The next best thing to time travel

In the space of a few hours I'm transported to Hawaii, and once again I'm driving the Kohala Mountain Road to Waimea to pick up some groceries at KTA. I had to pull over and take the photo above, to remind myself how feckin lucky I am.

Everybody bitches about airplane travel. Whine, whine, whine. Don't you remember what it was like, just a few centuries ago? Don't you remember traveling across mountain passes in Conestogas, crossing oceans on leaky frigates, traversing deserts on the backs of camels? In the space of six and a half hours, I have been transported to another place, another life, and in effect, another time.

Now I'm walking past the brown-skinned paniolo at the KTA shopping center in Waimea. (Photo above) Country music plays over the loudspeaker, as always. Because Waimea is upcountry, Waimea is Parker Ranch headquarters. Parker Ranch was once the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the world. And paniolos are Hawaiian cowboys, who first learned the trade back in the 1800's when the first cattle were introduced to the Hawaiian Islands by the British. Hawaiian cowboys kicked ass in the early 1900's, winning top honors at the rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. They would have had a two week sail to get from Hawaii to California, then a train ride from there to Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific Railroad (completed in 1869, a fact I just remembered from a Wyoming History course I took back in 1979...)

And we bitch about the discomforts of 21st century travel! It isn't so hard to stand in line, go through a scanner, sit in a crowded airplane for a few hours, or even half a day, and eat bad food at high prices, until you get to your destination. Your other life.

Here's a photo of the Spam section at KTA. If you don't understand Spam, you can't fully appreciate Hawaii. It ain't all palm trees, folks.

Aloha!