Stellar and Amazing

EG just left for Bali today with his girlfriend for two weeks. So, I am living in this oceanfront house alone. We tried to have the family come over but they just couldn't take the time off right now.

You do understand what I mean by oceanfront, yeah? You know, one side of the house faces the yard and the street and neighborhood. Not that I ever saw the show but one of the boats used in 'Baywatch Hawaii' lives right across the street. It's all so Hawaii normal, with streetlights, telephone poles, electrical wires mailboxes, garbage cans, stray cats and cars all crowding little two lane Front street.

But then you walk in the house, or around the house through the yard, yard being a term meaning wild, overgrown, beautiful, lush ground with Starfruit trees, a giant Mango tree, an Avocado tree, Banana trees, ginger flowers, Hibiscus, Plumeria, Taro and all the other stuff that I don't know what it is crowding and jockeying for the abundant sun, the occasional rain and the limited but fertile soil. You have to cut it down constantly because if you don't, whatever it is that you use to cut it down with will be swallowed up in the brand new undergrowth and never seen again.

One way or another, you make your way to the back of the house. From the back deck (lanai in Hawaiian), you are ten feet from the Pacific. The only things in your way are a couple worn wooden steps and a hot tub.

The island of Lanai is right across the channel. The nice thing about Lanai is that you can't see any lights on it at night. Only a few hundred people live on it but that's on the other side.

This cove here is called Shark Pit. I love that name. There is a surf break three hundred yards out and there are surfers there from six a.m. through sunset. It's a gnarly break.

My goal is to someday be able to surf it. Otherwise, it is so dang inconvenient. I have to walk up the beach past zillion dollar a night hotels to get to the breakwall. Or, I have to drive south for 7 minutes in Danny's 69' Corvette Stingray with the surfboard strapped in the passenger side to try to surf at another great beginner spot.

It's pretty stellar and it's amazing how I get to live my life. I'm exquisitely lucky, and at the same time have made choices along the way that have contributed.

Oh, and since it's all west facing, great sunsets, too.

Paying by the minute

It's a good thing I have this internet cafe, surfing and that I found this author to distract me and mask missing my family.

The bums are becoming redundant, boring and less interesting by the day. The tourists are one giant jiggling mob of middle class extravagance. I want less and less to go into any of these shops.

That little deli I found is cool. I'll dig up a niche. I have to for survival. I think I'll even go grocery shopping after EG is gone.

Time goes by quickly when you pay by the minute.

Suddenly, these internet cafe expenses are enough to keep track of. Seems like I bought a couple hours a minute ago and now I am down to 7 minutes already.

I've never been to Greenwich but I'm pretty sure time doesn't work that way.

I'll need to try to force myself to get out in the surf as often as possible the next couple weeks. EG will be gone and keeping distracted will be more difficult.

I feel some deep low missing the family, the dog, home and friends. 3 minutes left. It's 7:30 a.m. and I'll go off to work here shortly. I might have another cup o' coffee first though.

Wow, that was interesting reading! Gotta go.

Sea to Ski

The absolute finish date for this project is Dec. 15th.

I just changed my return date with the airline from Nov. 2nd. to Dec. 17th. I'll go straight from sea to ski. It should be quite the radical transition.

I get a bit more tan everyday here and I am pretending that my hair is streaking blond. It's like eighty degrees everyday. High humidity. I'm sitting here with no shirt on in the cafe and it's normal. It's taking awhile to get used to the fact that I can go in most places wearing nothing more than wet shorts and slippers (flip-flops) or just shorts.

Plus, and maybe most importantly, I'm at sea level and I live at 8000 feet in Aspen and will immediately be going up to 12,000 feet at patrol.

It will be with a bunch of crusty, greyhaired ski patrollers. I am quite sure at least two of them in particular will refuse to accept that I have been working my butt off over here, often six days a week. They will just remember that I was in Hawaii while they set up the mountain.

So, they will have a bigger chip on their shoulders than usual. I completely expect to be loaded up with heavy stuff to carry up the ridge as soon as I get back. I'll be cold and tired and more than happy to do it.

My patrol director (boss) is cool and understands what I'm doing over here and has told me to expect getting shit from the guys all winter. It's mostly just in fun but . . .

The Inevitable Hawaiian Christmas

The song playing right now is some old lounge tune called, 'It's Cold Outside'

I guess I should brace myself for the inevitable Hawaiian Christmas to start up soon.

Santa in shorts.

Santa surfing.

Santa laying on the beach.

Santa flying across a Hawaiian sunset sky. He will be arcing a hard turn above the ocean. He will be being towed by a school of red nosed dolphins wearing leis as presents fall off the back of the sled.

Santa sailing.

Santa driving the tourist submarine.

Santa snorkeling with elves.

Santa scuba diving and delivering presents to eels and lobsters lounging on a bright impossibly colorful reef full of brilliant fish.

Santa . . . Well, I guess I got that idea across.

Coolness factor

It was actually almost cool enough last night to wear long pants! I wore my jeans. It was an exciting new way to dress.

Well, it most definitely is not Gaudi.

This coffee shop girl who has the long gnarled dreads and isn't particularly attractive and still doesn't acknowledge me (even though all the others do) just asked the guy showing her pictures of his trip to Europe if that was Gaudi. I looked over my shoulder at the picture and as far as I could tell it was a cathedral I saw in Florence. Even if it isn't the same one, it is full on catholic church architecture and nothing remotely similar to Gaudi. Whatever. She is not as cool as she thinks. She probably owns the place.

I've come back to EG's (Electrician Guy) place more than once to see him sitting alone watching some random old black and white movie. Not one he rented, but just the one that happens to be on. That's the last thing I would be watching and even the first thing I would be watching I don't watch.

He's an interesting character. For all his John Wayne bluster, he's really more than that. He has the ability to apologize. The other day at this different job site I went to with him, he warned me that it was behind schedule and everyone was all stressed out and being assholes. As soon as we walked in, this spike haired, both ear pierced foreman started going off on EG. He was yelling and insulting and belittling him even. EG just didn't say much and kept working.

I was more pissed and ready to fight than he was. I never said a word to this dick. Later as I was hanging a fan in a bathroom, he walked in. It was just him and me in the room. He said 'how's it going' or something to that effect. I didn't acknowlege him in any way. It was obvious.

EG apologized for him later, and for this other guy that also went off on both of us because we were on the carpet with shoes on. EG was saying that they both are usually really cool and nice guys.

Just goes against the grain of the manly EG image. I mean all this complimentarily.

Life as a Local

Checked the mailbox yesterday. I paid bills, went to the hardware store. I put out the recycle. Watered the plants. Cleaned the garage and then took a nap. After sweeping the Plumeria leaves and dropped flowers off the lanai, I waxed my board.

Yesterday, as I rode my bike toward the Westin, I ran into Dennis on the highway. Last week, as I paddled around and actually caught a few small waves, I ran into some guys I know from work out in the water.

At the places I frequent, like this internet cafe and a couple lunch spots, people are beginning to ask me if I live here. I say yes (you should always answer yes to this question regardless) and they drop the price of lunch, coffee and computer time.

I will be bringing home a surf-board and a scar on the back of my left hand. I will also be returning to Colorado with an improved financial situation.

I'm trying to be a better than complete rank beginner surfer before I get home.

And I am trying to learn how to blow a Conch shell, (What? I love it when I talk dirty!) At the Tuesday night dinner parties, dinner is announced by the blowing of the feudal horn. The Conch shell done right is very loud and environmentally appropriate, like drums on a distant torchlit beach. The environment being the back yard of Bunt and Annie's home on the ocean. It's not a big house but it is historical, being the former home of the sugar mill boss. It's a hundred years old with traditional architecture. The yard is mercifully small and the cocktail 'lounge' is perched on the point, jutting out slightly into the sea (kai) along the breakwall. When the shell sounds, it's time to move to the lanai (porch) for an outdoor dinner and intelligent conversation. The roof of this deck area that comfortably seats 10 to 15 people is a wooden lattice work overgrown with some awesome flowering plant that scents the already heady air with a tropical fragrance. These white flowers hang down their vines and are constantly falling on us. That is a memory I'll keep and value. Eating dinner with this incredible collection of characters while big white flowers fall in our food and laps and hair like concentrated snowflakes somehow reminding me of home.

Halloween is coming and it's serious business around here. The group has won first place two or three years running and then donated the winnings to some worthy cause. This year, we are going as traffic. I'm going to be a pineapple truck! I'll take pics of all of us as these guys spend money on materials and create works of art. Luckily, I'm one of those creative types and should be able to hold my own.

The first question from the ladies present on Tuesdays is if my wife and/or daughter are coming over. We've talked about it and they would like to meet my family and I'd like my family to experience this scene. I've a feeling they will, if not this time, next. I'm making some friends here.

Out of time.

Chicken, anyone?

I have some news. I felt the first earthquake tremors of my life this morning! Well, once in Mexico, Jack and I were both woken up in the middle of the night. But it was very subtle and we never knew for sure if it was a small tremor or some other third world shake.

This morning was most unsubtle. I was sleeping at Robin's and at about 7:15, I first heard a loud rumbling like a train coming through the doggie door. The tourist sugercane train is narrow gauge and on the 'other side'. Then the bed started shaking and the mirrored closet door rattled. I looked outside and decided it was some weird wind event. It wasn't. I lay back down and a few minutes later it happened again. Okay, okay! I'll get up! I did.

The power was out at Robin's. I fed the dogs and wandered around the house, deciding it must have been earthquake tremors. I tried to call the wife. Not working. We can make local calls but some tower or whatever must have been damaged. I couldn't leave in our decided upon fashion, which was to go in and out through the garage, using the garage door opener as my locking mechanism. Door wouldn't open. So I left through the front door locking myself out on my way.

The neighborhood looked normal. There were not any screeching sirens or any plumes of billowing acrid blackness roiling back against the slate sky. I drove into Kehei. No stop lights working. Cops acting as traffic directors. Remember this is all in the Corvette. I feel like they should pull me over for no reason in that car. No power in Kehei. Drove by Starbucks 'cause if any one would . . .

They didn't.

People sat around the outside tables at Starbucks and all the other little restaurants as if it were just another busy Sunday morning breakfast party. But there were no lights, no wait people scurrying, never with empty hands, hoping to fill empty pockets. There were no coffee cups and of all the sidewalk wanderers, none sipped 'go-cups'. Okay, I'll go back to Lahaina.

Between the two towns, you can see a vertical row of about 15 of those giant windmills like in California. They stretch away up this mountain ridge. They were all static. No power on the whole island. You know, the whole time I've been here, it hasn't felt especially like an island. Not sure what that's supposed to feel like. But once the power was out and my lines of communication to home were severed, I suddenly realized how I am on a tiny archipelago speckling a miniscule percentage of the Pacific Ocean. It doesn't bother me or freak me out. It still feels like I could get in the 'vette if I wanted to and drive to Cisco, Utah!

I got to Lahaina and Livewire was open and the computers were up and running. But the street lights were still dead as I got here. On the way over, there were lines of people out the door to an ABC Store. There was a long line across a parking lot in Kehei leading to a smoking, hissing portable spit with chickens roasting away. It already looked like some kind of big disaster.

It's a different deal here on Maui. It's much too real for me. Aspen is my/our real world but I guess there is some merit grudgingly admitted by me to the people who say Aspen is not the real world. Here, you have the whole bad-ass, tough-guy thing going on in your face. Reverse prejudice doesn't care if I'm not prejudiced. My arms and hands get cut up at work and my legs and feet get cut up at play (trying to surf). The cops are gnarly and they are always hiring. They even advertise on T.V. in infomercial fashion and reveal the pay. Let's just say it's less than I'm making.

Homelessness is year-round and prevalent. Crazies and old burn-outs from the sixties do their unchoreographed solitaire waltzes and tangos in the mangos. Graffiti lives at the boarded up former home on Front Street that was the coffeeshop I went to last time I was here. There is a lot of broken glass along the bike path. I've gotten two flats so far.

The landlubber cruise ship hoards wander quick in packs like schools of blind fish. They love it and take pictures of signs and seascapes. Even when they look at the photos, they won't notice the disreputable characters lounging menacingly on the benches. Corners of parking lots are overgrown with vegetation and provide shape for shady doings.

On the other hand, it is staggeringly beautiful. Mountains into oceans will always do that. The ocean is warm! If you did do the tourist trail, you would see exactly what you would expect to see and love it.

I like to live somewhere considered not to be the real world. But when I travel, I seek out the grit behind the skit. I wonder about the angry brother of a handsome Hawaiian man who works the hotels and juggles flame, wearing grass. I talk to the crippled skinny black man, wheelchair parked daily somewhere on Front Street. He never once asks me for money. He just gently suggests reading the bible.

I read the letters to the editor, not the dining guide. I look for something to bring home that is not for sale in the trinket kiosks. Experience, understanding, cultural awareness, respect and maybe a dash-board hula dancer or two is what I want.

"And the palm trees are waving goodbye in the breeze." I wrote that line years ago in Mexico. The difference between Lahaina and Aspen? In Aspen, it says 'caution, falling ice!' In Lahaina, it says 'caution, falling coconuts!' And they mean it.

It should be one hell of a transition sea to ski. Twelve minutes left out of this six dollar hour. It's overcast and windy. There was nobody in the ocean this morning and the waves were churning away like a big hand scooping sand.

Annie called me to make sure we were alright. So the news of these tremors made it to the mainland.

I saw pictures of Buffalo's 'perfect storm' on the T.V. last night. Pretty distant and foreign looking to me, whereas once I grew up in that landscape and didn't even think about it 'cause it was so normal.

The idea of actually surfing was abstract even a couple years ago. I remember wanting to buy a surf-board anyway 'cause they look so cool. I got up four times yesterday. If the power's out, you can still surf. I'm going this afternoon, unless I get there and there are waves but nobody out. I may be a beginner surfer but I'm not a beginner observer and thinker. I know that if there is a bunch of untracked snow on one part of a run and lots of skiers have already been skiing around there, that there is probably a good reason that they are not going there.

If we need to pick between the wife and daughter coming over here or us sending Rachel to Europe, I would pick the latter. Everytime, though, I think about having a house on the beach and car available, I'm torn. I want to have some savings after all this. Also, there is a very good possibility that this opportunity will be available to us in the future.

Gotta go, I'm about out of time.