Hawaii Journal

Night 1, Day 1, Night 2 – Honolulu Airport, Waikiki Ala Moana, PCC, North Shore

February 6-8, 2007

Okay, after a 4 hour flight to San Francisco and sitting next to an elderly couple from Michigan (we saw “Good Year” a great movie), I took the 5 hour flight to Honolulu, sitting next to a blonde Norwegian foreign exchange student. Had a ton of fun talking with her. We saw “The Prestige” and played the “Half-way Point” destination game.

I was a little freaked when I arrived because I hadn't planned those details of car rental or place to stay. On the traveler's board I saw a Beachside hostel, so that's where I shuttled to. After a four hour flight (with almost 2 more hours of de-icing) preceding a 5 hour flight then a shuttle, this has been a big travel day! And more to come tomorrow if things go as planned and I bus it or drive it up to the north shore. Would've liked to go there the first night, but beachside sounded gravy.

In Honolulu, I freaked without having a place to stay. I visited the Beachside Hostel, Polynesian Hostel, 2 other hostels, and additional 5-6 hotels and everything was greater than $200 or was already booked! I saw a bunch of the ABC stores with the famous macadamia nuts. After wandering around getting lost, but seeing a lot of Honolulu – buses, hotels, people – I waited at the Ala Moana shopping center (kind of the Mall of America of Hawaii) for the 52 bus to go to the North Shore from 1am to 5am.

Day 1

At 4am I saw Duke Kahanamoku beach

on the map and walked 2-3 miles in the wee early hours to see board rentals, the beautiful Sheraton Waikiki,

and saw the city life awakening. I walked probably 5-7 miles before again going back to the Ala Moana Center and caught the 55 to the North Shore.

I stopped at the Polynesian Cultural Center

and saw some amazing carvings

, Tahitian dance performances,

IMAX coral reef presentations, and some massive tour groups

in the rainy 42-acre village that contained Tahitian, Hawaiian, Samoan, and Tongan cultures.

After talking with some of the awesome Polynesian dancers, carvers, or performers, I got my suitcase I checked and continued northwest to the north shore (the PCC was immediately after the China man's hat landmark -). This third bus I got on was the most amazing medley of people I had ever seen. With a guy who looked like jsk/dr. P, the RHCP lead singer, some surfer dude, Maya (or some native Mayans), Alexa-Taylor - it was a hot bus! But it felt too crowded, so I got off. I then caught another 55, but got off after I realized it was going the wrong way - back to city. I got some change at a mini-market and caught the next bus toward the north shore. It took 2 planes, 1 cab (to Ala Moana), and 6 uses (airport to Waikiki, wrong bus to Ala Moana, 55 to the PCC, PCC wrong way to the city twice, & finally the PCC to the North Shore!

Now I had gotten no sleep for the past 36 hors except a short bus catnap, and had flown, bused, and taxied, over 4000 miles, but I was so psyched when I finally saw Sunset beach, Bonzai Pipeline (or as the locals call it, “Pipe”)

, Sharks cove and Waimea bay. I met this cool Brazilian dude, Robinson at Waimea bay - THE Waimea bay! The waves were epic - the biggest I'd ever seen in my life. We talked about how the pro surfers always have babes around them, the huge size and intensity of the waves, the scary shallow reef bottom, and then asked 4 women on the beach if they new a place to stay. Robinson was cool as heck. I made a last-minute reservation at the backpackers hostel and found that studio to be my most ideal place - tile floors, spacious, huge desk table, not cramped, minimal furniture, and ON the frickin’ Waimea bay!

This place definitely reminds me of “The Beach”, which is awesome.

The suitcase is kind of too much, but so I glad I didn’t, at least, bring the garment bag! I could’ve done the whole trip with a backpack possibly. So want to transfer here! This studio is so totally my kind of place, it’s scary! Everything about it I love -- the tile floor, the only 5 pieces of furniture (couch, double bed, drawers with TV, nightstand, and huge (about the size of a bed), white desk/table)! All that with the simple kitchen layout, the strong showerhead - I love its size and minimal belongings – so relaxing! Especially the closet without a door and only a bathroom door! Perfect!

A chiropractor named Bart Smith helped me out by giving me a lift to the hostel and coffee. The generosity and kindness here are as enormous as the waves! I met an Aussie named Joel and a bunch of locals, went to Foodland, then hit the hay after meeting this odd dude who said I could stay at his place for $100 for the week! I maybe was irrationally dubious about the offer, but, still, the kindness here is amazing.

Day 2, Night 3 – Waimea Bay, North Shore, Ocean Concepts Scuba, Continental Surf

February 8, 2007

I woke up at 7am and on my run saw the Waimea bay beach park sign

and realized this place is like Michigan, Miami, a twinge of la, Costa Rica and Yucatan with the jungle,

and Hollywood. Totally rocks. I've got to figure out where to stay tonight and can't believe how far I traveled without a car. Hopefully ill get some scuba, snorkeling, and/or surf arrangements today!

After running in North Shore yesterday, I walked with my suitcase to Waimea Bay Beach Park. 20 foot waves – it was amazing! People wouldn’t even rent me a board for fear I would get killed. It was all pros out there. I went back to Foodland and posted the three job resume flyers (computers, motivation, and place to stay). I met a guy named John Lane, selling a $3.2 million beautiful house.

Then I started to bus back to Waikiki.

Okay I realized when you travel on vacation, know exactly what you want to do (here its surf, snorkel, scuba) and only do that! You can do voices, motivation, all of that stuff at home. Now given that you only do those travel-specific things you only need cerain belongings. To comfortably travel with just a backpack, you only need 1 dress short, (1) running shoes. Possibly (1) travel shoe, 3(1) running briefs,2(1) dress shirt, 1 running shirts, (1) shirt, 3(1) socks,trunks, rashguard, snorkel, mask, (running shoes), suntan lotion, hygeine (body wash, toothbrush-paste, vitamins-meds, condom, contact solution, contact wash), cosmetic (deodorant, razer, cream), activity (book, camera, phone, phone chargers), travel snacks, water. Then just go meet babes, snorkel, catch waves, exercise, don't worry about food and places to stay (those will fall into place and shouldn't be considered priorities).

I realized some men encourage you to travel and explore; some women encourage you to stay safe and at home, possibly. Man, this place is incredible. Want to try to work on comfortably saying something with conviction & connected animation then when I don't have something to say, to be comfortable & productive with silence & calm. In other words I want to feel comfortable saying stuff and not saying stuff! So I want to have access to the extremes so that when I think of something I am allowed to have the floor and allow myself to go into full performance mode and when I am I am listening to be able to feel like I am watching something in a darkened Imax theatre, kind of.

I got off because I had to pee and didn’t know where to go, so I called Ocean Concepts and got directions to their shop. I met some rowing paddlers with their oars on the bus and saw these two twins, one of which had 2 women with him, and we looked much healthier, happier, and clearer. It definitely is healthy to have good friends. Then at the dive shop, I filled out the paperwork and got locked in the plane.

After the visit to Ocean Concepts, and getting locked into the marina dock area, I tried to catch a fourth bus back to the North Shore and ran into the same woman who helped me find the scuba place. She was eating M & Ms and we both took the bus to Long’s pharmacy, where she worked. I checked out her gig at Long’s Pharmacy, bought some Li Hing Mui (which proved to be gross). It sounds boring and bland, but seeing a Long’s in Hawaii was actually really quite an experience. There were entire rows of Asian, ethnic food, making it very different from mainland pharmacies. I then got some local over-fried mahi-mahi food and bowl noodle soup at Zippy’s, while doing the PADI booklet.

In hindsight, I realized that once you connect yourself with the true world, the true internet (through altruism and just communicating with them), you end up meeting similar people. Maybe I always encounter this omnipresent woman, and her level attractiveness reflects your level of activity and connectedness. The M & M woman, the Japanese short-boarder in Kahula, the Indian woman from Boston on the plane to San Francisco – all were basically the same woman, which is great!

At 9:00 pm, I took a 5^th bus, and this woman I was talking with turned out to be a hooker. Then I took a 6^th bus to Waikiki, checked into Continental Surf,

went to Maddog bar and two others, and went to sleep.

Day 3, Night 4 – Long-board Surfing, Pro Bowl Concert

Friday, February 9, 2007

Woke up really groggy at 9:30 in the cramped hotel suite, which was nowhere nearly as nice as the awesome backpacker’s hostel studio. Ate too many wasabi peas, went for a great run, now I need to surf. Waves look (much smaller than North shore, but…) awesome! Slow and good for long-boarding!

Caught some awesome waves and was out on the water for 2 full hours, ran afterwards. I walked around and saw a lot of Waikiki. I tried to find a place to stay, but every place was booked. Meanwhile, I saw the pro bowl areas

set-up for the concert and everything. The had 1 main concert stage

just east of Duke Kahanamoku beach, and 2-3 small concert stages

on the main beachfront street.

They had local Hawaiian ribs, cookout shrimp, grilled food, and a variety of Pro Bowl booths. This one band with 4 older dudes – a couple of bass players, a synthesizer player, and a drum guy – were awesome. They looked a lot like the Monkeys or the Beach Boys. The main stage show, this Jamaican-hip-hop type band was hideously awful. They had one stage performance with 5-6 cheerleaders which wasn’t much of a musical performance, but was great. Finally, they had some great lead woman singer and some incredible African American dancer. Very snazzy, all dressed up. It was fascinating seeing them set up for the show, hauling in the trucks with everything from the fork lifts for the stands, the performances, and then everything cleaning up.

After the Pro Bowl shows, I got some milk and red bull and walked around a few miles, listening to Validate Your Life, and tried local hostels – all booked. I saw this one couple about to go into this nightclub – an alert dude who looked like me and a very attractive woman who looked like Maya. For some reason, the alert dude went in but his girlfriend stayed outside. The other guys outside immediately started hitting on her, asking what she was doing all alone outside. You had to have your back searched, which was okay, but the 10 dollar cover was too steep, so I didn’t go in. I walked along the beach and saw this amazingly located property lot just east of Duke Kahanamoku beach, where I rested for a bit. It was freezing by the ocean, but I couldn’t believe how beautiful a place that was on Diamond Head road. I would totally be interested in living there and buying that area as a real estate investment. I walked back to the hotel to get warmer clothes and trekked back out that way. (In hindsight, I realized that my life will be a lot easier, when I accept and know that I like those physical challenges and do them on my own, knowing that I like those more than comforts is great because then I’ll enjoy the ride).

Day 4 – Kahula Run, Trip back to Mainland

The next morning, around 5 am, I got an early start and tried some more hotels; all were booked except the $200 priced ones. A guy at a local bus stop gave me a business card of the Beachside Hostel, which I called to find that they were all booked. In hindsight, I think I realized that everything in life is something of an “audition” and if you get the part, you get to be around cool, awesome people, like the hostel the night before. Then I felt like I wasn’t having a place to stay and that it was ridiculous wheeling my suitcase around everywhere, so arranged for a flight home that day. I drank some coffee, ate a croissant, and an orange outside the Continental Surf hotel, when some dude who looked extremely stoned came up and asked me what time it was. He acted extremely grateful when I told him that in Continental Surf, they had Honolulu time, Los Angeles Time, Tokyo time, and London time – time zones from around the world. I then took off on a run at around 6am, cleared the city, and wove together all the walks I had done. It was a fantastic run, doing basketball moves with trees, jumping around, and loosing up my Lat muscle and side back muscles, which were really tight. I passed the beachside place I had found before and ended up in this Santa Barbara, California-like, jungle-like beautiful town Kahula. I shouted to a biker I passed, “Are you training to be an Olympic athlete?”

He said, “No”

I responded, “Me neither!”

And he said, “Sweet!”

The common numerical streets – 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, etc – came into view after having run probably 6 miles or so. I stretched and saw a Chinese man named Trevor wheeling a green pushcart on his way to the local farmer’s market. He said, “You’re all twisted up,” when he passed me as I was doing my IT ban stretch.

I replied, “You have to be the pretzel to get rid of the pretzel,” meaning that I had all these knots in my back and I would only release them and get them out by contorting and stretching my body. So you had to stretch like a pretzel to get rid of the muscular knots.

I talked to him about dating older women and how that worked for Ashton Kutcher, the Manufacturing Dreams line about Langston Hughs and the necessity of nutrition, travel, and exercise (which is why it’s so imperative that I focus on exercise right now). I mentioned that I liked talking to Asian people because they always laughed, never like they were haughty, but like they were a little bit smarter and understood something a little more clearly that most people didn’t understand. We then talked about Hawaii, and its proximity to Japan, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the United states. I remarked how it’s a fusion of all these different cultures and he said some thought it was a bit of a “con-fusion”.

The market we arrived at was A+ with dried Ahi, Cherimoyas, kale, and some of the best fresh food imaginable. I bought a tofu, salmon salad with the $20 I had been running with, and Trevor had recommended that he ran up this steep slop to see the inside of this crater, so I checked that at out. I had calculated that I should leave for the airport by 10:30, leaving about 4.5 hours from when I left from my 6:00 am run, so I had time for the hike. The mountain slope reminded me of some CC hikes I had ton and I was crunched for time so I got off the paved trail and went right up the rocky ravine, making my own mini switchbacks. I was astonished when I arrived at the top. I felt like I was standing at the line of symmetry between two huge valley basins – one civilized with construction and housing, the other natural and pristine. I thought the crater would be something reminiscent of volcanic rock, something prehistoric, but it was lush valleys. It resembled the exact duplicate – hence the symmetry – of the city of Kahula with all of the homes and houses. The other side was just starting construction and I had a revelation about how awesome all of the nature looked. The nature was seriously much more sophisticated and advanced, compared to the construction, which was really crap. I realized how much I hated technology and how nature was the “true” technology. I felt that we, as humans, were so stupid and idiotic for tearing down trees and nature for something that we were disillusioned into thinking was “advanced”.

I ended up walking about halfway around the crater rim through a neatly carved path. Then I saw the road I had run to Kahula on and didn’t want to march all the way back, so I zigzagged and switch-backed down that mountain side. It was very steep and precarious but I made down okay. Unfortunately, this incline ended only in someone’s backyard, so I had to bolt through their back yard and onto the street. Ironically, I wasn’t afraid of nature or getting attacked by some animal. I trusted nature. I was afraid of humans and their stupidity in thinking that technology was more advanced than nature. Some technology is very useful and resourceful though, like phones, but really, if technology ever eclipses all of nature, all is lost. For some reason I felt enraged on top of that crater and wanted all the civilization to be destroyed. I felt so much safer camping with nature, around nature, because it was so much more efficient and highly evolved – truly – than technology. Technology should help us connect with our own nature; we should own it, not it owning us and the side of the crater with excess houses didn’t comply with that, the uncivilized crater did, though.

I walked back and saw an amazing view off a bluff with turquoise blue water and breakers below with surfers. Lots of cars had stopped to see the view. It felt like you could see to the south end of the globe and I talked with this very attractive, nice, kind, warm Japanese short-boarder woman about how United States was to our left (as we were facing south), Tahiti was right in front of us, and Australia and New Zealand were to our right – I definitely had the BIG picture view of the entire globe! Japan was also over our shoulder and to the right. We then went down a man-made switchback closer to the ocean and she went short boarding. I saw a runner who looked a little emotionally wound up and a surfer who said it had been picking up. I walked back and kept getting this glorious tingling feeling in my leg (only other time I got that was in Los Angeles after intense outrageous exercise). I remembered how much I loved basketball -- playing basketball shots with Darcy in 8^th grade – and then remembered “faking” my leg injury freshman year, but being genuinely angry. I was angry that the practices weren’t going the way I wanted them to, but faked my leg so I pretended I got angry because of my leg. I think I was just angry during the whole experience at Latin now that I think about it!

I made it back to Continental Surf and quickly got my bags and waited for the bus to the airport. I called TDK and told him I was panicked about heading back to Chicago but couldn’t find a place to stay and didn’t have any money. It was almost 11:45 and I had a 1:46 flight, so I was cutting it close. I missed the main bus, so had to take a $33.00 cab. The cab driver looked a lot like Binh Lee, but he had a cute, slow way of speaking. We talked about how hard it was to live in Hawaii because so many people were trying to live there. The whole cab trip I was in indecision about going back to the airport and finding a place to stay and not having money. At the airport, I was still in running clothes the entire time. I had to wolf down all the food I had in my bag and sort over the suntan lotion and drink all beverages because of the bottle limit. The whole time in the airport, I didn’t really know why I was flying back. In San Francisco I got some of the famous Boudin Sourdough bread and almost caught a flight to Los Angeles, but I ended up going back to the icy Chicago.

My winter “field trip” almost always includes water. 1998, surf camp, 1999, Alaska cruise, 2000, Mediterranean cruise, 2001 RLT (rafting), 2002 SPTC (Tuluum), 2003 Costa Rica and London, 2004 SEA semester, 2005 Costa Rica, 2006 Tony Robbins, 2007 Hawaii.