Uphill, in the sun...

My walk to school is a generally pleasant one. I walk down busy streets, but their are lights and crosswalks where needed, and though there is not sidewalk the entire walk, there is at least a wide berth of gravel so I don't feel like I'll get run over by cars.

Speaking of getting run over by cars, this has nearly happened to me about six times since I got to Hawai'i, and yes, at least two of those times have been during a walk to school. So it's not perfect, but it feels pretty perfect, and that's not so bad. One time that I almost got hit I was with Michael. An SUV was pulling out of it's driveway too quickly without checking the sidewalks, and ground to a halt about a foot and a half from me. Michael and I both paused. The SUV driver looked mortified. We continued walking.

Michael said, "You almost got hit by a car just now."

I said, "Yeah, it happens. I like it when I almost get hit by cars."

"Why?" I think this statement alarmed him slightly.

"Because it means I didn't get hit by a car."

Much more often, though, I don't come anywhere near getting hit by a car, and those times are generally even better still. I just walk to school.

It's about a 3/4 mile walk, uphill. I've been trying to figure out how it could be uphill both ways so that I'll have something interesting to tell my grandchildren, but, well... it's just that UH is at the base of the Ridge, and my apartment is at a lower altitude, and there is simply no way that I can go uphill and arrive back at my apartment.

Also, I will never walk three-quarters of a mile uphill in the snow here in Hawai'i. At least, there is a very low probability that will happen. Instead, I walk three-quarters of a mile uphill in the sun. And there is always so much sun.

In the afternoons, I cross the street even though it's slightly out of the way so that I can walk in the shade of the buildings. In the morning, I walk straight up in the shade from the other side. At intersections I slip into narrow swaths of shade while I wait for the light to turn. In my mind, I call these specks of shade "pretend shade" because they'll be, oh, perhaps a four-inch-wide strip of shade from a light post, or maybe a lumpy two-ish foot by one-ish foot block from a stoplight. But these pieces of pretend shade are very important, because otherwise you're just standing on a hot street corner burning in the sun. It's odd to think I'll still be slipping into pretend shade come December, January, February. I can't recall every having done this before, consciously and continuously. Here, I do this at every street corner. I will do it in every season. That is odd.

Sometimes, as I turn the corner off Date St. and onto University Ave., I can look up the hill and see that it's raining on my campus. Actually, this happens most days when I go to campus in the morning. I might slow my step slightly on these days, but the rain is always over by the time I get there. Thick black downpour for ten or fifteen minutes, then some mist, then, well, then I'm there and everything's sunny again. Sometimes I look at the rain enviously because usually rain feels nice here. There's only been one day that I got caught in the rain on the way up the hill, and I happened to have time that day. I stepped aside underneath a tree and waiting a few minutes.

The talk sometimes about the rainy season, but I'm not sure when that is. I hear that flu season has started now, and early. But I don't know when it usually starts, or why exactly it does. The weather hasn't changed. I guess the kids are back at school. Maybe that's why. I know that it's hurricane season for a bit more yet. So far that's been unexciting.

There's not really a point to any of this. Mostly I just wanted to talk about pretend shade.