JC's Take on Things

I have found it difficult to blog because there is too much fun to have as opposed to writing about the fun we've already had, but after 2 runs, too much sun and a rashed up belly from surfing, I'm ready for a day of writing, painting, music and perpetually playing sportcentres.

Today, my thoughts are with Mark and Charlotte who are delivering a baby as we speak. Yesterday, I finished a Stephen King book called Duma Key. It took me 2 years to read it. I bought it because the title had Duma in it. Duma was my dog that died. At the same time I finished the book here in Hawaii, Mark and Charlotte had to have their dog Grizzly put down back home. Pure sadness. I don't know that this is appropriate blog material, but the coincidence is too much. The book was about art manifesting into reality.

Now we anxiously await the arrival of beautiful Violet.

Tonight, we are off to a Luau. Lomi Lomi, poi, hula dancing, fire breathing, should be cool. But now I should go back to the beginning.

7 years ago, we made lists. Lists of lists. One of the lists was top spots to visit. Hawaii, Spain, Australia, and Disney Land were on both of our lists. We're usually busy with schedules all the time, but after having my shoulder rebuilt at the end of March all schedules were put on hold. We decided to go somewhere. We threw out a bunch of ideas from driving to and along the East Coast, to South Africa for the World Cup. Since I was at home with one arm, I researched. From the research, I discovered that Hawaii was an affordable option and Africa was not. I conintued to look into a Hawaiian Adventure and I pictured renting a cottage on the ocean and just chilling for the month. Krista did her research and found that Kauai was the Garden Island and would offer the most true Hawaiian Experience. We decided to commit. We knew that committing would be difficult and that we would end up missing things with friends and family back home, but life never takes a break. Aaron and Nicole's wedding, Sean and Amanda coming home, Mark and Char's baby, ultimate games, coaching soccer, our pets, our friends and fam....

But, we needed to do something as a family, our new family. The three of us have not really had a chance to hang out together yet. Krista and I got to travel the west coast for a month, years ago, and it really helped to shape our relationship. Now we wanted the same chance to spend time together as our new family. We knew Melody would love it here, but we were anxious for the difficulty in getting here. We also hoped everyone would understand what we were doing. I hope everyone gets to follow their dreams, because the effort is worth it. You get out of life what you put in.

So, that brings us to making arrangements, booking flights, apartment, vehicle, insurance... I was able to do it all from Krista's little pink notebook. The trip changed the more we looked into it. Instead of sitting on a beach all day, we decided to stay in a jungle with an ocean and moutain view and rent a jeep. We would do more exploring and activities instead of beach bumming. Luckily for us Sirius radio stock has done well.

I am still amazed that from my couch, I could hire someone to pick me up at my front door at 2am and drive me to the airport. Mike gave one word answers to my questions and soon reaized he just wanted to drive, which was fine with me so I could sleep. Airports are stressful and I was annoyed with all our luggage, but I knew I would be grateful with the stuff once we were there. I was also happy with the decision to not tour all the Hawaiian islands and just land In Oahu and fly to Kauai. (There are very few direct flights to Kauai).

There is a 6 hour time difference, which has been awesome. I get up early and go to bed early, which is new for me. We'll see if I can bring that home with me. So we went to bed at 6pm that first night in Oahu.

We only had til 430 the next day on Oahu, so we hired a driver to tour us to as many places as we could see in one day. We were supposed to have a small limo, but when we went down to the lobby, there was a massive stretch jobby. The lobby was full of military dudes and they were giving me the evil eye, like "Why do I have to go kill people and you get to cruise in that thing?" I also got a really short hair cut and I think the corporal may have thought that one of his soldiers was going AWOL. (The stewardess on the plane asked me if I was military.)

Scott Dang was our driver a super nice Korean who migrated to the island 17 years earlier. He said the small limo had a/c issues so we were driving around the second biggest limo on the island.

Oahu, is superbusy and touristy. Oh yeah, and beautiful. It's busy beacause people want to be there. Melody was a star. Japanese tourists taking pictures of her and she makes friends easily. People treat me much differently with my baby by my side.

I loved the Temple, the macadamian nuts, the beaches, the sun, and just cruising with surfing videos playing in the limo.

Then we flew in a little plane to Kauai.

I rented a jeep and the clerk upgraded us to the four door which has been a trip saver. We have had great luck, free upgrades all over, the plane, the limo, the jeep, the kayak. I found people are a mirror of yourself. Send out a positive vibe and you get slammed back in the face with positive radiation as if from the sun itself. No joke.

Sometimes I'm embarrassed that I have a degree in Geography because I get lost all the time. We found our apartment after only 13 wrong turns.

The apartment is perfect for us. Great location, great price, free amenities, fruit overflowing and falling from the trees and best of all free pets.(chickens, lizards and spiders). By the way, all dogs on this island are sedated. They are all so chilled it's weird. I'm used to our crazy pack of wild dogs back home and there are none like that here.

Krista's written about most of this stuff, so I'll try not to repeat too much. Basically, our plan was to tour the enitre island in the first 2 days and then narrow our focus to the spots that we want to see and do the most. The first tour to the north east was awesome and I've never felt like such a tourist. I want to video and photo everything. The next day was great as well. We made it to a remote beach, by chance. We were at the hottest part of the island, on the hottest day, at the hottest time. The beach sand really burned my feet, like one of those hot coal runs. I felt crazy vulnerable. My little baby is so pure white, I was simply in fear. We ate an uncomfortable lunch and ran from there. My biggest fear of coming to this island was a little baby sunburn. We learned from that experience and have had more fun at the beach since then. That hot-ass beach was freaking amazing though and we are going back this week.

We tried a different beach called Lydgate, which has boulders lined up to create a safe swimming spot for babies. Here, I took photos. I am really beginning to love taking photos. I thought I would enjoy videos more, but I'm finding, I'm more able to express myself through a camera more than with a pencil, a paintbrush, words, or video. It's also impossible to take a bad shot of Melody. Later that day, I bought a sweet ride and rod from walmart. I had to buy a licence for fishing and for my bicycle. I'm looking forward to riding and sticking a rod in the rivers and creeks around here.

The next day we attempted to summit our first waterfall with the baby in my backpack. It was intense. The bamboo grove was amazing and we really pushed. We hiked and climbed to where we found a german family. I scambled on my own from there for another 15 minutes and the climb just got more difficult. I committed to coming back on my own.

The next waterfall we saw was much easier to get to, we drove. There was a beautiful rainbow at the base of the waterfall and I had fun trying all the different features on my camera to try and capture the best shot. There are people making money in all sorts of ways here. At every tourist stop there is omeone selling something. At Wailua Falls there was an old hippy weaving baskets from the palm trees. People love being here so much, they make anything out of nothing and try to make a buck. You can climb a palm tree, knock down some coconuts, and crack em open for tourists to drink. You have to show the stomach rash to prove you were in the tree.

On our western trip, through the rockies, we have this memory of cruising through the rockies eating fresh roadside cherries, here we will always have the memory of cruising along the ocean eating fresh pineapple.

This brings us to the 4th of July, my first in America. I was amazed at how little patriotism there is. I have discovered that Canadians are much more patriotic than Americans. Americans don'thave the best rep in the world, but every American I have ever met has been awesome. They are down to earth, sincere and pretty much the opposite of the painted Hollywood stereotype.

We then visited Waimea Canyon. Whenever I'm around heights, the edge always calls me. I want to go over the cliff and get right into the geography, hopefully with a rope and harness. But this was justa sight-seeing trip. There is an outfitter here who will take you up the canyon and you can ride your bike down. It's a 12 mile downhill. Next time we go the west side of the island, I'm going to do my own tour down. I'm super stoked to try that.

It was this point that I wanted to do a couple things that we couldn't all do together. I'm not a golfer, but I read about a beautiful, easy and cheap course, so I gave it a shot. $9 for 9 holes. My shoulder held up well, I was happy about that. I ended up hooking up with a retired teacher and his younger replacement. We talked about the teaching scene on the island and a leave of absence from the NNDSB is a real possibilty in the future. Don't worry fam, we're not talking about this septmeber. Oh yeah, I almost killed my Hawaiian buddy Roland. Beacause of my shoulder, that has to be the reason because I used to be an awesome golfer, I developed a wicked slice. If I didn't yell f-o-u-r-, I would have nailed him. He actually had to duck, dodge, dive, and dodge my golf ball like a wrench.

The golf course was near a town called Koloa, which was where the Ultimate game was going to happen. I found an on-line ultimate group here in Kauai. They meet every wednesday at 7. I met some super cool people. There isn't a league here and I think most people would have played bare foot, but it rained, so most wore shoes or cleats. It started with 4 v 4, but people kept showing up. Not just people but families. Lots of people showed up in the rain to play and cheer. There was awesome spirit. Truly. It was fun at first, then it got chaotic with so many people in and out. Then they said lets play to seven. I connected with an older soccer player guy named Jim and we scored six in a row. My last grab was a flying one hander where I had to rotate matrix style through the air, land on my back, slide fifteen feet on my neck and roll into a summer sault, all the while hearing the cheers from the crowd. Through the whole slide, I just kept thinking how beautiful it was to play on real grass without crazy ankle snapping trenches like our sh**&ty North Bay field. I wanted to be invited back next week, so I figured I should let kids score some points. My competitive nature is never far from the surface. this week, I'm going to bring the 2pointer to Hawaii. I will be ready to return from the DL to join my team when I get home.

The next day, I was so happy to get a game of soccer under my belt. I had seen this beautiful beach front field and was dying to get a game on it. I stopped at a sports store and Manny told me about the game. I'm amazed they play indoor soccer here. The summer is the off season here, so it's all pick up, which is good for me. I met a bunch of people and within 5 minutes, I was invitedto tournament in Oahu. It's an old-timer tourney in august, so I can't make it, but it's nice to be asked. I'm old to play with college guys, but I'm a hot shot in the old timer league now. Life is perspective, I could be sad about being old with young guys or happy about being young with old guys. I'll take the latter. I love sports. I would have lots of friends already if we lived here, just because I play games.

We went to he beach again and this time I snorkelled. There were freaking fish everywhere. The people in the water had no clue. I grabbed my under water camera and took as much video as I could. That was awesome!

The whole spider deal was crazy. He was the isze of my hand. The little f*&ker shot me and wiggled his teeth. Die mofo die!!

We read about the Queen Baths. There have been a few things that have been difficult to do with the baby. We hike down this path and end up at an old lava flow, like 5 million year old lava flow, then there is a scary sign about 28 people drowning in the area because surprise waves will sneak up, knock you into the sea and KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! The sign left enough room to put lots more death markings. Krista turned around with the baby. I took a quick jaunt to the bath, took a couple of shots and turned back. There were locals hiking down a secret steep trail and were diving off rocks with crazy crashing waves. These locals reminded of the hills or the OC. The crazy waves only happen in winter, but with the baby in a known dangerous spot, you just have to do the right thing and be safe.

The next day we went back to Hanalei and I rented a kayak while Krista shopped. She's in shopping heaven:)I bought a little telescopic rod from walmart. There were two Hawaiian dudes, pulling up nets. They seemed anxious that I was fishing, but oh well as they say, there's many fish in the sea. I took lots of photos and tried fishing. The only thing I caught was a fmaily of three in a kayak. I saw a massive sea turtle and caught his big head on video. There were lots of people doing the stand up board paddling. It looks cool. I paddled the river to the ocean and just enjoyed being on the water. I was not impressed with my crummy lure selection that came in my $18 rod reel and tackle combo, but I was fishing. I saw a bunch of fish, but that was around one of the hawaiian dudes nets. Bubba burgers are awesome!

We've been eating really well. I've been trying as much as I can. Last night I grilled us Maco Shark. We've been eating sushi, mangoes, papaya, fish, eggplant...I'm looking forward to the all you can eat luau tonight. I've typed this whole blog through lunch and am ready for a snack, but one last post from yesterday.

We rented a surf board. We parked our stuff in front of a group of locals who were having aparty. We provided their entertainment. We should have charged them. The good news is my rebuilt shoulder rocks. I would have dealt with at least a dozen dislocations on this trip so far, but it is tight, sometimes too tight, but I can deal with that. Anyway, I kept trying to launch from the wrong place. I got slammed lots, but didn't quit. Later, I launched form another location and made it past the rollers and hung out with the other srufers, bobbing away. It's cool being on the other side of the rollers as you're about 2 stories from the top of the wave to the bottom,, but you just bob. I'd have to say that my board wasn't big enough and I'm talking about my Surf Board for you dirty-minded individuals. The lady in the store told me the bigger the board the more stable it is. Now I know what she meant. I didn't even really try to stand up. As soon as I pushed down the board flopped, so I hung on. I rode back to shore and was wonderfully slammed by a massive roller (massive in my mind anyway). It was fun to be under water, cool and collected, with the chaos of the wave and my board sloshing over head. A crazy wipeout, with no pain. Surfing is not skateboarding or snowboarding. I'm sure you could slam in a reef or get your own board in the head, but it's no road or snow rash. Well, actually I have a rash from lying on a sandy board, but oh well. I could see really getting into the sport with more time, a lesson, better equipment and a year of shoulder rehab under my belt.

Now, I'm going to check on baby Violet news, have a snack, write a tune called "The Termites Party", and maybe paint a scene. We have just under 2 weeks left and we have some cool stuff planned form here. I'm sure we'll keep y'all posted. Aloha and Mahalo!

PS Loved the World Cup. All of it. 330am games, missed calls, fouls, goals, drama, stress...I didn't predict anything right, but that's reality tv at its best.