Driving Mauna Loa

Last week I took the opportunity to film the drive from Saddle Road (~6,500 feet / ~1980 meters) up to Mauna Loa Observatory (a bit above 11,000 feet / 3,352 meters) on the way up to work. It's about a forty minute drive, so I sped it up, compressed it into a timelapse, and made a video which you can see below:

This is half of the drive I take typically several times a week to get to the YTLA for observing (it takes about 45 minutes just to get to the turn-off point from Hilo).  It's always interesting going from the tropical lushness of Hilo to the barren desolation of the upper slopes of Mauna Loa—the closest analog to the surface of the moon there is here on earth—in an hour and a half, but I always find it a very relaxing drive; it's nice to get out of the city and the view (which I couldn't really show off while filming) is amazing when it's not cloudy.

I think I said most of what I wanted to say about this in the video itself so I don't have much else to say here, but feel free to ask any questions you might have about it! A hui hou!

Further Amusing Observations on the Eating Habits of Gold-Dust Day Geckos

Adding to the list of interesting foods that gold-dust day geckos will eat…

I got out a tub of ice cream with just a few spoonfuls left and set it on the counter to soften for a few minutes before finishing it up, with the lid next to it. A few minutes lengthened into fifteen, and when I walked back into the kitchen I found this little guy enjoying himself:

I love the little push-up he's doing.

He looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and the whole scene was so funny that I couldn't resist making the following video:

He kept licking at it for another few minutes after I got bored of taking pictures before getting full and wandering off. Pretty funny!

A Brief Tour of Queen Liliʻuokalani Gardens in Hilo

Last Saturday my friend Graham and I went to the gym together, only to discover that it was closing two hours early and fifteen minutes after we arrived for some reason we never did find out. We ended up feeling very unsatisfied with a fifteen-minute stint on the elliptical, so we decided to head down to Queen Liliʻuokalani Gardens for a walk.

Queen Liliʻuokalani was the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii (reigning from 1891–1893), and donated the gardens that bear her name on the coast of Hilo bay. We visited right before sunset, and the light playing off the water and general atmosphere caught my eye. I took some pictures, panoramas, and video clips and decided to edit them together into a short video, which you can find below:

Here are a few of the pictures from the video in case people want to see them better:

One of the bridges in the gardens, in Japanese style.

This is from right before crossing over to Coconut island, looking back west across the bay towards Hilo.

Some nēnē hanging out in one of the ponds. They were pretty unperturbed by my presence.

Not actually in the video, but taken from the same position as the final clip. Just a nice sunset over Mauna Kea.

Nā Nananana o Mauna Loa (Or: The Spiders of Mauna Loa)

Two weeks ago I went to the optometrist and got some new contacts of a different brand to try, which also happened to be at my newly-updated prescription strength. Since then, every time I look further than a few hundred feet away I get a mini-jolt as I realize that I can see everything! In focus! No matter how far away! I can make out craters and maria on the moon again! (Apparently my eyes had drifted more than I realized from my old prescription…)

Due to a confluence of factors, I haven't actually been going up Mauna Loa for my job since before my eye appointment (instead working down in Hilo), until this week when I went up both Wednesday and Thursday (I write this having recently returned from the second night). The first night I was up there, I noticed a surprising number of spiders out in the middle of the night, where by “surprising” I mean “I'm surprised there were any spiders up there at all.” (Though come to think of it that's also the same evening a passing moth flew into my ear and freaked me out, so perhaps I shouldn't have been too surprised.) I noticed two spiders at different times over the course of the night by seeing the light from my head-lamp reflected in their eyes, both just out and about in the 5 °C/ 41 °F weather with apparently nary a care in the world.

I didn't think much of it beyond “Huh, there are spiders up here where I didn't expect them” until tonight, when I was driving down just after sunset after a short observing session in the late afternoon/early evening (which involved me getting a video of the telescope opening in daylight, so look for that in the future!). As I was driving down I noticed a spider's eye reflecting the headlights back at me, and pointed this out to my coworker Kristen who was in the car with me. She thought it was absolutely hilarious that I could pick out a spider at 30 miles per hour on a dark road, especially when she couldn't see the dozens of additional ones that I started noticing every few minutes down the road. (Other than a single one of the ones with a lustrous dark green/blue eye color.) Funnily enough we'd just been discussing contacts and glasses and other eye-related things and my updated prescription on the way up and how she'd been thinking of going to the optometrist and getting an updated prescription herself, and she's definitely going to do it soon after tonight!

So yeah: apparently “noticing lots more spiders” is one of the perks of correct prescription strength contacts. I think I'll keep the memory of those tiny spider eyes reflecting back at me from the dark handy for the next time I read The Hobbit. A hui hou!

(For the Hawaiian scholars out there, I debated on whether the spiders should be kino-ʻo or kino-ʻa for Mauna Loa [roughly, the difference between things owned inherently and things owned incidentally] and I'm not sure I chose correctly. Anyone who knows for sure feel free to confirm or correct me!)