Biggest burger in Kona?

So every now and then I think I'll post a little bit of a restaurant review of spots in Kona or on the west side of the Big Island that not every tourist may be familiar with, or even ever hear of. I will not be posting them in order of preference, just what happens to cross my mind at the time.

I went to "Phillysophical Deli" in Kainaliu the other day with visiting family. I used to eat there with my wife when it was in Kealakekua and known as Canaan Deli. It's pretty much the same food as before, but the new location might be a bit better than before, it's certainly more visible, being smack dab in the middle of Kainaliu.

It's your basic local sandwich joint, definitely not fancy, but the sandwiches are fairly good sized. They are fairly well known for their Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches. They have several varieties of hamburgers in the roughly $6-$7.50 range with all of the patties being at the half pound (appeared legitimate, although I didn't weigh them) size. I had the "Dana's Double Delight" - or something along those lines, which was the two patty verison of their bacon blue cheese burger. They do have a "Holy Trinity" burger, which is the pound and a half of meat version for $15 - that'd probably feel real good, but I'm not sure I need to spend the extra $4.

All in all, pretty good and relatively quick for a local style meal.

later,

Steve

Ikelite Olympus 8080 underwater housing.

Wow, that was fast. I ordered a housing out of New York on tuesday evening and received it at the post office friday morning. Now I've got to learn the camera I bought a year ago - I messed with it for a week or two and then put it down, haven't looked at it since.

Starting tomorrow, the camera will be on the boat pretty much every day. I may not use it or take it on dives, but it'll be available. We've had whalesharks sighted the last two Thanksgivings and we're coming into the season that we see them. I want a photo better than the ones I already have. If we see one on a surface interval I'll be set to go.

I haven't ordered a flash yet, so I'll be playing around with available light, manual white balance and shooting in RAW and post processing the images. It'll be interesting what might be produced as I've done little of that so far. It may be December before I really have a chance to practice with it much as I've got a lot cooking the next two weeks.

later,

Steve

Fishing and scuba diving.

Today's charter was a combined fishing and diving/snorkeling charter. The fishing was more kicking back and trolling. Virtually all that we talked to in the harbor had the same type of luck fishing that we did - skunked.

I played Captain the first dive and dove the second dive. Water temps have dropped slightly, running about 78 right now. There were some great currents out there today what with the full moon. We dove a spot called Kaiwi point (AKA Pawai Bay or Papawai Bay) off the old airport. The currents made for a neat dive. There were a bunch of ulua (Jacks) swimming along the dropoff that were roughly in the 12- 20 pound range. I had a group of 7 at our turn around point. I also saw a group of 6 firedart fish, the fish I mentioned several posts back that we hadn't seen for 5 years or so. We also got a good look at one of the resident flame angels (centropyge loriculus, for those who want to look it up), they are very shy, so I'm not sure if any decent photos were taken.

I've pretty much filled up my month in the last day. I tentatively have this friday and Thanksgiving day off with at least partial boats or classes the rest of the days.

The nudibranch in the picture is called a fried egg nudibranch. These are among the most common nudies in Kona.

Aloha,

Steve

Back to work. Yea! I'm diving again some.

Well, I've been back to work for a couple of days now. I've got a private charter tomorrow set up for a customer I've been diving with for 2 years now. It's always fun to see familiar faces and catch up.

I've got charters set up for 11 of the next 14 days so far, with other enquiries coming in. I may be posting a bit more about actual scuba related stuff than I have been.

This picture is of a wire coral goby. These are intersting little fish which pretty much spend their entire adult lives living on a piece of wire coral, the picture is roughly life sized, maybe a bit larger than life.

Later,

Steve

I'm getting antsy.

It's been two weeks now and I realllllly want to get back to work. The pain is going away rapidly and I'm feeling more up to par. I'm not sure about lifting anything yet, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I need to get back to work to take off the 10 pounds I've put on in the last two weeks.

I'm going to the boat tomorrow for a little cleanup. I'm loaning - well, renting it cheaply - it out tomorrow night to one of my employees. His daughter is doing plankton studies a couple nights a month and apparently the university boat is down or unavailable. I may have to tag along one of these nights. Apparently they lay out nets in several locations around sundown, then park it behind other boats at the manta dive site. After everyone leaves, they troll some plankt0n nets and then collect their placed nets. I guess it's a long term study to try to dertermine where exactly the plankton comes from and if certain conditions affect it.

Wednesday I'll be back to work. We've got a couple divers coming on board for the day. Not sure if I'll be diving. If my employee can do both dives I'll probably let him. After that the schedule is fairly sporadic until about the 20th or so.

I've got family (parents) coming in on the 11th, so I'll actually get to spend some time with them this time. They usually come over to dog-sit when Pat and I go on vacation. This time Pat goes, and I stay - payback for my solo Vegas trip I guess - to work and get the cash flow positive again.

later,

Steve

A Hawaiian barbecue favorite.

I'm gonna waddle on downstairs to the barbecue shortly and cook one of our favorite easy barbecue dishes that is very common here - shoyu chicken. I thought I'd pass along the recipe as it's very easy and not really done on the mainland.

1st ingredient - Boneless chicken thighs. Gotta be chicken thighs, not some other part. Hawaiian's eat more chicken thighs per capita than anyplace else. We've tried this with other chicken parts, and it just isn't the same, although I'd bet wings would be pretty darned good.

Other ingredients - Soy (shoyu) sauce, sugar, and ginger. Were talking enough soy to more than cover your thighs, nearly an equal amount of sugar (Hawaiian's also have a lot of diabetes) and a good chunk of fresh ginger ground up.

Directions:
1) Mix ingredients and soak it. The longer the better. 3 hours works, a day or two in the fridge is even better.

2) Cook it.

That's it. Pretty darned simple I realize we're getting into the time of year that a lot of people won't be barbecueing outside - it works just great on a Foreman grille too.

It's great straight, or even cut up on salads. We usually make 3-4 pounds of the stuff at a time, and if I can control myself we'll have enough salad toppings for a couple meals.

YUM YUM

I hate it when that happens!

I just received a call from someone who said they "think" they booked a dive with me a month ago for the Monday coming up. I have no record of it in either of my booking books (one stays at home and the other goes with me) and I have no record of it in my e-mails (he said he called) or in my old booking sheets I keep just in case - so I told him I don't recall and I have no record of it. I wished him luck on finding the company he booked with.

Odds are that he had called someone else, but I just always worry that I somehow goofed up. I'm not infallible and I know I've done it (everyone does at some point) a couple of times over the last few years. It's one of those cases where the more I dwell on it the more it seems familiar - I hope it wasn't me. At least he checked in far enough ahead that if he can't determine who he booked with, there are plenty of options. Then again, I've had people say they talked to another person at my shop earlier in the day and wanted to confirm... I have no shop, it's just me that takes bookings, and I can generally remember at least a day.

Oh well, my sincere appologies to him if it was me, I could use the charter.

Body-wise, things are finally coming around. My anesthesiologist put me on another round of antibiotics today, she's worried about the fluid that may have gotten into my lungs during the procedure. I'm beginning to wonder if things were a bit more serious than they let on - they had me knocked out 2 hours for what normally is a 20 minute procedure - The cold I had caused a lot of drainage and apparently they had a tough time maintaining the airway (sorry if this is a rehash, remember "I can generally remember at least a day", I may have touched on some of this before). I know little beyond that other than my tongue was sore when I woke up. At any rate, I'm planning on working charters come Wednesday of this next week unless it still hurts, then I've got a backup person or two I can call - the show must go on.

That's about it for now.

Steve

Now I can die happy.

I just finished watching "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra", a cheap satire of the 50's and 60's horror flicks.

It's got everything - space aliens, mutants, scientists, wives, dancing humans made from 4 small forest animals, caves, park rangers and more! It's even filmed in Skeletorvision! It was actually filmed just a few years back, yet it in my mind it can hold it's own against classics such as "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Here's the link http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thelostskeletonofcadavra/ in case my link attempt (first try) above doesn't work. The trailer will give you an accurate depiction of the quality of this movie.

I went to the doctor today. I still haven't healed up yet, although the last 2 days were much better than Monday. He said things were looking as though they were progressing pretty OK and the basic rule is, if it hurts, don't do it. Means another couple days of relative inactivity in my case. Oh well.

I wish I had more going on to talk about. Not a whole lot goes on when your day revolves around bed, the couch and your desk. I did drop off some tanks at one of my employees today so he can take a group out, Pat (my wife in case I hadn't introduced her yet) had to load up the car - I felt kind of guilty there, but she heard the doc say no lifting.

Well, that's it for now.

Steve