Busy day

The first task this morning was to do the February strength routine.  I went back to Ke'ehi Lagoon, easy to get to from my cousin's house, and did it in my favorite exercise spot in the pavilion there.

Ke'ehi Lagoon, site of the Hawaii high school outrigger championships back on February 6.  The pavilion I like to work out in is at right.

Then I headed over to the east side of Oahu, where I hoped to paddle and maybe visit one of the little islands just offshore.  But the surf and the shore break were rougher than I really wanted to deal with. So I drove down along Oahu's southeastern corner until I found a decent place to put in: Maunalua Bay by the town of Hawaii Kai, known to surf ski racers as the finish for the annual Molokai world championships.

I borrowed my cousin's Go Pro camera today, hoping to rectify my lack of good photos from out on the water.  I thought I was setting it to take still photos at regular intervals, but later on when I looked at the disk's contents on a computer screen, I found that all I had was thirty-plus copies of this photo of me pushing the camera's "start" button:

Oh well... I'll try again tomorrow.

I paddled out toward the eastern side of the big bay, where the China Wall gets hammered by the surf.  This spot is also well known because the Molokai course runs right along this cliff, forcing racers exhausted from the Molokai-to-Oahu crossing to negotiate a maelstrom of rough water just a few thousand meters from the finish.  I didn't get very close to the wall today, but I found some awfully confused water in the general area just the same.  I tried to concentrate and keep my boat moving in the unstable conditions, but I had to stop and brace fairly often.

I turned my boat toward the other end of the bay, where the Diamond Head crater stands.  Pretty soon I found myself paddling into much more regular waves and had little trouble with balance from then on.  For the last leg of the session I paddled back toward my put-in spot with a following sea.  I got occasional little rides but nothing memorable.  All told I got a worthwhile 80 minutes of paddling in.

My last order of business today was to hike up Koko Head.  A long staircase--actually an old incline track--leads up the west side of the mountain:

The hike took me about 30 minutes, and it was tiring but not at all the hardest hike I've ever done.  Once on top I took a photo of Maunalua Bay, where I had just paddled:

That's Diamond Head over in the right side of the photo.  The town of Hawaii Kai lies in the foreground.  The actual finish line of the Molokai world championships is in the little protected harbor in the bottom right corner.