My commute to work was pretty painless. I think from house door to office chair the commute is about 40 minutes taking the City Express B bus including wait time at the bus stop. Not too bad. I got into work and continued my Westlaw research on my assignment. That took me into lunch where I went with two senior litigation associates to Gordon Biersch. They are super nice and generous with their time, and I appreciated learning about their career paths and work experiences. For lunch I had the Cobb Salad as I was craving veggies. It was composed of lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, egg, bacon and chicken. Apparently the balsamic vinaigrette had some beer infusion but I didn't taste it and I didn't react to it, so I was grateful for that. It was so great to eat veggies! I've look back at my food pictures and know it's been a struggle to find large quantities of veggies here. I think the best was Me's BBQ where I deliberately ordered 4 sides of veggies. But other than that veggies are often not on the menu or there's a little in soups.
Back at the office and plowed through more Westlaw research and then starting writing. I stuck with that until 5pm which was when a director invited the summer associates to hike up Koko Head with him today. Three of the four associates were able to make it plus the director. We piled into the director's car and headed to Koko Head which is actually very close of Hanauma Bay where I was on Sunday. The Koko Head Stairs is a series of 1048 stairs up the side of the Koko Crater. Apparently this trail is composed of the railway ties of a World War II era tram, now abandoned, that had been used by the military to transport personnel and supplies to a lookout post on the summit. It gets pretty steep and it's all uphill, then all downhill. I was worried about my ability of doing this since I had a stupid blister on my pinky toe from my wandering around for the bus yesterday. The director does these stairs twice a week. Woah.
There are markers every 100 stairs which is sort of nice to see your progress. However, at 300 stairs I was already out of breath and super tired. I was at the back of the group and felt guilty about holding up the team but everyone was super supportive. I had to take long water breaks and by stair 700 I thought I was done. My heart was pounding, I felt a little dizzy, and my knee had acted up. Ugh. I took a long break and actually sat down on a stair to breath deeply. While I knew I was breathing a lot, I just didn't feel like I was getting a lot of oxygen which was the frustrating part. From stair 700 onward I had to take frequent stops and honestly I'm not sure how I made it to the top. It's literally a bit of a blur to me, and I assume adrenaline had a lot to do with it. But I made it!! Much slower than everyone else with many more breaks, but yay, I did make it! And man am I happy I did! The view was incredible! 360 view of Oahu. Many of you probably know that I'm a little skeptical of Oahu generally since I've been so spoiled by my time on Maui, but yeah, I fell a little in love with Oahu today. Below are some pictures I took during the excursion.
(Koko Crater, 1048 stairs to the top)
(It looks quite daunting from the base)
(But we made it! My fellow summer associates Laura and Michael kindly allowed me to put this on the blog)
(The 360 degree view is breathtaking. In the background to the left of the picture you can see little rectangles which are the hotels of Waikiki)
(Yep, still amazing view)
(Norther Eastern Oahu)
(Hanauma Bay where I snorkeled on Sunday)
(This is the marker at the top stair)
(Going down is steep and treacherous so I went down slowly. However, I found going down much easier than going up and actually enjoyed it. That might have been the adrenaline/endorphins though.)
After the hike we headed to Kona Brewing Co. for drinks and food! The director's girlfriend joined us and we enjoyed a great meal together. I downed several glasses of water and two diet cokes. I wanted to try to avoid as much lactic acid buildup as possible, so we'll see how successful I was tomorrow. Eeks. They ordered pizzas which looks super tasty and I had the Strawberry Spinach Salad with chicken. It was so good that I forgot to take a picture of it! (Sorry, also was super hungry after the hike). The salad was composed of spinach, fresh strawberries and macadamia nuts with a strawberry vinaigrette. The chicken was super moist as well. I was so excited to have spinach since I love it so much but at Whole Foods it was like $10 for a tub and I knew I wouldn't be able to cook/eat all of that to make it worth buying. I was also so happy that the conversation was great and easygoing. The director then took each of us home in his car. I think it was super cool that he showed us a spot he frequents, took us there, treated us to dinner and then gave us a ride back. I think that's pretty special. And we'll see how sore I am tomorrow.
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