The Institute of Transporation Engineers' (ITE) conference this year was held in Honolulu. As might be expected, attendance was high. I submitted an abstract that was accepted, so off I went on the company's dime to present. I presented a case where widening a road to accommodate another lane actually worsened traffic due to high pedestrian volumes. We discovered this while doing some work on Stanford's campus, and it earned me a trip to Hawaii. Cool.The first few days were spent in Honolulu, presenting and attending sessions. Surfed Waikiki with Sohrab (actually kind of fun on the longboard). He stepped on an urchin. View from the hotel:
After the conference I hopped a flight to Kauai and met Becky. Jon Nepstad & his wife Lela were on the flight, and we ended up going to a nice dinner with them. We had scored a really nice house at the last minute for a good price, so we spent the first few nights based there, on the north shore.
Lots of hiking....na'pali coast
Checked out Waimea canyon on the south shore. Mark Twain called it the Grand Canyon of the pacific (or something like that). It gave me the same feeling as when I visited the G.C.- a complete 'holy shit, this is way bigger than I thought' moment. We only had a short afternoon here and would have liked to spend more time exploring. Click on the photo for more details- pretty impressive even though the light's not great.
We did a cool hike up in the middle of the island, through the old irrigation tunnels. They were used to transfer water from the very wet side of the island to the dry side. We forgot a flashlight, and these tunnels were long (the longest was probably 1/2 mile or so), so it was pitch black, sloshing through ankle-knee deep water. Here's a blurry long exposure shot of a short tunnel. The others were much much longer, so the ends were invisible for 15 minutes+.
The worst part was the ceiling- it didn't provide enough clearance for a guy my height, so I had to always keep my hands outstretched and head hunched to avoid a major collision. 
At least when you popped out it was pretty. We saw a few pig hunters up here, real country. 
We got some fun longboard waves at Infinities on the south shore, a long left point, plus a few tradeswell sessions on the east side.
It was a great trip, beautiful place.
