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In Which Fear & Paranoia Descend (Also: I Eat an Illicit Sandwich)
My physical therapist is afraid of drones.
No, not generally. At least, not as far as I know.
She's afraid the mayor is spying with drones.
So a few days ago, she was walking on the Mahaulepu Heritage Trail and she got tired and wanted to stop. But, she was afraid to stop because our shelter-in-place order says that you can get out and exercise. But it doesn't say that you can rest while you're exercising.
And the drones might be watching.
The mayor of Honolulu is genuinely using drones.
He has them out at beaches, constantly broadcasting that people must quickly walk across the beach and dive into the water. No, it doesn't matter if the water feels cold. Dive right in! No pussy-footing around!
He swears the drones aren't taping anyone.
As far as we know, the mayor of Kauai isn't. Though he seems like the kind of guy who would love to exercise-shame people with drones or something (cf: the Derbyshire police).
The funny thing ...
(Not ha-ha funny.)
The funny thing is that a few months ago one of the late-night comedians, perhaps John Oliver, was showing tapes of drones outside apartment buildings in China telling people they had to stay inside. No pussy-footing around.
He laughed at it, that it was this Bladerunner-crazy thing, that the robots were now keeping us inside.
Now swimmers are robotically walking past the drones in Honolulu and obediently diving into the water, even if it feels cold.
How quickly we have come to obey our robotic overlords.
I don't think John Oliver (or whomever) is mocking them anymore.
And the weird thing is that yesterday the mayor made a new declaration closing down all the beaches. No, you can still swim. You just have to walk across the beaches quickly and dive in. Even if the water feels cold.
No one has any idea what he means, because that was the state of the beaches the day before yesterday.
So is the governor saying you can't walk on the beaches any more? No slow-motion Baywatch runs? No moonlit strolls?
No one has any idea. Which is to say it's a typical look-like-I'm-doing-something maneuver from one of our Hawaiian politicians.
(Not even our mayor has any idea what the governor means, so he's had to ask the Attorney General for a clarification. Hopefully he won't be told to actually close the beaches, or his political career is over.)
I walked on a beach today. No drones warned me off. None taped me that I saw. More on that momentarily. (I also ate an illicit sandwich. Or perhaps: illicitly ate a sandwich. But not on the closed beach.)
Our local golf course manager is afraid of the mayor of Kauai.
The source of the anxiety is the trails that run the east side of the course, in a wooded area. The trails are relatively wide, but there are certainly places where you couldn't give someone 6 feet of clearance. So he's afraid that if the mayor finds that out, he'll close down walking at the course.
So instead the manager has closed off the trails, putting tape over some of the entrances, and piling up felled trees in another place.
The problem is that's the only access from our neighborhood, just makai of the highway. So folks are going to have to get into their cars to drive to the course if they want to walk (or else they have to evade the barriers).
This is the second time that fear of the mayor has almost shut down walking at the course. The first occurred when the golf courses were shut down last week, and the course for a day or two said they had to shut down walking.
Maybe I helped get the mayor's office in touch with the course? I dunno. I tried. But in any case our course did get the word just in time that only golfing "activities" were forbidden. So walking continues.
But step by step we may be losing that privilege.
If the politicians of Hawaii are purposefully trying to rule with fear and uncertainty and doubt, good job, that's clearly happened. People are terrified of what the mayor might do next. If he might be spying on them, electronically or physically. He's become some sort of boogie-man.
Yet online people are still kowtowing to him, and if someone complains the reply is, "Well, leave the island then." Their xenophobia has turned from the visitors (who are mostly gone) to transplants (who are us. or we. I'm not sure. who we are?). They say it's the transplants complaining and all the good local who are telling the mayor good one.
There's a word for a ruler who reigns through terror, who uses secret forces to spy on his citizens, who has yes-men who build up everything he does, and who exiles his opponents.
There are actually several words, some polite, some not. (And there's also "Trump".)
We're not there yet. But the fear of the mayor that I've been hearing just in the last day and the constant brownnosing of some small but vocal section of the citizenry is unnerving.
I was not deterred by the alleged drones today. I decided to repeat my walk to Mahaulepu, but this time starting from Poipu, another mile or so further on.
So I:
There was one problem with my master plan: the Grand Hyatt, which is just before Shipwreck Beach, has shut down and it's blocked up all of its beachside paths.
This is a major problem: we're given these resorts the privilege of building up the paths near our beaches, and in some cases even allowed them to tear down old paths, like the rickety one over stones that used to be between the Sheraton and Poipu.
But now they show they can just close down what have become our public thoroughfares.
I actually hit this a few days ago when I tried to walk from Poipu to the Sheraton and discovered that the Ko'a Kea Resort had closed down its paths and you can no longer get between the beaches. The really frustrating thing is that Kimberly and I both walked this span many times before the Ko'a Kea Resort was built in 2009. The old path was a rickety old affair, but kind of fun.
Now the only thoroughfare is through the Resort, and we've allowed them to shut it.
I'm not a fan of public good being sacrificed to private entities.
Whether they be Lime and Bird or the Grand Hyatt and Ko'a Kea.
So at the Grand Hyatt I walked down to the beach to avoid their path on the way in, because they had people in buggies sitting all over the resort, guarding the paths.
But, I was worried how well my knee was going to do walking on the sand.
So on the way back I just shrugged and walked the paths.
The "guards" clearly didn't want to confront anyone, especially not someone just innocuously walking from point A to point B, as opposed to exploring their resort, mucking with their very cool water features, or something like that.
(They have really great water features!)
So one pretended not to see me, and I waved and exchanged pleasantries with another.
The walk to Mahaulepu was awe-inspiring.
That's because the waters on the south side of the island were filled with breakers and whitecaps. And jellyfish, but they weren't visible. The calendar says they're there though.
In any case, every time I saw the water it was just full of amazing waves.
Sometimes I stopped and looked at them for a while.
Then I moved along, nervously watching for drones.
At Mahaulepu I sat down and rested for a while at a picnic table.
With the sandwich I got from Brennecke's.
That's the illicit sandwich. It was even premeditated.
But I was alone the whole time, other than three or four groups of people walking between the Trail and the beach (or the tortoises), generally not socially distancing from each other (though perhaps they were all families).
I might have even done a little bit of work for Designers & Dragons project that I'm working on, just to create a little sense of normalcy. Because that's what my Saturdays used to be like. But I wrote, edited, and compiled for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, whereas on a normal Saturday I might have sat there for hours, working.
Then I walked back to Poipu.
Hiking in the Hawaiian sun is tough work!
I mean, I hiked all through the summer in the Bay Area, and sometimes that was in the 90s or even up to 100. But I usually could find shade.
Here I did 8 miles back and forth. About 80 degrees, about 70% humidity. With a decent tradewind coming off the water (hence the big waves). Still, I was hot and tired by the time I got back from Mahaulepu.
Hence the shave ice. I was all around thrilled to find that Brennecke's Deli is still open.
Because they have cold-cut sandwiches and shave ice, which are two of my favorite things. ("Coldcuts on Dutch crunch and shave ice with cherry; very dark chocolate and a giant library; Amazon packages tied up with string; These are a few of my favorite things.")
Mind you, neither was great. Hawaiian sandwiches tend to be made on fluffy, tasteless bread. And the shave ice wasn't as good as JoJo's, though it might have been due to an inexperienced shave-ice-maker.
Still, they were great rewards for the 4-mile and 8-mile points of my hike.
I had my bathing suit and towel and slippahs and goggles with me, but I opted not to swim.
That's because the beaches were all red-flagged and black-diamonded. (Cf: the big waves.)
I did watch the people in the water a little at Brennecke's Beach. They were playing amidst truly awesome waves. I was a little afraid that someone would die, and hoped the fishermen near me in their swim suits would dive in to save them, so I didn't have to in my jeans.
(It was never necessary.)
Back at home now.
I don't think any drones followed me.
No, not generally. At least, not as far as I know.
She's afraid the mayor is spying with drones.
So a few days ago, she was walking on the Mahaulepu Heritage Trail and she got tired and wanted to stop. But, she was afraid to stop because our shelter-in-place order says that you can get out and exercise. But it doesn't say that you can rest while you're exercising.
And the drones might be watching.
The mayor of Honolulu is genuinely using drones.
He has them out at beaches, constantly broadcasting that people must quickly walk across the beach and dive into the water. No, it doesn't matter if the water feels cold. Dive right in! No pussy-footing around!
He swears the drones aren't taping anyone.
As far as we know, the mayor of Kauai isn't. Though he seems like the kind of guy who would love to exercise-shame people with drones or something (cf: the Derbyshire police).
The funny thing ...
(Not ha-ha funny.)
The funny thing is that a few months ago one of the late-night comedians, perhaps John Oliver, was showing tapes of drones outside apartment buildings in China telling people they had to stay inside. No pussy-footing around.
He laughed at it, that it was this Bladerunner-crazy thing, that the robots were now keeping us inside.
Now swimmers are robotically walking past the drones in Honolulu and obediently diving into the water, even if it feels cold.
How quickly we have come to obey our robotic overlords.
I don't think John Oliver (or whomever) is mocking them anymore.
And the weird thing is that yesterday the mayor made a new declaration closing down all the beaches. No, you can still swim. You just have to walk across the beaches quickly and dive in. Even if the water feels cold.
No one has any idea what he means, because that was the state of the beaches the day before yesterday.
So is the governor saying you can't walk on the beaches any more? No slow-motion Baywatch runs? No moonlit strolls?
No one has any idea. Which is to say it's a typical look-like-I'm-doing-something maneuver from one of our Hawaiian politicians.
(Not even our mayor has any idea what the governor means, so he's had to ask the Attorney General for a clarification. Hopefully he won't be told to actually close the beaches, or his political career is over.)
I walked on a beach today. No drones warned me off. None taped me that I saw. More on that momentarily. (I also ate an illicit sandwich. Or perhaps: illicitly ate a sandwich. But not on the closed beach.)
Our local golf course manager is afraid of the mayor of Kauai.
The source of the anxiety is the trails that run the east side of the course, in a wooded area. The trails are relatively wide, but there are certainly places where you couldn't give someone 6 feet of clearance. So he's afraid that if the mayor finds that out, he'll close down walking at the course.
So instead the manager has closed off the trails, putting tape over some of the entrances, and piling up felled trees in another place.
The problem is that's the only access from our neighborhood, just makai of the highway. So folks are going to have to get into their cars to drive to the course if they want to walk (or else they have to evade the barriers).
This is the second time that fear of the mayor has almost shut down walking at the course. The first occurred when the golf courses were shut down last week, and the course for a day or two said they had to shut down walking.
Maybe I helped get the mayor's office in touch with the course? I dunno. I tried. But in any case our course did get the word just in time that only golfing "activities" were forbidden. So walking continues.
But step by step we may be losing that privilege.
If the politicians of Hawaii are purposefully trying to rule with fear and uncertainty and doubt, good job, that's clearly happened. People are terrified of what the mayor might do next. If he might be spying on them, electronically or physically. He's become some sort of boogie-man.
Yet online people are still kowtowing to him, and if someone complains the reply is, "Well, leave the island then." Their xenophobia has turned from the visitors (who are mostly gone) to transplants (who are us. or we. I'm not sure. who we are?). They say it's the transplants complaining and all the good local who are telling the mayor good one.
There's a word for a ruler who reigns through terror, who uses secret forces to spy on his citizens, who has yes-men who build up everything he does, and who exiles his opponents.
There are actually several words, some polite, some not. (And there's also "Trump".)
We're not there yet. But the fear of the mayor that I've been hearing just in the last day and the constant brownnosing of some small but vocal section of the citizenry is unnerving.
I was not deterred by the alleged drones today. I decided to repeat my walk to Mahaulepu, but this time starting from Poipu, another mile or so further on.
So I:
- Parked at Poipu
- Picked up a sandwich from Brennecke's Deli, which turns out to be still open
- Walked the green belt from Poipu to Shipwreck
- Walked the Heritage Trail from Shipwreck to Mahaulepu
- Rested at Mahaulepu for a while near the cave
- Walked back
- Got some shave ice
There was one problem with my master plan: the Grand Hyatt, which is just before Shipwreck Beach, has shut down and it's blocked up all of its beachside paths.
This is a major problem: we're given these resorts the privilege of building up the paths near our beaches, and in some cases even allowed them to tear down old paths, like the rickety one over stones that used to be between the Sheraton and Poipu.
But now they show they can just close down what have become our public thoroughfares.
I actually hit this a few days ago when I tried to walk from Poipu to the Sheraton and discovered that the Ko'a Kea Resort had closed down its paths and you can no longer get between the beaches. The really frustrating thing is that Kimberly and I both walked this span many times before the Ko'a Kea Resort was built in 2009. The old path was a rickety old affair, but kind of fun.
Now the only thoroughfare is through the Resort, and we've allowed them to shut it.
I'm not a fan of public good being sacrificed to private entities.
Whether they be Lime and Bird or the Grand Hyatt and Ko'a Kea.
So at the Grand Hyatt I walked down to the beach to avoid their path on the way in, because they had people in buggies sitting all over the resort, guarding the paths.
But, I was worried how well my knee was going to do walking on the sand.
So on the way back I just shrugged and walked the paths.
The "guards" clearly didn't want to confront anyone, especially not someone just innocuously walking from point A to point B, as opposed to exploring their resort, mucking with their very cool water features, or something like that.
(They have really great water features!)
So one pretended not to see me, and I waved and exchanged pleasantries with another.
The walk to Mahaulepu was awe-inspiring.
That's because the waters on the south side of the island were filled with breakers and whitecaps. And jellyfish, but they weren't visible. The calendar says they're there though.
In any case, every time I saw the water it was just full of amazing waves.
Sometimes I stopped and looked at them for a while.
Then I moved along, nervously watching for drones.
At Mahaulepu I sat down and rested for a while at a picnic table.
With the sandwich I got from Brennecke's.
That's the illicit sandwich. It was even premeditated.
But I was alone the whole time, other than three or four groups of people walking between the Trail and the beach (or the tortoises), generally not socially distancing from each other (though perhaps they were all families).
I might have even done a little bit of work for Designers & Dragons project that I'm working on, just to create a little sense of normalcy. Because that's what my Saturdays used to be like. But I wrote, edited, and compiled for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, whereas on a normal Saturday I might have sat there for hours, working.
Then I walked back to Poipu.
Hiking in the Hawaiian sun is tough work!
I mean, I hiked all through the summer in the Bay Area, and sometimes that was in the 90s or even up to 100. But I usually could find shade.
Here I did 8 miles back and forth. About 80 degrees, about 70% humidity. With a decent tradewind coming off the water (hence the big waves). Still, I was hot and tired by the time I got back from Mahaulepu.
Hence the shave ice. I was all around thrilled to find that Brennecke's Deli is still open.
Because they have cold-cut sandwiches and shave ice, which are two of my favorite things. ("Coldcuts on Dutch crunch and shave ice with cherry; very dark chocolate and a giant library; Amazon packages tied up with string; These are a few of my favorite things.")
Mind you, neither was great. Hawaiian sandwiches tend to be made on fluffy, tasteless bread. And the shave ice wasn't as good as JoJo's, though it might have been due to an inexperienced shave-ice-maker.
Still, they were great rewards for the 4-mile and 8-mile points of my hike.
I had my bathing suit and towel and slippahs and goggles with me, but I opted not to swim.
That's because the beaches were all red-flagged and black-diamonded. (Cf: the big waves.)
I did watch the people in the water a little at Brennecke's Beach. They were playing amidst truly awesome waves. I was a little afraid that someone would die, and hoped the fishermen near me in their swim suits would dive in to save them, so I didn't have to in my jeans.
(It was never necessary.)
Back at home now.
I don't think any drones followed me.