The North Shore of Kauai

 Taking a well deserved vacation with the family. We have been to Hawaii many times and love it, but usually it has been the Big Island. This time we came back to Kauai and are staying on the north shore. It is beautiful, if windy. There are several sheltered beaches here, but the place where we are staying is full on in the trade winds. I can sit on the Lani in the wind and for me it is pleasant, but too much for the girls. Otherwise it is a great time, we have hit the beach and kayaked the river and today ia a surfing lesson for my daughter and wife. I plan to hang out at the beach and maybe run. 

We keep flirting with the idea of moving to Hawaii, just not sure about which island or if it really is a good idea. We love this place,  but actually we know no one and we have a lot of family that would be  very remote. It remains one of those decisions that keeps getting kicked down the road, at this point by the very real need to stay put till my daughter graduates from High School. Of course the never ending Pandemic school drama scrambles that. Had we known a year ago that we would be facing  a whole year in distance learning and a fall with masks, questions and union shenanigans I think we might have pulled up stakes and bailed back then. Problem is, both of us could work from anywhere in the continental US, but Hawaii would have been a stretch. 

Our last time in Kauai was down at Poipu and mostly south except for one day excursion north. This time we picked the north coast and a small condo resort west of Hanalel. It is much windier and rainier up here, but still wonderful. The landslide of last year has the road only open three times a day during the week, so we have stayed on the Hanalei side. There are two amazing beaches and we did a day hike on the Napali cost trail, which was spectacular, surfing lessons for the ladies and a Napali coast boat tour with snorkeling which was both spectacular (boating into sea caves, cliffs, dolphins) and insane (high speed return trip into the swells and driving rain). Kind of a four hour IRL Disney ride. We were able to get a table at the Bar Acuda restaurant, it was a special night out for the three of us. In general though, the little town is overrun and the restaurants are having a hell of a time finding help. Blame the exodus back home and the pandemic payouts, the small businesses are suffering. Otherwise it is takeout and cooking in the condo. 

Hawaii has done a good job of containing the plague. Cases are low and deaths very low. They do have masks indoors, but not out and given the climate it is not onerous. Also they have made it easier for visitors if you are vaccinated, so in their own way they have been incentivizing good practice. Really, except for the help shortage and what seems to be more people, it is like any other year. It seems that Maui is overrun, and of course prices have been jacked, especially on rental cars. My guess is that it will take another year to recover to 2019, but for now the business owners are bent on making up for lost revenue.

Next week schools start in person, thank God. We did attend the webinar from the school on reopening and next week, so feel prepared. Looking at the numbers in San Mateo county, the vaccination rate is over 90% above 12 years old. Cases came up, but not crazy and if I am reading the county data right are beginning to level off. My best guess is that it will begin to turn down and by September will be looking like the UK case crash. Blessedly, deaths are not tracking cases. Comparing that to areas with low vaccination rates and you have a perfect study on the importance and effectiveness of vaccinations. I am not a fan of the restriction and health order of the week game coming out of the bureaucracy, and I am somewhat unimpressed by the actual impact of this on the healthy, but frankly I can go with the flow on masking indoors if it makes the fearful feel better. So long as the schools remain full time in person. 

If the narrative seems a touch strange, this covers several days. I mostly write for myself, so not too concerned about the flow. Apologies to any readers. 

Last point.  I have been consuming mystery books, in this case the Sister Fidelma mysteries and a series about a young woman who is an agent of Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. I am thinking it is part of a need for escape, to either 6th century Ireland or Rome of the 4th century. The one set in Rome has me thinking about the Crisis of the Third Century, when the Empire almost collapsed and was put back together by Aurelian, then reformed into the Tetrarchy by Diocletian. And that gets me thinking about the Collapse of the Republic and the founding of the Principate under Augustus. Societies work until they do not, and then comes change, but not without death and destruction. The Romans lost their Republic and freedoms and traded it for a Principate that had an emperor who cited like he was just the fist citizen. Then they lost even that and wound up with an Emperor who was very much the despot. In no case did the clock run back to republicanism and greater civil rights. 

As I watch the shenanigans of the political and media class on both sides, I am reminded of the same. And I wonder.