Steve Simko

July 5: starting in Hawaii

July 6th, 2022

So I’m visiting two islands I’ve never visited before: Oahu and Kauai. There isn’t much to speak of about Oahu just yet…I spent the 4th of July there with my friends John and Chris who are getting married this weekend. More on that later this week. Let’s get right to nature shall we?

My backyard in Kauai.

Note: click on the pic to see it full size!

So I’m staying in an Airbnb in the foothills outside of Kapa’a on Kauai. This is the view from my deck! By Kauai standards, that’s ordinary.

Mountains above Hanalei Bay. Not ordinary.

I spent the day driving the north shore, wondering what I would find. I drove the road as far around the island as I could, to the town of Haena. This marks the north edge of the Napali coast, the most famous stretch of shoreline in Kauai, one that can only be accessed by boat.

And when you get there, you’re stunned by the jagged peaks coming out of the earth, not even full mountains but pillars shooting out from nowhere, covered in lushness, overwhelming you with wet greenness.

Unexpected find: Maniniholo dry cave

Toward the end of the road, I came across an unexpected find: a wide mouthed cave across from Haena beach. This is the Maniniholo dry cave. Hopefully the trees and people give you a sense of scale.

Queen’s Bath trail, Princeville

I then drove back to Princeville to hike the Queen’s Bath trail. I didn’t make it to the actual Queen’s Bath, a tide pool fit for swimming, due to footwear issues. OK, I admit I hiked in flip flops. But it was worth it, and I didn’t rebreak my leg in the process.

Then there was this.

I’ve never seen a sign this aggro.

To get to the trailhead for Queen’s Bath, you have to drive through a manicured subdivision and golf community that seems more well suited for central Florida (where such development is a big improvement over scrub pine and swamps) than remote, rugged, mystical Kauai. The town, Princeville, aggressively polices people who do not park in the limited trailhead parking spaces. Have you ever seen a sign this obnoxious? That then has the gall to say “aloha and respect” at the end? I mean, there’s NIMBYism, and then there’s this story from The NY Times a couple of weeks ago about an anti housing advocate in Marin, but this takes the cake for radical exclusion.

Then I happened to notice the airport code for Princeville. HPV. I chuckled. So deserved. The wart of Hawaii.

There’s a play on words on “geniality” here, ya know.
Hello friends!

June 29th, 2022
Hi everyone! For those of you who don’t know me, well, this is me.

Me in 2019 in Mykonos. I look essentially the same now, I suppose. I use this pic way too much because I don’t like most pics of myself. I get that from my mom.

I started this blog to tell stories about and show pictures from my upcoming sabbatical from work, but I wonder if it will morph into something much more. The world seems TOO MUCH at the moment, has seemed that way for a while, for me to just tell you about my day.

Anyway, here’s the basics of what you need to know about me.
- I am a doctor. I am a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. That means I specialize in the care of children with blood disorders and cancer. I am no longer in full time medical practice, however. I currently work for a pharmaceutical company providing medical oversight of clinical trials for new cancer medicines.
- I am single. Which is why I’m not talking about my spouse and kids in the first bullet point. I would like to be in a relationship. In truth, I’d like to find my husband, that special someone who is in my life through thick and thin. But I live in San Francisco, and especially here, gay relationships are like laws and sausages—you don’t want to know how they’re made.
- I’m in my mid-40s. And since I’m taking a 2-month sabbatical from work, I like to think of this as my “halftime” in life. If my life was a football game, I’d say I was currently down 4 points after having been up double digits early, and down a lot more at other times too. But my therapist says I don’t have to look at my life in terms of success and failure, so I’ll practice that advice and not keep you updated on the score going forward.
- I didn’t come out of the closet until I was 35. When I came out, I thought that I was still the same me. But more than anything in the last decade, being gay has forced me to challenge my own assumptions about love, sex, religion, politics, all the subjects you shouldn’t discuss at Thanksgiving dinner, and maybe even some subjects you CAN discuss then. I can’t say I’m the same me anymore. You’ll get some reflections from me on all these things eventually.
- I like to sing. I am a member of the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus. You can check us out on streaming services.
- I love the outdoors. I love skiing (learned while living in Colorado) and hiking, and recently got back into backpacking. Somehow this Eurotrip won’t involve a lot of that however.
- I might live in San Francisco, but I’m Southern by birth and upbringing. Well, Southern-ish. My mom is from Birmingham, Alabama but my dad is from Springfield, Illinois, that is, the Land of Lincoln. So I had the freedom to come to my own conclusion as a child: “I’m glad the North won.” Quoting my 8 year old self here. That’s a STORY we’ll tell later. Also a STORY involving Lincoln is the rhyme my dad used to tell me: ”Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’, whatcha been drinkin’, Lincoln? It’s not whiskey, it’s not wine…oh my God it’s TURPENTINE!” I’m pretty sure I learned that at 6. Maybe I should stop with the family stories.
- My sports teams collectively are having the best year of my life. My beloved NATIONAL CHAMPION GEORGIA BULLDOGS HOW BOUT THEM DAWGS are, well, THAT for the first time in my conscious memory. Check out the compilation video of Georgia fans celebrating the game winning interception on YouTube if you want an approximation of how I reacted. My adopted NBA team, the Golden State Warriors, just won their fourth title and THE WINNING AND DRAYMOND’S MOUTH DO NOT GET OLD. And my childhood baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, won the World Series last fall, but they don’t get all caps on account of their outdated nickname. (Hmmm. This needs a footnote about whether it’s enough to sanitize the name by getting rid of Native American imagery, a la…the Warriors. But I digress. Get used to it.)
- On Twitter I follow pediatricians, gay doctors, liberal college football bloggers (that’s a WHOLE SUBCULTURE good enough to merit all caps), the occasional gay icon, Pope Francis, MSNBC hosts, YIMBYs, a FEW Democrats, and of course DRAYMOND GREEN. That should tell you about my world view.
So yeah, I’ll be going on my ”halftime” trip, and I’ll provide you with stories along the way. I’ll be headed to Hawaii, Portugal, Croatia, northern Italy, Berlin, and Iceland. I might throw some time in Slovenia and Austria in there as well.

OK I better get back to laundry.

XOXO, Steve

July 5: starting in Hawaii

Hello friends!