“Life In The So-Called Space Age”
So what do you do if you really want a Lego version of Amidala’s silvery starship from The Phantom Menace, but Lego has never made it (much less a metallic version)?
Give this guy an award. One of the most hardcore custom jobs of anything I have ever seen. I wonder how much the vac-metallization cost him?
The last three days of our recent vacation were spent on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
< Maui
Maui seems like the one-stop destination of the state, offering both the high-end shopping and resort life of Oahu and the outdoor activities of The Big Island. Because we'd already been to both Oahu and The Big Island we were a little underwhelmed. This may also be due to the fact we were very tired by this point.
While out hotel (yellow star on map) was lovely, the developers of the resort area of Kaanapaali had seen fit to place every large hotel in the exact same spot, which gave the area a distinctly artificial and overdeveloped feel (in direct contrast to the organic tourism of Hawaii). Even so, it was immediately obvious that Maui was the location-of-choice for (American) honeymooners and those that take regular vacations to Hawaii. Because of this, and if you only have a few days to spend, Maui may be the best place to see most of what Hawaii has to offer. If you have a longer itinerary though, I'd suggest Oahu and The Big Island and skipping Maui.
We only had two full days on Maui, and the one thing we really needed to do was drive the famous 'Road to Hana'. This is a highway that hugs the northeastern coast of the island for about 30 miles. Short though it may be, it is one of the most winding highways in the world and takes over 2 hours to drive. The turns are blind; the road narrow but the scenery breathtaking...
< Hana Highway
The road (allegedly) has 617 turns and 58 one lane bridges. Many sections of the road are one-lane as well, and a good portion of the turns are blind (some are blind, one-lane turns). As a popular tourist drive the road is well travelled and very well maintained, so it’s not dangerous (more exciting). Besides, everyone drives slowly to take in the views, including waterfalls, lovely ocean vistas, wildlife (we passed two large wild pigs just hanging out on the roadside) and a lengthy stretch where a ceiling of massive bamboo covers the road.
The town of Hana, at the end of the road, is not much. And since there is no road wrapping around the SE corner of Maui, one must take the Hana highway back to civilization again (so is you choose to drive it, you commit to doing it both ways). We did however, stop at a state park near Hana which features a beautiful black-sand beach:
< Disrespectin' Nature
The rest of our short Maui trip was simply relaxing, souvenir shopping, eating some of the best fish I've ever tasted ('Ono') and watching edge-of-our-seat Japanese drama's on the hotel TV (Hawaii has a Japanese TV channel, Kiku TV).
< Last Evening Sunset
Oh yes, in our Maui hotel we were only a couple of rooms down the hall from where The Devil stays, during his Hawaii sojourns...
< Satan's Room
Time for the summer plan update!
Summer, a time that I have for the past few years had off, is busier for me this year because I’ll be going to the lab most days a week to work on my experiment. However, I still have a good deal on my ‘to-do’ list during these next three months.
On the lego front, I’ve made good work of the backlog of kits I picked up over the spring. This past week I finished the Slave 1 kit and this weekend I will work on a kit I truly love, a crane from the Lego City line. Once that is complete work will begin on the mother of all lego kits, the Death Star II. 3449 pieces! Fifty centimeters in diameter! Approximately 15 hours construction time! I plan on taking many photographs to blog the entire process.
On the game front I made a good few purchases recently. I’m nearing the end of Super Paper Mario for Wii (fantastic) and well into the hardcore postgame of Etrian Odyssey for DS (one of the more difficult, strategic and challenging RPGs I have played in years). Next on the list is Baten Kaitos Origins for Gamecube, followed by Rogue Galaxy and Odin Sphere for PS2. It is always possible I may renew World Of Warcraft as well, just to see how things are going in Azeroth (it’s been four months since I cancelled).
Summer also sees Heroscape dragged out of the storage again. Anti-Yossie measures will have to be implemented. For instance, I won’t be able to build the map and leave the figures out while we are away since she may nibble on them. But I have a plan. Last year I bought the castle expansion for the game and have not even opened it, so I’m looking forward to making a map with a castle on it. Again, this will be blogged.
And also – if I have time – I still have a good few FF gamebooks to delve into. I want to (re)play each of them at least once, and there are nearly two dozen of the higher numbered volumes I haven’t gotten to. I also bought a couple of high-number Lone Wolf books in Hawaii (of all places…) that I wanted to play through at least once.
I’d like to go camping as well. Over to Ohio, somewhere near Cedar Point and Kennywood…