Wiliwilinui Ridge Trail

[disclaimer.  I started writing this...before Saturday.  What a procrastinator....]

Oh my goodness.  If the world ends Saturday, I am SO HAPPY I got to see today's Giants game.  

Speaking of which, look what I saw on the bus today: 

Awesome.  It got to Hawaii too.  Good thing I practiced for this by doing a zombie apocalypse Choose Your Own Adventure Book.  (Although I managed to survive by being a wimp...and ending up as part of a military experiment.)

Anyways.  Last Saturday we (me, my cousin, my aunt, my aunt's cousin, my great aunt.  3 generations of badass-ness) decided hike the Wiliwilinui Ridge Trail.  I had told them I really wanted to try a hike that uses ropes, and apparently this is the easiest one.  

The trail starts at the top of this super fancy gated community.  I wish I wasn't so sleepy (we had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. Yup, I'm going to be screwed once I start school again), otherwise I should have taken pictures of the houses.  I think it's one of the most expensive places to live in Hawaii.  

This sign makes me happy.   There's a cute little scrubby thing for your feet.  It reminds me of Matt H's fancy nanotech lab where there's this sterilization room you have to go through before entering the lab.

The first thing you run into are a bunch of strawberry guava tree, a highly invasive, but tasty, treat.  

Mmm.  Tastes like guava.  And guilt.  It's so bad that the 1954 soil book I'm reading complained about it, while praising the virtues of bermuda grass in the same sentence. 

The path was initially very nice, and along the way we found a walking stick for my great aunt.  I like it. She looks like Gandalf or something on our adventure.  

And oh, now that trail starts.  Awkward. 

Along the way we saw a bunch of tower material.  I'm terrified of electricity, so yay. 

This is my new favorite fern! (fern?)  I like the dichotomous branching. :D

And now I know why there are cell phone tower equipment down in the beginning of the trail.  There is impeccable cell phone reception up there:

This is a koa baby leaf.  It turns long, like the yellowish leaves in the background when it gets older.  WILD. 

I took a lot of pictures of it because I thought I discovered tree AIDS or something.  And then wikipedia crushed my dreams.  

Hehe, this is less puzzling. 

This plant though, I'm sure has something wrong with it.  There's definitely two plants here...

Hawaiians have this term called ahupua'a, which is basically a land unit that's like a pie shape, starting in the mountainous forest and extending to the ocean.  From up where we were hiking, it was very easy  to see where this land division came from.  It just seems natural with all these ridges slicing the island into delicious pie shaped ecosystems. 

This is naupaka.  There's two kinds in Hawaii: ones found on the beach and ones found in the mountain.  They have really cute half flowers (I don't know if this picture does it justice).  According to legends, the two naupakas are separated lovers...one who is in the mountain and one who is on the shore.   Awww, adorable.  

And kind of sad...

Not naukapa.  Probably an orchid?

Aaannnd now the trail starts.  Woopeee.  

This is definitely the part that is ranked moderate in the hiking scale. The original plan was to leave my great aunt behind so she can do sudoku on a bench, but she's too badass for that.  She followed us up on the stairs.   

That's her! BADASS.

'Ohi'a lehua.  This is the Big Island's flowers because it's red.  For the volcanos. And Pele. 

Down there's Hawaii Kai, I think. 

On the ridgey part of the ridge hike.  I can't imagine going through this when it's muddy and feeling like you're going to plunge to your doom any minute.  But that's just me. 

Another lehua picture.  They must be a big deal because my relatives were super excited to see them. 

This place is just spectacular.  If you guys are ever in Hawaii, I highly recommend it. 

Cook pine.  Probably from the Cook Islands, but no one really knows.  Or well, I don't know.  It's disconcerting to see a coniferous tree on Hawaii, but they have such awesome needles!  Look that that!

Yellow lehua.  Weird.  

Then we got to the part where you have to rappel yourself down with a rope once you get to the top.  Now we left my great aunt down to take pictures of us.  

I was SUPER excited.  

Unfortunately even though there's a sign there's still a tourist made trail.  That's probably why the death rate hiking on the ridges is so high. Boo.  Along the way we heard some guy talking to the police about hearing some guy's call for help though.  Spooky.  

You can literally see half of the island at the point.  Ridiculous.  That's the north east side, where the trade winds come from.  Mmm. 

That's the north side.  I think Chinaman's Hat is there.  It's an island that looks like a hat.  

After the hike we went and picnicked at the beach.  The disgusting beach filled with sludgy brown water, probably waste runoff from the storms a couple of nights back.  There's an ocean naupaka that's half submerged in the water there.  Fate was really unkind to it.  

I read books.

Dedicated to Eva M because I told her I'd make a list of books and I finally did.

I live 10 miles away from campus, but our lovely bus takes about an hour and a half to reach campus. In other words, I've had plenty to time to do some reading.

Here's some I liked (there might be spoilers!  Although most are non fiction, so I guess I'll be spoiling you with facts.  Hehe.)

• The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography by Stephen Hubbell.
Let's start out really nerdy.  This is a book I had to read for one of the last classes I took at Davis, Evolution of Ecological Systems, but then I read it again when I was back in San Jose.  Good stuff.  It's about, well, the Unified Neutral Theory, which explains the distribution of species with a lot of math, instead of with niche theory. A lot of math I couldn't follow, even in the comforts of my home and all the time in the world, so no theoretical ecology for me.

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.I don't like this genre of English literature, but since Jaime says good things about this book, I decided to check it out.  I liked the beginning a lot, and Heathcliff and Catherine together were adorable.  And then it just got weird in the end.  But, still good.  I used to really like tragedies though, so who knows.  I don't know how Jaime manages to read this every year though; it's so long.  

• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. This is a fiction book I actually like so I'll be careful not to spoil anything.  It's a really really good dystopian novel.  That's all - go read it.  After a quick google search, it's apparently a movie too.  If you don't like it, you should watch it, cause this concept is really interesting. Plus today's May Day so I should be excited about it.  Well, May Day Lei Day, not Mayday, but heh.

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I love this series now, and I can't believe it's taken me so long to read it.  It's so short!  Everyone should at least read the first book.  I have an irrational, but almost paralyzing, fear of aliens, so I try not to read books with creepy aliens on the cover, but this was totally worth it!

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  Such a guilty pleasure, but if it helps, I read this while stranded in the Seattle airport, and then had to finish the rest of the series, because I'm not a quitter.  I wouldn't recommend the third book, but the first two were ok.  The writing isn't that great, but it's written for teenagers, and I got through Twilight fine (no regrets) so whatever.

• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.  I unsuccessfully tried reading this book so many times in the past and then finally I realized that 1) prologues are boring and I really should stop reading them  and 2) he's explaining why there is unequal distribution of guns, germs and steel.  Ah.  Anyways, a must read if you ever wondered why there are third world countries, and why Western Europe is so powerful.

• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.  This is the the library book I awkwardly left in North Carolina. Many many thanks to Wake Forest for getting it back to me before the due date.  One thing I realized about Jared Diamond is that he is very thorough.  So most of the book, though it is very thick, repeats itself.  I think there's 5 case studies, and I only read through a couple of them.  I think the first couple of chapters is enough if you want to know, well, why societies fail or succeed (PS it has to do with the environment.  And the population.)

• Nutrient Cycling and Limitation: Hawai'i as a Model System by Peter Vitousek. Yea. I read it.  And I actually understood it, which is good because otherwise I don't know what I had been doing in Davis.  The first couple of chapters serve as a good introduction to biogeochemistry and Hawaii, and then it gets hard.  But read the first chapter.  It's fun. It made me remember why I love Hawaii so much. :D

• A Bunch of Books about Ender and his Friends by Orson Scott Card.  I know 'about' is a preposition but it feels so weird leaving it uncapitalized.  Anyways, after Hitchhiker's Guide, I decided to give aliens a chance, and I had read Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow before and liked it.  It's cool seeing what the kids are up to after their Battle School days, but it's also more serious and not as fun (not that sending little kids up to space to become military masterminds isn't serious, but they're kids!  Little people!)  The books with Ender had aliens in it, which still creeped me out, but Bean's stories are ok...until it got depressing.

• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.  Good thing I was reading this book at the time and not one of those Enders books because one of the questions University of Wisconsin asked me was what book I was reading.  I really liked this book and it made me think about food, which is nice.  (Mmm I think it might be time for a midnight snack!)  I'm not sure what the four meals were, because if I can remember correctly, it was 1) normal (aka corn. Thanks subsidies) 2) organic and 3) foraging.  I like this book, but I never read books again if I can help it, so someone will just have to read it and tell me.  Yay.

• The Botany of Desire: The Plant's Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan.  I'm becoming one of those people who read books by the same author!  Good for me.  This was a fun book.  He tracks the social/evolutionary history of a couple of plants: the apple, the tulip, the potato, and marijuana. 

• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Basically what the titles says.  And it's a lot like the next book:

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell.  Fun examples about the subconsciousnes playing a part of our every day lives.  I read these books back to back, so I'm having a hard time remembering the differences.  The perils of hanging around the library and just pulling random books off shelves...I get too excited and just take home an entire section.  I must warn you though, the ending is very depressing.  The book is filled with stories of stereotyping and first impressions, which is cool at first, cause it's about trumpet players, and other not as intense stuff.  Then he busts out the Amadou Diallo Shooting, which everyone should know about so I can infect you all with the despair I felt reading about it.  There is hope though.  According to Gladwell, people who were exposed to positive figures of a minority groups have better feelings towards that group.  Which makes sense, but the only way I see that happening right now is through sports.  Yay sports! This justifies my hours spent watching baseball... 

• The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu.  I thought it'll be cool to learn Chinese by reading this (because I just didn't learn from my last attempt of learning Arabic by reading the Quran).  I quickly gave up and read the English version.  Hehe.  For those of you who don't know, this is the teachings Daoism is based off of.  It's very...middle way. Hah. 

• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.  The first half of the book was pretty interesting, and what I expected.  And then, the second part just got really really weird.  And boring.  Really boring. :(  For those of you who don't know, the book written from a pedophile's (not to be confused with soil pedons!) perspective, which I guess was the ground breaking part of the book.  It actually starts out pretty witty and charming.  Unfortunately the bus I take is filled with little kids and I feel really awkward reading it.  

• Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology and Evolution by Alan Ziegler.  One of the first books I read on the island, I was pleasantly surprised it was the one book professors suggested I read.  It concisely summed up Hawaii's environment, and not too hard to read.  I liked it. 

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.  A fun book that explains science through eccentric stories.  I liked it.  :D  It reminded me why I got into science in the first place. He goes through subject by subject, charting its history and the drama that follows.  It's like Gossip Girl, but for science!

• Seeking the Sacred Raven: Politics and Extinction on a Hawaiian Island by Mark Jerome Walters.  The 'alala is a bird endemic to Hawaii and is now extinct in the wild.  The story follows the state's actions in trying to protect it through their captive breeding program, and the rancher who owns the land in which these birds are found.  I actually didn't know the status of the 'alala before hand so I was super depressed afterwards.  They grew on me. 

• The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard Nisbett.  I picked this book because the word geography was in the title, but it was actually pretty interesting.  Most of it is common knowledge now (that Westerners are more independent, and Asians are more communal, and Asians born in Western areas are mixed), but it also delves a bit into why (the geography!) and has fun little stories (apparently some Asian countries uses tangram puzzles as quizzes instead of...real...quizzes...).  It's an academic book, so it's not easy reading, but it's still pretty interesting. 

• The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives by Patrick V Kirch and Jean-Louis Rallu.  Hawaii currently has a population of 1.2 million people.  Hawaii pre-European contact is said to have 3 million.  That's a lot!  Especially since right now we have skyscrapers and are importing 95% of our goods and a bunch of technology.  How did they do it?  I read this book to find out.  This book looks into those claims with a lot of science.  It pretty much says we don't really know how many people were here before Europeans came, but we know it was probably more than 1 million.  Or at least over 500,000.  There is no consensus. It also doesn't saying how they did it, but that's because I don't read the titles of books well enough...

• A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.  Five words: We've got some major issues. 

• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner.  I adore this book.  I think this was the campus book for class 2012, so many of you guys might have heard of it.  It's about a reporter's search for the happiest place in the world.  But it's so much more than that.  It's such a happy feel good book.  I really really like it.  Everyone should read it.  I want to move to Iceland now.

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcom Gladwell.  Maybe it' because I sat next to a creepy person on the bus while reading this, but I didn't like this book as much as Blink.  The book's about well, the tipping point.  There's certain conditions that makes certain things cool.  For example, in Brooklyn, by reducing graffiti and cracking down on people who abuse subway fares, they managed to drastically lower murder rates.  Pretty neat. 

Books!

If you guys have read any of these books, we must discuss!  That's my favorite part about reading.  :D