Island Life

Ah, O'ahu!

After a week of working and playing on this island, I'm ready to stick my stuff on a ship and live here. The Pacific is warm, the skies are blue, the air is perfect, the people are kind and hospitable. Everything is beautiful here. It smells like orchids and food. There are lush, green mountains and heavy, rolling surf. There is the international city of Honolulu, and the backcountries and fields of pineapple and macedamia. There are lagoons, waterfalls, craters and incredible glistening emerald foliage.


Oh, and the MEN! This is a photo I found elsewhere on the web, but this is a rather fine example of some of the hunky Hawaiian men on the island. Big, brown and smiling, some with tattoos, some with long hair, some with surfboards. I like my men with a bit of heft on them, and a lot of the men here do have that. The women are gorgeous too, even when heavy, and the island is teeming with cute little Japanese girls. Japanese culture is huge in O'ahu, particularly in the city. It's like a little Tokyo. Many public signs are written in English and Japanese.

I found it very interesting to be in the Pacific Rim where so many Asian cultures are.

Above is a Bird of Paradise flower, next is the garden of a macedemia nut farm.

We installed a Sony Shop in the CompUSA store in Honolulu. Our boss arranged for us to have 3 days off towards the end, but unfortunately our fixtures were delivered late and we only had 2. But we did manage to drive around the entire island, seeing the city, the rainforest-like windward side with its moist low clouds, and the drier leeward side with clear skies and cactus.



Not sure what these little black lumps are. Whatever they are, they had a fringe of "legs" around their perimeter. They looked like some kind of round starfish or spineless urchin. Or, a squidbilly!








Surfer at the Turtle Bay Resort. We did get some ocean time in. The waters here were very much like our home in south Florida, very blue and warm. Of course there isn't much surfing in Florida. Not like this kind, anyway.

















Sunset at Turtle Bay Resort.











Our first arrival at Sandy Beach had some pretty serious waves coming in. While watching natives placidly lolling about on surfboards in the calmer section, Matt dove head first into the roughest section of the water onto an oncoming wave and received the spatula treatment. He was pressed into a roiling mess of sand and rocks that left him bloody. The lifeguards then promptly started sticking warning signs along the beach. One mentioned how this beach had the notorious distinction of providing the most neck and back injuries on the island. As Matt was getting some gauze pads from another lifeguard (a young, rippling, brown stud of Polynesian descent), I noticed a small flowery memorial at the foot of the lifeguard stand commemorating the death of someone who most probably lost his life to this beach.

So I guess Matt's lucky he didn't break his neck or end up in worse circumstances!



A fallen red leaf provides the wearer with a new prosthesis.














Claiming the best Mai Tai's on the island, Turtle Bay Resort is a peaceful north shore hotel paradise with a pool and outside bar overlooking surfers and sunsets. We stayed in Waikiki, which is very much like South Beach....thronged with tourists and tacky tourist shops stuffed with plastic shittery. But in Turtle Bay there was little of that. Matt used to be stationed at Pearl Harbor while he was in the Navy, and Turtle Bay was one of his favorite haunts.












This is overlooking the mountains of Maui. We flew out from Honulu during the afternoon with a stopover in Maui before we flew to Los Angeles. Don't ever get a double Mai Tai at the Maui airport. It's a rip off. You get a huge glass filled with ice and nary a buzz. We wanted to sleep on the place, dammit, and due to a weak yet expensive drink and uncomfortable seats, we got nary a "z".




If you get the chance to do it, go visit Hawaii. If I had my way I'd be living here for a few years.