Hawaii put his name on a license plate. He is the Olympic champion who carried surfing from Waikiki to the world.
I’m bringing back my first blog post of 2026, because the story of my Duke license plate frame isn’t finished.
Before the day concludes, I intend to share my thoughts on a custom license plate frame that I ordered on December 21, not expecting it until January 10, but it arrived on December 31, 2025.
In November, I read an article about the new Duke Kahanamoku license plate being released in Hawaii. I reached out to the Outrigger Canoe Club to inquire about purchasing one, but I encountered a significant hurdle: since I do not reside in Hawaii, I was informed that the DMV there would not sell me a plate.
Since my Lexus registration was due by the end of December, I made an appointment to speak with a DMV technician. As I had suspected, I could not display Duke’s license plate in my state.
The plate I chose is vibrant and reads “STEM,” which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. You might wonder why I selected that; frankly, every time I see it, I think of M&M candies.
A few days later, I decided to purchase a custom license plate frame. This sparked the idea of creating something related to Duke, which I proceeded to do.
I began customizing the frame with the phrase “I blog Duke Kahanamoku” at the top and “Father of Modern Surfing” at the bottom. However, the font size was considerably smaller due to the length of the text. I experimented with other phrases, but they were similarly lengthy, so I set it aside for a while.
Among all the options I considered, I wanted to emphasize the wording “I blog Duke Kahanamoku.” My intention was for those who read it to look him up. Eventually, I settled on the phrase “I spin tales about Duke Kahanamoku.”
As time was running short last night, I opened my front door to find a yellow envelope waiting for me. Curiosity piqued, I picked it up and realized, to my delight, that it was the license plate frame I had ordered, arriving ahead of schedule. It felt like a wonderful gift just before the clock struck midnight, marking the arrival of 2026.
For Rebel and me, the end of 2025 was spent at home, as it is the quietest and safest way to welcome the New Year.
We were actually sleeping because we were both sick, which started three days before Christmas, and it continued till the first or second day of 2026.
Today, Rebel installed my license plate frame, and I am truly grateful.
I feel proud because, first of all, I do not live in Hawaii. So anything probably that is related to Duke Kahanamoku here in the mainland, people will be curious who he was.
Although I am unable to display Duke’s license plate due to my residency, I have found a way to honor him and extend his legacy through my own means, by simply driving my Lexus around town.
As of April 2026, the Duke Kahanamoku plate is still not on sale. The Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation says the release is delayed while it waits for final government approvals.
Now the colors around where it said “I spin tales about Duke Kahanamoku,” they are all gone, and it exposed as white, which made me not happy. So I am looking for someone to create a placard holder that will not erase the “I spin tales about Duke Kahanamoku.”
