Pele’s Kitchen

I do prefer a pre-dawn run to see the lava. Beside the many advantages of a morning run, there is a problem. After hiking, boating, or biking all morning you are hungry, and there are not many places available to eat in Puna that are open for breakfast.

Pele's Kitchen
Pele’s Kitchen restaurant in Pahoa
Our usual solution is to drive all the way back into Hilo and have breakfast at Ken’s House of Pancakes. But this takes a fairly long drive, and we are hungry now! Fortunately our tour guide last time out, Andrew of Kalapana Cultural Tours offered another solution. He suggested we try Pele’s Kitchen in Pahoa. Hmmm? Recommended and only fifteen minutes away. Why not?

Pele’s Kitchen is located directly in the middle of Pahoa, along Old Government Road. You need to turn into town from the bypass to find the business district. Parking is found along the main street, not usually much of a problem first thing in the morning.

While Andrew had recommended the mango blintzes I was not feeling like something quite so sweet, ordering a breakfast burrito instead. Just as well as they had sold all of the blintzes for the morning. Also available was a selection of vegan and vegetarian offereings, no surprise in Puna.

The burrito was great, filled with eggs, a couple different types of sausage, and seasoned rice. Deb had the apple french toast, also excellent. Each breakfast was served with a side garnish of fresh tropical fruit. The meals were satisfyingly filling and ran up a tab of about $30 for the two of us.

It seems completely appropriate to eat at a place called Pele’s Kitchen after spending the morning out on the lava flows. It should not have been a surprise that there were other folks eating with us that had been out to the lava. Given the convenience of the location and the quality of the food I may just have to stop here the next time I am returning from visiting Pele in the morning

Gecko!!

The Dobsonian Telescope

In restoring a 20″ Obsession telescope I found myself pulling a book from the shelf that had not been opened in a while. David Kriege and Richard Berry’s The Dobsonian Telescope – A Practical manual for Building Large Aperture Telescopes is a book I once read cover to cover.

The Dobsonian Telescope
My copy of The Dobsonian Telescope by David Kriege and Richard Berry
The information here was critical in the success of my building Deep Violet, my 18″ telescope. Within the pages of this book are plans and drawings of the important bits as well as detailed discussions of what does, and does not work, when building a telescope.

The Dobsonian Telescope is the primary reference for those building large amateur telescopes. This book, along with the design revolution that went with it, put large telescopes in the hands of countless amateur astronomers. These telescopes extended the capabilities of amateur observers immensely, allowing spectacular views of deep space objects that were only fuzzy smears in the eyepiece before. Want to see the spiral arms of galaxies? A 20″ telescope can do that!

As I perused my well thumbed copy I was surprised to find bits of my own telescope plans used as bookmarks. There was dust on the top of the pages, but I still remembered where I disagreed with Kriege in the dimensions of the mirror box, or how to place the truss tube clamps. I may have deviated from the plans shown here in some aspects, but in other parts of the design I directly used the dimensions shown in the book.

So many old memories, good memories. Pursuing an art that has been around for four centuries, combining bits of wood and glass to make an instrument that can reveal our universe. Sure you can simply buy a very good modern telescope. But it is hard to overstate the pleasure of building one yourself. This is an art that can still be done in a garage, with tools available at the local hardware store, with results that can rival or even surpass something purchased from a catalog.

Solar System Walk 2016

Walking from the Sun to Neptune is easy… At least when they are set up in a scale model along main street Waimea.

A fun day… The Sun, telescopes, the planets, a few asteroids represented by meteorites, and plenty of activities for the kids. It was a great day to be in Waimea as CFHT and Keck put on the Solar System Walk 2016…