Kauai Olympian

Quick before the games are finished in Turin, I have to pass on the Kauai connection to the winter Olympics.

Source: volcom.com (why not vol.com?)

At 16 years old, the youngest member of the US snowboarding team is Elena Hight [not sure of the pronunciation on that]. According to the Garden Island newspaper, she was born on Kauai and lived here until the age of 7. I imagine she surfed here, though the story only says she was snowboarding at the age of 6, on the mainland it must be assumed. Her family moved to Lake Tahoe, California’s ski mecca, and she became one of those fearless daredevil kids on the slopes.

It all paid off because she finished sixth overall in the women’s halfpipe finals. Congratulation, Elena. I hope our (3 month-old) daughter learns to surf and ride half as good as you can.

Elena’s (outdated) bio and photo are on the US snowboarding team website. I also found a kidzworld interview with her, though I must warn you of all the pop-ups trying to sell things to your kids. Here’s a shorter interview with more photos and no pop-ups on the Volcom website, a surfwear manufacturer and sponsor (isn’t that redundant).

Errata: With the time difference and late-night posting, it seems like I missed the closing ceremony of the games by 24hrs.

Aggravated Stupidity

Kauai’s home-grown version of the incompetent crimial story has been unfolding in the Garden Island newspaper over the past week, with the newspaper itself playing an important role in the story.

Last week, the Garden Island reported the story of a minor drug bust, as they tend to do on slow news days. Two people were arrested on charges of dealing ice (crystal meth) at a hotel, after a tip-off from the public. The police seized $10,000 worth of the drug, barely enough to warrant a front page article with mug shots of both suspects, I thought. See link above for their photos.

The next day’s newspaper reported on the theft of the previous day’s newpaper from vending machines, along with various other attempts to limit circulation. It seems that one or more people tried to purchase all the papers from the early morning paper carriers, who obviously refused. So they bought all the newspapers on sale at the stores, and apparently emptied the vending machines. It was speculated that the suspects were unhappy with their photos being so widely distributed, immediately making them suspects in the newspaper thefts.

The headline of today’s paper is “Arrest made in purloined papers case”, wherein we learn that a policeman spotted the suspect and a stack of the stolen newspapers, in plain view in car he pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Not only was the suspect arrested again, but his friend’s car that he was riding in with the stolen papers was seized and impounded. Maybe he was so proud of having his photo in the newspaper that he had to keep them. I guess we the public can be thankful that the newspapers weren’t dumped somewhere by the side of the road.

It also turns out the second suspect in the drug bust called the newspaper asking them not to print the original story of the bust. I imagine that’s why it got printed in the first place, editors love to publish things they know will irritate some people.

PS: Kudos to the Garden Island for the use of the word “purloined” in a headline.

Update: I’ve just summitted this to Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird syndicated column.

I Want to Be a Travel Writer

I’ve always wanted to be a travel writer: who wouldn’t want to go off and have adventures, meet people, research interesting stories, and then get paid for it. That is until I realized everybody else wanted to do that, and the few who were good enough to get paid weren’t making a living. But I still like to read travel articles, learn about new places, and secretly entertain the thought that maybe I could’ve gone to the same place and written a better article.

Well, that finally happened. The article in question is “Hawaii: Searching For Koolau The Leper”, on a sleek travel website whose name I can’t even pronounce. So now I will become a travel writer critic.

Overall, the article follows a classic recipe: travel to an interesting place, search for some historical figure, and find echos of the past by interviewing the locals. The problem is that you need to do some historical research, and that takes time away from your working vacation. I know one should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, but in this case, they got in the way of my reading.

The story of Koolau the Leper was made famous by Jack London who heard a second- or third-hand account while traveling in Hawaii. So it was with great interest that I read the story told by his widow in The Kauai Papers, published by the Kauai Historical Society. Too bad our travel writer never found this credible account while he was at the local library, because it clearly states that Koolau and his wife came from Waimea, and hiked into Kalalau down the steep cliffs at the back of the valley on a trail that no longer exists.

So the entire following-in-his-footsteps premise of the article is undermined, and the author appears for what he really is: just another tourist. Yes, the Kalalau trail is hard, but it is nowhere near as hard as what Koolau and his wife actually had to do. If the writer had climbed that cliff, which might be feasible or might be suicide depending on whom you ask, then I would’ve been impressed. As it is, I think he needs to search for another way to pay for his vacations.

More Celebrities

Like every small town, Kauai plays up any connections it has to famous people. Since I can’t recognize these people, I usually just read about them in the newspaper. Time for some more name dropping:

• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the basketball player only slightly less famous than Michael Jordan, apparently owns a house on the north shore of Kaua’i.
• J.K. Rowling, the slightly more famous author of the Harry Potter series, has visited here all the way from England, and had direct ancestors living here back in the early plantation days before 1900. According to the newspaper, her maternal great-grandfather was a Scottish physician who lived in Kilauea then Waimea for 15 years before moving back to London.

Name Dropping

Two days ago, I’d heard through the coconut wireless that the Clintons were visiting Kauai. I’m always surprised how a non-gossiper such as myself manages to hear these things. Anyways, it was nothing to blog about, especially without any proof.

But it made the news today, so it must be true. Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and possibly her fiancé are/were here. As my original source put it, “I didn’t know they still traveled together.”

What does any of this change? Nothing at all, which is why we call it gossip. But it is interesting to note that many celebrities visit here, a reminder of the away-from-it-all-yet-luxurious segment of the local tourism industry. Soon after moving here, we met a guy who works at the private jet terminal at the airport. He sees them all come and go, rolls out the carpet for them, loads their bags, refuels their planes, and keeps his job by not saying anything about them–and gets good tips I imagine.

Like some not-so-rich-and-famous visitors, a few celebrities have bought into the island dream as well. Bette Midler owns much land between Wailua and Kapaa town, though I think that is more about buying into the real-estate boom than living here. It is agricultural land, so her property manager runs cattle on it, and she is generally open to community needs such as when they wanted to run bypass road through her property. Ben Affleck (or is it Ben Stiller, to me he’s just the recent movie star whose name starts with Ben) owns a house on the North Shore and vacations there off-and-on. A friend told me he was with his family at Kalihiwai beach the day we got married there last year. I wouldn’t be able to recognize him, even if he was on any of the photos.

I’m filing this under journalism so I don’t have to create a “gossip” category.