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‘Aiea Ridge on Flickr

Last Saturday I solo hiked the ‘Aiea Loop trail on a whim, and while I was there I meandered down an interesting side path which turned out to be the ‘Aiea Ridge trail. I traveled along the ridge for about an hour and a half, snapping photos and enjoying the cool mountain breeze. While the loop trail is usually well traveled on weekends, I was surprised to find myself alone on the ridge trail. There’s a wide variety of interesting trees and plants on the top of the ridge, including ‘ie‘ie vines, tree ferns and mosses.

One can appreciate the beauty of the mountains while driving through Halawa Valley on the H3 Freeway, but it’s another experience altogether when you’re exploring it on foot. ‘Aiea Ridge is one of the nicest ridge trails I’ve been on, and because it starts at the same trailhead as the ‘Aiea Loop trail, it’s easy to access. Parking is also fairly safe at Keaiwa Heiau State Park (don’t overlook good parking… you don’t truly appreciate it until someone tries to break into your car).

I posted photos of the ‘Aiea Ridge trail on Flickr. Sometime in the future I’ll organize a day hike so we can finish the entire ridge trail together; it’s not really safe to hike on ridges by yourself, but I didn’t fall off the side, so I guess this one time was OK…

Filed under: Hiking, Personal, Photography ,

Why I closed my Facebook and Twitter accounts

Twitter and Facebook logosNote, 11/25/09: The unfortunate reality is that planning activities with multiple people is extremely difficult without the use of a social networking framework. For this reason alone, I have decided to re-open a Facebook account. However, my views on social networking’s long-term effects on privacy have not changed. I suppose the experiment was not a failure, but the fact is that the way people communicate in the 21st century has evolved; some things have changed for the better, and other things for the worse. My Twitter account remains closed. Twitter account re-opened.

Recently I closed my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I didn’t plan on mentioning it since I didn’t think anyone would notice; however, some people have been wondering why I did it, so let me explain my reasons for jumping ship.

In the new 2.0 culture that we live in, über-transparency is an accepted way of life – in fact, it’s a socially acceptable addiction. Every thought that goes through our head is tweeted, things that were once considered private are openly shared between complete strangers on a global electronic billboard, and life itself has been reduced to almost nothing more than a constant stream of status updates. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but you get the idea.

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Filed under: Personal , , , ,