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I got up this morning and it was raining. This didn't give me high hopes for camping over the next 6 days.
I drove up to my first camp site, Ha'ena Beach, and immediately met a couple of beach bums. One told me he had been in the Navy and immediately asked me if I wanted any herb. The other guy (both in their 40s or 50s) showed me the shells he found on the beach that AM and some necklaces he had made as well. Apparently with some shells you can get $60 for a film canister's worth. The problem is that the shells are about a quarter the size of a peppercorn, basically big pieces of sand.
I walked around to get a feel for the place to see if I wanted to stay there. There were no tents here at the time, except for one on the beach. I asked the lifeguard if you could camp anywhere, and he answered only on the grass. After his tone, I didn't ask about the tent right there on the beach.
I left to get some more supplies in Hanalei (only 15 minutes away), and I returned to set up camp about 11:30 AM. By then there was already another tent set up. It wasn't raining when I started setting up my tent, but it was pouring for a bit after I started. This also disappointed me. It stopped soon thereafter. This is pretty much how the rain for the rest of the week went.
After setting up, I decided to just do beach hiking for the day. I started by hiking east towards Hanalei (and past Tunnels Beach). This beach is coarser with many more shells. There were lots of people snorkeling at Tunnels Beach. Next time I go to Kaua'i, I'm definitely going to snorkel.
So I return to check on camp. More tents have arrived, with more locals. So I then I hike the opposite direction towards Ke'e beach. This is the end of the road. Here there are still more reefs. There's a great reef lined pool to swim in here, with lots of people snorkeling too. I hang out a bit to watch people and the surf. I talk to some mud caked folks who had just hiked to Hanakapi'ai Falls, and decide I'm definitely going to do it the next day.
So I hike back to camp before dusk, and I make my first camp dinner. Not bad! It's an old staple of mine: pasta and sauce.
After dinner, I meet a nice family who are just setting up camp as I finish dinner. I'm not sure of their relationship until after sitting and talking with them. It's Claire and 2 of her children: hippie dread-locked Peter and cute Alice. They are from Sebastapol. We talk about all sorts of things. It surprised me how young they are (18 and 13). I thought they were 5 years older! I clearly know nothing about teenagers anymore, I see and know so few. #
I woke up at 7:30, just about sunrise. I made a lazy breakfast and got on the road to get the camping permit. There was quite a bit of traffic to get back to Lihue, especially in Kapa'a. It was Monday morning, I guess.
You can only get county (and state) camping permits in Lihue. It's cash only. You also have to pick exact dates for county campsites. I asked, and they don't have a weekly pass. So I picked 2 nights each at 3 different campgrounds. The woman at the counter said they'd probably be lenient if I had a permit for a different campground. It's only $3 a night! My plan is to head from the north coast down to the west over 6 days.
I needed propane for my stove, so after this I went from WalMart (they had no propane) to Kmart. I also got a small soft collapsable cooler for my beer, eggs, coffee, tortillas, pasta sauce, and salsa.
Back in Hanalei, I stop to get a coffee right around lunchtime. There's lots of cute women here. I think I head back 3 other times during my stay.
I get back to the hotel and make some snacks for lunch to bring to the beach. Peanut butter sandwiches and an apple. You slice up the apple and put them in the sandwich when you're ready to eat. It's great tasting. It's my staple for midday meals for the week.
While getting the damn tags off of the soft cooler, I jab my left hand with my knife, right where my index finger meets my palm. I immediately feel like I'm going to regret that for the rest of the trip. The injury wasn't too bad in hindsight, although I can still feel it when I make a fist now.
That afternoon I finally see the propeietor of the hotel. He says it was raining 6 to 4 inches an hour just the day before I got there. They had had some campers staying there who didn't want to deal with the deluge. I start to feel worried about camping.
So I go to the beach. I jump in for awhile and body surf. It's so much fun. While I'm drying off, I see a woman jogging on the beach so I decide to run it myself. I ran from the middle to the west end, back past the middle, to the pier and back. It felt great. I read it may be a 4 mile run or so. When I get back to my spot, I cool off with some more body surfing.
I wind up talking with two Canadians sitting on the beach, they may be father and daughter. We talk politics, mortgages and more. They had been there a few days and told me about all the rain that had been happening recently. I guess the two days I've been here have been the only sunny days since. Their friend had been stranded in Hanalei, since the road was flooded over.
The woman, a tall thin pretty woman, had just come from a trip in New Zealand. Man, you gotta love vacation times in other countries. She said she had tried hiking that day (and the day before). But she couldn't since the trails were closed after the rain. She mentioned about 6 inches of mud on a 3000 foot cliff. I'm not sure if I'd want to do that either.
Nevertheless my plan is to get up early to see if I can make the long hike up on the Na Pali coast. If not I'll just sit on the beach again. Decisions, decisions.
For some reason I find myself watching TV before I go to bed again. I sure won't be able to do that while camping on the beach. While listening to the radio on the car and watching TV today, it occurs to me yet again how grating, horrible, and annoying advertising really is. There's a freaking commercial where they are giving fast food taste tests to people who have never had it. They are all dressed in typical native clothing. Ugh. All I can guess is that people become attenuated to it. I have no idea how we got here it has to end. #
I arrive in Lihue about 3 PM without any incident. The airports here are mostly outdoors, which is odd. I get the rental car and drive all the way north to the end of the road. I head back to Hanalei to get to where I'm staying for the night, The Hanalei Inn. It is perfect. I can tell it's going to be laid back, because the door was open with the key sitting on the nightstand. The A/C is running, and has that terrible swampy smell of window A/C. I turn it off and crack a window.
I get into my bathing suit and head to Hanalei beach about 2 blocks away. I jump in for a little bit. It's not too hot out (about 75 to 80 degrees) and the water is refreshing. The sand is really nice and soft. The surf is strong, but fun. The clouds are over the mountains and the sea, as they are for most of the rest of the trip, except when it rains.
It's strange but I get 3G service nearly everywhere here. For some reason I thought I was going to be in the middle of nowhere. I decide to send a snapshot of the beach to Facebook without comment.
I decide to see if I can stay another day at the Inn. I hadn't gotten a county camping permit before I left and the government office was not open on Sunday. They are also all the way back in Lihue (about an hour in traffic). The inn let me know that I could stay another night. This will give me more time to get settled and oriented.
The room has a small kitchen, so I get some food for breakfast and dinner for the week at the grocery. It's dark out now, so I take a bottle of beer to the beach. There's lots of beautiful stars everywhere. I can see the Milky Way.
After a bit, I head back to inn. The neighors in the next room are blasting their TV. I reluctantly turn mine on to drown out the sound of theirs. I fall asleep about 9:30. #
I have updated my local source control and build system to use git. In the previous Colophon page, you'd see the svn revision of the source used to create the program that creates this web site. Now you see the git commit hash. Isn't that great? Also I can now have more than one entry on a given day. #
So I got back from a vacation to Kaua'i. It was wonderful. I'll have more stories and pictures coming.
Today Chip is 13! I can't believe he's a teenager already. #
It is only one month until the worst President of all time it out of office. It's been a long and horrible 8 years. I can already feel my stress level declining. I won't wince when I hear the President speak. I won't look at the New York Times front page with dread every morning, wondering what new outrage the President and his administration have brought upon us. January 20th cannot come soon enough! #
Apple typically has Beer Bashes every 3rd Friday or so, more during the summer. They'll set up the newest gear Apple just announced, or the fitness center will have kiosks, things like that. Earlier in the week the Beer Bash was announced as sponsored by iTunes, and would have a special musical guest. We speculated about who it may be. In the past, Apple has had a mixed bag of acts show up for events, although none that I can recall at a Beer Bash. The place was more packed than I've ever seen it. It was actually kind of nutso in there. The beer was free, and you can drink quite a bit of free beer in an hour. Finally around 5 PM, the head of iTunes, Eddy Cue, gave the cue to Mr. Jones, who bounded out and sang "It's Not Unusual". He and his band sounded great. Of course they also played "What's New Pussycat". They played a few new songs (one of which features fairly distorted guitar) and some Christmas tunes. In all, I think they only played about 30 minutes. It sure was a fun and funny way to end the year at work!
I signed up for a 10 week guitar class that starts in January. I'm really looking forward to it.
Last week I ran 5 days out the the entire week. I took 3 days off, and ran again today. I want to shoot for 5 days on, 2 off.
I know that last Saturday morning (probably actually late Friday night), I decided to start my New Years reset early. Both of the things I mention above are the types of self improvement stuff I start around that time of the year. It just came earlier this year. Hopefully I can keep it going longer too. #
The opener was interesting. A Farfisa, a standard rock 3 piece, and lots of delay on the vocals. Oh, and they played only 5 songs in about 40 minutes or so. They have a drone, where they will get into a groove and play the same thing over and over. They had echoes of Spacemen 3 and early 90s shoegazer in there. One song sounded strangely like Devo slowed down. I think that it's surprising how garagey this sounded, and it brought all three styles together in a nice way. When I got the ticket for the show in the mail, I thought it was strange that they had a typo in their name, but no, that is how they spell it. The main attraction was on next, and they don't look much different than I remember. They played lots of really great songs that I hadn't heard before, and they played all the hits I remember too! Mark Arm has an awesome voice, I'm not sure if it is that it fits their music so well, or if it defines their music, but it works well. For many of the songs I hadn't heard before, Mark didn't play guitar. So during these time he could act more like Iggy Pop. There's a lot of Iggy in Mudhoney. They made some reference to some band being on a reunion tour, which I took to mean that they aren't on a reunion tour. Man, they've been going at it for 20 years. That just sounds crazy when you say it out loud. The Stooges had started out 20 years before Mudhoney had started. Anyways, I'm digressing. I loved Mudhoney back in the day. They are just as fun and loud and rocking today as when I first got to see them play.
I've thought alot about it. For years, ever since I moved away from Chicago in 1996, I've been buying Christmas cards each year and sending a bunch of them to friends and family. I think I'm going to take a break this year.
So here's to all my friends and family that I'll be thinking of this year:
Dave Alexander; Marc, Ellen and Lucy Augustiniak; Chris Blumenberg; Dennis and Marcia Bolsinga; Michael Bolsinga; Brian, Edie, Jack, Fiona and Francesca Campo; Diane Campo; Jeff, Valerie, Rachel and Benjamin Campo; Mary Alice, Bill, Liam, Matt and Dan Connors; Kelly Cronin; Matt, Tamara, Lucas and Nora Daley; Matthew Daley; Robin Dannevik; Marika Davis; Marianne and Baltie de Ley; Tim, Lisa, Jack and Mike DeLisle; Rob, Tanya, Iris and Pearl Dimpsey; Sheila Diombala; Sara Diombala Sanchez, Victor Sanchez and Aden Sanchez; Kevin Elliott; Phil, Jen, Luke and Charlie Falkenholm; Alexandra Fraser and Ted Rzad; John, Becky and Jack Fuller; Pari Ghorbani; Brad and Mason Gilchrist and Suzanne Mason; Kate Glass; Alice and John Halloran; Claudia Halloran and Reed Lee; Victor Hernandez; Rebekah Hodgson; Seth and Ahmory Hodgson and Sarah Hirneisen; David Holloway and Brandi de Garmeaux; Penelope Horcha; Larry & Judy Jones; Larry, Emma, Max and Marisol Jones; Benjamin Kosnik and Abigail Derecho; Kim Laama; Lois Leen; Krystal Lewis; Jim and Hope MacGregor; Michelle Marie; Regan Martin and Teresa Radcliffe; Ginger McGilvray; Colleen Murray; Alysha Naples; Erika Ohlsson; Al Pacer; Andrea Pacer; Corrine Pacer; Jennifer Pitt, Andy Mueller and Owen Mueller; Ivan and Anna Posva and Brigitte Binkert; Ron Pranica; Josh Radding and Yasmine; Jeff Radice; Andrew Reynolds; Emily Rice; Adam Rosenberg and Natasha Kesaji; Lu Sapien; Kim, John and Josie Scannell; Jennifer Schaffer; Mark and Corinne Scheitler; Cindy, Allen and Rainey Sellars; Aram Shumavon and Mary Riley; Angie, Bret, Cole, Mia and Ella Staehling; Graham Stewart; Arshad Tayyeb; Karen Tsao and Thilo Heckrodt; Salim Virji and Anna Potterat; Jeff Wagner and Kate Hoag; Dennis Waldvogel; Jeff, Vanessa, Ethan and Max Wickenkamp; Jennifer Wickenkamp; Jonathan, Kim, J.J. and Rose Williams; Jon and Robin Bruns Worona; Elowyn Yager; Eric Ziegler #
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