Usually when I hiked in Canyon, until my little brother Jacky was big enough to join me, it was in the company of our dog, Mike. We were often joined by groups of Mike's friends. My main memory of this period is the weird things some of the dogs would do, and then end up getting stuck together.

Once on a very short hike, I found this place where somebody had apparently planned to build a house. The dirt was all leveled, and the back side mostly cut vertically, three or four feet high. But there was one place along the back that sloped fairly sharply down to the floor, so naturally I slid down it. Turned out to be an ant hill, of unfriendly ants.

Later we moved to East Oakland. I used to hike the rolling hills the other side of the highway, sometimes alone, sometimes with siblings. Then the war ended, and the developers moved in, blocking easy access to the hiking area.

I joined the Boy Scouts, and did some hikes with them. I remember an over-nighter on Mt. Tamalpais across the bay, and a one-day hike in the hills behind Oakland. I was the smallest of the Troop, and a couple of the bigger guys had fun holding my hands and feet and waving me over the edge of Devil's Punchbowl.

The next residential move took us to Lower Lake, in Lake County which centered on the fairly large Clear Lake. I did quite a bit of pretty much trail-less hiking in the hills south of Lower Lake; I hope I can find pictures of some of my favorite spots to scan in.

I don't remember any real hiking when I was in the Air Force. When I was stationed at Monterey I drove a bunch of us to Yosemite, where we had to have done some walking, but I don't remember it. I probably did no hiking at all on the little Korean island I was stationed on when I went overseas, but at least I climbed the top half of Mt. Fuji while I was in Japan.

Out of the Air Force, I was too busy being a student and working on the side. I don't remember ever wishing I had time to go hiking. Finally hired at Indiana University, I remember thinking about hiking, but all I can remember actually doing was some valley hike along a river not far from Bloomington with my wife and daughters. Oh, yes--we also hiked through Mammoth Cave in Kentucky once.

Until I started hiking with a loosely-knit group in September 1999, 24 years after moving to Hawaii, things picked up very slowly on the hiking front. My daughters and I hiked up Waʻahila Ridge from Dole Street faculty housing to the park at the top. From somewhere on the way up, I used my binoculars to look at Punchbowl, and there was a big carved figure that looked familiar. I finally realized that I had been seeing it for several years on Hawaii Five-O, and "hiked" over one day for a closer look. And I hiked all the way to Ala Moana Shopping Center once.

I did one semi-organized hike my first year here. One of my UH colleagues took us newbies on a hike up Moana Lua Valley, as far as the petroglyphs, at least, (and that day I had my first look--yucch!--and taste--ʻono!--inside a lilikoʻi) but it didn't seem like a real hike--I could see potential goals in the distance, but it wasn't until years later with the Solemates that I ever reached any of them. If "bike hikes" count, my daughters and I did an overnight ride with a few fellow members of the Hawaii Bicycling League along dirt roads from Wahiawā to Pūpūkea, then back on the roads to Wahiawā. And my last pre-Solemates hike, back sometime in the mid-80s, was up the Du Pont trail to the top of Mount Kaʻala, probably with the Sierra Club. My friend John Hall was the leader of that fairly easy hike [later addition here--where did I get that "fairly easy"? I did it again as my first hike as a member of Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, and some of it is downright tough!], but it was awfully rainy and cold at the top, in spite of the hot sunny weather going both up and down.

Things picked up after I was introduced to my Wednesday hiking group in September 1999.