With the air asset rotations out of MCBH diminishing as RimPac winds down, Windward residents may have noticed that bright light has replaced jet sound at night out over the bay. No, those alien abduction lights aren’t some black project: They’re illumination for night shooting of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie at He’e’ia Kea pier. The Black Pearl is tied up along the North side of the pier, off the tips of the slips. There is also some stuff staged at the old ‘Ulu Mau village site, and further down the road before the straightaway ends. When I detoured by tonight on the way home, they had four or five light booms shining full blast, and billowing clouds of Hollywood smoke flowing across the water and onto the shore. You can sort-of make out the masts of the ship in the center of this grainy spy picture.
Author Archive for risu
Page 36 of 95
Chris finds interesting stuff while browsing in unexpected places. He alerted me that he found some Purell in foliage green bottles at the Downtown Fisher Hawaii. I stopped by the Kaka’ako location and found some on a mid-aisle end cap after wandering the aisles of office supplies for a couple of minutes. The 89ml (3 fl. oz.) extra durable foliage green MDPE bottle has finger-grooved sides and is marked NSN 6508-01-535-5409. They were priced at $2.69, so after local sales tax, it was $2.82 – much less than the MSRP! The bottle is about the same size as a 20-round 5.56 NATO magazine (12cm tall x 6cm wide x 3cm thick), so it will fit in a strobe/compass pouch (empirically tested in the Blackhawk STRIKE version of this size pouch) or other similarly sized pouches. Good to have on the trail to clean the grubby hands before digging into the snacks or performing first aid.
Highly recommended
Four out of four alcohol-vapor-buzzed gear monkeys
Although the weather was looking good at the tail end of the week, we didn’t want to fully jinx it by getting all worked up for a Sunday ride, so we played it low key. The weather was clear and hot all Saturday, so the Sunday ride was on. Chris had last minute babysitting duties, Root had plans with relatives, and Ckucke was MIA. Jeff, Sara, JT, Dr. Paul, and Danny were at the trailhead when I arrived. I was feeling a little hung over from wine with osso buco the night before, so I was off the back from the start. My legs were burning at the first left turn after the gate! JT was hanging too, having survived a fried food and beer fest on Saturday, so he was my compatriot in suffering. After climbing up Government road to the side loop entrance, I aired down the new Rubber Queens, but ended up dropping them too much, as the ride felt like dual flats after that, and I heard a couple of bottom-out bumps on roots as the underaired tires pinched flat. Before the drop, I pumped them back up, maybe too much, as they were squirrely loose on the way down. I backed them off a little to about where they were when I started (40 psi front/50 psi rear) and all was good from then on. Continue reading ‘Hanging Sunny’
Friday looked good on the internet cameras, but when I got home, it was somewhat overcast. Since I was talking to Chris about riding, I felt it was almost my duty to get out on the bike. It was too hot at home to stay inside, so the decision to go out was an easy one to make. Being a furlough Friday during summer, the traffic was fairly light. I did see Blockman, but he didn’t get in my way this time.
D = 12.86 km (7.99-miles), Vavr = 18.3 km/h (11.4-mph), Vmax = 36.7 km/h (22.8-mph), T = 42-minutes
After getting rained out on riding this weekend, we deferred to an attempt at a St. Louis run this afternoon. Although it had rained all night, the morning was clear. Things were looking good. Then around 09:00, the clouds gathered and the rain came dumping down. The whole Town side was socked in grey. Oh well – nothing ventured, nothing lost. Just before noon, the skies cleared and the ground started drying out. Just so long as it stayed sunny and it didn’t rain anymore, we were good. As pau hana time rolled around, the sky was bright and the air was hot. It was a “goâ€. Kevyn met Ckucke, JT, and I at Kanewai, and we shuttled up to the top. Root was stuck in Waikiki at a job site, so he missed the start. After we had dropped the mainline through taco jumps then straight through to the rock drop and the switchback trail to agave. Root called us at this point to say he was at Kanewai, and would ride up to meet us. We climbed back up to the first junction to take the burnout trail to the concrete road where we met Root. In hindsight, we should have told him to drive up to the top and bomb down and meet us. Dinner was at the new Teddy’s Bigger Burgers in Mo’ili’ili.
Pictures here
D = 4.28 km (2.66-miles), Vavr = 13.0 km/h (8.1-mph), Vmax = 38.9 km/h (24.2-mph), T = 20-minutes
Former O’ahu MTB-er and surfer Vince “Akron†Labbe was in town last week for the Hawaii premiere of the film, Out of Place, in which he is a featured athlete for the Honolulu Academy of Arts Third Annual Surf Film Festival. He gave a Q&A session after the film and handed out some tee shirts. Chris and the Missus, Ckucke, and I made it down for the premiere showing. The film was well-done, from both the documentary and sports film standpoints. I came away with that awestruck, inspired feeling that I had as a teen after seeing Endless Summer. It will be showing again on Wednesday, 21 July 2010 at the Doris Duke Theater at 13:00, 16:00, and 19:30. I definitely recommend you go and check it out! For more info, go by the Honolulu Academy of Arts website.
The gathering clouds on Friday were a portent that the ride scheduled for Sunday would not materialize. At least I managed to get in a few km’s after work. Those Rubber Queens are still feeling draggy…
D = 11.91 km (7.40-miles), Vavr = 18.5 km/h (11.5-mph), Vmax = 36.4 km/h (22.6-mph), T = 38-minutes
I picked these up last year when I was picking up a Snow Peak Spork for Chris at the Snow Peak store in Japan. I personally strongly dislike sporks, so I got the SCT-001 three-piece utensil set instead. I see the utility of having utensils stashed in the EDC bag, since sometimes the krappy low-bidder PRC fork that comes with your Grace’s Inn chicken katsu plate lunch shatters into plastic shrapnel, the disposable spoon that comes with your convenience store ice cream is just not up to the task, or whoever picked up lunch at Yama’s Fish Market only got forks and your #3 plate has poi. I have in the year that I’ve owned this set used for exactly these things and then some. I have so far not used the knife. Continue reading ‘Snow Peak Titanium 3-piece Utensil Set’
Saw a white Land Cruiser 80 with crazy lift by the airport. I’ve actually seen this thing before out on the West side. I couldn’t really make out all the details since it was bouncing around like crazy, but the axle linkages and coil springs had all been removed, and leaf springs hacked in. The stock outboard shock mounting positions had been abandoned for dual inboard mounted shocks set at 45-degree angles, such that the top eyelets of the innermost shocks were almost adjacent to each other! This is of course because functionality aside, duals “look more cool”. NOT! I wouldn’t be surprised by the unnatural track if semi-floating GM axles had been swapped in instead of the stock full-floaters. Also wouldn’t be surprised if there was a carbureted GM V8 in this Frankenmobile instead of a proper, torquey Toyota sequential EFI inline. Remove the salient Land Cruiser features and hack in lame, inferior substitutions. Good job!
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I’ve had a Bencmade Model 7 Rescue Cutter for many years. I went out and purchased it and attached it to my snowboard pack shoulder strap immediately after seeing some video footage of a kid slipping out of a chairlift and ending up suspended by his helmet strap. Being able to cut out of a situation like that one handed definitely seemed like a good idea, and not getting impaled by a sharp instrument when subsequently hitting the ground seemed like an even better idea (if you’ve seen Will Smith in I Am Legend, you know what I mean). Conceivably, one could toss a conventional knife after cutting loose, but the reality of the situation is that when you’re falling after being suspended by your pack straps or helmet straps, all intentions aside, you’re more likely to unconsciously clench your fist and hold onto the knife rather than ditch it when that falling sensation kicks in. Thusly, I chose a safety cutter. The Model 7 is a great tool, but it is not cheap, so when Dave at Power Edge told me a less expensive polymer version was coming out, I was intrigued. Continue reading ‘Benchmade 9CB Strap Cutter, Carabiner’