Author Archive for taro

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The Return of Night

Published on September 18, 2007 in bike and Food by taro. Closed

A two week gap and 1 hour difference from the Labor Day monday night ride and what a difference. We crammed Dave, Ckucky, Scat and myself and our four bikes into Dave’s LandCruiser. Glad we could provide entertainment for the City Bus driver who seemed quite amused by the clown act. By the time we made it up the hill to St. Louis (Waahila) the sun was just setting. Riding into the park lights were needed already. Trail conditions were primo except for the fallen tree. It was damp enough to keep dust & loose dirt down, but not slipery from wet. It was right at the edge of panko. Some of the grassy stuff was starting to encroach. I fully hooked a high side dead treelet hiding in the brush on a small drop before agave with my handlebar. Sure got my adreniline pumping! Any faster and I would have been catapulted off the trail on a pretty gnarly area. BTW, its not there anymore, in my pumped up state I went back and angry aped it, broke it, & tossed it somewhere off the trail.

It was nice to be on bike, Dave was pretty hardcore having come back from Japan this morning and still hit the DH! Ckucky is Mr. Fitness now, having dropped five pounds and bringing down his cholesteral levels a signifcant amount in a matter of weeks. And speaking of cholestoral, dinner was at Toritos in Market City. I hadn’t been there in years, it was quite good! 

D = 4.44-miles, Vavr = 8.1 mph, Vmax = 20.5 mph on trail, T = 32-minutes

Traffic is Stop!

Published on September 16, 2007 in Culture and rant by taro. Closed

So after the Thunderbird’s show (a slight letdown as the weather hampered the performance) Derek and I hoofed it back on foot from Hale Koa to Ala Moana Shopping Center where we had parked. We knew better than to attempt to drive into Waikiki on this day of chaos what with a parade in the morning and the airshow in the afternoon. We easily beat the auto traffic going into Waikiki, and now returning the traffic was hellacious in both directions. Aside from the heat (or rather the stiffling humidty) it was an easy walk, we made it back to Ala Moana around 4:15PM. So now we pondered the question of whether we wanted to go to the Autumn Okinawa Dance Matsuri final bon dance of 2007 at the Hawaii Okinawa Center in Waipio. Continue reading ‘Traffic is Stop!’

Okifest Day 2

Published on September 10, 2007 in Culture by taro. Closed

Well, day two for me, but actually the 4th day of events. Anyway, I’ve finished processing my pile of pics from Sundays events. Some nice stuff, even caught Donna trying to be all incognito kachashi. Another blazingly nice day, probably because I brought my jacket with me after getting sprinkled on during the Rinken Band concert the previous night and the weather forecast in the morning paper calling for chance of heavy showers. Not a hint of rain. It was nice to go and get a dose of culture, I haven’t done anything like that in a while. Great performances, although some of the contemporary performances damaged my ears more than I cared for, some were in my opinion over amplified. As expected, the Naha Daiko wrapped the weekend up with a dynamic performance that never dissapoints.

My additions to gallery are here: gallery

Will try to get my lesser quality pics from previous day/night up soon.

Lost & found

Published on August 28, 2007 in car by taro. Closed

So I was home early on Friday and my dad answers the door & says its for me. Some guy I don’t recognize is checking out the FJ40 ‘Cruiser. Wonder what he wants? I go out to meet him. Turns out the car wranglers are looking at it for Lost again. They wanted to make sure it was still around, they weren’t certain if they’ll need it. Should find out sometime this week. Derek came over Sunday afternoon and after some monkeying with battery, jumper cables, and squirreling the gas from original FX into the FJ, it groaned back to life. The last time it was run was when Lost rented it before, wow, I neglected the poor thing! But after a bit of complaining and sputtering and letting the gas flow to clean out the carb, she was running again. Continue reading ‘Lost & found’

Jumpo

Published on August 6, 2007 in bike by taro. Closed

Dang I’m getting old, I’m feeling the effects of yesterday afternoon’s jump session at Koko Head park up my street. But we did deny our age by doing something we’re supposedly old enough to know better, we caught a tow up the street with Ckucky’s van. The jumping was fun too! And although we’re pretty lame, we managed some cool pics. Scat always manages some pretty rippin pics! Check out more on the gallery page!

Retro

Published on August 2, 2007 in Art by taro. Closed

Sexy retro goodness. Just got done drooling over dpreview’s review of the Leica M8 digital rangefinder camera. This thing is sweet sexyness in a German kind of way. Built like a tank, functional no nonsense design. Also demands that you know what you’re doing, no AIAF ass detection megazone AE stabilization technology. Damn I want one. Damn I don’t have $6000 lying around to throw around. Been tantalized with the possibility of actually getting to physcially play with one sometime in future. We’ll see!

‘Roncam

Published on July 30, 2007 in car and rant by taro. Closed

Fabio, we need ‘Roncam. Coming down Ward, stopped before Beretania because light red, everyone is stopped. Moron in Titan talking on his cell phone rolls into the back of the Suzuki. I pull into the convenience store at the corner & park on side by gas pumps. I see him turn in. He drives past me, parks in the stalls by the shop, gets out, and then starts walking to the store! At this moment he is officially a ‘Ron. I call out to him & ask if his truck is alright. Of course at this point I didn’t really give a flying monkeys behind about his truck. But I guess maybe its my over polite Japanese culture influence method of saying hey ‘Ron, WTF are you doing?! I had already looked at my (actually Dad’s) bumper and damage was trivial. Luckily his bumper did not hit the spare tire. So really that wasn’t the issue, the issue was that he said he didn’t know he hit me. Sheesh.

Anyway, Fabio, you need to finish development of your tailgater cam and we need to make it into the ‘Roncam and adapt it to spool video continuously to a memory card with the big red ‘Ron button to save the video. Or if its made so simply pulling the card out you can view the video file left on the card. You know, if you made it small without needing a laptop, relatively inexpensive unit, bet you could sell it. Consumer version and commercial version, commercial version perhaps some kind of authentication algorithm so it could be submitted as legal evidence. I even give you permission to use the ‘Roncam name.

Most Advantageous

Published on July 27, 2007 in Food and Review by taro. Closed

Thursday evening dinner was Cafe Maharani. Been wanting to check it out for a long time. Site of the former Javarama by the Down To Earth in McCully. We used to be fixtures at Javarama. Cafe Maharani is an Indian restaurant crammed into that small space. I was worried about parking, but I found a stall in back, and Derek lucked out and scooped prime parking right in front. Checking things out from outside it was already pretty packed inside, wonderful aroma of spices waft out, and they are equiped with a tandoori oven, we were sold. We were told we would have about a 15 minute wait, so we took a stroll to Star to find some beer as Maharani is BYOB. Timing perfect, table is ready for us when we get back.

We decide to do the 2 person dinner combo which consists of samosa appetizer, choice of two entrees, rice & naan. img_0788.JPGThe veggie samosa is a deep fried pastry stuffed with a curry spiced veggie filling, served with a spicy tamarind chutney, and a cool yogurt sauces. Both nice, but the tamarind sauce is wonderful. We do the eggplant tikka masala and chicken vindaloo our entrees. Oh, and this seems wrong, they have beef as entree choices. Continue reading ‘Most Advantageous’

Taco Time

Published on July 25, 2007 in bike by taro. Closed

Monday evening ride was Scat, CKucky and me head up to St. Louis. Summer sun now so we have some time to play. Decide to play on some jumps.

 J Scat gets too much air and is barely in the shot! Continue reading ‘Taco Time’

Smoke-fest

Published on July 22, 2007 in Food by taro. Closed

Sorry, no oregano herbage here, so all you gov agencies can go back to monitoring the rest of the Net. This Saturday was a daylong cold smoking session. img_0735.JPGThis time an old fridge was procured for smoke duty instead of our previous glorified cardboard box. A hole was cut in freezer section for smoke intake. It was determined after running for a bit that there was not enough air/smoke flow from the freezer to chill section so another hole was cut in the bottom & a computer muffin fan inserted to encourage flow. Yes, the fridge was now trying to chill the world and I’m sure Wayland’s electricity bill will show the damage, but it’s the price to pay for the pursuit of smoke salmon and bacon.

Continue reading ‘Smoke-fest’