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Casa de Bender> travel> Hawaii, April 2008

Surf's Up!

Hawaii, April 2008

2008-04-23 22:01 — Second full day on the island is winding down. Today was hotter than yesterday, about 90 I think. We spent all day Monday traveling and easting crappy airport food. Yesterday we ent grocery shopping and then laid around in the sun. Today was mostly just laying around in the sun. Shel wanted to hit a beach early in the day, but decided it was too hot by lunch. She was probably right too. Switching from 45 in Boise to 90 here takes some getting used to.

We just got back from dinner at Roy's. It was delicious. Shel had the Chef's tasting menu with paired wines. I had a huge piece of tuna. We both had the pineapple upside down cake for desert. The people watching was pretty good too. We saw at least three couples doing the crazy Japanese trick of taking pictures of their dinner. Most interesting to me was that only one couple was Japanese. There was also a lady with a crazy hyper tan. She was as tan as the old roommate in /There's Something About Mary/.

2008-04-24 — Just finished a tasty dinner of tuna, rice and veggies that we cooked on the bbq. The tuna turned out pretty tasty, but like the mahi mahi I cooked acouple of nights ago, I'd credit it more to the quality of the fish than the perparation.

Shel had her first surfing lession today. She was up and riding out waves in pretty short order. He instructor, Charlie (Charlie don't surf!), was a drippy burnout, but seemed to be fairly good at teaching the basics. Shel was a little miffed that he couldn't tell her how to analitically judge which waves were worth paddling after and which weren't. He said "You just know." which fit pretty well with some of the ideas in the /On Intelligence/ book I just finished.

2008-04-27 21:05 — Lazy Sunday is almost over. Shel and I took it pretty easy today. She was feeling pretty wiped out from surfing yesterday and getting a lot of sun. On Friday we ventured out to Secret Beach which is down a steep trail at the end of an unmarked road just past Kilauea Lighthouse. It was a pretty beach and practically empty. The surf was way up while we were there, but there was one guy out surfing it.

Yesterday Shel took another surfing lesson with Charlie. We went down to Wailua where there is a big beach at the river mouth with some pretty nice waves. Shel caught quite a few more waves than she did the first time out. I snapped a couple of decent pictures to prove it.

Today we layed around and read until early afternoon. Shel finally started getting restless around one, so we set out in search of food. After eating we went to Lihue and saw a movie (the new Jackie Chan & Jet Li one).

2008-04-29 21:16 — Another couple of days on the island have slipped by. Yesterday we wnet down to Poipu Beach and Sheley did some snorkeling. I wanted to go in, but the head cold/allergies that I've been having didn't seem like they would be fun. God knows I have a hard enough time keeping my wits in the water without actually having physical difficulety breathing. We had a Puka Dog for lunch and it was pretty damn tasty. They are alittle overpriced, but everything geared towards tourists is over here. We had some good ice cream at Lambert's on the way back home too. Last night we had dinner at a really good Italian restraunt. Apparently Lauray and Judge Kerrick both told Shel about it. It's hidden in a residential neighborhood behind the main beach in Poipu, and apparently doesn't advertise.

Today Shel went on a two tank dive. She said that she saw a lot of turtles, but that the sea was really rough for the whole trip. I slept late and layed around on my butt. Just a little before sundown we took a drive out to the extreme west end of the island to see the sunset. There's a park with a huge sugar sand beach past the Barking Sands complex. There was an unmarked turnoff and about two and a half miles of poorly graded dirt road to get there. The waves and beach were pretty impressive once we made it all the way out there though. We saw a guy propose to his girlfriend a hundred yards or so down the beach. Shelley seemed to think it was pretty sweet.

2008-04-30 20:58 — Did almost nothing today and enjoyed every minute of it.

2008-05-01 21:19 — We spent most of the day today in search of the perfect wave. After waiting 45 miuntes for the local surf shop to open (30 of them after the time the door said they'd open), we drove on down the road secure in the knowledge that there would be more surf shops. We headed for the beach at Wailua where Shel had her last lession with Charlie. We found a surf shop and rented a board. As a side note, this seems like a possible way to make decient money on the island if only you could keep the out of towners comeing to you. The rent was $20/day or $75/week for a board that retails for about $350. Obviously it wouldn't take too long (just over a month) to pay off the initial invenstment in the board. Anyway, with board strapped to the roof we headed back to the Wailua river mouth beach. The tide and surf were both much higher than they were the last time we were down there. Shel tried for at least an hour and half to catch a wave, but it wasn't to be. She kept getting hammered just trying the paddle out. I got on the board and messed around for a littel while just to see what it was like and it was brutal. We tried another beach on the other side of Ka'paa, but the surf was even higher there. We hung out and watched some locals surf for a while though which was pretty neat.

On the way back to the West side of the island we stopped for lunch at Scotty's BBQ which turned out to be very tasty. We also stopped at a fabric store Shel had wanted to visit wher eshe found some stuff to make baby gifts for some of her friends.

2008-05-04 20:00 — On Friday we went driving around a bit. We decided to see what was down some of the side roads we had never taken. We saw two waterfalls (and I took pictures for mom). We also saw a lot of coffee bushes. Other than that we didn't see much different; just boring old gree mountains, blue sky and big waves. :) We went to the museum in Lihui. It was mostly like the Idaho Hisotry Museum, a lot of random old stuff that seemed cool to the people who donated it or the grad students who were doing the curation. It was fairly obvious that all the money for the museum came from rich old white people because that was mostly the focus of the exhibits.

Saturday was a lazy day. Mostly just lounged round and read books.

Today we did some shopping in Koloa and went to the beach at Poipu again. Shel got in a did some snorkeling. I wussed out again with the swell and waves looking too bumpy for my delicate constitution. We cam home early in the afternoon and did some more reading/sleeping. Tomorrow's our last really full day here. We don't leave until late Tuesday, but with no hotel and showere we will probably not do too much active aventuring. Hopefully we will find time to do some cool stuff tomorrow.

2008-05-05 20:58 — Another mostly lazy day. Shel had a conference call for work at 11, so that pretty much blew the morning. After that we layed around at the pool and read more books. We celebrated Cinco de Mayo with some fish tacos for dinner.

Tomorrow we'll pack and then dink around the island in the rental car for most of the day before getting on the plane and flying all night. 2008-05-06 20:26 — Sitting in the airport waiting for our flight. We spent the day driving east (and north) and piddling around in stores and galleries. We made it all the way to the nort east end of "da road", so between today and the trip we took out to Po'lohani (?sp?) we covered the entire main highway from one end to the other.

I'm not really looking forward to the long flight or going back to work, but I guess it's time. Oh to be a .com millionare with nothing better to do thatn hack on open source code from exotic locales. I read an essay by a guy in _Beautiful Code_ about his time spent working on a gpg web mail client while in South America and Tibet. Sounds pretty rough.


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