The Art of jhorsley3

So since Hawaii is 3 hours behind Seattle I was up bright and early at 6am! Go me! It was really nice, I got to watch the sun rise, play on the beach in the morning air before it got super hot and generally wake myself up with nature. The mornings on this island are so incredibly beautiful. The water and the trees, man I could get use to this. Can you tell it’s my first time here?

After spending about 30 minutes trying to wake Kaylie up we all went down to the beach that’s in front of our room to play in the sand. We went and got our toes in the sand and played in the water, had some laughs and saw some awesome fish in the water. There is this cool reef type thing that Kaylie and Kamren went up on to get a picture taken. Unbeknownst to them there was a blow hole in the middle of it. I saw what it was and decided to not say anything and just shoot away. See the image (click on it) to the right to see the results…needless to say then got soaked from it. I wanted to go up on it, but never got the chance because I’m a big fat pussy sometimes. That and by the time I had put the camera down and was heading out there, they were off and playing in the water. Sadly I was ok with this because it looked all slimy and gross…Ok, back to pretending to be a man.

We rented a 2011 red 4 door Jeep Wrangler for this trip and holy shit is this thing fun to drive. First thing we did was take the top off so we could be AWESOME in a Jeep with the top off…just like everyone else with a Jeep here with the top off. I swear it’s probably the most popular vehicle here. Around 9:30am or so we headed out for a day of ADVENTURE TIME! (Sadly, not as adventurous as the cartoon) With our hair blowing in the wind (I grew my out to butt rocker length for this Jeep ride) we arrived at our first awesome Hawaiian destination: Costco.

You may laugh but a Costco in Hawaii is different from a Costco at home. First they sell liquor by the GALLON. I swear you could buy a gallon of Patron for like $25 or some shit. Cheap and lots of it too! Second they had Hawaiian things like surf boards, chocolate covered macadamia nuts and Kona coffee in large packs for the same price it is in small packs back home. I think to strangest thing I saw at Costco was ALL THE CHICKENS in the parking lot! Actually, ALL over the island there are chickens! Roosters, hens and baby chicks! They roam free wherever they want, it’s insane! Supposedly it’s either from some settlers in the 1800′s bringing them over or from Hurricane Iniki in 1992 destroying all the chicken farms and no one ever rebuilding them. Either way there where a ton of chickens everywhere and all I could think of was the game Fables where you can punt chickens and gain the title of Chicken Chaser and this made me happy.

After punting a few chickens in the Costco parking lot (just kidding Peta) we hopped back in our Jeep of awesome and headed out to find some brunch. We stopped at this little Hawaiian Café that looked awesome. They had this breakfast special that was Polynesian sausage, ham, smoked salmon, hollandaise sauce, friend rice and a corn muffin that sounded delicious. I ordered it along with a mocha and sat and waited for it to come…then the waitress came to me to inform me that they were out of the special and I needed to order something else. Dammit. I really wanted that smoked salmon, too. I ended up getting this spinach egg and bacon wrap that was pretty good but I was a little sad that I did not get my special. Overall it was an ok breakfast, not as great as we thought it would be but a good light way to start the day.

Stepping out of the restaurant we walked over to this grass patch that felt like we were standing on padded carpet. It was amazing! To the touch it was rough but it had bounce like a cushion. Mixed within this carpet grass was some, what Trish called Japanese Sleeping grass. Turns out its called Mimosa Pudica, which is ironic because we just drank some mimosas. It was awesome because you touched it and the leaves closed up like you just told it a bad joke and it was trying to hide its shame from you. Part of me wants to get some of this on my desk at work…then again I don’t care to remember to water it to keep it alive.

Back in out Jeep of Awesome and on our adventure of the day we headed out to find something awesome. We ended up turning into this Russian Park because, well it’s a Russian park in Hawaii and I wanted to see what it was. Turns out it was just a little park BUT it had an off road trial at the end of it that headed down to the beach.

“Come on Jeep, you can’t handle” The trail spoke to the Jeep.

“I’m a Jeep motha fucka! I can take anything you throw at me! You see these tires? This suspension? This roll cage? This crazy dude behind the wheel? BRING IT!!” The Jeep yelled back like it was Patrick Warburton.

“ok, don’t say I didn’t warn you! This trail isn’t for some pussy from off the island!” The trail barked back.

“Pussy? I’ll show you a pussy!” And the Jeep then took off in a blaze of glory.

We hit the trail hard. I blazed through the turns and hit every pot hole I could. Possible took the turns a little too fast when the tires spun and the ass of the Jeep spun around. The wheels gripped to the trail like a hooker to a $50. We went through the turns, the bumps and the holes fast and hard, made this Jeep earn it’s name.

“Who’s the pussy not trail!” The jeep barked at the trail as its tires slammed through a dirt hole and out again.

“Yeah, you are doing fine now, but what are you going to do about the drop off to the beach in front of you?” The trail said sarcastically back.

“Oh shit!!!” The Jeep stopped as suddenly as it started, nearly inches from a drop off that would off put itself and its passengers in the sand next to 4 foot waves slamming against us.

“That was close…uh hey guys why don’t you get out and check out that beach.” The Jeep told us passengers as if everything it just did was on purpose.

We all got out and walked down the beach, a little confused that the Jeep was talking to us. Never the less we went down to this area where the waves where about 4-6 feet high and the sand was awesome. I did not go in the water here because…well I have this irrational fear of drowning still. I’m working on it and plan to immerse myself in the ocean before I leave. It was pretty awesome watching Kamren in the water because he was riding the waves back into the beach. Honestly, I was jealous I wasn’t doing the same thing. I told myself it was because I wanted to stay dry since we were still driving around, but the real reason was I was scared like a little girl. Actually, I’ve seen little girls who are less scared of the water.

A decision was made to drive up the Waimea Canyon to see what sort of vista we could find. And since we were in a Jeep we thought this would be AWESOME! But first, we stopped at some little shops to see what sort of interesting things we could find. We stopped at one and bought Kaylie a dress to wear, since we was covered in water from our last stop, and then headed down to the next store that sold lots of shells and interesting shit like that.

Instantly walking in we knew the owners where not from Hawaii, or anywhere in the United States. The female was wrapped in a head dress and they had accents like people from Iraq…because they WHERE in fact from Iraq. The owner was an incredibly nice guy who cut us a great deal on what we bought. We got Kaylie another awesome blue dress for the Luau we are going to on Wednesday, we got the girls this awesome pink shell chandelier for their room and a bunch of other neat little nik-naks and shit. I even got a carved 2 foot surfboard with the Hawaiian Islands on them. It was pretty awesome.

We ended up finding out some interesting information about the store owner AFTER we left and bought our things. Like how he used to make deliveries to the missile base but after 9/11 he was no longer allowed to for “some reason”. He just got out of prison for tax evasion. The government thinks he is a sleeper cell. There are several times where there will be black vehicles parked across the street watching his facility. On more than one occasion there have been people leaving his store at 2 or 3 am. So apparently we bought a bunch of awesome stuff from a terrorist. Hey, they gotta pay their bills too, right? This actually gave me the creeps a little, if I’m being honest. I almost took everything back but then I thought A) there is no proof B) he was really nice and C) I got a really good deal dammit. Oh well, moving along the day.

So we headed back up on our awesome trip up the awesome Waimea Canyon. The roads where steep and super winding, which made having the Jeep that much better. About a quarter of the way up we had to stop because there where wild horses in the middle of the road. Three of them to be exact. Kamren wanted to jump on ones back and ride it…but I told him this would me a very bad idea. Sometimes we have to tell him what normal people would see as common knowledge so he doesn’t hurt himself. The canyon itself was pretty breathtaking in all. Not as majestic as the Grand Canyon, but still amazing. There was a lot of greenery all over the place and when you looked WAAAAAAY down in the canyon you could see a house. Some motha fucka lived down in there. I wonder how long his drive was to get milk?

The further we went up the canyon the colder it got. By the time we reached the top vista it was raining. This wouldn’t have been a problem except if you were paying attention earlier you would remember that we took the top off the Jeep and LEFT IT at the hotel. Well, fuck it, we have already come this far. Park and run bitches! Park and run! We ran to the top of the vista, posed for our pictures (which you can’t even tell it’s raining in) and ran back down in the rain to the Jeep. We were gone MAYBE five minutes and the whole front of the Jeep was soaked. My driver’s seat was water logged so my ass got pretty wet when I sat back down. We toweled it off with Kamren’s t-shirt and high tailed it out of there.

On the way down I may have been driving a little fast, on purpose. I was having fun with it. Kaylie was NOT liking it and kept yelling at me to slow down. I told her “Beep beep where in a Jeep! Enjoy the ride!” It was pretty awesome if you ask me! I may have spun the tires a little and screeched around a few turns…but nothing TOO outlandish, I mean I’m not crazy, right?

At some point on the way up or down, I forget, one of the straps on Kaylie’s dress ripped off so on the way back we stopped back at the place we bought it to exchange it. The lady was so nice and let us pick out something else. It took about an hour but Kaylie and I FINALLY picked a replacement outfit for her that was SO much more awesome than the original dress she had. The lady was so awesome that Trish ended up talking with her enough to exchange facebook, phone numbers and emails as well as get an entire bag of free shit for us to take home! It’s awesome to make friends that own stores and can give you free shit! I think the shop owner was just happy that we were nice to her about the ripped dress. She had mentioned usually people were assholes and just yelled when that happened. She felt bad that she even gave Kaylie a free pair of shoes to go with her new outfit.

After this we went to a Hawaiian BBQ place and had authentic Hawaiian friend Mahi Mahi and pork…wait…this was just a cheap mall food place! It was good though. Nothing really traditional about it, it was Hawaii’s equivalent of a mom and pop owned teriyaki joint in Washington. Kaylie of course order a BBQ pork sandwich and hated it. It’s still in our fridge here in case someone wants it, but I doubt anyone will.

That concludes this day, check the photo gallery below and come back tomorrow when I talk about our nature hike, train ride and horrible experience at a shitty expensive resuraunt.

Love and peace bitches, love and peace!