My wonderful grandmother decided to treat her two daughter's families to a week in Hawaii over Christmas break. It was so insanely amazing, this post will never be good enough to fulfill my high expectations. Ever. Alas, I will try to for the sake of the reader.
After seeing "Bedtime Stories" starring Adam Sandler for Sean Cook's b-day (very funny movie btw, I'd recommend it. Be ready to be blown away with extremely random instances that don't make many people laugh, but easily make me laugh), I drove me and my sister home to a waiting home of my family and my cousin's. It was a wonderful reunion, especially as Mr. Micah Hiett had been away in Kansas attending Tabor College.
We took off in the morning and arrived in Oahu really late at night. The airport is amazing: super laid back, plants growing everywhere, everybody just chilling. We arrive at our hotel and notice the lovely balcony. Micah, Matt, and I shared a room. The rooms contained a kitchen, a little living area, a bathroom, and a bedroom with two beds. It was wonderful.
I think I'm just going to list what significant things we did and then explain, rather than going through every second of everyday, as you, the reader, will probably grow bored, and leave this blog, my absolute worst nightmare. So here it goes.
First day at Waikiki Beach. We didn't realize the entire thing was pretty much a reef. It wasn't exactly all that fun, couldn't do much in the water. However, we played a lot of frisbee which was pretty cool.
The beach excursion. I believe it was one day at Waikiki Beach when a group of us decided to take a walk. We walked a long way, seeing lots of stuff, and lots of expensive things. Descriptions are lacking, sorry. The best thing about this was listening in on probably $50 worth of surf lessons.
The Luau. I believe it was called the creation. It was a pretty good show. Lots of hula dancing as well as crazy dancing. There was this specific segment with these guys who stuck their tongues out and grunted continuously with spazzed hands. Very very hard to explain. These guys were the highlight probably. Then there was the fire twirler guy. He was pretty tight, 'specailly when he put the fire on his tongue and feet. Awesome. We got free drinks at the luau. I got a virgin Blue Hawaiian. In fact here it is now.
The Duck. To tour the island and Pearl Harbor, we boarded a "duck." Our tour guide was a man named Bruce. This guy knew an insane amount about everything, including lots of stuff that was completely unnecessary and irrelevant. For instance, he spent 45 minutes talking about Elvis. The reason for so much time is the top speed of the duck was like 5 mph. We were driving on freeways at 5 mph. Talk about fun. Elvis was in 31 films.
Road Rage. On the way to Hanauma Bay for snorkeling, my grandma accidentally cut off a raised black truck with extremely tinted windows. This guy was not happy. He all of a sudden stormed next to us and revved his engines, trying to intimidate us. He then went to the other side, opened up his window and yelled at us, using very unnice language. He pulled up a little in front of us and stuck his head out the window staring behind his truck to us. He proceeded to drift into our lane, while staring at us, nodding his head. Remember, my grandma is driving. He then stopped completely on the freeway, dead stop. We stopped behind him, then he floored it. We were going to go to a police station, but we had a situation concerning Sheri, Matt's fiancé, that prevented us from stopping at the police station. After many more near collisions and crazy driving, he pulled a uyie and left. So check it out, this road rager went completely out of his way to mess up a grandma who cut him off. Here is his licence plate number: PPX 312. I don't think I'll ever forget this. If you ever see him, show him how it's done.
Hanauma Bay. I must say I have never waited in a line to get into a beach, especially a 45 minute long line, and I have definitely not been forced to watch a video to enter the beach. But, this place was the place for snorkeling. Snorkeling was legit. At first I had trouble with the snorkel, you know, breathing and such, but I got good at it and had an awesome time. In the video, they drilled us with the "Snorkel with a buddy" rule. My buddy was Micah. Together we ventured past the big rocks probably 200 yards out. No one else in the entire beach went that far out. However, this is where the quality stuff was. To get out there, you had to go past waves, which was a whole lot of fun because it tossed to around, completely out of your control. This resulted in many cuts, though. The best thing I experienced at the bay was swimming among a school of fish, probably about 40 strong. The best part was drifting with the currents with the fish. I felt so aquatic. The worst part of the bay was crossing the coral reef with six inches of water of leeway. This is where the pain came in. Bad bad idea. Do it if you wish.
North Shore. We went on a hunt to find the biggest, baddest waves in all of Hawaii. You've seen them, the 50 footers. We didn't find anything that big. Here is what we found.
Pretty decent I'd say.
Blue Water Shrimp and Seafood Co. On our way back from the North Shore, this is where we stopped for lunch. This truck was AMAZING. Awesome awesome food. I guess their name gets around because sitting next to us was a dude from Germany who heard about this place from his friend in Switzerland. I got shrimp and steak. All of it was BOMB. Oh my goodness, I'm sitting here licking congregating saliva off of my lips. Mr. Scott Weir said it didn't look that good. He doesn't know what he is talking about BECAUSE HE WASN'T THERE
New Years Eve. Let me tell you, New Years Eve in Hawaii is poppin'. There are so many people partying and so many fireworks, it's unreal. We set up to watch a fireworks show over Waikiki Beach and watched mostly children play with firecrackers and such. One kid "accidentaly" threw one into a group of people. Everybody freaked. Right before the fireworks show started, all the partyers came. This is what I remember. Four wild drunk people lanced right in front of us. Here's the lineup: a guy with a balloon tied to his ear, a shirtless overweight guy, a woman accompanying a overly drunk guy. I watched these buffoons in disbelief. All of the sudden the balloon guy and the shirtless guy start kissing and groping each other. It was seriously disturbing. Then the balloon guy, this is after the fireworks show naturally, came over to us and wanted high fives. I hesitated. Then they all left and the overly drunk guy made a fool of himself as he tried to walk up stairs. I think I laughed out loud. There was also an Obama look-a-like who was really drunk. This presidency is going to be interesting. Walking back to the hotel, a hoard of police cars, as well as a firetruck and ambulance pulled up to right where we were. In front of many many people a few guys were arrested as one guy was crying. I think what happened was a firework exploded probably on the guy. No good but quite the show.
Waxer. When my mom lived in Hawaii, she grew up with this guy David. His nickname is now Waxer. He pretty much picked us up from the hotel and took us to the beach. Micah and I rode in the back of his pickup. We couldn't believe it was legal, we were riding in the back of a truck on the freeway going to the beach. It felt good. Once at the beach, we took a multitude of family pictures, many of which didn't really turn out. Then, Waxer taught us how to surf and every single person who tried that day got up. That is Uncle Marlin, my dad, Matt, Sheri, Micah, Melanie, Marissa, Lacey, Spencer, Connor, Mandi, and I all stood up while surfing. I'd say that is pretty decent. Waxer came to dinner that night at the hotel and he talked pretty much the whole time. He knew an insane amount of information like the history of Hawaii and Christianity, and even the history of many different countries around the world. The thing that hit me the most was the realization that most pictures of Jesus portray his as weak. In most translations of the Bible, Jesus is said to be a carpenter. This, Waxer said, is wrong. Before the Romans translated the text, Jesus was a craftsman. If you think back to that day in age, what were most building made out of? Stone. Jesus worked with stone. There is no way a weak man would be successful in efficiently building with stone. This is awesome and eye-opening.
ABC Stores. Bruce from the duck told us it meant "All Blocks Covered." This was true. These stores were EVERYWHERE in Waikiki. It was so funny, so as a memento and souvenir, I got an ABC Store t-shirt. Score.
Diamond Head. The last day in Hawaii we all climbed Diamond Head, a mountain. I don't know what the general consensus is about the hike, but it was easy cheese for me, Micah agrees, because we were comparing it to our hike up Half Dome not too long ago. It was pretty fun though.
The only problem was earlier that day at the beach, my camera fell into the sand and nobody told me. So on the way up Diamond Head, my camera malfunctioned and quit working. Here are some pictures I took after the fact.
On the way back to the hotel, all 15 of us crammed into our 7 passenger van. Halfway home I realized I had forgotten my camera at the base. So we turned around. Halfway back I felt my pocket again and realized my camera was safely residing in my pocket. I had felt Micah's shoe the first time, giving the impression that my pocket was empty. The 15 passengers were not very happy with me.
Remember when I said the airport is amazing? Here's more proof. When I got my bags checked to go back , the worker said "Thanks bro" to me. Are you kidding me! That's ridiculously awesome. I don't know if you think so.
Here's some more pictures from the trip. Enjoy them. I'm going to be uploading pretty much everything to deviantart, facebook, and myspace, so when I do, I'll update this with links.
