I’ve got everybody’s Maui photos online now.

To Shane, Tori & Nadine: Keep in mind guys that I shrunk them down to 1024×768 so they wouldn’t take up too much room on my server. The ones on the DVDs I’ll be handing out soon will be full size.

Nadine



Shane



Tori



Dane

Quickie video of a fire dancer that I saw about an hour or so before the sun came up. She was spectactular, and by far the best I had seen the entire trip.

This fits me to a T. It’s too bad that I don’t have more faith in humanity — othwise I’d be a complete Anarchist.

You are a Social Conservative (38% permissive) and an… Economic Moderate (50% permissive) You are best described as a:Centrist Political Test

I’m sitting in the living room of the biggest cheap hotel room I’ve ever had the pleasure of renting. Cameron and Natalie, a couple friends of mine, just got married a couple days ago here on the island, and several of us from the group of friends that know them decided to make a full blown vacation out of the trip over here. I was charged with booking the flight, and found a great deal on the airfare, hotel and a rental car for seven days. The whole thing ended up only costing us a little over six-hundred for the week, so I was expecting our two bedroom hotel stay to be a cramped single bathroom dive a mile from the beach… that was far from what we actually got. I was shocked to open our door to a full kitchen, two full bedrooms, a living room, a balcony and a bathroom for each bedroom. We’ve saved a ton by buying groceries and cooking for ourselves.
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Cam & Nat’s wedding had cost them so much to do here in Maui that they couldn’t afford a photographer — they are very expensive on the islands — so they asked me to pretend I know what I’m doing and document the event. Everything was done with an old 35mm camera that I own, and since it’s litterally been years since I’ve used it, I felt very uncomfortable with it. I’m sending it in for processing in a couple days; I hope everything come out all right.

Their ceremony went very well, but the reception had a few hiccoughs. No family has no drama.
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Yesterday we took the infamous road to Hana. It was truly the most beautiful drive I’ve ever been on. I had so much fun stopping with my friends every 20 minutes to see the sights. It took us twelve hours to make the journey.

We stopped at twin falls, and a couple of us jumped from the top of the one on the left; I couldn’t because of my foot injury. Normally I would care, but I had just done the photography for the wedding the day before, and I have a trip-of-a-lifetime through Europe in a week… so no dice.

We stopped in Hana, which has absolutely nothing interesting going on at four in the afternoon on Sunday.

We stopped at the Seven Sacred Pools, known to the locals as Pools of O’heo, and did a little swimming in the rain. It was the most relaxing, beautiful and, oddly enough, spiritual places I’ve ever been to. In movies you always see images of paradise; I’ve always wanted to see it for myself. I found it in the Pools of O’heo. An experience that I absolutely will never forget for the rest of my life.

On the walk back from the pools to the car (stayed until dark) we came accross a small herd of cattle. They were very disturbed by us walking silently back and were probably startled by not noticing us until we were nearly on top of them. A large calf actually decided to charge at Nadine and I. She freaked and ran. Bad idea. The young cow started to follow her. I got her to walk calmly and distracted it enough to hold his attention.

Damn thing charged again — he musta been pissed I ate his cousin for lunch. I didn’t know what to do except grunt really loudly, which scared the crap out of it and he turned tail and ran back to the herd. The two girls were visibly freaked out by the cows and will probably never look at them the same way.

After that came the drive through the rental car restricted area. We were forbidden by our rental car contract to drive in two areas; this was one of them. When we picked up our Grand Am at the rental agency they actually tried to talk us into an SUV. The main selling point was that we could navigate these roads safely and not breach the rental contract.

Fearing that this would be a very bad dirt road with cliffs on either side the whole way I was preparing for a very long drive back. To quote Nadine, “What the hell…? This road is better than 7th street in Long Beach!” We got back in a decent ammount of time, and didn’t have any problems doing it. Though it’s litterally a one lane road where you have to use a turn out to get by a car comming the opposite way, if you ever go to Hana, don’t worry about the do not drive zone that your rental car agency warns you about.
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Tomorrow we have chartered a snorkel/scuba trip for the morning and afternoon. I hope things go as well as they did yesterday.

Will post video and photos of trip later.

Well, it’s finally happened. Twenty-seven years into my life I finally had to go to an emergency room for an injury. After all the rock climbing, backpacking and everything else that I do, I get hurt by my surfboard on the lamest wave ever.

My sister was in town and she’s wanted to learn to surf for years now, and so I figured that since it was small out, it’d be the perfect time to take her. Come to find out she’s still afraid of the waves (can’t believe she’s related to me sometimes), and didn’t even want to be in the water without a surfboard. So, she decided to sit out for a bit and watch me catch a few of the baby curls on my 9′6″ board — I have a smaller 7′6″ board as well.

For some reason I didn’t get the board aligned quickly enough and I started pearling (short for pearl diving, which means that the front of the board was dipping into the water, which is baaad), and stepped back for added control, slipped off over the front of the board (still don’t know how I managed that if I was falling off the back), and dove as low as possible so as to not hit my head on the board. As the board was pushed over me I felt the fin hit my right foot, but didn’t feel any pain whatsoever, which worried me. I surfaced, and rolled onto my back to look at my foot. I had a 1-1/2″ gash on the bottom side just below the callous pad for my big toe… the blood was gushing out. I was shark bait.

I headed into shore and my sister sacrificed her shirt to my cause. We got the boards up to PCH and I waited as she brought the car around. I was a little out of it, trying to get the bleeding to stop, and couldn’t think of where the nearest hospital was, I figured it wasn’t enough of an emergency to call 911, so I called 411. Don’t ever call 411 for directions to the nearest hospital. They are absolutely no help, and can’t even connect you to the nearest one. I ended up calling 911, and the dispatcher connected me to the nearest fire department which gave me perfect directions to the hospital down the street.

While trying to walk into the emergency room, I left a trail of bloody footprints even through the shirt that was wrapped around my foot. Still not feeling a lot of pain I filled out the paperwork and requested a towel so I wouldn’t bleed all over the waiting room, they took me in the back and wrapped it better, which actually stopped the bleeding. As they were wrapping it though I could literally see my heart beat in the blood gushes. It was kind of cool, I’d only read about that in all the first aid classes I’ve had to take.

I only waited about 20 minutes before they had me in the back, at which point my sister thought to use her phone camera to get my picture — which prompted me to take the photos you see here. Five stitches later, I was on my way home.

The only thing I regret right now is the tetanus shot I let them give me. My arm is killing me, and I have a really sore throat and my neck muscles are really stiff. My last shot was seven years ago, and should have covered me for another three years, but because of the amount of sand I got into the wound the doctor and I decided it would be better to be on the safe side with it.

So, now I’m lying on my Dad’s couch bored out of my mind, but sick enough to not have the concentration level needed to do work. Oh well.