Waimanālo has not grown as, as much as other towns.

I think it's because of the fact that we have a lot of agricultural zonings in this area mixed with the Hawaiian homestead lands.

So it has been slow to grow as compared to other towns in the state.

(Singing) Starting where the mountains I’ve been a Waimanālo resident for 30 years, I think there has to be some places on this earth that just stays you know, regular you have to be able to enjoy what's out there.

Historically, Waimanālo was mainly a sugar plantation type of or agricultural type of community.

And, you know, during the war years the military took over what is called the Bellows field.

And during that time, our population was very small, we only included mostly plantation workers, Filipinos, Japanese, and you know, mixture of Hawaiians.

I guess through these people established themselves in the community.

Population started to grow, and when they introduced the Hawaiian Homelands, you know, the Hawaiian population started to grow also.

Polo in Waimanālo, I think is very exciting.

Polo in Hawaiʻi has a very long history going back over 100 years.

Polo, I think, originally came to Hawaiʻi, about the same time as it began to make its international trek out of India and E- and Asia.

In Hawaiʻi today, we have polo clubs, here on Oʻahu, on Kauaʻi, Maui, and on the Big Island.

And in terms of the types of clubs that we have here in Hawaiʻi, I got involved with Waimanālo Polo Club primarily because I was attracted to the group of guys who had, I guess, a vision of starting a player's club.

Waimanālo Polo Club primarily consists, is managed, and operated and run by polo players, active polo players who get a lot of enjoyment and a lot of pleasure out of participating in this sport.

There are other clubs in Hawaii who are also players' clubs, as well as clubs that are primarily profit oriented at this time, towards a product or a specific goal or event.

But here in Waimanālo, as you can see around the Koʻolau mountains, the beautiful scenery along Kalanianaʻole Highway.

It's the perfect setting for polo in Hawaiʻi and it kind of gives the polo players in Waimanālo that special sense that they're part of the Waimanālo community.

Hardest part of hitting the ball, I would say, the neck shot.

Trying to make a neck shot where you take the ball underneath your pony’s nose and running at speed.

His legs are interfering with a shot.

It's rather expensive shot if you hit those legs.

I think the Polo in Waimanālo will continue to grow.

Here in Hawaiʻi, we have been blessed with terrific Hawaiian cowboys, the paniolo cowboy and the prerequisite for Polo is riding and it seems like the Hawaiian cowboys do quite well in the rodeo circuit here in Hawaiʻi and on the mainland.

So I look for polo to be getting stronger with local talent and not necessarily imported polo players.

Some of the problems, you know, we have so many people on our, or applicants are trying to get on the land become uh, lease hold, loan holders on Hawaiian Homestead land but there’s not enough land to go around—all the Hawaiians.

And this is one issue we're worried about.

Another issue is our originally the lease calls for 99 year lease for every person that’s awarded a lease and leases within the next 35 years, the leases are going to start to expire.

And in the act itself, it does not say what happens to people, what happens to the people after the lease expires.

And what address that concern so that if the, when it does expire, we have something to fall back on.

Right now the way the books are If we don't do anything about it, there is a probability that we might lose the lease and then you may have to leave the land.

Living in Waimanālo really inspires one, by all its beauty that surrounds you, you have the mountain back of you.

That's just just about all around you and the ocean, there in front of you.

Everything like that is, definitely, will take away your breath, you know, and it's something that you really can't and don't appreciate, until you leave and go elsewhere.

That you really, you know, come back and think, gee, how much you really appreciate all its beauty, its natural beauty.

But in Waimanālo we have a lot you know a lot of this.

The vegetation that's all around of us, you know, I mean it's, I hope they never ever build Waimanālo, I hope they live it just the way it is.

Because as you can see Kailua and Kāneʻohe, they're all built up and Waimanlo I think just the way it is I hope it stays that we never you know we have farms in the back.

We have our cows our horses that's all in back of us.

We got all of this in the back our yard.

And if you come down that way you even find our billy goats running around on the road.

You know, so they're just I just love it, you know, and this is why I love Waimanālo; for its natural beauty, you know, it's still there.

And it just, it's something that you can just you know, you can’t do in town, in Honolulu, in Kāneʻohe some of the places you can’t raise your animals back there, so.

The ocean, we have beautiful ocean and it's just that there just inspires one and when I put that all together with the hula you can just feel it, you know.

You can just feel all of that and without it, I don’t think it can, it can happen but it makes it a little easier when you dance, when you teach, you know, is to go out there and look at what we have that's around of us, around us and put it together and I think that will, that kind of inspires you even more.

(Singing) Sophisticate hula, it’s the talk of the town.

Swing your partners ‘round, soon you’ll cover ground, Sophisticated hula, it’s the talk of the town.

The native hula maidens they love to dance They do their dance to the beating of drums And now sophisticated hula's your chance do your dance while the melody runs Dance to the music sweet Soon you will repeat Sophisticated hula Is the talk of the town, the town Sea Life Park was established 25 years ago in 1964.

Sea Life was the dream of Karen and Tap Pryor.

They were the people who put the concept together and brought it to fruition.

In terms of employment, or in terms of the people that work at the park, the park is made a real, a real honest effort to hire people from the community.

Consequently, a fairly substantial number of people that work at the park are from the area of Waimanālo either born and raised in the area or live in the area.

We're proud of that we're happy about that.

Because we do see ourselves as being a Waimanālo, part of the Waimanālo community.

Working on at Sea Life Park is is something that a lot of people that live in Waimanālo do.

I personally have worked at Sea Life for about 20 years and I've lived in Waimanālo for about the same amount of time.

It is of course, very convenient.

It's very handy.

Sea Life employs folks doing everything from animal work to office work, to logistical operations type support, pretty much the spectrum of jobs are held by folks from Waimanālo.

And I think over the years the park has and continues to attempt to hire from the community whenever possible.

In addition to being a wonderful place to work, of course, Waimanālo, for those of us that live here, is a, is a delightful place to live.

But we don't want anyone to know that.

At Sea Life we're, of course, primarily concerned with marine life and in my department, which is the training department are our primary primary animals that we take care of, our marine mammals, dolphins and whales, and seals and sea lions, and marine birds, seabirds.

Many of the birds nest on the offshore islands off of the windward coast.

So it's kind of a natural place to to have a seabird colony and we do we do collect for our colony, both from the northwest, the leeward isles, and also sometimes off of the, off of the colonies here on Oahu.

This is kind of like our bird hospital here.

We taken all injured seabirds now these guys are, all have all have their own story, they're here for one reason or another.

These two in particular right here these are brown boobies.

As you can see the real hungry.

These seabirds can eat fish or squid.

This is smelt I'm feeling them right now.

But these two are a result of an oil spill and it must be somewhere off the westend of, of Oʻahu.

And they have been through, they look fine now but they have been through a series of baths, bird baths.

We, I’d say the total for each one is close to 10 baths each.

So, they were pretty covered when they came in.

Now the oil, I can see what the people Alaska are going through right now because the oil, at least for these guys, what it does is it destroys their reproductive system so they can't have you know, kids unless they're, you know, taken care of right away.

Also it keeps the, it clogs up all their preen or their oil to waterproof their feathers.

They might not be seabirds anymore, if you know unless the right steps are taken.

What I'm doing here at Sea Life Park is I'm one of the trainers here and we take care of the animals as well as train them for all our shows here at Sea Life Park and I really enjoy it.

I've been here for a while I work all the, some of the dolphins and some of the sea lions.

The dolphins are a lot of fun to work because they're they're very much like working your, your house cat, very independent animals, as opposed to working with sea lions, which are like training your, your, your dog at home, and it's very enjoyable work.

I've been doing it for 17 years and I wouldn't do anything else.

It's a highly enjoyable good.

I've lived in Waimanālo, I guess, most of my years.

I went to school at Waimanālo Elementary and Kailua High.

And right after getting out of high school I started here at Sea Life Park.

And you know, at that time, I thought, Well, I'm gonna only be here a year.

But I've enjoyed working here so much that the years have just kind of rolled by and it's 20 years now that I've been at Sea Life Park and living in Waimanālo, I don't want to live anywhere else.

We're real fortunate to be here.

This is definitely one of the best flying sites in the world today.

There's a lot of different types of sites for cliff site, a soaring site like this, it's probably the very best.

There's other mountain sites and thermal sites they’re just like comparing apples and oranges they’re quite different.

So we fly and pretty much anything from, from no wind where we can fly and thermals to up to about 20 miles an hour trade winds.

Anything from north to east, quite east.

It's nice to come and watch a launch or to watch a landing.

Well once you've done that you've seen it all because the guy goes away and it's a real personal sport everybody flies for a different reason and gets a different type of satisfaction from it.

No one better or greater than the other.

And the sport’s not for everyone.

There's, I don't, it takes a certain type of person that person is really driven to want to fly is not something you don't think you'd go out and do on a whim.

Because you actually have to become a pilot and it's just not for everybody.

This is without question one of the finest gliders on the market.

It's called a Sensor 510 CBG.

This one you can change the shape of the sail in the air, like trimming the sail of a sailboat.

Right this this is the parachute it's a 22 Gore reserve parachute I believe is a 24/26 foot canopy.

And again, it's just just for for those minutes, that, it’s a last resort type type of thing.

And then the harness your whole body fits in the harness and it supports the entire length of your body.

It has storage containers to take whatever you, you might like to take with you, a radio holder for when we fly cross country, we like to fly with radios.

And that's about it.

This is a where the harness actually hooks into the to the hang glider and the bridle to the parachute.

So if you're in a situation where you throw your chute, you actually come down with the hang glider.

So you the hang glider, everything comes down under the parachute.

So you don't have it banging around in residential areas without you.

This is a variometer.

And what it does, is it measures your vertical speed in feet per minute, how many, how fast you're going up or down.

And the scale runs, of course, from 1500 feet a minute up to 1500 feet a minute down.

And it has an an audio as well as visual.

So you don't have to be looking at it all the time to find out how fast up or down you're going.

It just helps in a lot of your calculations.

If you're traveling from point A to B, let you know how fast you're sinking.

So you can kind of figure if you're gonna make your goal.

And if you're working thermal or lift, let you know just how fast if it's worth working, if it's strong enough or it's just an aid, you can certainly fly without them.

But it’s a nice aid to have.

Sorry, I meant to get closer.

But there's there's less wind down here than I thought.

There's kind of a classic, perfect flying day.

Some of the concerns of our community is what happens to our land.

We have the general and developmental plans for the county, City and County have established, have mandated that the land here be kept as much as possible, and then rural and agricultural and that they not be covered with houses and not be urbanized.

And so our neighborhood board has tried to stick by that.

That means that we have been in conflict with the developers.

These islands are small.

They can't go on developing forever.

It can't take the world's population here.

We're overcrowded right now as it is.

We maintain and somewhere along the line we've got to stand back and say no, no more.

This rodeo was started eight years ago for the benefit for Habilitat, which is a drug rehabilitation center here in Hawaiʻi.

And they've got people that come to it from all over the all over the country.

It's a fundraiser for them.

And it's just a great community project that we have going here.

The rodeo itself is considered a professional championship rodeo.

We have real good bucking horses and bulls.

We raise our own livestock that we use for the double mugging which is a local event, an event that was started here in Hawaiʻi.

And we use also for the team roping.

Most of our participants are local people although we do have a lot of participants that come from the mainland.

This example, this year we have Jim Sharp who is the 1988 World Champion Bull Rider.

I’m Jim Sharp, I’m from Kermit, Texas.

I’m the 1988 World Champion Bull Rider.

And I’ve been in Hawai’i for about four days.

Went out on the beach swimmin’, had a lot of fun.

All the people I meet here, been super nice, and shoot I can’t say nothin’, but I love it.

I gotta go home in a couple of days and I'm not even ready for it.

I watch the other bulls they have here and I think it's really good you know for you know I don't get to have as many rodeos over here as they do where I live but so far you know this, of what I've seen, the stock’s been really good and the Cowboys they ride, they ride pretty tough, too.

Bull riding, you know, you don't really watch for anything, you know, the challenge is whether you can just stay on the bull for the full eight seconds or not.

And some bulls you know, are tougher to ride, you know, the ones that spin are a little tougher, but I'll say you know, guys just try to stay on ‘em.

Well, I started riding, I started riding my dad's roping calves when I was about five years old, you know, he, he rode calves for just the fun of it.

He’d rope ‘em and tie ‘em, when he’d untie ‘em I get on ‘em and ride them to the other end of the pen.

I started in junior rodeos when I was about nine years old and rode in there for about 10 years.

I rode in amateur rodeos for about five and then I got my pro card when I was 20.

I was in 1986 Rookie of the Year.

I don't know ever since I can remember I always wanted to be a bull rider and I was really lucky and was always around it.

So here I am today.

Also we have a young fella that is a local boy.

He's the Hawai’i champion bull rider.

And he I think he's in the top 15 for the college in Intercollegiate Rodeo finals.

He, Myron Duarte is his name.

(Singing) Across these endless skies Yippie yi ooh, yippie yi yay Ghost riders in the sky Yeehoo!

(Applause) Waimanālo is the is probably the closest country that you'll see to Honolulu.

I mean in 20/25 minutes you're over the hill and you're in the big city.

The horse industry in Hawaiʻi is just grown leaps and bounds, over the last probably, we've been here at New Town and Country stables for 25 years this past February may 25 years.

My dad started the saddle city years ago.

Here over 35 years ago, and he put on rodeos there and they had a lot of horse shows and so forth.

There's several stables throughout the throughout the valley.

Circle Z is one of them.

They have a real nice facility to lose facility.

They have a lot of the ingress and dressage shows there.

There's other stables around the board.

Our basic thing here is that we board and train horses for people and a lot of children in the western division.

The rodeo business here, getting back to the rodeo business in Hawaiʻi, the rodeo business has been going on for years.

It's you might say we're the farthest western state in the union.

And so you can say that we probably the most, most westerner people there is.

I think the people love coming here it takes them back you know a few years and they get to come in and see the country life and we've got a beautiful scenery here as you can see when you're in the bleachers and you're sitting there you look out across the arena.

You've got a beautiful golf course across the street and you've got the ocean out behind it.

I don't think you could find a prettier setting for rodeo anyplace.

(Singing) Hanai hoʻi au a ʻike ma ka Nā roughrider ka hulu ʻekahi Inu ana i ka wai aniani E maʻu i ka puʻu ke moni Huʻi e huʻi ʻeha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Huʻi e huʻi eha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Kilakila nā paniolo pipi lā Me ka ua Kīpuʻupuʻu Me ka wai o ka Puʻu Kaulaʻili lā Me ka hae o ka lanakila Huʻi e huʻi ʻeha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Huʻi e huʻi eha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Hanohano wale nā cowboy E makuʻu noho i ka lio Halena pono ʻoe i kaula ʻili I ka lae o ka pipi ʻahui Huʻi e huʻi ʻeha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Huʻi e huʻi eha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai (Vocalizing) Hanai hoʻi au a ʻike ma ka Nā roughrider ka hulu ʻekahi Inu ana i ka wai aniani E maʻu i ka puʻu ke moni Huʻi e huʻi ʻeha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Huʻi e huʻi eha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Kilakila nā paniolo pipi lā Me ka ua Kīpuʻupuʻu Me ka wai o ka Puʻu Kaulaʻili lā Me ka hae o ka lanakila Huʻi e huʻi ʻeha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Huʻi e huʻi eha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Hanohano wale nā cowboy E makuʻu noho i ka lio Halena pono ʻoe i kaula ʻili I ka lae o ka pipi ʻahui Huʻi e huʻi ʻeha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai Huʻi e huʻi eha Huʻi konikoni i ka puʻuwai (vocalizing) (Singing) The beaches they sell to build their hotels My fathers and I once knew Birds all along sunlight at dawn Singing Waimanālo blues Singing Waimanālo blues