Treadmill over Manhattan

DATELINE–New York:

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 18

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23: 214.6 lbs.
Goal weight: 175 lbs.
This week’s target weight: 210.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 207.5 lbs.
I am 3.1 lbs. ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.2 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 7.1 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 57 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I knew it was going to be a challenge keeping to the one pound per week weight loss schedule in New York City. New York is known for its wide variety of good food and I planned to try it all.

My approach to weight loss has been simple. I don’t count calories very well but I can do exercise. So if I plan to eat more, I exercise more. With this in mind, I have upped my daily exercise to 50 minutes at an easy, 70% of max heart rate. And it appears that I am actually losing more weight than I did at home. Now I have a choice: wine or dessert.

Here I look down on Times Square from the treadmill. It’s better than TV.

Yesterday I got elbowed by a guy carrying a baby. I think he was using the baby as cover. My impression of New Yorkers is that they play it pretty close to the ragged edge. Generally, everything is cool. This particular guy was an opportunist, but I don’t think he’s the norm.

We’re walking many blocks just to get the feel of the city, as well as to burn calories since we’re eating all kinds of stuff. We’re now looking for corned beef sandwiches and pastrami sandwiches at a real New York deli. Next: Little Italy and authentic Italian food.

If anybody has deli or restaurant suggestions, please let us know.

Bananas here look great on the outside but are bruised inside. After breaking off all the bruised parts of one, I ended up with only one small bite, and that tasted pretty bad. Modern day banana ripening rooms, with their precise humidity and temperature controls, can make the yellow skin color look so uniform and attractive that it looks almost like plastic fruit. The computer control rooms look like the cockpit of a 747. The technology can actually disguise bruising of the skin. Bruising is the consumer’s early warning signal and disguising it is not a good thing. No wonder per capita banana consumption has been declining for the last few years.

But I can say with a high degree of certainty that local Hawaiian bananas taste absolutely, without a doubt, better.

I’ve been losing weight for nearly a month now and feel comfortable that I won’t wake up one day and discover I’ve gained five pounds without warning. Setting a goal of one pound per week is easy to do. Now I know that if I’m behind on my weight loss schedule I just need to exercise for a longer period of time at a fairly easy 70% of max heart rate.

Piece of cake.

Taking the Lead

Richard and June have left the premises. They are accompanying grandson Kapono Pa (that’s Kimo and Tracy’s son) to New York City. I’ll let Kapono tell you what he’s going to be doing there.

Kapono_flying_out_of_hnl_2

Kapono writes:
I am 16 years old and this coming year I will be a junior at Kamehameha Schools Hawaii Campus. The thing that I am going to is a sort of leadership conference where I will be mainly looking at the aspects of Global Business and Entrepreneurship. I was invited by the people at LeadAmerica last year.

I was able to choose from a variety of things to study such as Medical Studies, Crime Scene Investigation, etc. that were to take place at a variety of cities across the U.S. (my conference just so happened to take place in New York).

For the next 10 days I will be with other kids from around the U.S. (possibly the world) learning about global business and entrepreneurship. I think we will be creating a “mock” business plan and going through a sort of fast-forward simulation of how it all works and what happens. We will also have field trips to various locations in the city such as the financial district (NYMX, World Trade Center, Wall Street, Museum of Finance, etc.) Liberty Island and The Statue of Liberty, and Sony Wonder Tech Laboratory. We will also listen to some key speakers and learn from their experiences. That’s the gist of it.

Leslie interjects: Sounds like a chip off the old block, doesn’t he?

Sign_on_seat_at_bush_intl_2

And then Richard picks up the story: What are the chances of spotting a Hamakua Springs bumper sticker on a seat at George Bush International Airport in Houston as we’re changing planes? Could it be George Herbert’s son, George W., is thinking of visiting us to go mountain bike riding?

We took a New York City, double-decker open-air bus tour, getting the lay of the land. We had to occasionally duck branches and low-hanging traffic lights. The weather is beautiful–in the high 70s. The city is cleaner than we had imagined.

The three of us spent five hours, on and off the bus, cruising the city. We walked around a block in Greenwich Village on Bleeker Steet. No wonder that street name sounded so familiar to us–that’s where the New York office of the Rainforest Alliance is located. In 1993, they awarded our farm the first “ECO O.K.” certification in the world.

Bus_tour_5

We knew this was going to be a different experience when we found ourselves in a 150-foot line waiting for a cab. The cab driver turned out to be an easygoing person from Bangladesh. He talked about immigrants and how they manage to survive in the city, all while he was jockeying for space against the other traffic. He and a van dueled at low speeds to get ahead of each other for about a hundred yards. Finally the van got a nose in front and cut him off. It seemed to me that our driver gave in good-naturedly.

But a short while later he spotted an opening, because of a break in the off-street parking, and shot in front and regained the lead for good. All this was going on while he was carrying on this easy conversation. Highly entertaining. If you watch carefully, it is going on all the time by bicyclists, pedestrians, even elevator riders.

It’s not easy to maintain the Hilo pace here. But we’re trying.

We ate dinner at a five-story Appleby up the street. The food is generally pretty good and plentiful. I’ll have to do 50 minutes at the fitness center and hope for the best. I hope their scale measures to the 10ths.

As they say, it’s “the city that doesn’t sleep.” At 8:00 at night, the line at Starbucks was longer than at 8 in the morning. At midnight on a Tuesday, Times Square is packed as much as at 5:00 p.m. pau hana (after work).

Kapono’s conference starts tomorrow and we’ll drop him off at Fordham, which is close to the Bronx Zoo. The conference finishes on the 25th. We’ll just have to keep ourselves occupied.

Here’s Kapono and June at Times Square:

7th_and_broadway_2

Run

We were happy to donate Hamakua Springs bananas recently for participants at the sixth annual EMS Run over Memorial Day weekend. That’s an event supporting the Hawai‘i Fire Department and Hospice of Hilo that drew nearly 500 runners and walkers to beautiful Lili‘uokalani Park.
runners

Despite having taken a wrong turn, Germain Ortiz led the way and was first overall at 17:22. His detour added a few hundred yards to his route before he jumped a fence to get back on course. He regained his lead at the turnaround point.

After having won the last four EMS runs (wow!), Jason Thorpe came in second this year at 17:48. Lyman Perry was close behind (17:56). In sixth place overall, and placing as first overall female at 18:40, was Kona’s Rani Tanimoto. She was followed by Caitlyn Tateishi (21:13), who just beat out Angie Miyashiro (21:15).

We were impressed to learn that 7-year-old Ziggy Bartholomy zipped through the 5K course in 22:49. Another nod of the head goes to Bill McMahon, who warmed up by cycling from Volcano to Hilo and then still posted a very respectable time of 19:10.

boys

This was also the first year for an EMS Keiki Run. Kids were split into two heats—3-5 years, and 6-10 years—for a hilly, quarter-mile course through the park. In the older group, a glimpse of the Big Island’s running future: Ziggy Bartholomy and Kirah Cooke pushed past the pack and raced the last 50 yards neck and neck to a photo finish, breaking the tape together.

EMS run

Hamakua Springs is happy to support this good cause. Go run or walk the EMS event next year—support your Hawai‘i Fire Department and Hospice of Hilo—and maybe we’ll see you there.

There’s a full list of run winners here.

— Leslie Lang

Reward

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 11:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23: 214.6 lbs.
Goal: 175 lbs.
This week’s target weight: 211.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 209.3 lbs.
I am 2.3 lbs. ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.2 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 5.3 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 59 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I plan to treat myself every time I lose five pounds. This week I went to Hilo Bike Hub and bought myself a bike-mounted speedometer and heart rate monitor combination. It’s okay—I don’t golf, so I’m saving money.

I did a test ride from the farm to the ocean. Decided to go only part way as I am not in good enough shape to smile the whole way. I’ll be working on that in the coming weeks. I’m starting to remember how tough the Kulani trails really are.

At Kulani, the outside perimeter roads are the easier ride. I need to start there and take the inside trails as I make progress. They become progressively harder and more brutal. No matter what, riding over a three-foot log that lies across the trail without unclipping is something that I probably will never be able to do. But the bike is light; I’ll carry (run?) it over.

Your whole body is active, riding over rocks and roots and stumps and making uphill turns with a tree just at the wrong place so you cannot lean where you want to. One should use bike shoes that clip the shoes to the pedals so you can pull up when the other foot is not in a position to push down. But, when trying to put a foot down, it is counter-intuitive to move your heel to the left or right to unclip before saving your life by putting a foot down.

I can remember yelling often, while falling in slow motion, because I thought that I could not afford the time that it would take to unclip in order to put a foot down. So I would be stuck to the shoe, which was clipped to the pedal, while falling over. It’s funny how you always yell when this is happening. But that goes away after some practice. The yelling goes away at the same rate that you stop falling. After you pass through this phase you get to smile when you hear someone yelling in the forest.

In Kulani, you need to go faster than feels safe to get the momentum necessary to carry you over obstacles. In Kulani it is all about momentum. But if you’re overweight you cannot maintain momentum—you can only think about not falling over, because you’re going too slow.

So it is a challenge and great fun to be able to ride the Kulani trails, especially if you’re over 60. I’ve got a long way to go. Not, no can. Can!!!

If I could finish one of the fun rides or races there, it would be one of the most satisfying things that I can think to do.

Blog of the Day

ALERT!! ALERT!!

Ha Ha Ha! has been named “Small Business Blog of the Day!”

Whew, that’s a lot of exclamation points, but we’re excited over here.

Brian Brown is an authority on blogs and maintains a website for small businesses interested in blogging. On his site he monitors the state of the art and he also selects the “Small Business Blog of the Day.” Today he selected us.

Brown said a lot of nice things about Ha Ha Ha! Here’s a snippet:

“I really love this blog. First of all, even though all blogs follow a pretty routine format (or at least they should), Ha Ha Ha! is particularly clean and beautiful. Secondly, the posts are very much on-task, each one contributing to the overall goal of adding to the personality of the farm. Even the posts about Richard’s diet add to this aspect by humanizing the company, as well as showing how the company’s products are contributing to his health.”

Brown’s site is called “pajamamarket.com” because–oh, how we love the computer life–he often works comfortably at home. While we might prefer this commendation was from an organization called, say, “The United Nations Committee on Excellence in the World,” we, ahem, have heard that other chief bloggers sometimes work in their pajamas and we understand completely.

Read more about Ha Ha Ha! as the Small Business Blog of the Day here.

And now we’re going to go eat a celebratory banana.

–Leslie Lang, chief blogger

Intelligent Design

When I talked to Nelson Makua recently, he told me that his job is to be the “other side of the brain.”

logo
Nelson has a full-service design company, and he’s the one who designed that great Hamakua Springs logo. He’s known Richard for years, having designed the Kea‘au Bananas logo way back when.

“What I offer clients is an objective view from the outside,” he said, “to give a fresh perspective of how they’re being perceived by the clients. The other half is to take that information and make it into something visually, to address whatever we’re trying to achieve.” The art work, he explained, is pretty much the last leg of the job.

He said that when Richard told him he was starting up Hamakua Springs, he went out to Pepe‘ekeo to see the farm for himself.

“When I got there he showed me some springs,” he told me. “His farm had access to fresh water springs just coming out of the grounds. That was basically the take-off point for the image. I was looking for something that visually dictated the water element, as well as the mountains and valley of the Hamakua coast.”

He found it.

living-lettuce

Later, when Richard told Nelson he was going to start growing products hydroponically, and produce a “living product,” Nelson said he knew it wouldn’t be enough to just tell people that.

“I’m a visualist and my problem was the words weren’t strong enough, clear enough,” he said. “So I designed a little logo that would appear on all the products that are living. Something that would distinguish him from other companies.”

As for the hydroponics, he called it “Hawaiian Hydroponics,” to give it a geographic sense. Nelson explained that as a visual pun, there’s a drop of water replacing the first “o” in “hydroponic.”

hydroponics

Nelson has worked in the business for almost 30 years, specializing in image development and logo design.

He explained that image development is looking at the products, figuring out who the market is and working out visuals based on that.

Logo design—well, you know what that is:

Logos

Nelson’s good, obviously, at what he does, and his resume proves it. He’s worked with Big Island Candies for 20 years and Mauna Loa Macadamia Nuts for 10, as well as for Chinese New Year, the Hawaiian Slack Key Festival, Tahiti Fete of both Hilo and San Jose and others.

His work has been nominated three times for Hoku Hanohano awards (for three of the 27 album designs he’s done for Hawaiian Slack Key Masters) and won for graphic design twice. For four years now he’s designed the beautiful Merrie Monarch hula posters.

He displays his clothing line at the retail store “Na Makua” (http://www.namakua.com), on Waianuenue Avenue in downtown Hilo, which he operates with his son Kainoa. His new designs come out there in August, if you want to go see.

It’s always worth the trip.

 

–Leslie Lang, chief blogger

At The Mall

At the Ag Expo this past Saturday, at Hilo’s Prince Kuhio Plaza, one of the things we demonstrated was our “living lettuce.”

june-and-tracy

Richard’s wife June and their daughter Tracy set out a head of our lettuce, which we distribute with some of the roots still attached, in a “Hawaii Seal of Quality” mug filled with water—to show how you can keep Hamakua Springs lettuce fresher, for longer.

Here’s Richard with the lettuce.

richard-with-lettuce

It sat there from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Tracy says it looked great. “The lettuce stayed nice and perky the whole time we were there,” she says. Feel free to try this at home.

We also rolled out our new slogan: “Hydroponic: Clean and Green.” What do you think? We want to educate the public about the positives of growing food hydroponically, the way we grow everything at Hamakua Springs (except the bananas, of course).

If this is new to you, you can read more about the Clean and Green—such as why hydroponics is such a healthy choice (growing without soil means less need for chemicals and pesticides, as well as lower energy use because we don’t have to till the ground, etc.)—at our website.

We also sold our vegetables at the Ag Expo this year. While introducing people to our new products, we managed to move about 65 pounds of cucumbers, five cases of tomatoes (beefsteak, cocktail, mini Roma and heirlooms) and six cases of lettuce.

Have YOU tried Hamakua Springs? We’re at your supermarket (if you live here in the land of aloha, that is).

Ag Expo

If you don’t live here in the land of aloha—why not? Where do you live? Tell us something about it. Or tell us what your favorite Hamakua Springs product is. We’d love to hear from you.

Losing It

Richard Ha writes:

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 4:
Starting weight 214.6 lbs.
This week’s target weight 212.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight 210.5 lbs.
I am 2.1 lbs ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.1 lbs.

Goal 175 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 4.1 lbs.
Starting resting heart rate 65
Today’s resting heart rate 61 beats per minute.*

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I lost 1.1 lbs. this week, when my goal was to lose 1 lb. Overall, I’m 2.1 lbs. ahead of schedule now.

I’m starting to realize that all the things you read about losing weight are pretty much true: Lose a little bit of weight at a time; eat breakfast; check the scale frequently, and you start to feel better—it’s all true. I’m not feeling deprived; just a little more disciplined.

They say that one of the characteristics of successful weight losers is that they check the scale frequently, and it is interesting to weigh frequently. I’m doing that and I’m starting to spot patterns and I’m actually modifying my eating behavior on the fly. For instance, last week I gained almost 2 lbs. for no apparent reason. I deduced that it was due to eating too much sodium, like in the beef jerky that we bought from Costco. I eat way too much of this when I get my hands in it. So, I just found out what “retaining water” means.

It is true, too, about weighing in at the same time each day. In the morning after everything is stable works for me. The rest of the time, I’m trying to figure out what causes the temporary ups and downs. Kind of interesting.

In terms of exercise, I use a heart rate monitor to determine how hard to work. Effective training involves just the right amount of stress combined with adequate rest. This involves monitoring one’s heart rate. The heart is a muscle and needs to be trained accordingly.

There are training programs that are based on one’s theoretical maximum heart rate. There are on-line calculators that will calculate your maximum heart rate and there are training programs that tell you how long to train at what heart rate. So this involves watching your heart rate monitor and working harder or less depending on what your schedule calls for.

I am on what is called an interval training program. I train hard three times per week and cruise for the other four days. For the first three weeks, the training days are progressively more intense but for shorter durations. The fourth week is an active rest week where I cruise for at least an hour three times during the week.

On the days I am not scheduled for intense training, I cruise until I get 500 calories expended. On my elliptical trainer at 70% of maximum heart rate, which is considered active rest, it takes me about 40 minutes to accumulate 500 calories.

Because I like to lift weights I throw weightlifting into the mix as long as my heart rate is where I need it to be. One word of caution: one should refrain from over-training.

Here’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon to keep it all in perspective.

I cannot wait to break 200!

How We Do It: Toys

Richard Ha writes:

Workers in Central and South America who harvest bananas have to carry the heavy bunches more than 100 feet to a cable for transporting.

Compare that to our workers, who harvest bananas using ATVs pulling trailers. We designed these units so the harvesters take only about seven steps with the banana bunch on their backs. The height is such that they don’t have to bend their backs too much when placing the bunch onto the trailer, and the tires run on five pounds of pressure, which prevents bouncing.

Aren’t we brilliant to have designed such a system? NOT!!

I’d like to think so, but here’s how it really came about: About fifteen years ago, when I used to ride off-road dirt bikes for fun, the first 3-wheelers came out. I just had to have one of those new toys.

So I mentioned to June how the farm could use one for spraying. I could strap on the backpack sprayer, I explained, and by riding on the 3-wheeler instead of walking I could get more spraying done.

I got the impression her reaction was, “Yeah, right.” But we got one, and it was as fun as I thought it would be and we did actually use it for spraying.

And then the 4-wheelers came out. They had lots of power and great suspension, so of course I had to have one of those, too.

“I know what!” I told June. “We’ll use it to pull a trailer when harvesting bananas.”

We’ve used them ever since.

Living Lettuce

Richard Ha writes:

Our newest product here at Hamakua Springs Country Farms—our Chef’s Select baby lettuce, which we grow hydroponically under a rain shelter—breathes.

baby-lettuce

That’s why we call our new product “living lettuce”—because we leave some of the roots on when we send it out to the stores. This means the lettuce can take up water and oxygen, and gives it a longer shelf life. It also means one can actually keep it fresh on a kitchen counter for awhile, in a bowl of fresh water, provided some of the roots remain above the water so it can take in oxygen.

We developed the “Chef’s Select baby lettuce” product after learning about the finer points of lettuce from Chef Alan Wong, who provides much appreciated help and advice when we are developing new products.

We held a product development meeting at Chef Alan’s King Street Restaurant and I watched him evaluate several different varieties of lettuce. He removed each leaf, giving a running commentary of how each lettuce leaf could be used for salads, garnish and in other ways, depending on its size, texture, color.

Living Lettuce
I had no idea that lettuce was ever so closely scrutinized. He talked of loft, which is when a lettuce has characteristics enabling it to retain its shape and not go flat under the weight of different protein offerings as well as dressings. He said that he could use baby leaves as the baby lettuce leaves would be tender and retain their identifying shape in salads and garnishes.

That’s what led us to develop what we call Chef’s Select baby lettuce, a combination of three lettuces in each container. We chose a mini romaine for its crunchy texture, dark green color, loft and good taste. A butter lettuce is included for its light green color, buttery taste and round shaped leaves, and a lollo rosa is a part of the mix for its brilliant red color, frilly leaves and because its taste complements the other two.

If you try some of our new Chef’s Select baby lettuce you’ll know you are getting a lettuce with the characteristics that Hawai‘i’s finest chefs seek out.