View From The Top

Thor Wold
telescope Systems specialist
UKIRT/JAC

I expect this is only the first of many changes in the next few years. Still anticipated, long-awaited as well, is the Puainako Street extension, which will allow a bypass of all of Kaumana and connect from just south of University Park to the 6 mile area of Saddle Road. Then of course there is the very long-awaited realignment of Saddle Road itself. Like a lot of locals, I do hope to live to see this! The progress on the Mohouli Street extension is now obvious to anyone that has travelled here. The Puainako Street extension is now suddenly being threatened by a lack of funds! This, after being planned for over 30 years? This boggles the mind...

Meantime, the Great Flood hit on November 2nd. This cut Komohana Street (yet again) and the Powers that Be decided they had had enough with their 12' diameter culvert; they decided to put in a proper bridge. Bids went out in December, the project was opened to traffic in early February; astonishing speed, if you know how things are done in Hawai'i! In the interim, the detour around the project was really bad. Those of you who have come through in the past few months know all too well how annoying this detour was. What used to take me five minutes now sometimes stretched to thirty or more. But now we have the bridge and things are much better again. This was indeed epic rainfall. A new record at the airport was set at 27.21" in 24 hours. Pahala, on the southern end of the island, got over 36" in 24 hours, and lost a few major bridges. The soccer fields down at Bayfront are still unusable, being buried under rocks and rubble. JAC was knocked off line for a while in the thick of things. I happened to be on vacation, so missed all the fun.

Right after this, it seemed like someone turned off the tap and forgot to turn it back on. From this level of water, we went to nearly nothing, and indeed had not one drop of rain from Christmas to mid-January. Things were starting to shrivel and turn

brown...then the tap was opened again and again someone forgot to turn it off. At this writing (mid-February) we just had the worst winter storm in years. UKIRT was closed for 9 nights in a row--I cannot remember the last time this happened. People down below were trying to again perfect the maneuver of getting in and out of cars with golf umbrellas without getting soaked. This is not as easy as it seems!

Speaking of taps, your wonderful Vacation Resort Hale Pohaku has decided to reinstate the ever-popular Variable Temperature Showers. One has to presume that this is done to try to counteract the low-fiber high-fat diet. That is, you get a subtle dip in water pressure while showering, and know it is time to jump quickly out of the way of the spray or suffer slight scalding. This way, we are forced to exercise. Cleverly, they have made the pressure variation even more subtle thanbefore. This literally keeps you on your toes. A real clear winner though, has been the new queen-sized beds. I find lolling about, sleeping sideways, etc, simply marvelous! You may recall I bought two of the old twin-size beds, which I have relegated to the occasional visiting victim at my house. This has not elicited any complaints...but then, people are not tarrying, either. Am I the only person that finds that these new beds seemingly cannot keep either the sheets, blankets or the fitted sheets on the mattress? I surely do not have the problem of awakening with the fitted sheet wound around myself at home and having to reconstruct everything every few days. I am beginning to wonder if the bedclothes are really the right size. Further, the rather tawdry iron frames leave much to be desired, especially compared to the real, solid oak frames of the old beds. I have managed to scrape my shin a few times on the bits that stick out on the corners. But overall, this is a great improvement over those old twin beds.

It is hard to believe that already another six months have gone by and it is time for another edition of the UKIRT Newsletter! As they say, 'Time passes quickly when you are having fun...'.

My last article certainly generated a lot of curious comments through this time. Naturally, everyone was astonished that anyone who might be passing through as an observer could be inconsiderate, etc. I especially found it humorous that some people who were well known to do so were amazed that anyone could possibly start reading/sending email, etc. at the end of a night, when they could easily have waited to get down to Hale Pohaku. Above all, everyone wanted to examine ‘The List’ that I refused to publish. Sorry. No reason to get into any Gruesome Details, especially when it does appear that at least some culprits still won't get it anyway.

Almost immediately after our printing deadline, it was announced that --finally!-- the first major new road project in Hilo in over 30 years was to start. This is the Mohouli Street extension. Mohouli Street is the street that is just north of the entrance to University Park and the JAC office, the one with the stop light on Komohana. This road will now connect to Ainako, right where Curt's 76 gas station is. This will at least allow one to bypass some of lower Kaumana and Komohana when going up or down the mountain. It is scheduled for completion in late 2001 and visitors will no doubt be getting new instructions as to how best to make the transit up the mountain.