• A perfect return • More flights to Kauai? Oh, no! A perfect return On Saturday, July 15, I was showing a visitor some of the sights of beautiful Kauai and one of them was the Waimea Canyon. As we
• A perfect return • More flights to Kauai? Oh, no!
A perfect return
On Saturday, July 15, I was showing a visitor some of the sights of beautiful Kauai and one of them was the Waimea Canyon. As we were leaving the parking place, a couple came over to the car and showed me their hiking map and asked me if I could show them where they were. I put my small Canon camera down on my car’s trunk lid and looked at their map.
I have to admit I wasn’t much help as the map had only the names of the trails and not the names of towns and villages or scenic sights. I was able to point out the general area where the canyon is located but nothing more.
I then drove back to my home in Princeville. Getting home I realized that I had left the camera on the trunk lid and that it would have fallen off. Expecting it would be “toast” within minutes, I accepted the fact that it was gone.
On Sunday afternoon, July 23, my doorbell rang and when I opened the door there was a handsome young man with a camera in his hand.
He asked, “Is this your camera?” and I replied: “Yes, but how on earth did you find it?” He said that he saw it in the middle of the road at the Canyon Lookout parking lot. There was no name or address in the camera case so he looked at the pictures and saw a few pictures of a home with a street address (Sherlock Homes would be impressed).
His name is James Bibb. I thanked him and I said that I wanted to give him a reward.
He replied: “No, I was an Eagle Scout and we are supposed to help others.”
My first thought in thinking about his efforts to find the owner of the camera and return it was “Where else but in Kauai would this happen?” But I would be wrong. You see, James Bibb is in the Navy and is stationed at the naval base in Barking Sands, and he and his wife drove all the way to Princeville to return the camera to me.
The truth is that James Bibb would have made that effort wherever he was stationed. What a great person and what an outstanding representative of the U.S. Navy he is.
Joe Frisinger, Princeville
More flights to Kauai? Oh no!
Sue Kanoho of the Kauai Visitors Bureau says “the more flights to the island, the better, as long as it makes sense logistically.”I’m sure Sue is a very nice person and her job is to bring more people to Kauai. But do we really need more visitors?
I wonder where Ms. Kanoho lives and what her commute times are? The traffic is in gridlock almost daily somewhere on theisland, with no real plans to do anything to solve the traffic problems. Are we all supposed to be happy that Hawaiian will bebringing in more people every day?
We can’t even escape traffic jams on Sunday anymore in Kapaa or Kalaheo. And have you tried going to Kokee lately to viewthe look-out points? The parking lots are bursting at the seams, with tourists driving around in circles, waiting in vain for aparking place.
I wonder where the people in the Planning Department and our councilmembers all live, and what time of day they are on theroads. How can they possibly be OK with more flights and more tourists arriving on the island, when they don’t have anytraffic solutions in mind?
Sitting in traffic,
Kris Van Dahm, Kapaa
