Author: supermaren

Posted on

Volcano Day (Part 2)

Previously: Volcano Day (Part 1)

Lunch at the Volcano House was wonderful. We sat down with our buffet meals and ate in front of a huge window overlooking the Kilauea Caldera. The fog and rain were coming in, obscuring our view for much of the time, but we did get some good shots of the gasses emerging from the ground (see left), so I was pleased.

Even though there were tons of warning signs and blocked roads restricting views of the volcano (even the little steam vents by the main road were blocked off!), I was amazed that I could get as close as I did. I mean, we were on an active volcano! Not one that was dormant and maybe might go off soon, but one that was actively spewing out lava and gasses as we were watching.

So I didn’t see Pele’s tears or Pele’s hair as we were hiking around (I did see them in the Jaggar Museum, though). And we found out that because of safety concerns, the place where you can see the red flowing lava was closed. But I’m okay with that, because I saw this:


And so I feel like I really did see a volcano.

After lunch, we decided to see how far up we could get on Mauna Loa (Kilauea is actually a bit of a pimple on the side of Mauna Loa). One of our maps showed a road going up to Mauna Loa Lookout Point at 6,662 ft., so we decided to try it.

We drove up a one-lane, (mostly) paved road for what seemed to be ages. Even though we only traveled for 11 miles, we were also going 5-10 miles an hour. But there was much more to see here than the Chain of Craters Road. Where along the lava flows there was only desert, here was lush forest, with wild animals at every turn.

The rain and the fog persisted all the way to the top of the road: so much so that when we got to the lookout point, there was nothing to see! It was also 50 degrees outside, which, according to my mother, might as well be freezing. So, back in the car we went, to drive back through the fairyland forests and over the mysterious cattle guards (we really weren’t sure why they were there, since it didn’t really seem like ranching country…just one of those weird Hawaii things, I guess), back to our guest house, where we decided to have dine at the Lava Rock Cafe (okay, it was really a diner, but they wanted to be so much more!).

Next: Another Side of the Island (Part 1)

Posted on

Volcano Day (Part 1)

Previously: Valley of the Kings

While I had been planning our trip to the Big Island, the thing I most wanted to see was the volcano. I mean, the thought of being able to see the birth of the world was extremely exciting, and the fact that we happened to know someone who knew someone who had a guest house in Volcano seemed serendipitous.

So Saturday was Volcano Day.

As we entered Volcanoes National Park, we were inundated with warnings about the air quality. The level of sulfur dioxide in the air was high, and we should only enter at our own risk. We closed our windows and put the air on “recirculate,” but the smell was still coming in. The cloud of SO2 billowed across the road like a sinister fog (they call it “vog” in Hawaii – volcanic fog), and because we couldn’t find parking at the visitor’s center, we decided to drive around the crater away from the vog.

First stop: the Thurston Lava Tube. This seems to be the most famous of the volcanic landmarks, although when you come right down to it, it’s little more than a cave with two entrances. Sometimes, when lava flows, the top crusts over, but beneath it remains liquid magma, creating these natural pipes underground. As the source of the lava shuts off, the lava keeps flowing, but there becomes less and less and less, until there is nothing but air. This one is the largest of its kind, I believe, and you can walk right through it, which is what we did.

While we were on this side of the crater, we decided to take a look at Desolation Trail, which is truly a path of devastation left by an eruption in the 1959. The ohia lehua trees seem like the only plants able to survive in this desert. We started up the path, but quickly realized that there wasn’t much to see here (hence, desolation trail), so we turned around and headed back to the car for more sight-seeing.

Unfortunately the Crater Rim Drive was closed due to a new vent that recently opened within Halemaumau Crater, so we opted for the only road open to us: Chain of Craters Road.

The Chain of Craters Road is a 18.3-mile winding drive down the mountain to the sea, with craters and lookout points along the way. We stopped at some of the craters, but after the fourth one, we got bored and decided to stop at the scenic lookouts instead. I was ready to turn around about halfway down the mountain, but Ray was enjoying the lava experience, and he wanted to know what the end of the road looked like, so we kept going.

Lava flows from as recently as 1974 are all that exist here. Oh, there are some hardy ferns growing out of a few crags here and there, but there is nothing but black as far as the eye can see. A blank slate, land yet to find a name.

We finally made it down to the shore, where it was at least 15 degrees warmer. I shed my sweater as we headed down the path towards the plume of steam rising from the sea. That was where the lava was hitting the water, and I was interested in seeing what that looked like.

More warning signs abounded as we set off on the trail. Apparently when the lava hits the salt water, large amounts of toxic hydrochloric gas is produced, so we should proceed at our own risk. A little cartoon man on a warning sign was falling into the ocean because he had been hiking on an unstable lava shelf. All this made me nervous, but we decided to at least hike out for a little while.

As we were walking in the hot midday sun, Ray noticed a little oasis-like area with palm trees. It stuck out because there were no trees of any kind anywhere else. They were all so close together we thought maybe this must have been a village of some sort at one point or another (we found out later that it had indeed been a village before the lava came).

We did have to stray from the path to get to the trees, but it was nice to be in the shade even of coconut palms, and we got some cool pictures while we were there. That plume of steam was so far away! And it was lunchtime, and I was starving.

What to do? I wanted to see the lava flow into the ocean, but I just couldn’t ignore my growling tummy. We decided to turn around and head back up to the mountain (there was certainly no food anywhere here) and have lunch by the Kilauea crater.

Besides, my mom reasoned, the lava is much more spectacular at night when it’s glowing red. We could go to the ocean lava viewing area in the evening around sunset. But for now: lunch!

Next: Volcano Day (Part 2)

Posted on

Valley of the Kings

Previously: Infrequent Flyer (Part 2)

My mother was only going to be with us for the first weekend we were in Hawaii, so she and I had tried to plan as many fun adventures as possible while she was on the Big Island. Unfortunately, that meant me going back on my promise to Ray that I wouldn’t plan anything during our stay.

Technically, though, my mother planned the tour to Waipio Valley, so I can’t really take responsibility for that. All I had asked was that we have a tour in the afternoon, rather the morning, so that we could recover from our plane ride.

Being awake for 24 hours must have reset me in Hawaii time, though, because I was wide awake at my normal wake-up time, 7:00, even though I had only gotten about 6 hours of sleep the night before. Ray was asleep, though, so I left him in bed while I went to find breakfast.

The guest house was much different in the daytime. My mom (who is also a morning person) was up, and the two of us read through the welcome binder and noted all the signs around the room about preserving water (the entire water supply was through a rain catchment system) and how the solar water heater worked.

Our instructions said that breakfast was “in the greenhouse,” but we couldn’t figure out which building it was from our windows, so we went outside to investigate. Sure enough, directly opposite our building was a greenhouse, and we saw some people inside eating breakfast.

Fresh papaya and bananas were the first things I saw, and I took full advantage of the available fruit. The rest of the breakfast fare was typical: juice, cereal, milk, coffee, as well as assorted bagels, cream cheese, and other spreads.

We chatted with some of the other guests until our hostess, Bonnie, arrived, and my mother introduced us (my aunt went to high school with Bonnie, so we got a good deal on the rooms).

Later in the morning, after Ray was up and dressed, we headed east to Hilo for lunch before continuing up the coast towards Waipio Valley (the Valley of Kings). It was an hour and a half before we got to our destination, but we had left plenty of time, so we stopped at the Waipio Valley Lookout before starting the tour.

Our tour guide was a young Hawaiian by the name of Douglas (but everyone calls him “Toki,” since that’s his middle name), whose family owns some of the taro fields in Waipio Valley. He showed us a lot about local plants and their uses (the stinky Noni fruit with a smell that rivals Camembert apparently cures everything from a stiff shoulder to cancer, but if you’re suffering from nausea, you should chew on some young guava leaves), and he spent a great deal of time explaining that the King Kamehameha Bishop Estate, which owned Waipio Valley, lease land at very reasonable rates, but only to Hawaiians who are willing to farm taro through traditional means (no equipment other than your own two hands).

With electricity only running to the first five houses in the valley and only two roads into and out of the valley (one of which being a footpath only wide enough for one person on the face of a cliff, the other being a poorly-paved winding road built at 25% grade), it’s no wonder there are not people lining up to take advantage of the good rents.

But the valley itself has a very magical quality to it, and it certainly feels like paradise there. It’s just that the price of this particular paradise is manual labor, no electricity, and commuting from work to home via the river road (no really, it’s a road that’s also a river).

After the tour, we headed back down the coast towards Hilo. It was getting to be dinner time, so we stopped at Cafe Pesto, which had been recommended to us by my dad (apparently the owner is a son of one of his Peace Corps buddies).

It was a nice enough meal, but Ray and I were exhausted again, so we drove back to Volcano (at night, again…only this time approaching it from the opposite side of the mountain) to fall instantly asleep as soon as we got back.

Next: Volcano Day (Part 1)

Posted on

Infrequent Flyer (Part 2)

Previously: Infrequent Flyer Part 1

The next leg of our trip was a short flight from Honolulu to Kailua-Kona on the Big Island. We met up with my mom at the Honolulu airport (some confusion in communication had us meeting her in baggage claim, only to have us all go through security again, and having to confiscate the overpriced water bottles we had purchased in Phoenix). Even though we were hungry, we decided to wait until we got to Kailua-Kona before eating, since we didn’t have very much time before our flight, and Ray and I were both tired of overpriced airport food.

The three of us continued to the Big Island in a little Boeing 717 commuter plane, where Ray could stretch out in the aisle seat and I could try to catch a few Zs in the window seat.

Except I couldn’t, because there was a kid with autism or Down Syndrome or something right behind, and wasn’t it just my luck that he was a seat-kicker? He also was very excited about being on a plane, but was only able to express himself with moans and sighs and occasional hacking noises that disturbed me greatly. The flight only lasted 43 minutes, but it felt like 3 hours.

On the ground in Kailua-Kona, we had the great good fortune to have our baggage arrive first, so we were on our way to the car rental place with almost no delay. Once at the car rental, however, we stood in line for what seemed to be an eternity before we finally got our car.

In the car we went, and out came my TomTom GPS device (which I had uploaded with the voice of John Cleese, so we call the GPS “John Cleese”), much to the amazement of my mother, who I think had not seen one up close before.

Our first priority was to find food, so I used the “points of interest” feature on the TomTom to find the closest fast-food restaurant. John Cleese first led us to a Subway, which was closed (it was 9:00 at night by this time), and the second place, a Wendy’s, was not at the point indicated to us by John Cleese. Fortunately, we stumbled upon a Denny’s and decided to eat there.

Ray and I had breakfast, while my mom had dinner; one of the side effects of our travel was that our bodies thought it was 3 a.m., so I decided to treat it as an all-nighter. A half hour later, we had paid our bill (mom came in handy, as her senior status gave us 20% off the total!), and we were on the road again.

The maps we had looked at before the trip never had a scale on them, so I don’t think we really realized how big the Big Island was until we started driving. Sure, I had checked our road trip out on Google Maps before we left, and the estimated travel time was something like 2.5 hours, but I thought that surely that was a conservative estimate, and that once we got on the highway things would go much faster.

Little did I know that “highway” in Hawaii just means “road that is paved regularly.” It has nothing to do with number of lanes, because we were on a two-lane road for the entire 106 miles. Ray was a trooper, though, and while my mom and I napped, he navigated the windy roads up the mountain to Volcano very well.

We knew we were close when we smelled the sulfur dioxide from Kilauea’s crater. It was foggy, so we couldn’t see very well, but John Cleese led us to our destination with no problem, showing us where the road was when we ourselves could not see it. When we finally arrived at the Volcano Guest House, we rolled into bed and slept soundly.

Next: The Valley of the Kings

Posted on

Infrequent Flyer (Part 1)

It’s been two years since I’ve taken a domestic flight, and while many people may have been witnessing the gradual changes that airlines have been making, I (who do not travel nearly as often as I would like due to lack of means and time) have been shocked at the changes that have been made in the airline industry.

Granted, the last time Ray and I took a flight together, we were on our way to get married; I had booked a nonstop trip from Newark to Honolulu simply because I didn’t want to risk our baggage (read: wedding dress) getting lost during a transfer.

This time, though, we were more concerned with cost than with transfers, so when I found a flight that left from Philadelphia for a reasonable price with a reasonable travel time, I booked it.

Our first leg took us from Philadelphia to Phoenix. I had the pleasure of being seated next to Typhoid Mary, Plague-Bringer, who hacked and coughed her way through the 4-hour long flight.

I was also surprised that the “In-Flight Café,” which I had known would be a pay-for-your-food-if-you-want-to-be-fed deal, had absolutely NO vegetarian options. Instead our choices were: 1) a Reuben sandwich with cookie – $7; 2) a Cobb salad with cookie – $7; or 3) a “snack pack” consisting of a tiny can of chicken salad, 4 cubes of cheese, some crackers, and, you guessed it, a cookie – $5.

Ray had discouraged me from making sandwiches for the trip because (and it was a good point) we had no way of keeping them cold until lunchtime. Instead, I packed a bunch of Lara Bars, and he stocked up on cashews, Pepperidge Farm Milan cookies, and almonds, so that became my lunch.

As we were landing, we hit a patch of turbulence, and my poorly-fed stomach began to turn. Thankfully, our plane landed before things got too desperate, although I was trapped near the back of the plane (which is always annoying during disembarkment) and forced to listen to Typhoid Mary explain that she got sick from her grandson, whom she had visited, when the last thing I wanted to talk about was being sick.

In Phoenix, we had 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to the next gate (one terminal over) as well as eat lunch/dinner. I was still feeling queasy, as was Ray, but we forced ourselves to buy individual pizzas to bring with us on the plane.

Before we knew it, the flight had boarded, and we were back in the air again. Departing Phoenix was almost as bumpy as our arrival, so we were both thankful when we reached cruising altitude.

Even though I had specifically requested a window seat for Ray, something must have happened with the booking process, because he was given an aisle seat. And we were right next to the lavatories, which might have been useful if either one of us had continued to be sick. Instead, we got a whiff of other people’s bowel movements every single time the bathroom door opened.

I was stuck in the middle seat, as always, since I have shorter legs. The guy in front of me pushed his seat as far back as he could, and then he bounced back against the seat a couple more times, for good measure, I assumed, in case my knees hadn’t gotten quite bruised enough.

Meanwhile, the guy behind me (who had made a big stink upon boarding because his seating assignment had been messed up too, and the flight attendants gave him the option of dealing with a middle seat or getting off the plane) had some sort of nervous tic that involved kicking my seat for about 2 hours until he finally went to sleep. He awoke about an hour before the plane landed and resumed, much to my chagrin.

The only good thing about the seating mix-up is that Ray now realizes he likes aisle seating better because there is more room to stretch out.

After 7 hours in the air, we arrived in Honolulu tired and hungry and cranky, but we did stop to take in the fact that we were finally in Hawaii. That put smiles on our faces.

Next: Infrequent Flyer Part 2

Posted on

A Little Podcast for Ya

I’m sure you have all heard me talk about The Crossing. I don’t think I’ve written about it as much as I’ve talked about it, but suffice to say that singing with this group of people is exactly the kind of musical experience I wish I could do every single day of my life.

Below is an interview that our director, Donald Nally, gave with WMFT’s Andrew Patner about The Crossing. Yours truly sang in all the recordings that are played on the podcast, including a movement from Kile Smith’s Epiphany Vespers, which will be released on CD in March.

Included in the podcast:

  • “der Frühling” from Tag des Jaars by Kaija Saariaho
  • “Herr Christ” from Epiphany Vespers by Kile Smith
  • “i lie” by David Lang
  • “Was heut’ noch grün” from Vier kleine Finalsätze zu ‘Es ist ein Schnitter, heisst der Tod’ by Erhard Karkoschka (excerpt)
  • “Creator of the Stars of Night” by Gabriel Jackson
Posted on

Obama Swirl

I was lucky enough to be in the comfort of my own home, watching the inauguration in HD clarity during lunch, but I finished my sandwich about halfway through the musical stylings of Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, and it was really hard to keep still. So I pulled out my spinning wheel and went to work.

Although I know I had these combinations of colors in mind many months ago, as I spun, I thought about how appropriate a blend of brown and white alpaca would be as I watched this half-black, half-white man take the highest office in the country. My spinning wheel was whirring as Obama urged us all to be a part of making this country great.

And so I give you: Obama Swirl, a blend of very soft alpaca spun into a warm twist of hope, change, and determination. Oh, and it looks pretty too.

From SpinningAny suggestions for what I should knit it into? Should I go with a standard matching scarf/hat combo? Feel free to put suggestions in the comments below.

Posted on

Too Much To Do!

When I was little, I remember this cartoon that my grandmother had drawn of the family (her, my grandfather, my father, and his siblings), and thinking that it must have been one crazy household. I’m not saying my household, either then or today ISN’T crazy, of course…but what I am saying is that I remember being an only child and wondering what kind of a three-ring circus it must be to have so many people in one house.

My grandfather heads up the upper left corner. Proclaiming, “I’m sick of it!,” he has taken his belt off, ostensibly to beat someone with it. Over the years, I heard many stories of his temper (especially because my father had sworn never to lay a hand on me), but to me, he was always “Grampi,” the big, fat, laughing Buddha, always happy to see me.

My father is to his right, having come home from wherever he had been (college, perhaps?), with suitcases in his hand, asking, “What’s for dinner?” I’m assuming that phrase annoyed my grandmother as much as it annoyed my father, ironically, when I asked him that very same question every night growing up. (My dad’s answer was never-changing: “Food.” When I would ask, “What kind of food?” he would reply, “Good food.”)

My uncle Christopher, clearly a beanpole at this stage of life, says only “Hoodly-oodley-hoo!,” to which my aunt Maggie replies, “Get out of here, you little creep!” Ah, what a loving brother/sister relationship. Aunt Nina, the baby of the bunch, asks, “Why does Tommy always kiss me?” I guess she was the pretty one in the family? Everyone says I look like her, so clearly she must have been.

But in the center of all of this, my grandmother stands with a mop and pail, exclaiming, “Too much to do!” And that is how I feel today: everyone around me is in their own world, but I’ve been sitting here with my virtual mop and pail (otherwise known as Word and Excel) and the more I cross off on my to-do list, the more it gets inexorably longer.

My New Year’s resolution? To try to find a balance between being the helpful, organized person that I am and actually having a life. We’ll see how well I can stick to it.

Posted on

The Messiah Made Me Do It

Last week, I performed in the event that every classical singer looks forward to (sometimes with dread) every year during Christmas time: Handel’s The Messiah. This year I only had one performance; in years past I’ve had to perform the piece multiple times at multiple venues with various different groups.

In fact, I’ve done so many concerts of The Messiah that I have almost every single printed edition currently available: the Baerenreiter (the preferred edition of The Philadelphia Orchestra and the heaviest), the Watkins-Shaw edition published by Novello (a lighter score only because the pages are super-thin; it actually has all of Handel’s variations in the appendix, including the triplet version of “Rejoice”), and the Schirmer, edited by T. Tertius Noble, which I got in college, because everyone gets that in college (Ray says I make it sound like a disease when I put it that way, but for some reason — probably because it’s the only one printed in the USA — all the college bookstores like to stock the Schirmer, even though it’s the worst edition with the most mistakes and the least number of variations).

This year it was the Baerenreiter for the whole season, and, as I mentioned, it is the heaviest of all my Messiah scores. So heavy, in fact, that I believe I pulled a muscle in my back while holding it up during rehearsals and the one performance of it. I myself find it difficult to believe that something as simple as a heavy score would hurt my back, especially since I’ve done this every year for the past ten years with no ill effects, but I haven’t been doing anything else to strain myself, and my pain seemed limited to the muscle below my left shoulder (the arm I use to hold my music) so I guess it must have been The Messiah that threw my back out.

Ray says the Messiah should have been able to levitate and save me the stress. I told him to take it up with Baerenreiter.

After about a week of anti-inflammatories, massages, and hot showers before bedtime (sounds like a typical Saturday night!) my back was still spasming, so I finally decided to seek professional help. I thought about going to a masseuse and decided I needed something a little more heavy-hitting, so I went to an acupuncturist.

I’ve seen this woman before in the past, although I’m not a regular acupuncture patient. As I laid face-down on the table, she exclaimed that she could see my spasming muscle clearly because it was so inflamed. Not a good thing, I’m imagining. And so the needles went in, and she decided she was going to do some cupping as well, which was a new experience, and felt somewhat like a very large starfish had attached itself to my back.

After all of the needles were in and the cups were in place, she covered me with a mylar blanket to keep me warm and left me in the room with my thoughts for 20 minutes as the qi began to unblock, and for some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep, like I’ve done in the past. Perhaps it was too early in the morning and I had too much on my mind; but even my normal meditative techniques of trying to direct my thoughts towards relaxing my muscles didn’t work very well. All I could think of was how silly I must look, lying face-down on a massage table with a space blanket draped over me.

Ah, well. The 20 minutes were soon over, and my acupuncturist removed all the needles and cups, leaving me with five large red circles on my back. I sat up and stretched and noticed right away that my back felt better. Not perfect, mind you, but much better, and all I could think of was how grateful I was to Chinese medicine.

When I got home and sat at my desk for about four hours, I noticed that the pain was coming back, so I started examining the way I was sitting. Yes, indeed, I’ve been a little torqued, and I have to reach a lot to the left to get to the mouse, so perhaps The Messiah wasn’t the culprit after all!

In the meantime, I’m still trying to avoid any heavy lifting, so don’t ask me to sing Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem anytime soon!