Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Hawai'ian Tiger??

My company sent me to training in Virginia and then to Hawai'i to meet with my team out there. I got in on a truly red eye flight at 5:30 am Hawai'i time. I had been awake since 7 am Eastern time, so that was a lot of time without sleep, but since I only had a couple days to enjoy the island, I thought I'd better get on it. I took a quick hour long power nap, had the best pineapple of my life and got out to the beach.

I vegged around a bit, but with my pale Alaskan skin, I wasn't planning on getting a tan, so I slathered on some more sunblock and went down the beach to get some surfing lessons. Now, as I like to put it, I can swim to save my life, but I've never been a huge fan of the water. Going surfing has always been something I wanted to try but I was pretty nervous. The guy showed us how to do things like stand up on the board and how if you are about to get run over, you go under water so that you don't get hurt. Not a real inspiring start. Heh! In case anyone wants to know how to get up on a surfboard, you do a push up (you are laying on it paddling), then you put both knees on it, then you put your front foot forward and your back foot back and flat on the board. Then, you just bend your knees and keep your balance. Piece of cake.

Actually, it was pretty easy- more so than I thought it would be. It helps that Waikiki has 'mellow waves' that stay the same speed and my instructor would tell me which ones were good and then would give me a good shove to start. My first wave I only got up to my knees because I wanted to see how hard it was. Wasn't bad at all, so I just started going after that. You had to dodge around a whole lot of other newbies, so it was tough to avoid them all and still stay up. One of the times I had to jump off because of someone else I bumped my knee and it gimped me up for Sunday and Monday. It was totally worth it though. Here's just one picture of that- you can click on the link at the bottom of this post for all the pictures.



After surfing, I went back to the hotel for a shower and a nap, then headed down to the bar for a few drinks. The Mai Tais were delicious, but after the fourth one and no supper I was done for the night and went up to my room and, uh, went to sleep (aka passed out).

Sunday I got up at 5 am (my sense of time was all messed up) and called my buddy, who had tried to call me the night before but I didn't hear it. We set up a time to meet and went over to Duke's for brunch. It was really good. Duke was the guy who got surfing well known and in the Olympics and such. I'd attempt to spell his last name but it's a whole lot of vowels and I can't remember the order of them. After that, he drove me around the island in his wife's new red convertible Porsche (she turns 40 this year so he bought it for her to cheer her up- heh!). It was great- he knew all the best places to stop to take pictures. He took me to Magnum PI's house! Other than the surfing that was definitely the highlight of my time in Hawai'i. Hee! Not everyone knows where the house is and you can only see it when you go up the beach a ways- then you can see it from the back. It's not nearly as big as it looks on TV, and it's really rundown for some reason. I think it's weird because it's on a prime piece of beach front, so you think someone would be living in it. Anyway, here's a picture of Magnum's cottage. This is mainly his balcony that you're looking at.



As we were driving back to his place, we saw a boar that someone had killed on the interior of the island. I thought that was cool, so here's a picture of that. If you look close you can see the big dog under it that must have helped take it down.



We chilled on the beach near his place until the rain came back (it rained off and on all day) and we went back to his place. We didn't see Mathew Fox (the main character from Lost) but they've seen him out there a few times with his wife and kids. He lives up the road from them.

Monday and Tuesday I worked and was all sunburnt from the car ride (the dumb clouds tricked me- and I know better!) so that's pretty much all I did. I did see them feed the penguins that were in one of the gardens in my hotel's complex. Don't worry, they're African penguins, so they like the heat. Here's a picture of them:



Here's a link to the rest of the pictures so that this doesn't get too crazy. I pared it down to only 39 pictures, not counting the surfing ones, so it's not too crazy.If you click this link and then hit 'View as slideshow' on the right, it will scroll through all the pictures in a big size.

I have to say that I thought it was really pretty, but with how much housing and a lot of things cost and not having more than one season, I'd never want to live there. I'll take the 49th state over the 50th any day of the week. :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way too nice for April! The beach and ocean look beautiful. Did you see the blowhole? A.S.

Auburn Tiger said...

Yeah, it was nice weather. And then I came back to fresh snow. LOL! I did see the blowhole- can't remember where it was- I had a fever and felt like crap the day we drove around so I have no clue where anything was i reference to the island. LOL!