The REAL 4th

So I think the Russells have a new tradition: Various odd fruit night. The night of the 6^th we went shopping and as I was browsing the fruit section I saw a fruit that caught my eye. It looked a little something like this:

Being in an adventurous mood I decided to try it. My sisters picked up on the idea of buying strange fruit. Christin picked up a coconut and Mini decided to get asparagus. Nothing too crazy, I guess, but other than my fruit there wasn’t anything we’ve never tried before. Anyway, turns out my fruit was a dragonfruit, and we had to look up online how to cut and eat it.

Turns out everything was delicious! The coconut was fun to break open and drain. The dragonfruit was really sweet and dyed everything it touched red. The asparagus, well, we cooked it wrong and had to throw it away.

So the REAL 4^th of July celebration came for us on July 7^th. By boss, Harold, has this tradition that he and his family watch the Makawao paradethat morning then have a BBQ at his place afterwards. He invites various and sundry other people as well and they just see who shows up. So he invited Bret and I (and I asked if I could bring my family and got the OK on them, too). So at 8:30 we all plunked our seats down and waited for the parade. My brother-in-law Steve and my sister Mini were there, too. The parade was really funny – typical small town parade. Probably every classic car on the island was there. Then came the different clubs and stuff. Here’s a couple pictures of the Democratic parties festivities – one of the more colorful displays I’ve ever seen. They had loud music, women dancing on stilts, people in corn suits, etc.:

And as Steve is fond of telling everyone, Harold was the star of the parade. He heckled about everyone that went by. He had a thing going with the people around him where they’d try to guess the year of the car going by. Of course that meant to settled the wager he had to yell at every car to ask the year. Some times he’d just yell, “How’d you sneak that car into the parade?!” or “What’s the deal with your float?!” One local business owner drove by and Harold yelled, “Hey, where’s the Kama ‘aina discount, man?! I can’t afford to eat at your place!”

Afterwards was a BBQ at Harold’s place. He’s got a beautiful plot of land with a cool house on it.

Every 4^th of July Makawao also hosts a rodeo that’s pretty famous in the islands. I think it’s the biggest in the state. We dropped by, but at $10 a head we decided it wasn’t worth it. We were all tired and weren’t planning on hanging around long anyway. So that was the real 4^th of July.

The 4th, give or take

All the Russell kids, together again at last. ^^ (and of course Mini blinked)

This last week Annie and Ed came over to Hawaii on vacation. Ed’s parents have a time-share thing goin on so they were able to stay at Ko’olina on Oahu for free. We convinced them to come to Maui for at least a day before they headed over to Oahu, and they arrived last Thursday night. Everyone had Friday off of work, so it was great to hang out together. We all drove around West Maui, stopping in Lahaina to shop and to lie on the beach, then stopping at a blowhole and some cool tidepools around the top of the road. When we got back into town we had dinner at this really cool Thai place. The next morning I drove them down the Hana Highway a ways and we did a short hike. Then unfortunately Annie and Ed were off to Oahu the next morning.

When the 4^th of July came around, Annie had kept hinting (rather heavily) that we should go visit her and Ed on Oahu. I had the day off work and Mini’s never doing anything, so we both decided to head over there. That night about all we did was walk around Waikiki and watch the surfers and stuff.

One quick sidenote - I hate Oahu traffic, and I didn’t think about the whole island having the day off. So not only was the place over run with tourists, but locals as well. Not really a big deal, but yeah, the whole island was pretty crowded.

I had never been up the Waianae coast on Oahu, so we all took a drive up as far as the road would take us. This is the stretch of beach where all the transient and homeless set up their shanty tents and live. There was one stretch of road that was lined with huge banners pronouncing an independent Hawaiian nation. There were lots of locals out surfing, too. It was fun to sit on the beach and just watch them.

Then I made Annie and Ed drive us up to the north shore and we had lunch at one of the shrimp trucks and shave ice at Matsumoto’s after that. For a long while after that we relaxed on that one beach where all the turtles are. It’s cool to be able to see turtles that close up as they come into shore to rest on the beach. Oh, and as Mini and I were walking along the beach there we saw an ipod sticking out of the sand. At first I said to Mini, “ah, that sucks, someone got their ipod ruined.” But Mini picked it up and it was still playing! So we kept it with us to see if anyone would notice their ipod in our hands but I’m sure the owner was long gone by that point. So yeah, free ipod. It’s quite the opposite experience from last time when Christin had her ipod claimed by the ocean.

The rest of the night we just spent walking along the lagoons at Ko’olina and enjoying the sunset. No fireworks. We really just didn’t feel like fighting the traffic in Waikiki or anywhere else they may have fireworks. I had to be back for work early the next morning so we had an early flight to Maui, but it was great to hang out with Annie and Ed while they were here.