big island

So I'd better write down my big island experiences before I forget em all.

First things first - I booked my tickets 3 or 4 weeks prior to leaving. I was all excited because the only flights direct from Maui to the big island are the little propeller-driven commuter planes. I show up to the ticket counter and apparently Go Airlines has a problem. All their commuter flights were contracted through Mokulele airlines, and there's some sort of recent dispute between the two. The ticket guy says the people they've been sending to Mokulele were being rejected because the flights were booked through Go. The guy spent probably 15 minutes calling around to make sure there's no way I'm getting on my schedule flight, and finally gets confirmation. So he books me tickets on regular Go Airlines flights - only problem is now I have to stop off in Oahu. So what started off as a potentially big problem gets resolved. Note: the guy at the counter was extremely helpful in smoothing over the mess. Thanks Mr. ticket man!



After that things went well - picked up my car, drove to the campsite where I'd be staying and signed in. My first stop was about 15 minutes down the road. There's a beautiful valley called Waipi'o. The guide book talked about the trail that leads down into the valley - how steep and treacherous it was. Only 4-wheel drive vehicles are allowed on the trail because 2-wheel drives can't handle it and go plunging off the cliff. I decided to hike it, but I was a little nervous before hand. When I got there my fears were abated. The road the whole way down was paved, it turns out, and while the grade was steep it was no problem on foot.



The other thing I worried about was the sort of people in the valley. Because getting into the valley is hard, and there's basically no electricity or telephone or other modern conveniences, it's a haven for the homeless and the scary.

I left early enough in the day that I thought I could hike across the valley, up the other side and at least get a glimpse of the valley on the other side (which is supposed to be even more remote). So I hiked along the trail for a good hour or so. The main road was crossed several times by rivers that I waded through, but the road was still followable. It seemed I was getting close to the far valley wall and was looking for the trail up the side I could see earlier in the day, but it had disappeared. The road got less and less defined as I went along, until I was trudging through forest and wetlands with some scary-looking shanties and stuff set up around the way. At that point I decided I must have missed something and turned around.



My first strange experience was when I ran into a group of horses. I've always been a little scared of horses. At first they seemed scared of me and kinda of ran ahead of me. But after I had passed them they started following me. One of them followed pretty closely (like within a couple feet of my back) and it freaked me out a bit, 'cause horses can smell fear right? I just KNEW they'd get a whiff of that and just all gang up on me, beating poor defenseless me with their hooves. Luckily, I escaped. (Not all facts about horses in the above paragraph are true.)

My second experience was running into a guy about the time I turned around. He looked rastafarian with his dreadlocks, and was wearing only a pair of pants. In one hand he had a fruit and in the other he carried a gigantic machete. I hadn't seen another person since the beginning of the hike, and for the first time in a long time I feared for my life. But I tried to keep my cool and I said "hey" as we passed. He said "hey dude" back and I live to tell the tale.

On my way back out of the valley I noticed a fork in the road I had missed earlier, and this trail led to the beach and to the trail to the other valley. Next trip I'll have to finish the hike I suppose.

Anyway, the valley was beautiful and I was glad to have spent some time in it.



Amy and Clay arrived in Kona early the next morning so I went to pick them up. We had nothing planned for the day, but I had a couple things I thought about doing so we headed out.

First we dropped by the City of Refuge. We wandered about the city for a while then hiked around on the lava rock and tide pools that surround it. Things were going good until Amy stubbed her foot on the rocks. I could tell she was hobbling a little after that, but it wasn't until we got back to the car and inspected the damage that we could see he foot was in bad shape. She had hit the ball of her foot right under her toes, and it was turning her foot purple and there was quite a bit of swelling going on.

Before the incident I had recommended we hike the back side of Waipi'o valley, and that was out of the question now.



We drove back to the campsite and got Amy and Clay all signed in, and Amy was kind enough to let us do a quick hike on our own. So Amy hung out around the tent to read and Clay and I went to do the hike real quick. Of course we got to the trailhead and the hike was closed for some reason. Bummer. So we headed back to camp and came up with a plan B.

We had all wanted to see some flowing lava that evening, so since we were headed over that way anyway we decided to see some of the waterfalls around Hilo. First was rainbow falls, and I don't know the name of the other one.

Then it was off to the lava flow. The county had a parking lot all set up and reflective strips on the rocks as a trail. man, it was beautiful. we got there as it was getting dark, and throughout the hike you could see the orange trail of lava coming down from the mountain. at the end there was a viewing area set up and we just sat and watched where the flow hit the ocean and sent up a huge cloud of steam. The steam was lit from beneath by the lava - it was so cool! Unfortunately we were only allowed to go to within 1/2 from the lava. Maybe sometime soon I can go back and hike from the other side - get a little closer, eh?



saturday was temple day. We had a good 13 or so people from the branch show up. We did baptisms and confirmations, sealings, and then a session later on in the day.

After that a lot of people went to the Big Island Grill across the street from the temple for an early dinner.

Then Clay and Amy and I walked around Hilo town until it was time for them to fly back to Maui.

The next day I was originally hoping to have some time to check out a beach or two, but my tickets got changed so I was headed back earlier in the day than I wanted to. There was a church about 10 minutes down the road from the campsite (Hanako'o ward), so I decided to attend the early meeting there. Wow, they must never get visitors there. The first question they asked was, "Are you lost?" Then I was almost swarmed by everyone that came in. Someone would walk in and whoever I was talking to would stop them and ask, "Hey, have you met Jeff?" I still can't get over how friendly they were there - so cool. Either that or they were just couldn't stand me and were passing me off to whoever they could.



Anyway, that's the end. Overall it was an awesome trip. I took about 100 pictures, so you if you really want you can download them here.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/114454/templetrip.zip



And I almost forgot - some guy hit my car from behind while I was waiting at a stop light my first night over there. That's 3 times in 2 years I've been hit in Hawaii. He was going slow enough that there was no damage, which is good because he didn't even stop. Crazy.

Short update

Aloha all,

First, here's a picture of my canoe, since I haven't before posted a picture of it.



Second, I'm definitely out of touch because I don't own a TV, but something I ran across online that I hadn't heard of and thought was funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82lhqiAF-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5YJkhizRs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SkFjTCscM4

And I suppose that's about it. The county fair was in town a couple weeks ago and I spent lots and lots of time there taking in some shows and riding all the rides. Other than that I've been trying to hike and surf and canoe and run and keep myself busy any way I can. Anything's better than being cooped up in the house studying for the CPA exam.

Oh, de doo-da day

Sunday I got back into the running thing officially with another half-marathon. I realized I hadn’t done one since I arrived on maui so I figured it was time. This race was actually really fun – it was small in size (about 1000 people), it was very very flat, and we started early enough in the morning (5:30am) to avoid most of the heat. It was also nice and scenic, starting at the Whalers Village in Kaanapali, heading down to Launiopoko along front street and back up to the Village. Parking was a problem as it always is on the Lahaina side of the island, but other than that it couldn’t have gone better. Well, unless I had trained harder. In a couple of the pictures I snagged off the photo-peoples’ website I look especially soaked, but rest assured that’s because someone had a hose at the last water stop and was hosing people down. I can safely say that person is going to heaven.




Saturday was the next big event – the 26 mile paddle across the Molokai channel. It was similar to the Great Kahakuloa race I wrote about last, but instead of hugging the coastline we started on Maui and ended up on Molokai. I’d never been to Molokai and I hope to get back there someday and see the sights. But the day went without a hitch, honestly. Oh wait, there was one hitch. Normally we have 9 people to a crew so that we can rotate 3 people into the boat every 15 or 20 minutes. We only had 8 show up. So each person spent more time in the boat than they should have. We were all pretty hammered at the end of the 4 hours or so. But we made it. We hadn’t ever been in ocean swells like that before so I’m sure we worked a lot harder than the more experienced crews. But we made it!

At the end of the race they had food (like the end of any good race), and then we caught the ferry back to Maui. Good times. Basically there’s one more race to finish up the season – from Molokai to Oahu. It runs about 41 miles or so. Things tend to get expensive the longer the race; you have to think about airline tickets, hotels, escort boat fees, entry fees, a rental car, all of that stuff. We’ve got a couple guys working on getting sponsorships for our crew. But barring not having enough money to cover the race I’m all for it. Then comes the end of the racing season (whew!) and I can start getting some alone time with the solo canoe – so far I’ve only been out on it once. So sad.

Anyway, life is good. Oh, and here’s a picture of a lizard who was just begging to have his photo taken.

what's in a name

Ever Googled yourself? Every once in a while I get so bored I do. Normally doing a google search for Heeble doesn't bring up much - just a couple of people that have copied my unique internet handle - but this time I found something new and it made me laugh out loud. You probably won't enjoy it as much as I did, but it does bring a whole new meaning to my name.

http://www.diclib.com/cgi-bin/d1.cgi?l=en&base=amslang&page=showid&id=4577

Someone who knows me obviously set this up to sully my reputation, methinks.

Paddling

So things have been pretty status-quo the last couple months. The regatta season of paddling is over and it's now the middle of the long-distance season. Here are some pictures of yesterday's race. We started from Kahului harbor and came around the top of West Maui to about Canoe Beach - a total of 33 miles.

Here's the start at the harbor. They couldn't've ordered up a better day for us. I woke up I was so glad:

Here's us just out of the harbor:

Here's Joel and Kimokeo (Kimokeo's a bit of a local celeb and we were stoked he agreed to steer the canoe for us. In fact, he's volunteered to steer us rookies the next couple races, too. One race from Maui to Molokai and another from Molokai to Oahu.):

Here's a scenic shot:

This is Eric, Mike and Sam from our crew:

And here's a series of shots of one of our water changes. There was only one change I didn't play an active part in, so I was glad to get a couple photos:

So that's been the typical weekend. The surf has really sucked lately so life's been mostly paddling and work.

The Good Life

Another picture of the crew just because I'm not blinking in this pic:

Well, life has been different since getting back from vacation. The big change is no Chris and Steve. It was nice getting to know them better over the last year and a half - they're pretty cool people. Yeah, things are lonely in the house with just me. Pros? Sitting around watching movies at full blast whist naked. Sleeping in Chris and Steve's huge king-sized bed. Con? I miss Taco Bell runs with the family. Anyway, it sounds like they won't be coming back (except maybe for a quick visit) until next year some time, so I better get used to it, eh?

Over the summer the work schedule is pretty lax. I'm working Mon-Wed for about 6 hours a day. It's enough to pay the bills and that's about it. But what else do I need right now?

The other days are pretty much spent at the beach doing various... beach... activities. The main thing right now is paddling. At 5:15am Tues and Thurs mornings and early saturday and sunday we have paddling practice. We had our first regatta last May 31st. I guess I wasn't prepared for how big an event it was. I was there about 7:00am and was there until about 5:30pm or something. Sorry, Mom, I got a little more sun than I should have.

Our crew did pretty well. We held the lead for the first half of the race and through the turn, and ended up fifth in the end. Last week we ended up fourth, but it was a dang close race with us being about 7 seconds from first place. Anyway, it's lots of fun and it keeps me in shape. Another 5 weeks or so of races and then long distance season starts up.

If you're interested, some pictures of the regattas are here: http://www.kiheicanoeclub.com. I'm in a few of them if you can find them.

Late Friday (Friday the 13th) afternoon I decided to go surfing so I called up my coworker Bret and we headed out. The surfing was great - the waves were huge. I got pounded as much as I caught waves, but all in all it was a good surf day. However, as I was leaving the ocean I came out at a different spot than when I went into the water. Much to my surprise I stepped on something pokey. That combined with the waves coming into shore brought me to my knees. I tried to sit a spell till the current set of waves passed and I could see the ground more clearly but that didn't happen. I tried my best to just walk in as fast as I could, but I just stepped on more spikes. I finally got into shore and my feet started burning. Yep, I had had my first encounter with Sea Urchins. I hobbled as best I could back to the car and let Bret know that he was driving me to the after-hours clinic.

Turns out there's not much you can do for urchin stings. They've got these glass-like barbs that just break up if you try to remove them from your feet. So I continue to hobble around like an old man for now. Oh, and they also gave me a Tetanus shot for good measure. And of course Saturday was Regatta day. My shoulder was pretty sore from the shot and that along with the not being able to walk thing made me sit out this series of races. It just wasn't quite the same sitting on the sidelines cheering the team on. And our team didn’t do so well this week. I’m hoping my shoulder feels good enough to practice with tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

So that's life right now. The boss man is on vacation for a couple of weeks so I have nothing better to do than study for the CPA exams and hang out at the beach. I'll keep you posted on anything else that goes on.

As usual...

here's a couple pics. Stories will come tomorrow. These are of our saturday regatta - the last picture is of our crew.