Applications Needed

Another weekend in Honolulu endlessly wandering up and down the streets waiting with mainland visitors and Japanese tourists at street corners waiting for the lights to change, I walked along the sidewalk by the beach looking for a reason to snap a picture.

I had already found a really nice looking chopper outside a restaurant on Kuhio street and quickly snapped a shot while trying not to appear too "touristy". The hog was probably a rental but still was an attention grabber and thought of Boudreau covered up in the garage back home in 30 something degree weather.

As I arrived at the beach, I thought about maybe taking pictures of the homeless guy digging through the trash or possibly of some other social statement of life's injustices and even maybe the ever present chess players at the covered picnic tables but nothing really got my attention until I looked out across the beach.

You know, some of us do NOT have much room to talk (I'm including myself here) when it comes to physiques but for crying out loud, we DO have some idea of what's appropriate and what's not. Well, here it is. There are just some things you ought to have to fill out an application for and this is one of them. Hey, even charge a fee or license ($ 200 at least) to wear one of those things and an extra hundred bucks if your gut covers it up. What's fair is fair!

Speedo

That's just wrong on so many different levels.

Whale of a Weekend on Maui !

What a weekend! Friday afternoon, I changed into shorts and Crocs at the office and headed for the airport for a quick flight to Maui.

After a night on my friends, Don & Rachel's couch, we boarded their boat, the Maui Diamond II and headed out for Molokini Crater. It was a slow ride, watching out for and seeing whale spouts at a distance.

Arriving and mooring at the extinct volcano, we did a couple of dives with divemaster Kat and a Canadian man and his two teenage sons. Kat knows her stuff and was the first to spot things like octopus, white tip reef sharks, eels and many indigenous species of fish. Just two weeks before, Darlene had been with me out here and am sorry she was not able to witness this with me.

On the way back, we stopped a few times hoping to spot a whale up close. On the third stop, we found a mother whale, her escort and a two ton bouncing bundle of joy calf. We were all just blown away as the trio came closer and closer to the 40 foot boat. I'm sure they could have flipped us if they had wanted to but swam under us then circled the boat several times driving us all wild with our cameras. After entertaining us for probably 20 minutes, they moved on. We had been out quite a while so Captain Don brought us back in to Maalaea Harbor.

That afternoon, a few of us went on for the third dive of the day out near mile marker 14 west bound toward Lahaina. We dropped anchor into 40 foot water and soon found Manta rays all over us. At one point someone said they counted 10 in sight swimming around and over us, banking like stealth fighter planes. The largest had to have had a wing span of 10 to 12 feet across. The were almost as amazing as the whales.

I believe this had to be the most memorable dive day I've ever been on. I spent Sunday relaxing and watching people in the middle of enjoying their 3 day weekend.

Banzai Pipeline..2008 Backdoor Shootout

Saturday night, I put Ms Darlene on a plane in Honolulu headed for New Orleans. She's been with me from the get-go since flying in here on Christmas day so I'll miss having her around. She's been a jewel at finding deals on hotel rooms and reasonably priced joints to eat in. Were it not for some chain restaurants, the best food here would be the after-taste you had in your mouth from the last meal on the mainland.

She usually spent the day out on the beach and parks watching people and shopping (not much buying) while I fought traffic sometimes for an hour and a half each day to and from work. To us, the attitude, culture and ambiance of Honolulu and Oahu are entirely different from Maui.

Yesterday, we went out on the North Shore to the Banzai Pipeline and watched the 2008 Backdoor Shootout . The sand was very loose so I dug my tripod in and squeezed off a hundred or more shots. Here I was with a pretty decent camera but felt oh so small when the pros came out with those big nasty Canon lens that made mine look like a dime store cheapy.







The waves were thundering, the sun was bright and there was a modest crowd there on the beach to watch as jet skis / wave runners waited to tow the surfers if necessary.

( You can click on the pictures for a larger view )

Although the waves were not the legendary 30 footers, many were at least 20 feet.

Just when we decided to leave, Darlene looked over at the BodyGlove tent and lo and behold, David Hasselhoff was there getting his beauty struck with the local girls and they were all over him like flies a dead fish on the beach. He's the guy who was on Knight Rider and Bay Watch .

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hasselhoff - you remember the red bathing suits).







After some of the commotion eased a bit and the girls stopped accosting the man, and the Hoff sauntered down the beach to where the news and camera people were hanging out.

We left shortly after and was headed out when we ran face to face with him and Darlene thought it would be a wonderful idea to get a picture taken with him, so she hit him up as he came out the gate. He mumbled "yes" and so fired off a couple of shots of him and Ms Darlene.

The whole encounter probably lasted no more than 10 seconds and realizing Mr. Hasselhoff had more pressing things on his mind, we thanked him and dismissed ourselves as he went his way and we went ours.

That's it from this rock in the Pacific.

Happy New Year!!!.....Honolulu style

I love this time of the year, especially when you get a weekend off, work one day then get another day off (New Year's day) then work 3 more for a weekend again. Super!

Ms Darlene and I originally had 8:30 p.m. reservations at Buca Di Beppo but the more we thought about it, we decided that was a bit late to be eating so we waited for an hour (groan) at the Cheesecake Factory for a really surprisingly great meal.


After dinner, we took a stroll and sat in rocking chairs on hotel patios on the beach.

A Honolulu fireworks display was scheduled for 9:15 but we were in no mood to get into a car/traffic so we went back to the hotel room. Although we were at least a half mile from Diamond Head, we were able to see a really neat fireworks show from our window in the 15th floor.



Ooooooh.......ahhhhhhhh.........wow.


We had hoped that New Years Day would have more spectacular waves out at Banzai Pipeline but we arrived to find hardly any surfers in the water. Perhaps next week.