September 28, 2003
Its' a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Home today, its very hot in the house. I don't have anywhere special to go and have to do house work and paperwork from the store. For those of you who say..."EEEKKK! Get a life girlfriend and get to the beach or something"... I must remind you that the beach opportunities are few here on this side of the island...
In fact, once you have been here for a while you sort of forget that you are in Hawaii. As I drive to work I have to remind myself that I am here and not in say...Long Beach...But this isn't anywhere California, for one thing there is no traffic. Not really... I laugh when people start talking about "how congested the roads are," I say.."...Please! You have got to be joking." Those of you that live in the San Fernando Valley can appreciate my sentiments when I say that if you are moving at all, that's something. Here, if you have more that five cars on the road with you as you are driving, that's congestion and we should think about expanding the highway. Since it takes two fact finding committees, a panel action group and appropriation study, not to mention environmental impact reports and here in Volcano Country, a geological survey, to get one cent of government funds legally, ( trust me, the state and county governments here are a financial sieve. Most appropriating is done the good ole fashion way via bribe and slight of hand political maneuvering). There is no danger of abrupt road widening on the horizon.
How ever, I think that someone should consider possibly the problem of an expanding population that has two lanes in and two lanes out, one road. We had a serious accident last year that took our local ever efficient police investigative unit twelve hours to investigate. ( A druggie, high on ICE, walked out into the middle of the pitch dark highway in camouflage pant and black sweatshirt and was killed by a off duty cop driving home from Ka'u at 55 mph. What's to investigate?) Half of South Hilo county's workforce was stranded due to the road being closed. You tell me if things should change. They have "a panel" talking about it. Brother!
I dont want to make this a bitching blog about what is wrong about Hawaii so dont fret. There is so much good here, thats why me and Woody came here.
