I don’t know if I am prone to getting side tasks, but I am getting them certainly here, and you know what, I actually like it very much, as it helps me a little bit from the “Cabin Fever” that I have been developing a little recently, not being able to get around much and being stuck to the Visitor Center and the Bunkhouse with the weekly side trip to Hilo. But only 7 days to go and I will have my rental car to get to all the places that are still on my list.

Side tasks
So to the side tasks: You know and may have seen the audio recording photograph some time back – I was tasked to both translate the movie script of “Born of fire, born of the sea” into German and then actually have it also recorded so that German speaking visitors requesting assistance can listen to the simultaneous translation on what the park calls the “Audiostik”. Today I was given the final production version on a DVD, “Aus Feuer geboren, geboren aus dem Meer”.

Then there are the German special hikes, e.g. the German summit walk “Gipfelentdeckung” that lasts about an hour and has really drawn the crowds, this probably because it is held during the right time of the day and is pre-announced a few days before. Recently I was getting as many as 15 German or Swiss visitors on my German summit hike, and once 0 and once 1 (that is, “zero” and “one”), respectively, on my regular Summit hikes. And I have finalized the “Into the Volcano” just now, the virtual tour of which has been posted to the blog before, I hope you could enjoy it! The German “Wanderung in den Vulkan” will comprise a group of probably 15-16 and will take place this Thursday.

And today was the farewell event of the Youths-in-Park, the YIPs. The Hawai’ians call this the “Potluck” event, and everyone is asked to share a dish. So Andrej and Danny got to work in our kitchen with the little utensils that were available, and it ended up being mostly deep fried or fried nonetheless, so everything is a little greasy now. My task, however, was to put together an audio-backed photo slide show of the summer with the YIPS, and this proved to be quite challenging but worked out quite well in the end, I guess, as everyone liked it, I think. 8 hours of clicking away on the ‘puter wisely spent, then?

Which leaves me with the translation of the German trail brochures for the four most popular longer hikes in the park for the moment…