Kawaihau Road unsafe for bicyclists
To the mother driver who tried running me off the road: I forgive you. I do.
Kawaihau Road is narrow, and it’s hard to share. It is really hard to share. We wouldn’t devote so many years training our children how to share if it were easy.
Many things happened in your day that led to the decision at 2:30 p.m. on July 7 to nudge up against a woman in a pink shirt and yellow helmet riding a bike on the road. The kids were in the back seat of your black SUV, and maybe they’d been hard to deal with on this particular Wednesday. Maybe your ex didn’t pick them up and now you were running late for work.
You laid on your horn and swept as close to me as possible without actually catapulting me from my bike. You were clearly pissed about my presence on a road “made for cars,” and wondering why the hell I wasn’t on the narrow, broken, asphalt path bordering every driveway on that stretch of Kawaihau.
Let me answer that question for you: That little path isn’t made for bikes. The road your SUV drives on is the one cyclists need as well.
This is my plea to the county. I think it’s time to paint bikes on the road all the way up Kawaihau so drivers start getting it in their mind to share.
Your neighbor.
Pam Woolway, Anahola
Turning blind eye to illegal fireworks a problem
This letter is addressed to all the people who spent the last four days and nights setting off high-explosive, dangerous, illegal fireworks. Thank you for terrorizing my dog and thousands of others across the island. Thank you for setting off such high-explosive charges that you rattled my windows.
Thank you to whomever felt it necessary to set off an extremely powerful charge at 6:15 a.m. Sunday morning and 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. Thank you for turning our Wailua Homesteads neighborhood into a four-day soundtrack for the invasion of Normandy.
So, thank you, for proving that there are more than a few self-centered, inconsiderate, law-breaking jackasses on Kaua‘i who have NO regard for their neighbors.
As special thank you to our state and local politicians who have allowed and continue to allow tons and tons of these dangerous, illegal fireworks to be imported and sold on our islands, year after year, while doing nothing in the face of thousands of complaints.
To the Kaua‘i police who responded to a neighbor’s complaint, saw illegal fireworks being set off and walked away because “it was on private property in a fenced yard” and did nothing. It is nice to know that you can break the law and get away with it as long as it is done on private property.
If that is actually the law, then there is a serious issue with our legal system. I know that this is one of hundreds of letters written past and future about this issue. I guess what is most disturbing is that our politicians seem to turn a blind eye to the problem year after year. There is a way to stop this if they only had the will to do so. But, acting to fix this would take guts and hard work, and a dedication to actually solving the situation, so I guess we know why it will always be a problem!
Barry Dittler, Wailua
