Kauai, Day One

On a normal WCH trip, this would be the time when I wait to see which of my travel companions end up writing the day's Loop Me In. Unfortunately, I cannot pass the buck today as there is no one to pass the buck to. I almost asked one of the hundreds of senior citizens at this resort to write this post in my stead but ultimately decided against it.

As for Day 0, I left for the Madison airport at 3:45 AM on Friday which was 10:45 PM on Thursday on Kauai. I ended up with a 4 hour layover at LAX (Los Angeles International not La Crosse). Because of this long layover, I got a discounted Sky Club lounge pass where I saw both John Stamos & the kid who plays Finn on Glee. The Sky Club is basically a hotel's continental breakfast except with a disturbing self-serve bar. By the way, John Stamos is beautiful, he glows.

Eventually, I made it to Kauai at 5 PM Kauai time. Which was 10 PM Madison time. I was very sleepy. I picked up my rental car, drove to the hotel, ordered a room service mini-pizza that cost the same as a regular pizza (Natalie, I'll check my hotel receipt to make sure this doesn't get charged to the WCH card.)

My experiment with long exposure settings. It is hard to focus when you can't see what you are focusing on.

I woke up at 3:45 AM, which was 8:45 home time. I responded to all of the Kauai e-mails and then headed out around 5:30 to explore the island.

I knew that I would be filming a multi-use path that runs along the coast of the town of Kapaa, on Sunday morning so I decided to scout it out after some pre-dawn granola and coffee.


The is an extremely beautiful walk, I ended up following it for about 1 1/2 miles. I enjoyed the rainbow of colors from the sunrise, the soft sound of the waves crashing against the beach, the cute doggies being taken for walks. For contrast, I decided to walk through town on the way back. Now I was on a narrow sidewalk with noisy cars, difficult-to-cross intersections & a severe lack of cute doggies. It made me think of the built environment in Madison, I think of Madison as a pretty pedestrian-friendly city, however, there are a lack of paths like this where you don't have to deal with cars or aggressive power bikers.

Oh, and there are feral chickens EVERYWHERE. They conquered the island over the last few decades following their escape during a 1990 hurricane.

Eventually, I meandered down to Lihue, about 8 miles South of Kapaa, where we filmed a story at a farmers' market at the Kauai Community College. This is where I met the videographer, Bruce. He is an interesting guy who "does a little of this, a little of that" around the island. Videography is one of his skills and he does it very well.


The shoot went well. Unfortunately, the person who was going to come and talk about the partnerships that made this market unique was unable to come. Much of what we captured was about EBT, which is still very good, but a story we've already told. However, we did get some very candid statements about food security, much more honest than the comments on that topic captured in Maui, so there is still a unique angle to make this story stand out.

We interviewed this woman. She is awesome. I'll save that story for the office.

After that, Bruce and I planned out the shoots for Tuesday & Wednesday. Then, he gave me some bananas he grew at his house. Yum! I also picked up some treats at the market to share back at the office.

Then, I was on my own so I decided to explore the southwest portion of the island and I'm not scheduled to go there any other time during my trip. Kauai's population density is very different than Maui. Whereas Maui had a relatively big city and large spaces between towns, Kauai has a lot of small villages only separated by a few miles. The towns form a ring around the island connected by one highway that loops around. THERE IS A LOT OF TRAFFIC ON THIS ONE HIGHWAY. The interior of the island is largely a nature/forest preserve.

The John Stamos of vistas.

Eventually, I decided to stop at a coffee plantation, they grow, roast and sell the coffee all on the property. It was touristy but fun. I bought some coffee to bring back to the office. What was very neat is that they generate all of their own electricity through hydroelectric power. I have some pictures from the tour that I really like, however, hotel wifi is very slow and I'm sick of waiting two minutes to upload each picture.

Coffee!

After the coffee fest, I picked up some shrimp tacos for dinner and slowly drove back to the hotel. Tourism seems to be an ever bigger part of the island's economy than it was on Maui. There is a definite "tourist v. resident" vibe here, once I started thinking about that issues like food security and location of active transportation paths can take on a very personal & political meaning. Sometimes I forget that there are more to these issues than just health.

Obligatory 'story' reference.

Finally, I drove back to the hotel and went up to my room. This is the view outside my window.



There is the cutest old couple holding hands on the beach right now. I should have gotten them to write this for me. They've probably got a good story.