Fun Event Saturday - Ke Aloha Outrigger's Mayor's Cup and Ohana Festival, Hoboken Cove

"Hey! Did somebody say Mayor's Pup?"

(adorable photo swiped from Ke Aloha!)

     O
:D />

O

No, pup, you're adorable, but it's Cup! Starting line 2018.

Quick post today to mention that the 3rd Annual Ke Aloha Mayor's Cup Race and Ohana Festival is happening at Hoboken Cove on Saturday the 27th. I'm SO sad I can't make this year, I've attended the last two, and it's a wonderful race with that spectacular view of Manhattan (and of course the Statue of Liberty for the outriggers and surfskis), and Ke Aloha gathers some really wonderful entertainers and food vendors for their Ohana Festival in Maxwell Place Park. It's a great event, and if you're in the area and looking for a lovely way to while away a few hours on Saturday, I just can't recommend this enough. Click here for full details. 

A bit more from last year. At the moment I recorded this snippet, I may have been as unwound as I got for all of 2018 (so relaxed!). Enjoy. :) 

147 from Bonnie on Vimeo.

Maxwell Place Park

Mmm kalua pig bowl. The guy had had spam musubi but was sold out, but this was pretty ono!

Samoan dance by the Hudson

A Pearl Harbor post for December 7th

I was going to post about the fancy duck of Central Park today, but it is December 7th today and I've decided to re-share one of my Pearl Harbor photo posts instead. 

Photos taken during a visit to my folks in 2007. That turned out to be their last year living in the islands - TQ came along on this one and I'm so glad he had this chance to see where I'm from. 

My dad being retired Navy, we got to go on a Navy tour, which runs in much closer along the shore of Ford Island than the public trips go (this is still a working base). That's how I have the picture of the Utah Memorial, which I wanted to share along with the more familiar Arizona Memorial. Click on any photo for a better view. 

Utah Memorial (on Ford Island)

Ford Island

Arizona Memorial

Inside the memorial

Battleship Row, with the USS Missouri. The concrete platforms to which the ships were moored are marked with the names of the ships that were there that day. Click here to read more about Battleship Row on that day. 

Closing with a peaceful picture - outrigger practice on Pu'uloa (Hawaiian name of Pearl Harbor). 

Ke Aloha Outrigger's Hudson River Cup, Hoboken, 7/28/2018

So glad my friend Derek stopped by - thanks for the photo!

I haven't been keeping up with the blogging very well, but that's at least in part because Operation Seize the Summer has been going pretty well and I've been getting out and doing a good bit more on and in the water this year than I managed to last year.

My last post was from the inter-club race day at Inwood, where I ended up racing for Sebago, getting the club points pretty much by virtue of putting my butt in a boat and not getting distracted by a passing seagull (paddle paddle paddle paddle OOH LOOK BIRD! MUST TAKE PICTURE! - anyone who's paddled with me can tell you that's not really too much of an exaggeration) and wandering off the course without crossing the finish line. The following week was Ke Aloha Outrigger's Hudson River Cup race; I'd gone to the first one the year before and just had a blast, winning the kayak race, which consisted of me and one of the volunteers from the Hoboken Cove Boathouse paddling the sitatops the boathouse uses for their public paddling program (you can paddle with them for free on summer weekends, there's a link at the end if you'd like more info, also a link to a Flickr album of course - if you're just here for the pix, skip on down there!). The other guy was actually faster than me, but the timing was such that we were paddling into a strong current on the return leg, I knew the trick about pulling over to into some slower-moving water, and the other guy didn't and by the time he figured out what I was doing it was too late for him to catch me. It worked out fine but oh, that moment I made the turn at the buoy and suddenly discovered that I wasn't making ANY headway AT ALL...jeeze, I was having visions of having to be fished out by one of the safety boats! It was such a relief to find that sidling over into quieter water let me start moving again. 

Starting Line 2018

This year they stepped things up a bit. The sea kayak race went from being a little short one of I think it was about 2 miles up to a 5 mile distance, which I thought that sounded like a good test distance to see how I'm coming along with the general fitness level. I was not interested in doing that distance in a Drifter, though, so I got in touch with some friends there who were kind enough to hook me up with a QCC700, which is a good fast touring boat. Unfortunately I failed to do justice to the boat - I set the foot pegs a little too short and ended up getting foot cramps and a shin cramp (ow ow ow, that was a new one for me!) maybe a third of the way in. I'd been holding onto 3rd place of the 4 sea kayakers until that happened; I tried to suck it up and keep going but when the guy who'd been in 4th breezed by me I decided that if I was going to be in last place, I might as well be comfortable. Fortunately QCC's have footpegs that you can adjust easily while seated in the boat , and once I took care of that the cramps eventually eased off and I was able to get moving again. I didn't catch the guy who'd passed me to get into third but I also wasn't too far behind him.

Answer to the test of my general fitness level - I did five miles in just under one hour and eighteen minutes, in a fast boat, but with a episode of foot cramps; it's frequently said that the average cruising speed of a trained paddler is 3 mph, so I was at least doing better than that. However, I had absolutely no extra gas for a finishing kick at the end (I wanted to 'cause the other guy was just NOT that far ahead of me, but it just wasn't happening) - so there's still progress to make.

Sea kayaks were split by gender this year though, so I still brought home a trophy - 2nd place women's was the same tiki bar coconut mug as last year's 1st place so now I have a matched set! Now, I would LOVE to see more sea kayaks in this next year, but they drew a really nice number of outriggers and stand-up paddleboards - the race definitely grew this year and that was really good to see. Ke Aloha is a relatively new organization, but counts among its founders and members some of the most experienced outrigger paddlers in the area - I'm happy to support them, many of them are old friends from my Pier 63 days and they're good people, they didn't name their new club "Ke Aloha" lightly. These folks know how to run a major race and I'm looking forward to seeing the Hudson River Cup continue to grow.

In addition to the races, the boathouse folks also put together the Ohana Festival that went on throughout the day in Maxwell Place Park. The post-race atmosphere was thoroughly enjoyable, with ono-kine grindz, arts and crafts for the keiki, cornhole boards (not particularly Hawaiian but good fun for a summer day in the park), and lovely music and dance by the talented performers from Aloha Hula NYC - couldn't think of a nicer way to spend a day. You didn't have to be in the race to have fun!  As I said on Facebook when I posted the video snippet you'll see at the end of this post, "Lying on the grass after a five mile kayak race on the Hudson, looking up at the sky, Bill Wynne singing, happy people all around...can't get much closer to da 'aina without getting on a plane". Mahalo nui loa to Ke Aloha and the Hoboken Cove Boathouse for another great event!

Looking forward to 2019!

     O
:D />
   O

Lots more photos on Flickr, click here to view. 

147 from Bonnie on Vimeo.

Fish on Friday!

h/t to Joe at The Horse's Mouth for my stealing of his Friday theme since time immemorial, plus my Hawaiian friend K., whose FB page was where I first saw this and loved it more than I can say. Had to share this for all my mainland friends who are curious about how that neighborhood McPokebowl (possibly spelled with an é) joint stacks up against the real thing. Now you know. Perhaps I owe an apology?

PS - Leonard's...ahhh...SWOON!

Annual Admission That Mom Was Right

Kids hate to admit that their parents are right, but almost every winter since I moved to New York City, I have to admit that my mom was right about the snow.

My sister and I were lucky little Navy brats who got to grow up in Hawaii. Hawaii is an absolutely spectacular place to be a kid, and I loved it, but every year when Christmas rolled around and we'd put up the ersatz icicles and snowflakes and decorate the plastic tree (you could buy a real one but they were shipped over on a Matson container ship, cost a zillion dollars, and were well into dropping their needles by the time they made it to the supermarket parking lot), my sister and I would start to get wistful about white Christmases. We'd watch the Christmas movies, and the TV specials, and we'd see the beautiful snow scenes on the Christmas cards we'd get. Wouldn't it be neat, we would think, if it could just magically snow, just for the holiday? Snowball fights! Snow angels! Snow forts and igloos! Snowmen! Sledding! So many wonderful things!

My mom grew up in New Jersey (not Joisey, please, New Jersey, properly enunciated, she's from the areas that gave the Garden State its name). She grew up with snow, lots of it, every winter.

And when she would catch us mooning about the white stuff, she would try to explain the different between Hallmark-card snow and real snow. Real snow, she said, isn't all that neat. She would grant that it was pretty when it first fell - but then, she would continue, it doesn't go away. It hangs out, getting plowed and walked on and driven on, and it goes from beautiful white to dirty gray, and you're oh so ready for it to all be over.

My sister and I were skeptical back then - but now?

Yep, Mom was right. And this storm didn't even manage the new-fallen-snow prettiness part. Straight to frozen muck.

Come on, Spring! 

Mele Kalikimaka from Brooklyn!

Barely in time but wishing you all the best here at the end of the year!

Lau Hala weaving workshop with Paula Fuga

So it didn't get off to the start I'd hoped for, but somewhere around my road trip to Ithaca, my summer 2017 got back on track. The week before Labor Day and Labor Day weekend were especially rich - I had a wonderful trip to Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan for the wedding of a cousin once removed, that's where the lake I showed a couple of days ago in the "Not Brooklyn" post was, and then I came back to a reasonably quiet couple of days at work, with time for cheesemaking one night and a wonderful lau hala weaving workshop another night.

The weaving workshop was sponsored by Hālāwai. I am so glad to have gotten more involved with this excellent not-for-profit dedicated to sharing Hawaiian culture in NYC last year while helping out with welcoming the voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa to NYC during her around-the-world Mālama Honua voyage. I'd known about them for years but only ever made it to a couple of the Hawai'i picnics before; now I'm much more in the loop about what's going on and I was delighted when this workshop popped up on my Facebook feed.

Our kumu (teacher) for the evening was Paula Fuga; she's a highly regarded musician and this was the 3rd of 3 events she was doing during this visit to NYC. The first was a concert, the second a songwriting/storytelling/ukulele workshop that I told some of my musically inclined friends about, because it sounded great. I couldn't attend either of those because they happened while I was at the wedding, but this one was the day after I got back, nice to have something to look forward to right after the family vacation!

It ended up being such a good evening, Paula is an excellent teacher and it was such a nice group that gathered to learn from her. Lau hala weaving is a hobby of Paula's and she thought it would be fun to teach this while she was here. She'd actually put together kits for us with the leaves all prepared for the weaving - she told us that she'd done this for all of the friends and family at her own wedding, too, and that the leaves we would be using were from the very same tree. That makes these so special!

This workshop was also special to me for a personal reason. This is actually the second time I've made a lau hala bracelet; the first time was at the Bishop Museum on O'ahu when I was back for my 30th 'Iolani class reunion. I never finished blogging about that trip, I made it through Day 4 (a two-post report because I had had too good a day to squeeze everything into one). In the second Day 4 post, I made a vague reference to September going like a runaway train "as usual, and then some", but added that I wasn't ready to talk about it and then went cheerfully off into that day's selection of fun in Hawai'i.

The "and then some" part was of course dealing with breast cancer. Once you've figured out you have that, boy do you get busy, so many things to do and all of them time sensitive. After that Day 4 report, the blogging petered off to a trickle up until after October as I scrambled to get through all of the medical appointments plus all of the work that I wanted to get done before I was out for three weeks (suggested recovery time for the type of mastectomy I had). Never circled back to share the rest of the trip after that, but my afternoon at the Bishop Museum was one of the things that I would've gotten to if everything hadn't gone so horribly awry with my health.

The bracelet making there was part of an exhibit they'd had about the importance of lau hala and weaving in Hawaiian life - so many things could be made from the tough yet flexible leaf (lau) of the pandanus tree (hala) (I didn't actually know the distinction until Paula started off her worksho by telling us a little about the materials we would be using - always interesting to learn something new like that).

sailing canoe with woven sail 

model wa'a kaulua (double-hulled canoe) with woven sails

The exhibit was over (the canoes above were part of the regular exhibits, I added them in here because thought they were a great example of the sheer working utility of Hawaiian weaving) and the gallery that had housed it was closed while it was being taken down, but museum staff member Moses Goods was still teaching visitors to weave a lau hala bracelet. 

I always enjoy making things with my hands, so I decided to participate. Moses started out by telling us about the Hawaiian understanding that when you create something, you should be mindful of your thoughts and feelings and surroundings, because those all become part of what you are making. 

 

So I ended up with this bracelet that when I look at it or wear it, I think of how happy I was to be there in da 'aina, in a place I'd loved when I was a kid and still do today, making something under the eye of someone so willing to share his skill and knowledge with visitors...but then there was also the sickness hidden away in me, even though I didn't know it yet. I found the lump shortly after I got back to NYC - still grateful I didn't find it before or during the trip, wouldn't have made any difference if I'd found it sooner except to fill an amazing visit to a place that will always feel like home with worry. The bracelet I made that day always reminds me of that whole intense shift from the beauty of the trip to the shock of finding the lump and then the intent march through diagnosis and on into treatment.

The one I made at Paula's workshop just seems to balance that. I've just passed the 2 year mark of discovery and diagnoses and of course that's marked with all of my doctors wanting to see how I'm doing - and the general consensus is that everything's good, I'm as healthy as a horse and likely to continue being that way for the foreseeable future. You're not considered to be entirely in the clear until 5 years later, but so far so good, definitely. And I sat there in the classroom in Manhattan, thinking how happy I was to be there in good health, with friends all around, weaving this second bracelet under Paula and Kapena's guidance. For a second when she was passing out the kits, I thought it was going to be the same bracelet - but it turned out to be somewhat similar as far as size and simplicity (both were attractive yet simple patterns, perfect for inexperienced weavers), but quite a different pattern. A complementary set, one for before and one for after, without anyone having planned it at all.

Very neat. I was so glad I was able to go. 

Here are some pictures from the workshop, you can see how much fun we had - click for a slideshow view - and then down at the end there's a link to a page about Paula that you might enjoy. 

And here's a link to Hawaiian footwear company OluKai's "Walk Story" (play on "talk story") featuring Paula - it's a nice little intro with a lovely song. They talk about her Motown influence - well, she was pretty excited about her Labor Day weekend plans - she was going to go hear Aretha Franklin sing! 

A Great Afternoon at Hoboken Cove

Test spin on a shiny new Epic V5. Whee! Nice boat. Photo by Epic rep Gerald Kastner, thanks Gerry! My photos are down below. Click on any photo for a slideshow view.

It wasn't as easy to get there on a weekend as it would've been on a weekday, but I did make my way to Hoboken yesterday for the first annual Hudson River Cup, put on by Ke Aloha Outrigger and the Hoboken Cove Boathouse. If you happen to be in the Hoboken area, do follow those links for their regular activities, I was there for the festival but they do public paddling programs all summer, and there's a food truck pier a little ways north of there, you could make a very nice waterfront afternoon of it!

There was actually a moment on the way there when I nearly threw in the towel and went home - the issue was that the map program Facebook uses said that I could catch a ferry from the WTC, which turns out not to be true on weekends. If I'd thought to check that, I could've just gone to the 39th street Waterways terminal in the first place, where they did have a ferry to 14th street in Hoboken 7 days a week, that's how I got home and that worked great, but that mistaken direction sent me through the WTC area, which on a lovely summer day was of course swarming with hucksters shoving pretty souvenir books about the time all those people died under all the tourist noses. I know they're just trying to make a living and all but it feels so disrespectful and I just don't handle it well, having been there myself that day. To get to the ferry terminal, looking forward to a nice boat ride across the river after running that gauntlet, only to be told that that ferry doesn't run on weekends, was deeply disheartening, and I really did think about just heading for home. I think it was around noon or so, though, and the festival was slated to go on until 5, it wasn't like I was going to miss ALL the fun, so I decided to suck it up, take the PATH train, and hoof it the mile to the boathouse . 

And I'm so glad that I did, because I started to unwind just walking along the Hoboken shoreline; this was definitely my first trip to the Hoboken Cove Boathouse, and possibly even my first visit to the Hoboken shoreline, and their riverfront is pretty nice, with lots of parks (including a big run-through fountain that I was tempted to run through myself) but still an active little bit of a working waterfront too. By the time I got to the boathouse I was feeling a good bit less rattled, and there was the wonderful musician Bill Wynne singing songs from Hawai'i, and outrigger sprint racing going on in the cove, and so many old friends from Pier 63 days to say hello to. Ke Aloha is one of the area's newest boating clubs, but came about after some kind of split at the long-established New York Outrigger sent many of the original paddlers from that club looking for a new home. It may be a new club, but there's a ton of experience there, they have got themselves a lovely spot at the Hoboken Cove Boathouse and it's great to see them doing well there. I'm on something of a quest to get back in shape this year and with them not being that hard to get to from where I work, joining them for some practices may be an option worth considering.

I got there just in time for the 2 mile kayak and SUP race. I hadn't planned on racing, but when Jon, who's the one who told me about the day, saw me he asked me if I wanted to, and I figured "Why not?", if I could borrow a boat. One of the volunteers pointed me to a Drifter, which is not the boat I would ordinarily pick for a race, but I was just out for fun and figured I'd give it a shot. This actually worked out well - there was a moment when I noticed there were 2 Epic surfskis on the beach and thought "Oh dear, I'm going to get thoroughly smoked here", but those turned out to be demo boats and the only other kayak racer was one of the Cove's volunteers, who was in a Scupper Pro. With both of us in sitatops, it actually ended up being a pretty good race. He had the lead for the entire southbound leg, where we had the current with us, he'd done a better job at the start than me and although I wasn't too far back, I couldn't gain ground, we were pretty well matched in our sit-atops.

I had one horrifying moment when I rounded the buoy and discovered that I could hardly make any headway against the strong current AT ALL in this short, wide boat, for a second I was having visions of how embarrassing it would be if I couldn't get back under my own steam, but I was able to hold my ground while sidling over to get closer to shore and into the shelter of the piers, where I was able to move along much better. The other guy didn't know that trick, and that let me pull away and come in first by quite a ways. He did figure out what I was doing eventually, so he got something good out of it - you only get to pull that trick on a less experienced paddler once, at least if they are paying attention, which he was! You can really wear yourself paddling against that Hudson current, I remember that well. Actually the hardest part of the race for me was probably the last 50 yards or so, where you had to go out around the last pier and on to the finish marker, for that you did have to be out in the current a bit and man, it was a slog (Gerry the Epic guy actually said he was watching me finish and there was a good moment or three when I literally wasn't moving forward at all, and I believe it). I got there though, by that point I was not about to give up. I do hope next year they have more kayakers, it sounds like they had a good turnout from the outrigger community, I would love to see this grow. Spectacular setting for racing, too, with that cityscape across the river and the folks enjoying the Hoboken waterfront cheering us along.

Back at the boathouse, Aloha Hula NYC was performing, cornhole games were going on, and I tried out the Epic V5, which is a totally sweet little entry-level surfski. Someday I'm going to be in the market for a replacement for my Kayak Centre surfski, which I have literally repaired with duct tape and wire, and which I expect to just sink out from under me someday, hopefully not too far from the dock in the Paerdegat. V5 is definitely going to be in the running, I don't use my surfski for racing, more for summer workout paddles, the V5 is much more stable but still moves nicely, and is not horribly expensive. This is a totally unsolicited plug, I just really liked that boat, would be a lovely summer paddling craft. I should've tried the V8 that the Epic rep had there too, but the awards were starting up so I had to go get my coconut trophy! Finished off the day helping bring the OC-6's up from the beach; Aloha Hula NYC was dancing again, and it truly felt like a little taste of Hawai'i right there on the Hudson River shore.

Came home with my coconut and a plumeria lei that's still smelling lovely tonight. So glad I stuck out the bumpy start to the day, it was well worth the trip. Such a nice day!

 

Annual Hawai'i Picnic, Governor's Island, NYC

Taking a break from my Colorado blogging today to share some photos from wonderful picnic for people who are from or interested in Hawai'i that Halawai, the local organization dedicated to sharing Hawaiian culture here in the "Apala Nui" (OK, I just made that up, nobody really calls the Big Apple the "Apala Nui", but if they did want to say it in Hawaiian, that's what it would be, I think), puts on every June. I've known about this potluck for years but didn't always attend, with this time of year generally being great for boating, I frequently got myself committed to something on the water before I remembered the picnic. However, after having had such a generally amazing time being part of the welcome committee for Hokule'a on the NYC stop of the Malama Honua voyage, and making so many friends among the local Hawaiian community, the picnic is now on my can't-miss list.

It was a horribly hot day on Sunday but the location on Governor's Island was cooled by the breezes off of the still-chilly water of New York Harbor, and the music, the dancing, and the fellowship of da 'aina was beautiful, the plumerias were fragrant, and the food? Onolicious, beyond compare!

My contribution to the table: butter mochi from Hawaiian Electric's Electric Kitchen. So easy, so yummy, was gone in an hour! 

And that's it for the writeup - here are the rest of the pictures from the day, click for a slideshow view. I forgot to take pictures of the food (d'oh!) but here are: a couple of hula halau (I'm bad, I should have gotten the names); the lei-making tent; a couple more halau; adorable little girls who asked to dance Lovely Hula Hands (keiki hula is the cutest!); the lei that I made (smells like home!); graduates of the latest Hawaiian language class through Halau ʻŌlelo; and then all the hula halau joining together in one big wonderful dance. Made me wish I could take hula again and join in - I did dance when I was a kid but I don't remember anything beyond a couple of first lines; I also wasn't very good and I also wasn't very patient with myself as a kid, I'm not sure I would be good now but 50 year old me is somewhat more understanding of the time it takes to do something than 15 year old me ever was. Just not sure where I would find the time, that's all!

Anyways, was good fun, enough wala'au, here's the pix!