February 1, 2016
Day 22: Honokaa: How do we get out of here?
The small and funky lobby of the Honokaa People's Theatre did not prepare us for the expansive and nicely maintained main seating area and screen. We had learned that the community had contributed to the digital conversion of the projection, so that the theatre could carry on. We could certainly see why it was felt to be worth preserving. This time we pretty well had our choice of any of the 500 seats. Perhaps the movie, Daddy's Home was not the same draw as Star Wars The Force Awakens, that had played the previous day.
Daddy's Home is a current Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg movie, so maybe it should have some draw. On the other hand, from about half way through I was looking over at Dodie to see if she would say " Ok, I've had enough, let's split". The movie did have some funny bits, but it took its premise - the reappearance of a charismatic but footloose Dad and his interaction with the newly installed step-Dad of two kids - way over the top and into the realm of excruciatingly embarrassing and silly scenes. The ending, though, was reasonably satisfying, making the whole thing pretty much worth the $4 price of admission.
Having used up our major fun activity of going to the Waipio Valley yesterday, we started today just refining our plan for how to get out of town the fastest tomorrow. It really is a sweet little town, but one day is lots for checking it out. The different options for leaving town involve several roads that balance between how steeply they climb and how long they are. Today we tried out a medium steep one.
All escape roads essentially lead to Tex Drive In, so of course that is where we ended up. Tex is quite nice, with a gift shop and expansive lanai. Tex advertises itself as a source of warm malasadas, so we felt we ought to research that. They have a separate room obviously devoted to hand making malasadas, but as mentioned yesterday, none were immediately on display, nor was there a menu citing the flavours or prices.
Since this was our second expedition to Tex, we doubled down and waited in line to get the malasada story. The story was $1.85 each. That compares to $1.28 at Krispy Kreme on the mainland, less at Canadian icon Tim Horton's. Well we bought two, one to split now, one to split later. We were definitely the exceptions, we could see others in the lanai with quite large white boxes of the darn things. However the folks nearest us " amply" illustrated why we did not want a white box.
Tex features something else we do not know much about, the "loco moco". According to Wikipedia:
"The dish was reportedly created at the Lincoln Grill restaurants in Hilo, Hawaii in 1949 by its proprietors, Richard Inouye and his wife Nancy, at the request of teenagers from the Lincoln Wreckers Sports club seeking something that differed from a sandwich and inexpensive yet quickly prepared and served. They asked Nancy to put some rice in a bowl, a hamburger patty over the rice and then topped with brown gravy. The egg came later. The teenagers named the dish Loco Moco after one of their members, George Okimoto, whose nickname was "Crazy." George Takahashi, who was studying Spanish at Hilo High School, suggested using Loco, which is Spanish for crazy. They tacked on "moco" which "rhymed with loco and sounded good".[1][2][3] Perhaps unbeknownst to them, "moco" actually means booger (snot) in Spanish, so the name directly translates to "Booger Crazy" in Spanish."
If you want to go booger crazy at Tex, here are the prices:
A donut shop would not be complete without a police officer, and Tex had indeed attracted one. Just as with the two fellows at Boogie Woogie Pizza, he struck me as being quite small. In Canada there used to be height and weight requirements for the job, but I believe these have been struck down by human rights commissions. There do remain fitness requirements. Even if you would have size requirements still in place, they would surely be relative to the population being policed. Here, it's tricky. There are very little Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino people, and very huge Polynesian and Hawaiian ones. My sample donut dining officer at Tex might have trouble with a local giant. On the other hand he could easily be a karate master.
Back in Honokaa town, we did our best to amuse ourselves in the tourist shops, but found the prices high and the items heavy looking for bike transport. We just returned to our room and are chilling out until our sortie tomorrow. We have spotted a back road - part of the old Mamalahoa Highway that we can hop on once we reach Tex, and that goes almost all the way to Waimea, our next stop. It figures to be longer and hillier than the main highway. But then, we will be well rested, and could even stoke up with another malasada!
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Today's ride: 5 km (3 miles)
Total: 741 km (460 miles)
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