Category Archives: Travel

Losing Weight, Travel

Weight Loss on the Fly

Richard Ha writes:

We’ve been in Las Vegas since ten days ago, when June and I flew here suddenly because June’s mom went into the hospital. She left the hospital yesterday, but the doctor says she cannot fly. So we are arranging to bring her home on one of the cruise ships that visit Hilo. Tomorrow we drive to San Diego.

I did not bring my heart rate monitor and haven’t had a chance to weigh myself. I’ll try to post my weight loss statistics next week.

Trying to lose weight under these circumstances, while eating hotel food, has been a real challenge. For the first few days, we ate a combination of hospital cafeteria food and hotel food. I exercised by walking for an hour each day through the mall and around the hotel. But it was not very useful since I hardly broke a sweat.

One day I even walked the stairs of the hotel’s six-story parking garage. I didn’t realize it was so high. The stairs are like a fire escape on the outside of the building, and it got a little hairy up on the top floors when I was breathing heavily and hanging on to the railing closest to the wall.

I finally had to acknowlege that the hotel food was way too much volume and too many calories. I had to tell myself, “Even if you paid for it, you don’t have to eat all of it.” Getting over that idea was a big deal.

Since I don’t gamble, even for entertainment, I was able to justify paying to go to the spa. It’s a place where people go for manicures and massages, and where the walls and ceilings are mirrored and the trim is done in wood tones. The ambience is quiet and sedate. There was a pitcher of ice water for guests that had slices of lemon and cucumber in it. It was not your ordinary power lifting gym by any means.

But I was on a mission and I went twice. The first time, I wanted to do a long session at a 125 heart rate or so. I started at 5:50 p.m. and at 7:00 they told me the spa was closing. Two days later I went in and did three intervals–one at a 138 heart rate for ten minutes, another at 145 for five minutes and the last for three minutes at 153.

I don’t know what my weight is because I did not go into the locker room where the scale was. I know that I have gained a few pounds. But not many.

I started to get control of the situation once I realized that serving sizes were twice what I needed and adapted to that. As far as exercise, it’s been the first time I ever set out with the intention of walking as far as I could for an hour. I had to take side trips so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself as the guy who was coming around the block again. But it was enjoyable as I saw a lot more of the place than I otherwise would have.

Once we reach San Diego, we will be in a more stable environment and I’m sure losing weight will be much easier then.

I wasn’t able to plan the exercise portion of this trip ahead of time because we had to get here as fast as we could. But I’ve found that I can adapt and maintain my weight even under unplanned conditions.

It’s been a great learning experience. There have been obstacles in the way of my continuing the weight loss program. But I feel I’ve adjusted well and I am more convinced than ever that I will succeed in losing 39 pounds in 39 weeks.

Tomatoes, Travel

I Say Tomato…

3 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

I’ve had a strong interest in heirloom tomatoes since we grew our first ones a couple years ago. They were far and away tastier than any of the regular tomatoes. And heirlooms hold together better.

Tomato_fest_sign_21

I was fascinated by the fact that there were several hundred varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and I wanted to grow the best of the best. But where to start? When we first heard about the Tomato Fest at Carmel, California—and that it was all about heirloom tomatoes—we had to come and see what was up.

We have not been disappointed.

We arrived at the Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley Sunday an hour and a half before the gates opened and a lot of people were already there. The shuttle buses were running and there was a line waiting to get in.

The event is a charitable fund raiser for the Chef and Child Foundation, a project of the American Culinary Federation. Some consider it Central California’s best annual food and wine event. We bought VIP tickets because in addition to contributing to the good cause, we wanted an opportunity to check out the many different heirloom tomato varieties.

Gary_ibsen_2And that way we got to meet the Tomato Fest director Gary Ibsen and his wife Dagma Lacey, too. Gary started the Tomato Fest 15 years ago as a way for family and friends to celebrate the season’s tomato harvest, and it has since grown to 3,000 participants.

The VIP tent was buzzing by 11:30, an hour before start time, and there was a line for wine and a double line for samplings of tomato dishes. We got a glass of wine and sat down next to a guy wearing a Poipu Beach shirt. He was from Hawai‘i, in town to attend his third Tomato Fest and to golf.

Musicians kept the mood in the VIP tent upbeat. We each received a tray that holds the souvenir wine glass and pupu so one hand is free.

Lines_of_tomatoes_1We were allowed into the display area a little ahead of the 12:30 start time and headed straight for the heirloom tomato sampling tent. The large tent was devoted entirely to the display and tasting of heirloom tomatoes. Not to sound like a Dr. Seuss book, but there truly were big ones, little ones, green ones, purple ones, red ones, white ones, yellow with stripe ones, round ones, long ones and everything in between ones.

Tables were set up around the perimeter and tomatoes were displayed on a continuous line so people could sample and keep moving. Each was displayed on an upside-down plastic glass, which served as a pedestal that showed off the whole fruit. On the platter below were small cubed pieces to taste with a toothpick.

Richard_tastesWhen we got there, no one had yet sampled any tomatoes yet and the display was perfect. The tomatoes were of all shapes, sizes and many different colors. I took more than 50 pictures of the more than 200 different varieties on display and sampled even more.

When the gates opened up it was a madhouse—people were trying to taste as much as they could and as fast as they could. It was very interesting listening in on conversations of non-farmers talking about heirloom tomatoes. I can’t imagine any other type of tomato generating this much interest. I sense that interest is building in Hawai‘i, as well, and we want to bring to Hawai‘i the very best varieties we can find.

Once we finished with the variety tasting, we visited the three tents with the chefs’ creations. The chefs did a great job creating their dishes and it was apparent that they put a lot of effort into it.

Tomato_shootersThere was a tomato tower, made of carmelized onions and slices of different colored cocktail-sized heirloom tomatoes. Another tasted suspiciously like Kalua pig and heirloom tomatoes served on a toasted cracker. The tomato sorbet was surprisingly good: refreshing with a hint of basil, and leeks sauteed with something sweet and tasty underneath.

We had a tomato shooter made up of yellow lemon boy tomato soup with a red heirloom tomato soup on top. The instructions read: “Sip the red soup and notice the burn, and then drink the rest of the lemon boy soup with syrup to top it off.” It was very good.

There was a slab of heirloom tomato that was red, flecked throughout with yellow, something like a striped German heirloom tomato. It looked like a 10-pound slab of ahi.

The chef made smaller squares about an inch and a half square served on a toothpick. I don’t have a clue how he did it. It tasted like heirloom tomatoes with basil and was delicious. Cherokee_purple_6

We went from station to station. It moved very rapidly and was a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. I looked forward to finding out, at each station, how I would be surprised yet again. It was a spectacular tasting event.

The whole area was as big as maybe three or four football fields. In the middle, there was a sit-down area of 30 or 40 tables. Along the sides were specialty tents with some of the commercial tomato-grower sponsor booths, wine tasting booths with wines from the Monterey area, olive oil from local orchards as well as other products. There was a stage and a live band that kept people jumping all day with songs like “Lucille.” We stopped at the fried green tomato booth. Maybe something for our fruit stand/snack bar?

Farmers_marketThere was a Farmers Market booth where people could buy a basket of mixed varieties of heirloom tomatoes. The mixed basket looked so farm fresh. This is decidedly different from the all-same look of commercial tomatoes.

People were paying close attention to a chef preparing a tomato dish from a mini-cooking stage. Close by was a souvenir tent selling t-shirts, baseball caps and other things. I got several Tomato Fest baseball caps and June got some t-shirts.

The influence of the Tomato Fest is pretty evident. We had lunch at a small cafe at the Barnyard Shopping Center in Carmel and there were heirloom tomatoes on the salad bar. Heirlooms were also served in salads in place of regular tomatoes.

June_with_chefs

That evening we had dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey and noticed heirloom tomatoes in the regular salad there as well. I commented to the waiter that we had come from the Tomato Fest and he said that he just recently started eating tomatoes; and that it was only because he tasted heirloom tomatoes and liked them. Before that he had hated tomatoes.

I feel that heirloom tomatoes could be very popular in Hawai‘i. When we get home, we’ll start to increase our supply and see what we can do about bringing heirloom tomatoes to the masses.

Food and Drink, New York City, The Good Life, Travel

Exit Interview: New York City

1 Comment

Ny_copy_1
Here are some highlights of our last few days in New York City. It was a great two weeks in shorts.

When we landed at Honolulu International, our first impression was that Hawai’i people walk at half the speed of New Yorkers. In New York everyone seems to be on a mission, as if they’re going to miss the train to somewhere. Where we were, the city was clean and felt safe and the police were visible and personable. The people are fine and I have a favorable impression of New Yorkers. We like New York City very much and are eager to return.

But I like to walk around slowly with my hands in my shorts pockets. It’s hard to do that in New York City.

June_4

We took in four musicals. The Color Purple was very good. Everyone was teary except me. I just had a runny nose.

Chicago was really funny and enjoyable. Rosie O’Donnell, with her partner and some friends, sat five rows in front of us. She seemed very approachable and the people around her in the audience seemed to genuinely like her. She smiled and acknowledged Kapono. We liked her too.

We went to the Saturday evening performance of The Phantom of the Opera and sat in the front mezzanine. Amazing how the smallest sound can be heard so clearly. There are theatres up and down 44th street. We had seen The Phantom at the Blaisdell on O’ahu and so we knew the story. But there is nothing like experiencing it in New York City.

We saw The Producers last. You’d have to be crazy to think up that story line–of making money by financing the show using funds provided by little old ladies, then keeping the difference if the show flops. The expectation is that the worse the show, the more money they can keep. And then having a financial disaster, because the unlikely musical about Adolph Hitler is a big hit. But that’s Mel Brooks for you.

We loved it all. From blocking the whole sidewalk on Broadway waiting for doors to open up for The Color Purple; to going to our seats for The Phantom of the Opera and walking down steps so steep we felt like we were going to fall off the mezzanine; to going to Juniors for cheese cake after the show; to dodging the traffic while crossing in the middle of the block like veteran New Yorkers after The Producers; to sitting on the sidewalk outside of Starbucks watching people go by. It was all lots of fun.

Gelato
We caught a cab to Chelsea Market, the home of The Food Network. We discovered gelato for the first time. Wow. It tastes like good ice cream, only better. Would have blown my diet if I had one. We ordered a sandwich at Ruthy’s Bakery and ate it outside in the hallway watching the people go by. They had the most interesting variety of sandwiches. They all looked tasty.

It will be good to have some of these sandwiches at the Farmers Market gift shop/deli we are planning to build at “The Gears” property, which we own. It consists of 13 acres fronting the highway where the Sugar Mill Road meets Highway 19 in Pepe’ekeo. We will start the permitting process soon.

The best food deal was a $3.50 slice of jalapeno pizza at the Grand Central Station. It had a thin crust with tasty tomato-something sauce with sundried tomatoes and just the right amount of bite and taste from the jalapenos. It would have been perfect with anchovies. We ran down with the crowd and squeezed into the subway shuttle to Times Square and 42nd Street. We poured out into the streets with everyone else but stood behind a post so we could get our bearing without getting swept along out of control.

Empire_state_bldg_hscf_2

We went to the Empire State Building with a friendly cab driver. I asked him why cab drivers blow their horns. He said they can only blow their horn in case of imminent danger. They risk a $350 fine if they sound their horn for any other reason. I guess there must be danger everywhere.

Crazy_kids_6_person_bike_3

How about the weird, six-person bicycle, where the driver is facing the right way and the other five are in a circle facing the center and pedaling like hell? Crazy young people having fun. We were stopped at a traffic light and one flew by with the rest of the cross traffic and a group of young kids on the sidewalks gave them an ovation. We had to grin.

Where do the vendors go with their carts when they’re done for the day? It seems like there is a cart on every corner. The cab driver said there are several warehouses down by the Hudson River that replenish the carts during the evenings. So the vendors push their carts back in the evening and go get it the next morning. That’s a long push. They must make money.

86th_floor_obs_wide_6

After 50 minutes of standing in lines, we finally arrived at the Empire State Building’s 86-floor observation deck for a 360-degree view of the City. Because we had been all over the city, we were familiar with many of the prominent landmarks. Looking to the North, there was the GE and Met Life Building. So, our hotel must be a little to the left and short of the GE building. Further up was Central Park. That must be the pond where we sat on the benches. To the right, the Upper East Side and Eli’s. Further up, Harlem and the Bronx. To the left was the Hudson River and to the right, the East River. Facing the East, there is the United Nations building and across the East River, Queens and Brooklyn. To the south, Greenwich Village, the financial district and in the haze, the Statue of Liberty. We’re glad we came here on the last day. The view is so much more meaningful after having put some time in on the ground.

Our last couple of days were rainy. We’re veterans at the hotel by now. The greeter recognizes us and tells us she will miss us when we leave. We are starting to nod knowingly when newly arriving guests look around disoriented.

They’re just like us with the revolving doors. We eventually figured out that they are supposed to keep on revolving smoothly, not jerky like when we first encountered them. June says it was me who made the revolving doors jerky. It kept talking to us: “Please move to the front.” Now we’re smooth.

The elevators go from A to N and are computer routed. Punch in the floor that you want and the key pad tells you which elevator is going to that floor. And you need to get in that elevator, which will only stop on the floors pushed. There are no buttons inside the elevator.

A person asked, as I got out and the door started to close, where are the buttons? He must have followed someone in and did not push the button for his floor. I could not react in time to tell him to get out and punch in his floor number on the keypad outside. I think he is still on that elevator.

New York is great fun, and we have to go back again. But it’s nice to be home.

New York City, Travel

New Yorkers

Richard Ha writes:

We’re starting to ride the subway; still need to get familiar with the bus system. Once we do this, we’ll be able to get around very well.

The Bangladesh cab driver told me that the transportation system makes it possible for immigrants to avoid having to buy a car as they try to make their way in this country. He told me there is a large Bangladeshi population and they get together socially and so they have a real sense of community that makes life comfortable for them.

The real New Yorkers we met were really nice. One guy was in the Sephora store where the husbands wait–against one wall. I walked up next to him when June went in to look around and asked him if that was the spot where the husbands wait, and he talked to me for the whole time, telling me how to get tickets for plays and musicals. He told me about dropping his mother-in-law on a bus for Canada. He even introduced his wife to me. He was the real deal with a heavy Brooklyn accent.

A lady that June started talking to was the same way, open and friendly. I have no negative impressions to report about New Yorkers. When I think about it, it probably was a tourist who elbowed me.

It really is great to get a change of pace. This will allow us to get back to the farm and hit the ground running.

Bananas, Food and Drink, Losing Weight, New York City, Travel

Treadmill over Manhattan

1 Comment

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.

Bike, Family News, New York City, Travel

Taking the Lead

2 Comments

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