Our day in picutres

It’s not often that Christin and I have the same days off together (although now that I don’t have a job it happens a little more frequently). Monday was one of those days.

There’s a hike nearby that a lot of people on the island talk about. On weekends the locals like to hike it and hang out at the end. It’s known as the “swinging bridges” hike, and it was pretty cool.

We started the hike early at around 9am. The day was very overcast and it looked like rain, but it turned out to be just cloud cover and the rain never came.

I’d seen pictures of the bridges before and I didn’t think they looked scary at all. But truth be told, they made me a little nervous when I was actually out on them. They’re higher up than they look. And they’re a lot more rickety than they look, too. Some boards looked like they have given way under people before, and some were almost completely loose from the cables holding them. It certainly made the hike a little more exciting.

Towards the beginning of the hike Christin got a phone call from work, so we stopped while she took the call. In just the minute and a half we stopped, swarms of mosquitoes gathered round and tried to take a bite out of us. It’s funny (at least I think it’s funny), but Christin for whatever reason seems to get more than her fair share of mosquito bites, and this occasion was no different. While I totaled 3 bites, Christin had around 6 or 7 on each leg, plus a few more on her arms. And she must be allergic as well – because instead of just little bumps she gets welts. I really felt sorry for her. And again, all the bites seem to have come during the first couple minutes of the hike when we weren’t moving. Poor thing.

At the end of the hike there’s a man-made waterfall, pictured below. To me the water looked a little dangerous so I swam cautiously. It was also some of the coldest water ever so I wasn’t in very long. I guess I need to come up one weekend when there are other people to see which parts of the water are safe to swim in and which are not. With nobody else around it was really a relaxing place to be.

After that we visited ‘Iao valley. It’s a common tourist attraction and it’s only about a 30 minute drive from home, but we’d never made the trip. The famous landmark there is the ‘Iao Needle. Really, the needle wasn’t too impressive, but the valley itself was beautiful. The mountains here reminded me of the mountains along east Oahu that I love so much.

The other thing we witnessed was the suicide of this local Hawaiian guy off of a bridge here. Just kidding. I guess there are a few locals that jump off the bridge for money. It was quite impressive – the fall must be 30 feet or so. I guess I’m just a chicken when it comes to heights, so that made the jump that much more impressive.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m starting to get a little bored now so today I think I’ll update my resume and maybe get it out to a few places. Or maybe I’ll head to the beach. I’ll just have to play it by ear I guess.

Kokua

So had myself another great weekend. I was really disappointed a while ago because I tried and failed to get Kokua Festival tickets (it’s a benefit concert on Oahu with Jack Johnson as the main booking and Matt Costa and Eddie Vedder as some of the supporting acts). Sometime on Thursday I was listening to the radio and I was mentally tuned out, but the overheard the DJ say something about there being about 50 tickets left for Kokua. So I drove home and checked and lo and behold – there were tickets! They must have released a limited number the week before the show.

So I called Christin at work and asked if she could make it. She was able to get work off and I booked the tickets. So we knew where we were going but not how to get there or where we were going to stay over there. The happy answers were that inter-island flights are at an all-time affordable rate (about $50 roundtrip), and we packed up the tent in case we needed it. So Sunday morning we flew over to Oahu. The doors didn’t open until 2:30 so we hung out at Waikiki beach for a while, then wandered over to the Waikiki Shell venue where the concert was.

While in line we met a couple kids who had just moved to Maui the month before, so we talked about what they’d seen there and what we’d seen. Good kids. We were there early enough that we got killer seats right at the front of the lawn. The acts started promptly at 4:00, and man, it was a loooong concert. We finally got out of there around 10:00pm. Eddie Vedder did some cool Pearl Jam songs and had the place rockin, and then Jack played for about 1½ hours and rounded the night out nicely. By the end of the night, tho, the drunks were crowding in around us, taking over the 5 inches of space between our towels and our neighbors’ blankets. Eventually they had taken over all our personal space. It was annoying, but really the whole place was packed by the end of the night. Like a can of sardines we were. So maybe next year we’ll spend an extra $10 a ticket and get individual seats.

We had packed the tent over with us just in case we found a nice spot to camp out, but after the concert I doubt that even if we had had a spot in mind we wouldn’t have made it. We were just too tuckered out to go anywhere. So we drove around Waikiki a little and found a nice neighborhood and just slept in the car. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that bad at all.

Monday we were professional beach-hoppers. We took the Likelike hwy (one of my favorite drives of all time) to the Kamehameha hwy up to the north shore. First we hung out at Sunset beach and watched the surfers a while. Then we spent some time watching the waves at Waimea Bay. The surf was too large for anyone to go into the water, but a few brave souls were out in the distance surfing. We draped our towels on the beach somewhere we thought we’d be safe from the surf, but one huge wave caught everyone off-guard and swept up the beach. All of our stuff was carried away in a few inches of water, including Christin’s new iPod. We salvaged everything eventually, but sadly the iPod is a goner (man, she’s bad luck with those).

We stopped by Matsumoto’s (of course) on our way down to Ko Olina on the Ewa side of the island. I’d never been there but it’s a beautiful place if your goal to just relax and not worry about waves at all. Here’s a picture of us in front of one of the lagoons.

So after that we hopped on the plane and came home. It’s funny how quickly this place has become home to me.

Tuesday and Wednesday were also notable. Firstly because I was in direct sunlight for another 2 straight days (making 4 total if you were counting – and yes, I’m totally fried now and just want to hang out indoors for a couple days and let my sunburns die down a bit).

But secondly because the Dalai Lama came for a visit. It’s been about 14 years since he’s been to the islands at all. So Tuesday was a free lecture. The Lama talked about compassion and its importance in everyday life. At the end of the speech he took some audience questions. But probably my favorite part was the introduction and welcome by some native Hawaiians with their ancient Hawaiian chants and hula. Wednesday the lecture was a little deeper – it served more as an introduction to Buddhism. He spoke about the different thoughts about creation, the idea of self, morality and how a Buddhist tries to live life.

So that’s been the last few days. Oh, and by the way, gas on Oahu was $3.03 for regular. Here on Maui it's now $3.45. Ouch. And here's a picture of Chris on Waikiki beach.

The end of a season

The end of tax season, that is. I can't believe it's come and gone already.

When we first moved to the island, the most pressing and frustrating thing was finding a job. Christin had finished massage therapy school, Steve had just finished his stint as acting general manager at the Ponderosa, and I had a master's degree in accounting. Should be no problem for us, right? Nope.

It's funny, I started keeping a short journal when we first got here so we could remember stuff once we got a computer and the internet or some kind of communication link with the outside world. After a while I stopped. The main reason was - it was extremely boring. Every day was the same. We would wake up and hit the job market.

We believed when we first got here that all the jobs would be at the big hotels. So we drove around to the Four Seasons, the Prince, the Fairmont, etc. It turns out this is a horrible place to start looking for a job when you need one. The interview process is insanely long - about 3 or 4 weeks at least. First you meet with the pre-interviewer, then the department manager, then their manager, then theirs. And inbetween each interview is a week at least. Most of the time you have no idea what kind of chance you have at getting the job because of the "don't call us, we'll call you" policies.

So really the first few weeks were spent dressing up, handing out resumes, going to interviews, checking the job posting boards, and hitting the beach whenever we got sick of it all. It was rough. Christin got desperate a couple times and worked a few days doing room service in one of the big hotels, and even a few nights working night shift at Denny's (which is a story in and of itself). She eventually found out that all the starting jobs are at the smaller spas and even doing some out-call work (where people call from their hotels and you take the massage to them) which Christin had no idea even existed back on the mainland. She's really happy doing that sort of work now and so things have mellowed out for her as far as a job goes.

Steve eventually got a job at the Fairmont as a bellman, but that only lasted a couple weeks. He's been back in Utah at the Ponderosa for the last couple months and we're anxious for him to come back to Maui.

So that leaves me. I had a couple of job offers the first 2 days we were here. But the only jobs I could get were doing taxes. So I accepted both jobs thinking I could swing both at the same time (I must have been delirious). It was nice knowing I had a job lined up, but the tax season really doesn't start until sometime in February. It got hard towards the end of January because money was tight, but eventually I started working and things turned out better than I could have imagined. (The pictures are of where I worked, by the way. Yeah, it's an old gas station and barn. It's a story for another day but I promise I'll tell it. Oh, and if you look really close in the first picture you can see my boss, Harold, in his office in the center of the picture.)

I guess I could sit here and type forever, but who would read it? So now that I'm temporarily retired (sounds better than unemployed, yeah?) I have lots of free time to write down some of our experiences here. Anyway, I'll sign off for now.

The Cleverest Blog Title Ever!

I just had to write a few words about how cool last weekend was (March 31^st and April 1^st). It’s funny, but in the 3 ½ months we’ve been here I haven’t had a whole day off to do some real snorkeling. So last Saturday they didn’t call me in to work so I decided to go all out. There’s a place about 30 minutes from home called La Peruse Bay. Pretty much you just start driving south and park where the road ends (thank goodness for the little Geo Metro or I wouldn’t have had a parking place at all). Then if you really want to see hoards of fish you hike about 45 minutes over a lava field. And the hike is no picnic. Some parts of the hike there’s no trail at all and you just have to jump over crevasses and boulder up mounds of rough lava. But after I got to what’s called “the aquarium” it was all worth it. Despite it being the middle of a Saturday morning, the place was virtually empty. There were maybe 3 families hanging out there and me. In fact I decided to head back a little early because eventually it was just me and one other group of 4 people, and I wanted people around in case I got eaten by a shark or tripped on the lava and hurt myself, so I headed home before they did.

The bay itself it beautiful to look at even though there’s no beach, but the real eye candy was after you put your face in the water. It reminds me of when Frodo falls into the dead marshes – it really doesn’t look that deep, but when he falls in the water there’s a whole world down there you can’t see from up top. Except there were fishes instead of dead guys. It was amazing! Huge schools of fish of all kinds. Crazy stretched-out trumpet fish. Huge parrot fish. It was just impossible to describe, really. I could have spent all day there.

It’d been a long time since I’d snorkeled or scuba’d, so I swallowed a lot of salt water that first half hour or so. After that, though, I was just one of the fishes. It was great.

The next day (Sunday morning), Christin had the day off too so we went to Po’olenalena Beach to hang out (pictured at the top). After lying on the beach for a while we decided to do some snorkeling there. I had been a little disappointed the day before because I didn’t see any turtles, but this totally made up for it. There were turtles all over the place. Most were pretty friggin big, but there were a couple that were snuggled at the bottom of the ocean in some corral. They looked like they were sleeping and they were bigger than me and Christin. (Sidenote: How long can turtles hold their breath? Were they really sleeping under there or were they dead?)

Then Sunday evening Christin and I went on a whale-watching trip. Chris and Steve had already been on one earlier in the year but the whale season is ending and I figured I’d better get out there before they leave. It was pretty cool. We didn't see any breaches where the whales jump totally out of the water. But we saw plenty of dorsal fins and tails. Any way you look at it it was a nice boat ride at the end of the day.

So yeah, that was last weekend. It's hard to believe, but this week is really my last week doing taxes. After that I've got some time to explore Kaui or the Big Island. That and I'll have some time to do some real blogging finally.