Banana Nana Fofana

About twice a year, one of my dozen banana trees presents me with a lifetime supply of bananas. There were over 90 bananas on this one bunch. I removed all the ripe ones and left the rest here on the lanai to finish ripening. I’ll be delivering bananas all over the neighborhood later this week, and I’ll still have many to bake with and/or freeze.

I've learned that the rule for picking bananas is to cut down the whole bunch as soon as you see the first bit of yellow. If you wait until most of the bananas are starting to turn, it's too late. I let a couple of bunches "spoil" before I figured this out. 

Aloha y'all!

Sophie at the Beach

It used to make me nervous to turn my little girl loose at the dog beach. I worried that she'd get so engrossed with the dogs and people and beach and water that she might not come when I called her.

But my little girl is all grown up now. She had the BEST beach day on Saturday. She wandered far and wide, but when she heard me whistle or call, she'd stop dead in her tracks and turn and run FULL BLAST right to me.

She hears her mother's whistle and here she comes!!!!!

My iPhone was on full zoom when I took these. She was much farther away than these pictures might imply.

Meanwhile back on the mainland...

Her California cousin, Walter, was shopping with Megan at Stanford:

AND

Her California Cat Cousins were contemplating lunch:

Aloha y'all!

When the ZipMobile breaks, madness ensues!

Honolulu is just like any other crowded metropolitan city.
Commuters drive on a 5-lane highway into the city in the AM, and they drive back home on another 5 lanes in the PM. And then there's the zipper lane...

A mechanical monstrosity called a ZipMobile moves a segmented concrete barrier from one side of the zipper lane to the other twice a day to let the commute direction access the extra lane. And then the ZipMobile breaks. There are in fact, TWO ZipMobiles, and BOTH of them were broken for three days this week. You'd have thought the Zombie Apocalypse had arrived!

Traffic was stopped for hours! The governor broke into broadcast TV to beg people to stay home. They contemplated closing schools and government offices.

You really must see how a ZipMobile eats concrete barriers on one side of the lane and poops them out on the other:

Watch the ZipMobile in Action

Aloha y'all!

It's Snowing in Hawaii !

Lest any of you think that it's always sunny and warm here, these are pictures from Mauna Kea this week. Mauna Kea is 30 miles from me, and the summit is 14,000 feet above me.

This morning it was 20 degrees with a 35mph wind. 

You can see the entire slideshow here:   Mauna Kea Slideshow

Aloha!

Sophie in the Garden

Yes, I'm a bit biased, but isn't Sophie the cutest thing EVER?

Surf's Up!!!!!!!!!!

For the past week, we've been having really big waves -- 30-40 feet! All the state-owned beaches on the Kona Coast have been closed, so I haven't been able to get close enough to take any decent pictures or videos, but I can easily see the crashing waves from my house. This weekend, it dawned on me that Sophie's dog beach isn't a state beach, so we took a chance...

It was way too risky to walk all the way down to our regular beach, so I filmed this from the cliff above. Sophie stayed safely in the truck and kept a watchful eye on me. 

When I pan to the left, watch the point in the background. ((The dog beach is that cove between the distant point and where I'm standing.))

Aloha y'all!

Megan and Shannon and the Helicopter

These crazy girls actually CHOSE a "doorless" helicopter for their trip around the lava and waterfalls near Hilo.

This is the lava flow that all the news has been talking about: