Before the heat of each day of this Oahu visit, I take an early morning ride around Ewa Beach. Today, after clearing the thick belt of cookie cutter housing developments I’m riding a bike path running between mangrove swamps and a golf course. Occasional bursts of perfumed scent rises from late blooming plants. A man, in ball cap and tee shirt, skin darken by sun, passes on a bike from the opposite direction. He holds a fishing pole across his handlebars, riding slow to conserve energy. We exchange alohas then move in opposite directions-me towards a bay side park, he toward a hard-to-find fishing hole.

Early morning sun bounces off the waters of an arm of Pearl Harbor at the park.  I leave the bike and walk out onto a short dock located between two others. On one, an old Asian man stands with a throwing net in his hands. Nothing stirs in the waters around him. Bait fish rile the water around me, driven into tight balls by larger fish. I see the wakes produced by their fins running just beneath the surface. The fisherman sees this too but doesn’t move to my dock. Maybe he knows the fish will move to him or maybe he is put off by a guy in bright spandex standing in the morning sun. Figuring it’s the later I hop back on the bike and ride on.

After the docks, the path runs along a small point. On the opposite side I stop to ask another fishermen for the names of the fish hunting the dock waters. Showing great interest, he only wants confirmation that they were, “on the other side.” I owe an apology to the net fishermen for sending him competition then ride through a small flock of the ever present egrets.