In a time of political strife and civic freedoms curtailed, taking the public bus can be the opposite. Hawaiian pidgin is a creole dialect earning language credibility more than casual slang. One phrase used often is how will you get there and then hearing, “I go bus.” Go bus I did today because occupying a seat requires simple energy for staying awake and alert to observing entirely through this one long Zen staycation day. Go grateful I did then.

The phone alarm clock set for 4 30 a.m. began ringing and announcing to shuffle my feet until I met with kitchen space. Next, crank the coffee grinder, prep a few cups of caffeine energy, feed the dog, organize a day’s travel backpack, and wander out the front door. Outside I caught my breath and stood completely still for gawking skywards.

A zillion crystal-clear stars sparkled in the 5 45ish morning nighttime sky. The air smells green in a crisply morning chill with dew on trees, shrubs, and lawns. One or two cars start humming an engine yet mostly quiet in driveways and behind house windows, light switches yet to go on. Plenty dark horizontal planes and the infinite vertical bright as can be.

From my house’s front door to the bus stop is taking 15 minutes to walk. In all my jazzy for the chance to go bus, I am half an hour early. Go bus won’t go until 6 15 a.m. A 30-minute pause while viewing all those glittery stars feels like standing in a free outdoor art museum where no long lines stall progression. On a casual day like this one, following impromptu energies that are new is the work even during leisure.

These last seven years living year-round on Big Island’s farthest north village Kapa’au qualifies my experience as daily familiar. What happens while go bus, though, is seeing what I have not before driving a car. Hele on is the bus service name; one departure from Kapa’au and one return are on the official schedule—th-th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks—as Porky Pig, a wise passenger in Loony Tunes, reminds us.

Being so early at the bus stop gave me pause inside curiosity what might happen if I missed go bus either traveling there or returning from my destination. Some adventure is healthily wonderful; being stranded on rural Hawai’i backroads is not a match for the word “fun.” Surprising are my life increased levels of impatience after welcoming 60 years blessed on my birthday a few days ago. The Zen in go bus zen is taking more work than I reckoned when a remote smidgen of speculative stress happens. Let’s worry about that later, right?

Once the bus departs immaculately on time at 6: 15 a.m., the clock has ticked forward and the wheels are rolling close to 7 a.m. True that at first boarding, I heard the rattler. We had a short van-bus compared to the usual luxury dark green bus seating 60 people. Simply myself and one other woman on this trip’s Polynesian voyaging on a van-bus that seats ten or so bus wayfarers in total. Despite the cackle (clan) of metal hyenas bringing da noise (shock absorbers entirely absent or long overdue), I counted on that deeper rumbling as a dynamic other than the axle dislodging. I’m faithful like that.

Besides, the woman driving had the phrase expertise all experted up, so trust was driving the contraption, too. Excessive van rattle and rough bouncing, even as I kept snug in a waist seatbelt, these did not diminish Mauna Kea’s spiritual view scape. Another view for the art paintings that go bus affords freely is a Mauna Kea sunrise. Go grateful I be.

A Mauna Kea sunrise begins a go bus day.

Returning from our sister city Waimea (45 minutes into the trek) and going speedily down the hill towards a turn onto a road aiming for Kona just those 40 miles away—where I hoped to arrive sometime during the day—I swiveled around staring behind me at a new perspective: this day’s sunrise. Just a glimmer of an exuberant sunshine smile was starting behind Mauna Kea. The rest of the day was extra goodness after that reward. I leaned cozily into my seat and exhaled.

Just on the leaning lurch into a high-speed curvature, I flicked my eyeballs in the opposite direction at the Kawaihae Harbor to spy bright wattage in early dawn. Soft lighting, fluorescent flood lights, squares and circles lit up, yellow lights and red ones blinking—all these outlined a massive cargo ship and likewise the visible outlining on a tug boat, bizarrely small in comparison, that will haul all that tonnage through the mid Pacific Ocean waters. Curving around the Hamakua coast is Hilo 70 miles distant on this same Hawai’i Island simply other side, a few volcano mountains away, them being Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

What I saw newly as the bus driver drove on is how Hawai’i Island clusters habitats to accommodate humans living here, even at all. Dense ropes of lava for long stretches blending in with jagged lava clumps do not make for easy terrain to go domestic. In a geography where affordable housing runs scarce, our bus has arrived at a ubiquitous resort mall called Mana Lani. Grass roots citizens like you and I can still be on the premises. Countless delicious times over the years I have shopped at Foodland grocery store plus window shopped, staring beyond the display glass windows, at the realtors, restaurants, cafes, and clothing stores in this touristy mall. Today our bus cruised through here swiftly. Taking the bus makes your shopping target specific. To exit the bus at this location early morning means I have a most-of-the-day wait for the return bus. Go intrepid instead I went.

Going past the five dazzling blue helicopters on their pad at 8 a.m. an hour before launch time, the bus turned makai (ocean side). Into this cluster of condominiums built on historic lava we drove easily past the landscaped waterfall. And one swivel turn in my seat meant I saw Hilton Resort Hotels, a place I have heard, for a few decades now, has a dolphin pool on property. Another go bus day requires that I follow up on the research. Driving on we go.

Blessing be that at King’s Shops, another active tourist drapery of a food court, including Food Lands, Starbucks, and on and on fru-fru expensive gear: jewelry, clothes, art, and more of the more, the bus driver has designed a restroom hiatus. Earlier at 4 45 a.m.ish while sipping coffee at my kitchen counter I wondered how to regulate two cups during a three-hour+ bus venture into the unknowns. Familiar island mana (energy) went goddess smoothly, and I could tinkle without stress. Good to go on that go bus dynamic.

King’s shops are the helpful location for a restroom hiatus.

Miraculous as the morning had already evolved, now we had touchdown at 10 a.m. behind Target (specific shopping, indeed). My queen bus driver delivered all patrons safely to the scorching sidewalk three hours and 45 minutes dutifully later. Remember that in a car the trip takes one hour since from my house’s front door to Target’s electronic sliding doors is 60 miles or so. This go bus deal requires Zen energy and gladly I offered up what I had and then some. Yet an unforeseen challenge was the changeover to a second go bus. A few kindred travelers and I were waiting 25 minutes in blazing Kona sun for a short hop up the hill to consumerism destinations. You might discern that I am a fan of leisure, yet staying productive is also in my kuleana (responsibility).

Perhaps also observable is that I don’t have a $%#@! car. Hence returning four spark plugs and a pcv valve at Auto Zone credited $47 back to my credit card. And what else immediately (patience thinning now) after but chicken adobo French fries right next door at Emma’s? Did I mention I was too jumpy for breakfast? Today was my first time go bus, and I simply could not eat. Highly unusual culinary conditions for my life. Another unpredictable culinary flop on this go uncertainty day was Emma. She handed me a premeasured 2-ounce plastic container of ketchup when I asked.

The café is called Emma’s and my food serving colleague on the day’s traveling path might not have been Emma herself as royalty are frequently not working in the trenches. She offered me a wan smile, as in “Good luck with that ‘ketchup’.” In new horizons I can bring too much giddy, so I over thanked her. She looked baffled and returned to mundane requirements.

Often in proclivity mode to research flavors inside foreign bottles sitting on my café table (each one gets researched) I had already taste tested the Banana Sauce—the new looking much like common, good ‘ol ketchup. Sweeter though, similar viscosity, and shiny red rather than ketchup’s dark flat. At my table I pondered available choices on what action to take. “Emma” had clearly been working since early given her fatigue expression at 11 a.m. Would my ketchup quality-control add to her chores? Yes, probably so. In my day’s path I strive for easygoing. Was I content enough with ketchup Banana Sauce? Clearly the culinary moment was already flowing flavorfully. Given the fish sauce, soy sauce, salt, pepper, chili sweet relish (courtesy of Emma’s earlier efforts), and chili pepper vinegar the word piquant captures being at culinary ease. Emma was off the hook from this customer’s further feedback.

Learning how to keep my ethnofries dynamic to a minimum while traveling on Big Island.

Besides, while at ease before a high-quantity of French fries I could admit that perhaps I was in an ethnofries moment. Americans are known to go ethnocentric during travel. Say I venture to Paris (reason for the word French before fry remains one mystery, for now) and ask my wife Gwendolyn, “Honey melon dew, where is the nearest McDonald’s?” Now finally I have the ketchup I know so well. (For journalistic accuracy the wifey Gwendolyn is a fiction in my single lesbian life, and I refuse to eat at McDonald’s.) Banana sauce is Filipino style ketchup and most likely I should get over myself.

Chicken adobo Filipino french fries served just culinary right at Emma’s cafe.

Better news is that skipping breakfast made right-sized stomach room to finish the well-seasoned vat of French fries. Rather than go bus on the return, I selected go walking to rebalance. Meandering to Poi Dog across the street where inspiring posters are glued to the wall and eclectic sandwich flavors are acting as a turbine for culinary nourishment, I just watched inside this restaurant; on my memory now is a yellow post it note to lunch here soon rather than late. The café door closing behind me and standing fully in bright sunrays beaming to earth made me curse that I had not brought a hat. I persevered until Kona Coffee and Tea seemed on the horizon. Or was that a mirage on my desert walk?

Nope, the doors opened for real, and I valued one cup of Kona coffee. Rest and caffeine are the tandem engine revs replacing what we still call horsepower for an automobile. For a car, this is the ability to move 550 pounds in one second which conveys how much horsepower an automobile engine has. Yet I am simply a humble lesbian woman walking on the street. Just the air-conditioned respite and a cup of caffeine were plenty powering for the walk where go bus had brought me several hours before.

Kona Coffee & Tea provide ample fuel for the day’s go bus project.

Mind you, how taking the bus this day plus meandering around correlates with my shopping methods became clear. What I often bring to the Target overwhelm—oops, meant to write experience—is consumer fatigue before I start. When I used to drive a car that I parked in a huge Target parking lot, some modernist mindsets I stored. Am I really sourcing food, socks, car oil, deodorant, toothpaste, and an iPhone charger at one store? How often have I wished to take a few steps back outside and sprint for the nearest Farmer’s Market? Dozens and probably hundreds of times if honesty on the table. So, yes, a few hundred times. Imagine explaining to an early 1900s farmer the concept of Target. And that the strawberry crop she grows has traveled several thousand miles in an airplane.

Yet on this go bus day I caught my breath and sauntered into the super dome to see the familiar at a new angle. Not being rushed meant buying fewer items. Calculating more calmly I determined more easily what my family would need in the future weeks, food wise. And I walked slowly, at first right on past, and then arriving to a full stop directly in front of bim bam boo after back tracking a few steps, sensing I missed a moment. The bright packaging caught my eye.

Bamboo toilet paper that had extra price than usual, yet given saving on gasoline, car repairs, and automobile insurance the splurge meant sense. These are my reinvented thoughts. And can I afford not to invest in the environment (harvesting bamboo saves diverse trees)? Or a woman owned company? Decision making was thoroughly complete in half a minute. Bam—in the cart bim bam boo went. New process on a familiar purchase. Who can possibly ever walk on by a toilet paper product that when opening the box announces activism to “Wipe Out Deforestation”? I for one will not leave this earth being a consumer who did not support the cause.

Bim bam boo represents future ways to get off our butts and take political action.

Exiting the fluorescents in the lighting during cavernous shopping, I brought a few heavily ladened bags to a cement bench and took a rest. Go bus has a schedule to depart from Loloku Street behind Target at 2 45 p.m. Approaching 1 30 p.m. the time was plenty to reach the bus stop. Which is nonexistent. Just a blank sidewalk and zero places to sit away from the blazing sun. We had a handful of bus passengers standing around. Having been zapped with more than enough direct sunlight earlier in the day, I hauled my weighty bags across the street to go snugly under a tree for shade.

The process worked if I ignored the motion sensor on the wall adjacent to the tree telling me to go away since I was trespassing. A phrase that makes me chuckle given god’s bountiful earth being open to human spirits on our public daily travels. Scanning left and right I sensed aloha and stood my ground under a haggard tree still able to provide coolness. Who is the owner of circuitous air freely breathed, in reality?

Remaining under the tree for a half hour and in conversation with another woman who also go bus, eventually I returned on my familiar path, crossing the street to where the van-bus would arrive. Once back in a van-bus seat, mumblings I shared with the universe that I was going in the right direction to origins where I had seen all those deep morning nighttime glittery stars. How soon these three hours will fly compared to one hour in a car, I thought patiently.

A few miles north of Kona on Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway is a parallel street makai side, just past Matsuyamas grocery and gas, at a corner is where a gaggle of West Hawaii Exploratory Academy teenagers join the van-bus. After more good citizens boarded the bus community, the driver kept the compass steering northbound. On another narrow road also parallel to Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway exists a path traveled where an entity invested good money for several miles of indestructible steel wire fencing dug thoroughly into lava purposefully keeping goats away. Big Island has many intrepid wild goats foraging shrubs growing in lava crevices and drinking rainwater often stored there.

At the end of this road, one I had not been on before or recognized where I was other than having the familiar Four Seasons Hualalai as the last place just exited, was the familiar gate (Hawai’i has them in droves) and a security guard appearing inside the hut. A county bus like Hele On earns a simple wave through. Having got through security, I observed on the right side a Polynesian carving thoroughly tied in a circular wave with thick rope. Decorative in modern meaning, yet, in native Hawai’i many centuries before, these tough ropes weaved from plants and other sources sufficed as steel nails since the culture had thrived well anyway sans steel. An entire roof is highly skillful when built with well-tied rope at the corner angles.

Sitting on the bus, I concluded that wherever I was, these people had an eye for historical Hawaiian detail. We didn’t greet any passengers, and the quick drive was circular onto the property and then departing. Supportive infrastructure I thought looking at the 80 or so cars parked under a solar-paneled roof. More careful design appeared like. My guess was that we had landed in the employee parking lot for a school or nonprofit group. One sign hanging on a roof from inside a walkway flew familiar LGBTQ flag colors announcing a diversity welcome to all peoples. What place is this I wondered?

Curiosity was still active this late, nearly 4 p.m., into the afternoon, and I continued observing through the looking glass van-bus windows. At Waikoloa Village the teenagers departed at the neighborhood bus stop, same one from earlier that morning, a location where the bus driver paused for a 15-minute smoke break. Walking back to their houses the youth were. Returning again was our van-bus chugging along on the highway well-traveled and to the same locales visited while getting to Kona. Into Waimea we went. Descend the hill with Mauna Kea behind us we did. And as her last stop for the day the queen driver mixed right ratio cranky with kindly when she agreed to bring me within a short walking distance from home. She saw my grocery bags. Living rural countryside has kindness benefits.

Walking into the house kitchen at 5 45 evening (an exacting 12 hour expedition), a sunset da kine with all kinds of energy lines swirling, the grateful and cheerful applaud was for the day’s progress not perfection. Hele On is Hawaiian pidgin for it is time to get a move on or take my walking feet towards go bus. Hawai’i county named its bus service Hele On back in the day, I suppose, for staying close to local language. Author Liz Prato delineates through research why this is so in her book Volcanoes, Palm Trees, & Privilege: Essays on Hawai’i (2019). “Hawaiian Pidgin is a creole dialect (not slang) that evolved from Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and Hawaiian laborers trying to communicate with each other and the English-speaking plantation owners.” A language created to bring functioning for peoples politically oppressed is as official as any other.

This volume of essays discovers Hawai’i through honest, difficult inquiry.

County government bureaucrats clearly know how language hierarchy works on the island. Giving Pidgin official sanction cuts through prejudice on local culturally derived languages. Pidgin’s true designation is Hawaiian Creole English yet “is often characterized as the tongue of the poor and uneducated.” That stigmatizing stereotype ends when one entire-island transportation system goes Pidgin for an official, public service. Empowered language empowers people.

Another victory occurred later while exploring online. The mystery location is called Kona Village. Seems the place has been iconic for wealthy folks, since 1965 until 2011 when a tsunami wreaked havoc, to stay in this location as an authentic Hawaiian culture luxury resort. Picture a Steve Jobs type of tourist (he actually vacationed here) valuing a beach hale (cabin) distant from phones, Internet, and techie trappings. Closed for many years after the tsunami, once the resort company Rosewood invested the big buckeroos we now have an 81-acre exclusive resort that is an all-solar operation, grows herbs and leafy greens on property, and stays quite true to native ways of early Hawaiian history, housing style, and culture. The place has an aloha vibe even from a bus seat simply taking a slow drive through the parking lot.

A single’s rate is $1,250 for one luxurious night and if 12 people gather their pennies together then two entire houses, a swimming pool, sauna, outdoor lanai with barbecue facilities and more, will enjoy one night’s stay assisted by a “bespoke butler” (web site quote and means dedicated wait staff) for that night’s cost: $17,000+. When I earn all my hopeful 91 years, I will cash out my one-month social security check and stay one evening at Kona Village (who knows and who cares how I will live the rest of the month). What I hear is when you arrive a golf cart immediately whisks you to your hale, and grateful for the whisk I will be since as a cantankerous nonagenarian I can still ask for help, walking cane and all.

Until then I can only laugh out loud at how distant that experience is from the budget I live on now. Reading the Kona Village description, I kept chuckling that I had no idea the place even existed all these decades I’ve been visiting and living on Big Island. Who knew? That’s why go bus opens your eyes on diverse levels. Go grateful for that.

Too simplistic to compare a major luxury resort development to one bus shelter yet for the sake of modernity let’s go there. What I’m attempting in my life today is to bridge the one with the ninety-nine. Let’s begin with the 99 percent of us who live on the go bus model of life whether we ever step one foot on a Hele On. I used to be one who had never taken the bus before. Whenever I drove in my car past the bus folks waiting in line on Loloku Street behind Target I always said, “Dammit, I wish those folks had a bus shelter. Kona sun is direct and distressing when standing without protective shade.”

And then I drove comfortably on in my car over stuffed with groceries from a store that is not one, a grocery store, and crowded to the gills with modernity tchotchkes ( a few necessary, many not) delivered in a streamlined process when the massive barge I saw very early this morning has a huge crane unload the container onto a truck that parks in the wide Target parking lot. I gave the people standing on Loloku Street waiting for Hele On a few seconds thought and went hele on into my life. Today those people are my people, for I am one of the people taking the bus.

And we need a healthy area to rest in cool shade while waiting go bus. Reminds me how history repeats herself until we choose different actions. A few weeks ago, a woman of color was deposed from her highly qualified position of social power influencing Hawaiian lives to their benefit. In 1893 on January 17, Queen Liliuokalani was removed from political office. Sanford Dole and the US federal government decided the white privileged guy knew better. The coup was sadly successful. And a few months ago in 2024, Kamala Harris was removed from her highly qualified influence as a powerful woman of color to continue working on our behalf. The white guy takeover has historically returned.

When Harris worked as a public defender, she announced herself to the judge as Kamala Harris for the people. In an era when she will not have optimal access to working powerfully every day on behalf of you and I as the people, I ask myself what can I do? And the response I hear loud and clear is to work on behalf of local projects that can make a difference for the people. The letter to a county transportation clerk has been sent. After several phones calls and an official e-mail sent via the Kona country government web site, I have taken civic action. And I will follow up. If I can help a bus stop shelter be built for ordinary people then simplistic effort is still paying attention, a way I choose to live politically.

One of the several inspiring signs posted on sandwich cafe Poi Dog walls.

Comparing a billion-dollar luxury resort existing 20 miles from where the new bus stop will be, makes absolutely no sense. Why identify how dramatic the one percent is compared to the 99 percent? The reason for doing so is because at the end of a beautiful day choosing to go bus, the brilliant sunset reminding me how much privilege I live with, even as I don’t qualify into the one percent, while watching devastating history repeat herself, I can act. On your behalf. On mine. And for future bus passengers. Isn’t that why we are here? To ensure a better future. On any scale.

The point I am striving to make is that leisure time on a bus is fantastic to open your sensibility and senses to seeing the familiar from a new angle sitting cozily in a cushioned seat that you are not driving. Go grateful I did.