Great Hawaiian Rubber Duckie Race

This event happened a few months back, but it was fun and unique, and I took pictures I’m just now getting off the camera (!) so of course want to share here. The local March of Dimes affiliate hosts an annual Rubber Duckie Race on the Ala Wai canal, the manmade canal which more or less divides Waikiki from Honolulu. For a $5.00 donation, you can sponsor a rubber duck that is later tossed into the Ala Wai (as shown below). The current carries the ducks to the finish line a few hundred feet away, and the first set of ducks plucked from the water are recorded. Those with winning ducks receive prizes. Good prizes! I don’t remember any of the prizes but one…a free iPod. And that was for 7th place. I can only assume prizes 1 – 6 were pretty good, too.
I’d heard about this event every year since we arrived, but never got into Waikiki to see it. This year it happened while Noel and Robbie were back East, so I figured it was the perfect time to go. I dropped off Cub with Grandma and Grandpa and then walked over to the race site. As usual, I was cutting it pretty close and nearly missed the big start. All the good “first row” views were gone, so I quickly sized up the crowd and positioned myself behind a short Japanese tourist that I thought I could shoot over. Results are not that great, but I hope they give you a hint of just how much fun this was to watch. Pure silly joy. You can’t see the numbers on the ducks so there is no way you would know if your duck was in the lead or close to a prize, so you just watch and smile.
And the winner is… What you can't see in the pic is that nearly half the ducks were carried by the current and slammed into the wall on the Honolulu side of the canal. The winner came from the middle of the pack.