Riding Nowhere, Wiki Wiki

ride. Last year, soon after we arrived in Hilo, I found an old, Sears-brand, 1960s-era stationary bike at the Salvation Army for 25 dollars.

I had been on the look-out for an exercise bike, as Hilo is not what you’d call a bicycle-friendly town: No bike-lanes, a higher-than-average number of drunks on the road, and, being on the slope of a shield volcano (Mauna Loa), most roads either go steeply uphill or down.

Mauna Kea in the foreground, Mauna Loa behind it
(taken last winter)

Plus, it rains a lot (the average rainfall is 130 inches per year—see here).

So I was pleased with my find, and rode that little bike for hundreds of imaginary miles, in my quest to keep in shape whilst in Paradise.

me on the bike in the master bedroom,
before we acquired furniture for the room
[photo: Robin McDuff]

Alas, the little bike was on its last legs—or rather wheels—and it was not long before its axle broke and ball-bearings started spitting out in all directions. I duly tracked down a machine-shop and bought new parts, and managed to get it going again, only to have another part break—this time the gadget that puts friction on the wheel, to make it harder or easier to pedal. Fixing that problem proved beyond my abilities. As it was only a few weeks before leaving town, I just started running instead for my workouts.

Now we’re back in Hilo, though, and in the last year my knee has made it clear that under no circumstances should I run anymore. At least not more than about a quarter mile at a time.

So it was time to buy another stationary bike. As soon as I got here, I looked on Craigslist and Freecycle. Nothin’ there.

Next I tried Sears. Eureka! Not only did they have a small exercise bike (one I could transport home in the car), but it was 25% off—only $150! The warehouse guys loaded the box into my trunk, and I managed to drag it downstairs to the basement—my new training grounds.

as Brian says, beware the words “some assembly required”

After several hours of sweat, swearing, and swilling water, I succeeding in putting it together.

good thing Robin left lots of tools here

Here it is, all ready to go:


The next morning I took her for a trial run. Unlike my last bike, this one has a computer gizmo that shows me how far I’ve gone, how long I’ve ridden, my mph, and my calories burned. (Though I think the calorie-counter can’t be right: First of all, this number varies according to one’s weight, etc., and my little bike doesn’t know anything about my physique. Plus, it consistently tells me I’ve only burned 300 calories in one hour, and I know I’m doing at least a “moderate effort”; I feel like I’m workin’ pretty darn hard. See chart here.)

I listen to my iPod when I ride. For the first 45 minutes of my hour-long work-out, I listen to podcasts of the Food Chain, What’s Eating What Radio. After that I listen to a shuffle of the various songs I’ve downloaded: a variety of new wave, country, jazz, opera, and classic rock, so it’s always a surprise what I’ll hear next.

My rule is that when an hour is up, I continue riding until whatever song I’m listening to is finished. This morning it was Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” which clocks in at 7 minutes and 6 seconds, so my ride was a bit longer than usual.

Although I ride first thing in the morning, usually from around 7 to 8 a.m., I get really hot after just a few minutes. This is the tropics, after all. So I have an electric fan hooked up, which I turn on full blast. (Seems silly that I can’t power a fan with my pedal-strokes; they really should market exercise bikes with power sockets to run a fan or other electrical device off of while you’re riding, don’t ya think?)

Even though I’m in the basement, I do have a view out of the lattice-work that surrounds the base of the house:

ti plants line our home, to ward off evil spirits

Here’s a close-up through the lattice. You can see that I have a view of the coconut palms across the street, as well as the red ti.


Not the same as real cycling, but so much better than a gym!

Coconut Chicken Curry With Raita

eat. The view of the coco palms across the street from our house put me in the mood for something prepared with coconut milk.

coconut palms with snow- and observatory-topped Mauna Kea

(not the view from our house)

A coconut-based curry sauce over some yogurt-marinated chicken would hit the spot. Served with a cooling raita as a side dish.

I boned some chicken thighs (since Dad doesn’t like to mess with bones—aren’t I a nice daughter?), and tossed them with yogurt, cumin, turmeric, garlic powder and black pepper. This would sit in the fridge for a few hours to marinate.


Next I made the sauce. It’s basically a béchamel, i.e a white sauce (interesting site about French sauces here), using coconut milk instead of milk, with the addition of other flavoring agents.

Start by roasting your dry spices: cumin, corriander, and curry powder. Cook them in an un-oiled saucepan for a few minutes over a medium heat, until they become very aromatic; it’s okay if they start to brown a little bit:


Next, add half a stick (1/4 lb.) of butter to the spices and let it melt.


Then add an equal amount (by weight—about 4 T) of flour, and whisk it into the butter. It should look more or less like this:


Cook this roux for several minutes, to get rid of the floury taste, and to further cook the spices. Next add, a little at a time, two cans of coconut milk, whisking continuously to avoid lumps.

after the first can has been added

I then further seasoned my sauce by adding a quarter cup dry sherry, a few tablespoons of oyster sauce and shoyu (soy sauce), and a few tablespoons of brown sugar. I also added about a half a cup of milk, as the sauce was too thick, and would further thicken as it cooked.


I let the sauce simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring it periodically so it wouldn’t burn.


Once the sauce was done, I turned off the heat. It would sit on the stove and be reheated right before service. Next for the raita.

Thinly slice cucumbers, salt them well (the salt draws out the water), and let them drain in a colander for about an hour.

I partially peel the cukes, which looks pretty

Next, squeeze them dry in a cloth or paper towel.


Toss them with yogurt,


and then add cumin and black pepper to taste. (Don’t salt them—they’ll have plenty from the earlier salting.) Put them in the fridge until time to eat.


Back to the curry. About a half hour before dinner—it would have been earlier had they still had their bones—I popped the chicken thighs in a 350° oven.

on a rack in a foil-lined pan, to ease clean-up

I served the chicken with steamed rice (easy, since we have a rice-maker), and roasted baby bok choy (from the Hilo farmers market) drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

before roasting

I spooned sauce over the thighs and veg, and garnished the plates with chopped green onions. We had the raita separately, but I neglected to photograph it—sorry.

Going Bananas in Hawai‘i

eat. Hawai‘i is banana heaven.

Groves of graceful mai‘a line the highway heading north from Hilo up the Hamakua coast, their enormous, shiny leaves rustling softly in the afternoon trade-winds.


Dozens of varieties of the fruit are grown on the Big Island, several of which are to be found at the Hilo Farmers Market. The two most popular seem to be the tiny, sweet, apple banana (so-called in Hawai‘i, but really the dwarf Brazilian), and the larger Williams (the kind generally available on the Mainland).

spoils from the farmers market
[photo: Smiley Karst]

I found this account of bananas in Hawai‘i on the Ka Wai Ola website, of the Office of Hawai‘ian affairs:

Early Hawaiians brought banana plants with them as growing rhizomes from the islands south of Hawai'i. In ancient Hawai'i, bananas were kapu [tabu] to women, except for the varieties that Wākea designated as noa (free from kapu), pōpō'ulu and iholena among them. These varieties were tastier when cooked.

Two banana mo'olelo [stories] illustrate their cultural importance. The first tells how Kāne and Kanaloa travel around the island chain together. Kanaloa would find a water source then Kāne would use his 'ō'ō [spade] to make a puka [hole] to allow the water to flow. Once this was done, they would plant bananas nearby. Bananas are the kinolau [earthly form] of Kanaloa, the god of the sea. Today, fishermen still don't take bananas with them when they go fishing, so as not to incur Kanaloa's displeasure that would reduce the size of their catch. Another mo'olelo tells how Pele [the volcano godess] was angered by Kūmauna, a tall foreigner from Kahiki [Tahiti], for refusing to do her bidding. He cultivated iholena banana in a marshy spot in a Ka'ū [a desert area near Kilauea volcano] valley. Pele appeared as an old woman and he refused to share bananas with her. First, she sent cold, then, as he put his hands against his face for warmth, she overwhelmed him with a stream of molten lava. He remains encrusted in lava.

Just shows ya don’t mess with Pele.

Given the importance of the banana to the Hawai‘ian culture, I decided it would be an appropriate subject for my first post from Hilo.

close-up of dying banana leaf

I don’t eat bananas much when in Santa Cruz, but I do here—dunno why. I guess it just seems right. I’m eating one now, as I write this; here’s the proof:


And here’s part of the breakfast Mom made for Dad the other morning:


When last here, about one year ago, I planted two bananas in our back yard—an apple banana and a Williams. They were 64” and 57” tall, respectively. Here’s the Williams now, with me under it for perspective:

[photo: Smiley Karst]

And the apple banana already has fruit on it:

the purple thing is the flower

Things really do grow fast here in the tropics.

The other night, when our friend Bud (good fun!) came over for dinner, I made a simple banana-based dessert. I peeled and sliced up one apple banana per person, and got some butter melting in my cast-iron skillet (yes, I have a set here, too):


I fried the apple slices until browned and a bit crispy,


and then placed them on a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream.


I finished the dish with a drizzle of chocolate syrup (it was Bud’s birthday, hence the candle).


Here’s Bud opening his present (shelled pistachios from Trader Joe’s, which he loves and can’t get here), artistically wrapped by my Mom in ti leaves and raffia, and decorated with bougainvillea.

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula

eat. It’s been longer than usual between my posts, as I’ve been without internet access (gasp!) for several days since arriving in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. My parents and I flew here Monday, and I’ve been spending the last few days setting up house: shopping, rearranging the kitchen (which our tenants left in grand shape, but we all have our own ways of arranging things), and getting reacquainted with lovely little Hilo Town.

But before I turn my blog-thoughts to things tropical, I want to finish up with my Southern California sojourn, and tell you of a day trip we took last week to the past—to historic downtown Los Angeles (yes, the title of this post is what the city was once called).

It started as a quest for Robin and me to buy some huaraches—Mexican sandals—at Olvera Street. But then Mom suggested we have lunch too, at a restaurant called Phillipe’s.

We drove to Union Station, the downtown train station, which is housed in a Spanish-style building with a bell tower that evokes one of the original California missions.


The station, which dates from 1939, is gorgeous inside too, with inlaid stone floors, tiled walls, enormous arched windows, and carved-wood furniture and fixtures. I especially like the intricate, painted wood ceiling:


But it also has the trappings typical of other train stations, such as newsstands,

gotta love the sign above the magazines behind the counter

and sparrows flitting about the vast lobby.


From the train station, we walked the half-block to Olvera Street. This replica of a Mexican outdoor mercado—which sits near the site of the original 1781 settlement of Los Angeles—is patronized mostly by tourists, but accurately mimics (on a small scale) the real thing. Merchandise decorated with the Virgin de Guadalupe was clearly in high demand, which told me that it isn’t just gringos buying the wares.

la virgin with John Paul

and with John, Paul, George and Ringo

We found the huarache stand, and Robin and I each bought a pair of sandals.

a German couple examine the wares

Next it was time for lunch. Phillipe’s—pronounced by Angelenos as if a Spanish name (i.e., Felipe’s)—dates from 1908, and is a downtown institution.

My grandmother used to bring my mom there as a youngster, and my dad also used to eat at Phillipe’s in high school in the late 1940s. Because of their history with the place, my folks now occasionally go there for lunch as a sort of date. Very romantic, no?


They specialize in the French dip sandwich, and claim to have invented this culinary delight (though another L.A. restaurant, Cole’s, makes the same claim). A French dip is just slices of meat—roast beef or pork, usually—on a French roll which has been dipped in the meat juices. Pretty simple. But if the meat is tender and tasty, and the roll nice and soft, they can be pretty darn good.


What makes Phillipe’s special, however, is its ambiance: You stand in line and order from women in 1930s-style uniforms at a long counter stuffed with pies, pickles and coleslaw.


You then take your tray and sit and eat at long tables sitting atop a sawdust-strewn floor.

Robin bearing the tray

Oh, and did I mention?—They have coffee for 10 cents! Not bad, either. It tastes like Farmers Brothers; the kind you typically find at places like Denny’s or Golden West Pancakes.

our coffee and French dips

If you want water, you help yourself from a station with those curvy water glasses I remember from when I was a kid.


Phillipe’s has an upstairs seating area too, which looks like it used to house insurance company offices or some such thing. There are three different rooms, which are much less busy than the hustle and bustle of downstairs. A good place for an undisturbed, peaceful lunch.


As we were finishing up our sandwiches, a couple sat down next to us with their French dips. I glanced over at them, and then did a double-take. Yep, this place is clearly in the guide-books. It was the same German couple we saw at the huarache stand.

the Germans next to Robin, Dad and Mom

Golden Beets and Doodles

eat. I drove down to Long Beach yesterday to have lunch with my friend Carolyn, whom I met in tenth grade English class. One of my first memories of us together is of her cracking jokes about those “lusty”—was it Sirens?—in Homer’s Odyssey, and thereafter referring to me for the duration of the semester by that moniker, or rather, as “Lusty von Krast,” to be more exact. (In retrospect, I find it a bit odd that we read a translated Greek work in an English class. Whatever...)

We later got to know each other even better in orchestra and band, where I played clarinet, and she the string bass. (She was the far superior musician, and is now a professor of composition at Cal. State Long Beach.)

Carolyn suggested that I drive down to her place from Santa Monica, so that I could meet her Goldendoodle, Percy—who, she said, would surely lick her condolences to me over Rosie—and offered to make us lunch. An offer I would never refuse.

Turns out Carolyn is quite the cook. We had sirloin tip, slow-roasted in homemade salsa, served with little polenta cakes topped with yet another homemade salsa of grapefruit, tomatoes and cilantro.


And as sides, she served discs of golden beets topped with goat cheese and olive oil (more on olive oil later),

I like the way the beet discs mimic the polenta

and a colorful bowl of roasted carrot and parsnip spears.

and she didn’t even know my favorite color is yellow!

Lunch was superb: I especially liked the beets with goat cheese. The rich, creamy chevre went perfectly with sweet and slightly tart beets.

And the olive oil... oy! Carolyn, I now know, is an olive oil aficionado, and she had two kinds to sample with our beets (and also on the polenta), as well as an intense, naturally sweet Balsamic vinegar—the real kind, from Modena.

After lunch, she took me to We Olive, where she buys her oil and vinegar, for a tasting. It was fascinating to learn just how different olive oils can be from one another: from soft, buttery-smooth ones to young, intense ones with a black-pepper finish.

one of my favorites that I tasted

sing. When we got back to her place after the olive oil tasting, I convinced Carolyn to let me hear her work-in-progress, a trumpet concerto. She had me sit down at her enormous computer screen, so I could follow along with the score as the midi-file of the composition played.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I will tell you that it’s “modern” in style (which really tells you nothing, of course), with an innovative—at least, to me—harmonic structure. The piece builds quickly in intensity, and is quite exciting: I was sorely disappointed when it stopped short at its unfinished point. I can’t wait to hear the finished product, with a real trumpet and wind ensemble. (You can hear some of Carolyn’s works here.)

Finally, I know you’re dying to know: Yes, Percy did give me kisses—lots of them. She’s absolutely adorable, and as sweet as can be. She has her very own blog, which you can check out here (the fabulous photos in Percy’s blog are all by Carolyn.)


A delicious and delightful afternoon. Thank you Carolyn and Percy!