Kauai Invaders Sweep Across Oahu

Don Chapman
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November 07, 2007
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My next-door neighbors in Kaneohe hosted an extended Kauai family over a recent weekend.

I thought about throwing rocks at them, pounding on their two rental cars and screaming that their mere presence defiled my island, not to mention my street, but had more important things to do - like cleaning my fish tank.

So instead I asked them if everyone on Kauai agrees with the folks there who’ve protested the Superferry so boorishly.

“There’s only about 12 of them,” one of the women said with a dismissive shake of her head.

“We’d have loved to bring our cars over on the Superferry with everything we need to tailgate at the UH homecoming football game,” one of the men said. “That would have been perfect.”

Turns out they were also here to see Lion King and do some shopping - not to mention clog up our roads. But being the magnanimous guy that I am, I forgave them ...


* What’s going on in our ocean with all of the recent shark attacks? Oh, yeah, it’s not our ocean - it’s their ocean! And it’s obvious that the tiger shark population has rebounded after being whacked down to almost nothing in research by former UH prof Albert Tester. Following the fatal attack on Billy Weaver, of restaurant legend Spence Weaver’s family, while he was surfing off Lanikai in 1958, the state legislature gave funding to Tester do shark research. And the only way to do that is to catch and kill them. The program continued into the 1970s. Now it appears that the tigers have bounced back. My son Kai and a friend were playing catch with a football in knee-high water at Kailua Beach Park a while back when lifeguards ordered everyone out of the water - because out by a buoy marking off a swimming-only area, a big tiger was tossing a turtle into the air, taking a bite, then tossing it again. I haven’t gone swimming there since ...

The California guy who was bit last week on Maui was breaking the first rule of how not to get bit by a shark: swimming in murky water. Tiger sharks love murky water, especially near the mouths of streams, because all kinds of morsels wash down when it rains, including dead animals ...

* What’s wrong with Michelle Wie? Let’s put it this way: When Tiger Woods enrolled as a freshman at Stanford, Mommy and Daddy didn’t pack up and move to Palo Alto with him. College is where kids are supposed to start growing up and making decisions on their own - sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but that’s how kids learn to be independent adults. And if there’s any trait that history’s great golfers share, it’s being strong individuals who think for themselves ...

* No moral to this story, just a little observation: While driving on a recent sunny day, moments after seeing three teen girls walking along laughing and dressed in what seems the requisite practically nothing, I passed three elderly ladies walking along laughing, all wearing broad-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts. No matter the age, friends are good ...


* Speaking of the way kids dress these days: Heard about a preschool girl whose mother sent her to school on Halloween dressed as Beth Chapman, including large fake breasts ...

* As for my cousin Dog: What a sad story. But I have to disagree with a columnist for the Advertiser, who wrote that Dog’s stupid, racist rant showed his true colors. That’s just simplistic thinking. We humans are each capable of doing great good and terrible immorality - none of us is all good or all bad, not Dog and not that columnist. Unfortunately, the bad Dog spoke that day. And as you may also have learned in life, once something is said you can’t remove the words from another person’s ears and put them back in your mouth. Sad, sad…

* November, I’ve been informed, is International Drum Month. Did you know that playing the drums can burn up to 270 calories in a half-hour - more than cycling, hiking or weight lifting. It also lowers stress hormones. According to the Percussion Marketing Council, girls especially benefit from drumming: “Percussion can transform a quiet, timid, ordinary little girl into a strong, powerful, focused and confident young woman.” I’ve been fooling around with congas and various other hand drums for a decade and can attest to drumming’s therapeutic effect. For more info, please check out www.PlayDrums.Com ...

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