back to a time when aviation was elegant, thrilling,
and fun.  Here is the terminal viewed from one of the breezeways
leading to it:

This is the old entrance which is currently inside the secure area and accessible only by bus:

This
is the inside of the terminal.  It almost looks like a vintage
photograph.  The waiting area has a large mezzanine above it.  The
terminal is sleek, stylish, and airy:

This
is the mezzanine area.  Mr. Poe tells me that the first class
passengers used to board from up here.  Right now there isn’t much up
there at all except for the Red Carpet Club:

These cool light fixtures are a little dated but they’re still fabulous.  They need to be cleaned.

Our ride for the day:

Same aircraft viewed from the mezzanine.  I can’t see how they boarded a 707 from up here but Mr. Poe says they did:

10-29-07 United Flight 74 HNL-SFO Dep 2:10 PM Arr 9:05 PM 777-200 N213UA

I
was seated in Premium Economy which was a nice surprise.  There’s a lot
more leg room which was nice because I’m tall.  United’s buy on board
seems to be pretty popular but other than that, little has changed in
the last 10 years on United.  They still use the enormous televisions
in the aisles instead of drop down screens.  This I find really
puzzling because there’s a lot of those TV’s on a 777 and it would seem
that the changeover to drop down flat screens would pay for themselves
pretty quickly because they weigh so much less.  Even the safety video
seemed mired in the last century with the female flight attendants in
really 90′s looking seriously matte with matte brick red lips that made
me wonder if I’d seen them as on Friends playing somebody’s high
powered bitch of a boss.  It looked dated much in the same way that the
terminal did.  If I compare United today with Delta, who I flew in
August to Orlando, modern thinking Delta seems to be trying a million
little ideas to improve the passenger experience while United hasn’t
really changed much at all and looks old, tired, and broke.  The plane
was, however, very clean and they gave us full cans of soda.  Twice. 
Here we are in flight:

We landed into SFO.  Terminal 3 has a had a lot of renovation and has a
lot better food choices than it did a couple of years ago.  But it
definitely isn’t as cool looking as the Honolulu airport:

We
got on BART and picked up the truck and went home to the dogs who were
unbelievably happy to see us.  Rufus cried all night long.  Around 1AM
I figured out that he was afraid of the forced air heat blowing air
through the vents.  We haven’t used it since we’ve had him and it
causes a lot of dog concern.

Sunday, October 28

We got up and went to the beach pretty early where Sharon and Mr. Poe read/napped and I went on a bunch of walks up and down the beach.  Then I collected Mr. Poe and we went over to the gay beach (aptly named Queen’s beach) which was looking pretty bleak.  20 years ago, every gay who came to Honolulu wanted to stay in the same hotel and spend their days at the same beach, but we’ve been digested by America and we don’t really feel the need to segregate ourselves like we used to.  The gay beach was populated mainly by Chesters and small town fags.  So we headed back to the Royal Hawaiian.  I took off to do some shopping in the afternoon.  I got a cool bike jersey.  The lady working at the bike shop had done the Lifecycle in 2005!  Small world.  After, I walked around Waikiki a bit:

I headed back to the hotel and we went out to dinner.  I went to bed pretty early because I’d been walking around all day and I was beat.  That and the “Hawaiian Iced Tea” I’d had at dinner that you could have fueled your car with.

Saturday, October 27

We got up and packed up and headed to the airport in Lihue.  Lihue is a very small airport and most of it is open air which is kind of neat.  The United desk was not staffed to check in the two 757′s that left within an hour of one another, which was crazy because that meant that there was a big line and people screaming and drama.  Luckily, we were flying Aloha to Honolulu:

  

Once we got past security we went into a large open air room.  Pretty:

This has got to be the ugliest piece of art anywhere:

First 757 departing for Los Angeles:

We went to the restaurant which is pretty good and reasonably cheap given that it’s in an airport and your only choice.  Mr. Poe doesn’t ever pass up an opportunity to eat a hamburger.  Don’t ask about his cholesterol.  It’s a sore subject:

The other 757 headed for San Francisco.  New livery.  Don’t really like it.

An Aloha 737.  Aloha has 16 737-200′s the youngest was built in 1985.  The oldest in 1974.  A properly maintained aircraft can fly indefinitely and they were clean and with fresh interiors.  But these planes are old!  Check out these engines. It’s like a museum!

This is a garden in the center of the terminal.  I think you can only look at it:

A Hawaiian 717.  Which is so cool looking inside and out:

This is the 737 I’d photographed earlier leaving the gate:

Finally, our ride.  N837AL was built in 1985 for British Airways

10-27-07 Aloha Flight 26 LIH-HNL Dep 2:05 PM Arr 2:34 PM 737-200 N837AL

This flight is really, really short.  They managed to have a drink service (punch only) which was kind of impressive given that the flight attendants were basically charging up the aisle tossing juice cups to any takers so they could get to everybody.  This flight had the youngest crew I’d ever seen on a US flight.  The more senior crew is likely on their mainland flights.  The copilot was totally hot but I didn’t want to leer at him because he looked so young I was afraid he’d call his mom and tell her a bad man had tried to touch him.

This 737 has the shortened aisle by the emergency exits:

We landed at Honolulu.  I love HNL there’s tons of cool stuff to see.  Recognize the paint job??  This 737-200 last flew for Hooters Airlines before they went out of business and it went to Aloha. 

Some more of those great looking Hawaiian 717′s:

And Island Air dash 8

Look it’s the GO jets!  Quick take a picture before they go out of business:

When we got to the terminal it was really cool.  It’s decorated with vintage Aloha advertising:

Much of HNL is also open air:

Sharon and Mr. Poe delighted they had a few more days before going home:

We stayed at the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki.  It’s pink!  The building is pink.  The rooms are pink.  The towels they give you at the beach are pink and they’re signature cocktail is called  “The pink palace”.  It was like the whole place had been hosed down with Pepto Bismol.  Needless to say, I loved it:

  

Mr. Poe and I.  Hello gorgeous!

Our room.  You guessed it.  It’s pink:

  

We hung out at the beach for a while and then we headed off for Chinese.  Then straight to bed because I was beat.

Friday, October 26

Last day on Kauai.  Sigh.  I went for a long hike along the coast.  It was the same one I’d done on Tuesday and it was a lot of fun.  The cliffs are really pretty:

There were people camping at the cliff I’d turned around at on Tuesday so I didn’t stay very long:

Bukake hair again! 

Some of the many beautiful features carved into the sandstone and lava by the surf:

This is a sacred structure that signs told us to stay on the paths because of:

Thursday, October 25

Today we started off at the beach and then went to the Allerton Gardens which is part of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens.  You can read more about it here.  It was a royal property in the 19th century and then bought by a son of a Chicago banking family in the 30′s and the lush areas on either side of a freshwater stream were transformed into a beautiful series of formal “rooms”.  Here are Sharon and I above the garden (which ends at the beach just like everything good in Kauai)

This is the wide freshwater stream that separates the formal garden from the informal, “Jungle” rooms:

Jeff and I on the bridge over that stream at the beach.  Not a tank top again!

Sharon on the same bridge:

The cliffs above the garden:

Jeff with sculpture.  The cottage in the background is the oldest on the property and used to be at the top of the cliffs and was lowered:

In front of the main house are sculptures representing the four seasons so that the Allertons could remember that they had them:

The surprisingly modest main house:

Palm trees on the jungle side of the stream:

A mermaid in the first of the formal rooms we saw:

This crazy tree with buttress like roots.  Parts of Jurassic Park were filmed in this garden and apparently the trees played a prominent role:

A water feature in another of the formal rooms:

This is a “surprise” water feature that you can’t see until you’re on top of it:

Another formal room, another water feature:

This was the view as we were leaving the gardens:

This is a view down into the gardens we were just in:

And the view down to the coast.  All the pink flowers are bougainvillea

The beach again from the top of the cliffs:

We headed back to the beach for another swim and then home for dinner.  I was beat.

Wednesday, October 23

We took the day to go to Waimea canyon today which was good because my feet were all chewed up from my hike the day before and I’m very, very sunburned (lousy spray on sunscreen).  You can read more about Waimea canyon  here.  It’s kind of a long ride over there and a lot of driving from cool-thing-to-see to cool-thing-to-see but the views are spectacular.  This is a viewpoint from before we even got into the canyon and the views kept getting beter:

 

The canyon is in a really dry part of the island but the interior of the canyon has a lot of water flowing through it so it’s pretty lush.  And the canyon is enormous:

 

There are chickens EVERYWHERE in the Waimea Canyon.  Most likely because the tourists keep feeding them.  Yes I fed the chickens.  I couldn’t help it.

 

At the top you can look down onto the Napali coast.  We’re almost a mile above the ocean at this point.  Watch that last step!

 

 

We headed down the mountain after that and headed back for the hotel.  We had some lunch and headed for the beach.  There was a beautiful sunset and then we headed back for dinner.

Tuesday, October 23

I decided to give Mr. Poe the morning off so he could sleep on the beach.  This is an artist rendition of him later that morning:

I kid.  I headed off to the beach I’d been to the day before and decided to take my hike a little farther:

There’s all these cool rock formation where raised seafloor and lava meet:

And one of me as well:

I climbed up pretty high and you could see just about all of the surrounding area:

You can see one of the beaches way down below:

I went home and had lunch and then headed back to the beach with Mr. Poe and Sharon. I discovered that the spray on sunscreen I had been using was pretty much not working and I was pretty well charred.  Here I am in the water: 

Miss Sharon:

Mr. Poe and I at sunset:

I managed to stay up until 9!  But that wasn’t easy.  It had been a long day and I was beat.

Monday, October 22

We got up and I was able to talk Mr. Poe and Sharon into going to a new beach instead of the one they normally go to which represented a significant departure from their rut and was VERY difficult for Mr. Poe.  The ride to the beach was along a terrible dirt road.  But once we got there, the beach was beautiful and nearly empty:

We weren’t the only visitors to the beach:

 

A Monk seal had recently given birth.  Very late in the season for it, apparently.  And she and her pup were swimming by the beach looking for fish:

Mr. Poe and I went for a little walk up onto the cliffs. 

Hello gorgeous!

 

We headed back to the beach and then went to the crappiest farmer’s market I’d ever seen.  It seriously looked like they’d gone to the grocery store and then come to the farmers market to resell the stuff they’d bought.  I think I even saw a few safeway bags.  We went home and had some lunch.  I went for a walk in the afternoon in the opposite direction that I’d taken on Sunday.  Much more volcanic rock and not so much sandy beach.  It was also much more populated.  This is Spouting Horn from a distance:

And close up:

The rocky coast looking west:

I headed back into the resort areas.  This is the grounds of the Sheraton Poipu.  It’s very serene:

This is me in a covered, outdoor area.

It was getting late and starting to rain so I headed back to the room.  I was pretty beat yet again and I went to bed at 8. 

Sunday, October 21

Hawaii is three hours behind California, so we were all up pretty early on our first day.  We lounged around a bit and then headed for the beach.  Mr. Poe and Sharon aren’t crazy about the beach closest to the hotel because they think the water is a little rough for swimming, so we headed to a beach a few minutes away that was a little more sheltered and without such a wacky surf.  Kauai is unbelievably beautiful:

Here’s Mr. Poe up from his nap:

This is a small island a little offshort that you can swim to but the water is very shallow as you get close to it and it’s really rocky so it’s kind of a pain in the ass but when you get there it’s kind of worth it because there’s pools of water with little fish swimming in it.

After lunch, I decided to give Mr. Poe some time to sleep on the beach without me bothering him so I went for a little hike.  This is the grounds of the Hyatt hotel:

And this is one of the mountains looming behind it:

This is the cliff above Shipwreck Beach.  SOme people jump off it into the water.  I’ve been forbidden to do so:

This is the view from the top of that cliff.  You can see the Hyatt hotel and out hotel is the next one down the beach:

This is another view of Shipwreck beach:

I headed on a coastal trail I’d taken before.  It’s very pretty:

 

The trail spits you out on this gorgeous beach.  It’s kind of hard to get to by road so it wasn’t very crowded.

The trail picks up again at the end of the beach:

And it leads to this even more secluded beach:

I picked up an actual road on the way back.  The area is a cattle farm.  An actual cowboy came to make sure that I had latched the gate:

They’re growing corn as well:

One last view of the beach:

And the name of the beach that non of us can pronounce:

Mr. Poe had asked me to pick up olives.  This seemingly innocuous errand added a full 50 minutes to my walk because there aren’t a lot of places to buy olives at Poipu beach.  It was pretty late by the time I got back to the room.  I was totally exhausted and I had some dinner and went to bed.