Rivers and Roads

Every year I do this and every year it never gets old for me. For you the reader maybe, but for me... never. So, by all means please excuse this "I moved to Oregon Spam" to be exactly that, but for any one else... it's more or less the story of me, of independence, of adventure, exploration and knowing that life really could be better. Today is my Independence Day. The day I celebrate four years of living out here in beautiful amazing Portland Oregon. And... to help celebrate, yes... I will drink coffee, yes I will have a beer, and I will also get my library card. That is how I will celebrate!

Also, yesterday I bought a surfboard... so that makes me a little more Oregonian. All I need now is the wetsuit and I'll be set! In case you haven't heard, our coastal waters here are a little chilly. Speaking of which, today is one of the first warmer days in quite a while. However, in true Portland fashion I am layering by wearing a hoodie from a local brewery, Hopworks... whom just celebrated their 3year anniversary yesterday. As well, I am staying true to my Ohio roots by wearing a Cincinnati shirt to celebrate Opening Day for Major League Baseball (which in Cincinnati is a pretty big deal).

And, today I also celebrate four years of my Brandi Carlile video for The Story, for being filmed and being such a big hit on YouTube. You know it's got over 1,856,444 views? If only I had at least, a dime for every view I'd be a very happy camper by now. And that doesn't mean that I'm not currently a happy camper, it's just that I could probably also "afford" a camper... as well as a owning a house! And, in a very fitting move, Sara Ramierz from Grey's Anatomy is singing that song on a special musical episode of the show tonight! Make sure you tune in! Me personally, I'll be carb loading for my massive stage race in The Dalles this weekend. That's pretty Oregonian right? Bike racing.

Oh, and the photo that is posted above is my photo for the Portland Timbers, Portland's newest Major League sporting team (the only other one currently is the Blahzers). This winter they had quite a notable ad campaign that featured everyday Portland residents and soccer fans wielding axes and logging equipment. Even though some people complained that the ads were vague and didn't make sense (who are these people, they aren't even players or attractive models...) seemed to have missed the boat on the whole campaign. Because that's the point. Those people aren't "special"... they're just like you and me. And that's what makes Portland and soccer in Portland so special... especially before the season has even begun, we don't go to the game for the players (who are the players right now anyways?), we go for each other. It's the event, it's the spectacle, you, me... all of us, we are the Timbers Army and we want soccer to be big time in Portland. And it will be. It will be big, just like the ads of the everyday soccer fans suggest. And the people who don't like it... well, I suspect that it's just cause they are Blazers fans. And so, I digress, the second part of the ad campaign was to let people come in and get their "Timbers photo" taken for free. From here, people could download them and use them as profile photos or whatever on facebook. More free advertising for the Timbers. From there, they selected from the thousands of photos, the Top 100. Then, they invited the people to vote on their favorites (more free advertising) to be added on billboards. Results were talied yesterday and well... I didn't win... I didn't expect to, but it was fun to be in the Top 100. In fact, my gf Sam has the photo as her iphone screensaver. We were at a Chris Pureka concert this week and some girl behind Sam leaned in over her shoulder and said... "nice Timbers photo". To which Sam replied... "thanks, it's my girlfriend." Bam... more free advertising.

Anyways, I digress on this whole post in fact! So... to get back to the topic at hand.... yes, moving to Oregon. And here is the spam I promised you:

2010: 3.31.07. It talks about the significance of a certain show I went to go see at Mississippi Studios and what has happened since.

2009: She Flies With Her Own Wings. A condensed story of what brought me out here.

2008: One Year in Oregon Review.

2007: Oregon Trail: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 4.2

(some of the links were not working)

I think next year I should take this day to go climb a mountain or something.... ;)

we need more banjo...

If anyone has been keeping up with me or my new years resolutions/five year plan for the past few years, you'll notice a few things always seem to pop up. No, it's not work out more... lord knows I should probably work out less... the two items which always seem to pop-up are A) floss more and B) learn how to play the banjo.

While I can't really vouch for how more effective or not my flossing has become, I did make the first step the other week in Plan B), by actually purchasing a banjo - which i figure, is the first step in learning to play one. I've always heard that in comparison to the guitar, banjo's are rather difficult to learn, but I've never learned to play the guitar so I really have nothing to compare it to. I figure that when it comes to learning to play the instrument, that ground zero is probably the best place to learn. And yeah... I really don't know how to read music either, so that's another obstacle to overcome. Maybe by the time we're all said and done flossing everyday may be the more obtainable task, but I'm all about the challenges here.

Just so you know, my only prior musical experience came from Jr. High Band where I played the snare drum. Ideally during this phase in my life I should have learned to read music, but I had a rather poor introduction (since I joined band in sixth grade as opposed to fifth like most of my peers), so because of this, I think I learned most of my songs by memorization, improvisation and twirling my drumsticks. This learning process probably explains why after a year or two in band, I was moved from the drums to the cymbals and then finally to the triangle. By then, I saw the writing on the wall and regulated "playing music" into something I did once... much like show choir. Speaking of which... I will gladly dance and sing at random these days... but if ask me to sing "properly' without changing key, we might have some problems.

Also, I can't overly vouch for why I wanted to play the banjo in the first place... I guess part of it stems from that EVERYONE it seems, can play the guitar and well, the banjo is just a little more obscure (which is so hipster of me, I know). And I'd say the other part of is that I stem from Appalachia, so... it's in my blood if you. The banjo and bluegrass is the music of my people!

While I don't have big plans of learning to play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" overnight and starting my own bluegrass band, I'm making strides to try and go over some online lessons a few times week in between work and spin classes. Hopefully eventually I'll at least be able to play "Cripple Creek" within a year. And if I can't well... there are always my goals of better dental hygiene (as the fine folks in Deliverance can tell you).

PS: as an interesting side note: I recently told my dad about buying banjo and he told me an interesting anecdote which I had no idea about, apparently, my grandfather had wanted my dad to learn how to play the banjo, and for whatever reason... my dad never did. So, one way or another, it appears as if my Grandfather is getting his wish.

in search of awesome... Hawaii part four.

Okay, I realized that I haven't yet reported on the rest of my trip to Hawaii. It's not like I went surfing, saw a sea turtle, some random dude said we were cute and bamn... trip over. Far from it in fact. It's just that while we were in Honolulu we were busy going places and doing things and after that... well, the point of the trip was to not do anything. On my itinerary for my Hawaii trip, right after surfing and pearl harbor was scribbled the word "nothing". Meaning, all I wanted to do was sit on the beach, sip some rum, and read some books. And well, that's what we did.

Oh, but aside from nothing... one day we did go sea kayaking off the Windward coast. It was fun but we spent most of our time in the kayaks using them to catch waves as opposed to "see nature" which is what our rental company suggested the boats for. I also found this other sea kayak that was totally emblazoned with Ironclad stickers.

After that, we headed to Malaekahana State Recreational Area, where I had a three night permit for camping (which is in the Northeast sector of Oahu). Happily, The Bus drops you off right outside the front gate. However, by the time we arrived there is was past dark and the park patrol people were locking the front gate. I had downloaded a map of the campsites so that I could tell where we were to pitch tent, but in the dark of the Hawaiian forest, every thing kinda looked alike... so we ventured to where we thought we were supposed to be, marveled at how no one else was there... and set up camp.

This is what we woke up to when we opened our tent in the morning:

Really, I can't complain with that view at all.

This is from the beach, we were about twenty paces from the beach. It was friggin amazing!

After fixing some breakfast we walked around a little bit and discovered where we were actually supposed to be camping. The regular campground was full of tents, people, turned over trash cans, and random chickens. Sam and I looked at each other and begrudgingly decided that later in the day we should probably move our tent to the proper location, but... we were in no rush. First on the list was laying in the sun and reading.

A little after 1:00pm a rain storm rolled in and so Sam and I decided to take the bus up to the fabled North Shore and see what the surfing is really like up there. And, so we did. And so... let me tell you, that shit is big. HUGE and no way in hell would I be surfing there anytime soon. On our day trip to the North Shore we also got some authentic Hawaiian Ice and had some tasty fish tacos at a local mexican place that seemed to be quite popular with the locals. Note to self: it's a good bet that when you're in the tiny surfing capital of the Pacific Ocean and home to some of the best waves in the world, if you local fare and not touristy stuff, do not go to the restaurant with a surf theme.

After picking up some beer and watching some surfing, Sam and I headed back to Malaekahana and made some dinner. Thankfully our tent and everything was undisturbed and so we just decided to wait it out and try to stay in our happy private backwoods camping spot for one more night, as squatters.

The next day was Valentine's Day and so I made Sam a beautiful card in the sand with a stick.

We spent all day hanging out on the beach reading and lounging in the sun. For the most part it was kinda like a private beach. We'd be all alone for most of the day till a random jogger from the nearby town would pass by. Some people would also walk nearby with surfboards, but it wasn't really that ideal of a surf spot so we'd get a little confused when they'd disappear into the distance. Also on that day a random Park Patrol man came by in a 4x4 ATV and angerly demanded to see my permit. I whipped it out and handed it to him. After a little confusion, his demeanor changed when he saw that we actually had the right paper work and then all of the sudden he was happily chit-chatting with us. He informed us that we were not in the right campsite, but told us that just as long as we moved later in the day we'd be okay. So, Sam and I agreed that we would move the site later in the day.... knowing full well that we had no intent on doing so.

So, we sat and read and drank and read and applied more suntan lotion and read and repeated that process all day long. When evening seemed to be approaching, we gather wood for a campfire and decided to cook dinner down on the beach. What followed was a delightful valentine's day dinner with wine and red beans and rice and summer sausage. Sadly though, our evening and kinda the rest of our evening of camping was marred by two random pit bulls that kept hanging around. Sam and I got kinda freaked out by them... but over all it was a delightful little camping spot.

The next morning Sam and I awoke bright and early before the sun at 5:30am to pack up camp in the dark and catch a bus to head south back to Honolulu. Not only did we have a plane to catch that afternoon back home to Portland, but we had booked a surf lesson at the private surf break that we had to catch a boat to get to. So, needless to say it ended up being a three hour long bus ride to get to where we needed to be.

The surf lesson was ho-hum, but both Sam and I rocked all the waves we got and so were were able to leave Hawaii on a positive surfing note and a little extra sun before we headed home to rainy Portland.

Have you ever transcended space and time?

great day for bike race huh?

This is my race report for Cherry Pie.

You know, I've had so many people ask me what in the hell happened to me (and what's up with the DNF?) that even after writing it down in a coherent readable form, that it still fails to make any sense to me - but here it is.

Cherry Pie is the first race of the season on the OBRA calendar. And, seeing how I cringe at any race over 35 miles (Cherry Pie is 50 miles)... it's one that I normally wouldn't sign up to do by my own measure. I mean, come mid February I'd rather be at the mountain snowboarding and thinking happy thoughts about warm weather racing; however, the promoters for Cherry Pie were offering a CAT 3 Women's ONLY field and not only did I want to support that choice with numbers, but I was excited to race for the first time with my new team, Ironclad. We had at least six girls set to race and we put together a nice little game plan to better our chances of getting one of us across the line first. In fact, I was most excited for this race as it was my first chance to really work a "team strategy". In my prior race history, it was more about surviving and trying to scrap together a decent placing... but here with Ironclad I had a set plan for the race and a finite goal to accomplish.

My game plan for the race was to work really hard and pull a lot for the first 25 miles, in an effort to protect my teammates and wear some of the other ladies out. Basically, it was nice to just focus on 25 miles and not really worry about the rest. If I was able to hang on beyond that I would, but anything over the initial 25 miles was icing on the cake. So, needless to say the first 25 miles of the race I was a crazy biking into the headwind racing fool. I pulled in a lot of places I normally wouldn't and didn't mind wearing myself out for the good of the team cause... well, it was for the good of the team. Going into the first part of the second lap (after my focused 25 miles) I got dropped on the hills (not surprisingly) and then caught up with a chase group that was in hot pursuit of the main pack. As hard as I tried though, trying to organize a productive paceline with the wind and my prior hard efforts taking their toil, I slacked off the back of the chase pack when we hit a set of rollers. Not feeling bad since I had done my job prior, I rode the remaining 18 miles or so of the race by myself seeing the trailing chasers ahead of me pretty much the whole time.

Even though I saw the glistening of bikes ahead of me, I did lose sight of them around mile 45. No worries I thought, I've just got five miles to go and well, since it's a loop course that I've already been through once, I shouldn't have a problem. So, I finished up the rest of the 50 mile race solo. The cat 3 women were the last race of the day so I naturally figured that the finish would be boxing up and packing away by the time I got there... but by the time I got there - there was no one to be found. I knew I had crossed where the finish was - since I had seen the "1km to go" and all the other race signs... but no one was in sight. Shrugging it off as the OBRA folks just being eager to get home, I wearily started to make my way back to the staging area (which was still a few miles away). It was then that I realized I had no idea how to actually get back. When prior we had passed this point I had been in a hill racing haze... so I just rode around aimlessly for a bit trying to look for something familiar, to guide me back the right way. However, the evening was drawing to a close and the sun was dropping lower in the sky. As well, I was tired and hungry and knew my ride was probably waiting for me at the car.

At that point I happened upon a local man who was cutting and loading wood into his car. I stopped and asked him how to get back to the high school and he gave me a long series of directions that made my eyes glaze over. Finally he just asked "would you like me to give you a ride back" and I eagerly agreed. So, I helped him load some wood for five minutes and then we loaded my bike into the back of his beat up Dodge truck. Then, we headed off for the staging area where all of my teammates were worried about my whereabouts. How often can you say in your race report that you helped someone stack and load wood?

So yeah, I got lost... but in my book I got lost after I passed the finish line. What makes me wonder is what in the hell happened to me to for that last quarter of the race? It'd be easy to say... well, you were just really slow jenn... but the interesting thing is that one of my teammates was behind me in the race - and yet... she finished the race across the line ahead of me. In fact, she even said that everyone waited for me at the finish - but I never showed up. My clock and milage had me at 50 some miles and I followed the race course (it was a loop so we did the same thing twice) and passed them same signs twice (most notably the egg place and the fake cop car sign)... but really I have no idea what happened to me.

Yes, I suppose I could have taken a wrong turn in there, but I don't have good luck with ending up where I am supposed to be in the first place. Normally if a wrong turn was the case I'd still be spinning around the greater part of central Oregon as we speak. Basically, my best guess is that I passed into a parallel time dimension between miles 45-51 which caused me to miss the complete official end of the race. Basically, I transcended time, but not space (Huckabee reference) In my book though, I did not DNF. In fact, I pride myself on never having a DNF in a race... it's just unfortunate that no one was there to see me finish. Anyways, quite frankly, I am still puzzled by the whole thing. All in all, it just makes me realize why i love track and crits so much. IE: it's normally pretty easy to remember where you left the car cause you never were more than a half mile away for the whole race. And, this is all the more reason to love Spin class too!

Oh, and in case you were wondering ... the Ironclad ladies killed it. The game plan continued to work even tough I was apparently lost in the woods and Brianna Walle charged up the hill at the finish to place first. It's going to be a kick ass year.

in search of awesome... Hawaii part three

One of the most memorable parts of my trip to Hawaii this past week was when Sam and I were in Kailua, on the windward coast of Oahu, to go sea kayaking. We were walking towards the beach through a residential area on a busy street to get to the beach to pick our boats up. We both were wearing shorts, tank tops and hats with our bikini’s visibly on underneath. At one point, a local man was crossing our path and as he neared closer to us… his face lit up with a big friendly smile. As he passed by us he said… "you’re AWESOME"… and walked on.

I sqinched up my face and looked at Sam who was herself, just beaming from ear to ear at the remark.

“Huh?” … I said to Sam… “I wonder what was so awesome?” in a vain attempt to pinpoint the awesome.

Sam just smiled and said… “isn’t it obvious?”

in search of awesome... Hawaii part two

SPEAKING OF TURNING 31...
Speaking of turning 31, in doing research for the trip, I read about a series of articles that Mark Twain had written in regards Hawaii while he was here back in 1866 (at the age of 31). At that time he was on assignment for the Sacramento Union and spent four months writing about ship captains, whalers, missionaries, mosquitoes, thickets of flowers and thousands and thousands of cats. Some of these letters were published as part of his "western travel anthology" called Roughing It. I had wanted to pick the book up to read while in Hawaii, but a last minute trip to Powells to pick up another book which I had ordered a week prior on Amazon for the trip... but had not yet arrived by the time I was set to depart, had me looking over Twain's book. I wanted to read Twain's work... honestly I did... but I did not want to carry another book into the thickets of flowers, mosquitos and cats known as Hawaii with me... so I left it for a later time. However, if any of you are Mark Twain fans...I suggest you read it as I've heard nothing but great things about it for the past 31 years of my life. (PS: In Hawaii I started reading "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman, which is a compilation of three books combined in one, most notably the Golden Compass -it was made into a movie staring Nicole Kidman back in 2007-. The movie, by all means was a pretty lame retelling of the story, but the ideas behind it and the characters which were created had me captivated, so... when looking for a book that I could read for hours and hours on end on a soft, sandy, warm beach somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this was the book I chose.)

PEARL HARBOR

On Friday Sam and I got up early and boarded "The Bus" for cross town transportation to Pearl Harbor. When the thought of going to Hawaii first crossed my mind, the biggest thought aside from surfing that crossed my mind was getting to visit Pearl Harbor. Always a history nut growing up, I had a keen interest in WWII and even wrote a fictional story for a writing competition using Pearl Harbor and the events of December 6th, 1941 as a backdrop. So... needless to say I was more than excited to get to see the site with my own eyes. We arrived in what I thought would be enough time to see everything and leave with enough time to get a half-day of surfing in, but when we went to the ticket window at 11am to get our ticket, the earliest they could give us to catch the boat to the sunken USS Arizona was 1pm. From there it was a 90 minute trip/tour, which put us well into the afternoon and out of the range of surfing. I was mad that I had come this far and had gotten so close to seeing it, only to be dealt with the fact that I had already paid for a day of surfing too. I wanted to be able to have my cake and eat it too... but logicistcal crap was preventing me from doing so. Sam and I sat down on one of the many park benches which lined the displays at Pearl Harbor and talked over our options. I really wanted to go see the USS Arizona, but I also really wanted to surf. Then practically dawned on me... the Arizona is underwater, there isn't much to see in the first place. Realizing this, I took it to be here in this sacred and holy ground as being good enough. And really, you could feel the solemn energy, it was the same as being at Gettysburg or at Ground Zero. You could tell that something big and important happened here and many lives were lost. That was good enough for me.

Pearl Harbor Side Note: So... news to me you aren't exactly allowed to bring in any bags to Pearl Harbor. Which if you've driven there... great, go put your sunscreen and water and rain jacket, etc back in the car. However, if you're like us and took public transportation, the kind security guards tell you that you can check your bags. Seems pretty harmless right? So you go over and there you realize you've gotta pay a fee. Bull shit right? I mean, I totally understand the reasoning and I know our National Parks are in funding danger, but it's also a little bit of an ass-hole move. I mean, what kinda woman who goes to visit PH isn't going to have some bag or purse with them? Men? many pockets and wallets handle that need... but ladies, we normally have bags with us. This is where it comes in handy to travel with a lesbian, preferably one who wears cargo shorts. One fell move... Sam put all of our bagged belongings, even the bag itself (the amazing REI Flash) into her pockets. Bam... eat that Pearl Harbor National Park Bag Bitches!

MINOR OVERSIGHT:

On our way back to Wakiki we were going to quickly change into our suits and then run down to the shop to grab our surfboards and get a few hours in before the shop closed for the day. Which, was a great idea.... providing we could get into our room. It just so happened that there was a lapse in planning and we had booked the condo for two nights, instead of the three (as we were told was the minimum amount we were allowed to stay). So, as you can imagine this created quite a stir when we couldn't get into the room to get to our stuff and try to contact the rental company and Sam's phone was dying. Luckily, everything got sorted out, but it did end up being a minor hic-up in our day and apparently, our planning.

SURF BREAKS:

We learned from the folks that we rented boards from, that Pops surf break is a lot better for the beginner than Canoes. It's not so much abut the waves themselves, but more or less the people who inhabit the break. IE: a lot less ass-holes at Pops. As well, Sam was able to overcome the surfing frustrations of the day before and once again... enjoy surfing. Thank God.

SECOND MINOR OVERSIGHT OF THE DAY

Later that afternoon after surfing and happy hour (which Sam had a much more enjoyable go at it this time around) we walked a mile or so to the local mall to pick up more jet-boil fuel canisters at Sports Authority. See, after tonight we'd be departing for a more rugged and isolated part of the island and camping for the next three nights. I had brought my jet boil as a means of cooking meals, but due to airline restrictions, was unable to fly with the needed fuel canisters. No worries, I thought... I'll just pick some up in Honolulu. So, Sam and I walked into the store and went to the "camping gear section". We finally came to the row with the fuel and there we found, row after row after row of coleman fuel canisters, little green Coleman fuel canisters filled up every row as far as the eye could see and as far as the arms could reach. Back to back, side to side, Coleman, Coleman, Coleman. Upon seeing this, I realized we'd be in luck... if only the jetboil took a coleman fuel canister, which I didn't believe it would.

So I asked a nearby salesman. At first he was like... "yeah, that should work" and then we pressed him and asked him more questions finally he coughed up that he didn't think it would work at all. The funniest thing is that Sports Authority sells jetboils, in fact they had one on hand at that moment for $99; however, what they didn't sell was the fuel to go in them. I asked the salesman if he thought that was ridiculous. He replied that they normally do sell it, but they seemed to be sold out. "Really?" I responded... by looking at the row upon row of green coleman gas canisters... "where do you think they're supposed to go?" - pointing to a small gap right in between the row after row of Coleman canisters. Disappointed, we settled on getting a cheap little backpacking stove with little cheap fuel canisters. Not glamorous and nothing that will boil water in under twenty minutes, but good enough to make some mushy noodles in the backcountry for dinner at least.

in search of awesome... Hawaii part one.

For those of you who don't know yet... in a spur of the moment too good of a deal to pass-up opportunity, my GF Sam and I decided to take a week-long trip to Hawaii to celebrate not only reaching my 49th State of the Union, but also my birthday, Valentine's Day, and it's friggin February... why in the hell not vacation. In several installments as to not bore the reader but also the writer, I will note some highlights of the trip. This isn't just for you the reader, but also for me since I didn't do such a swell job of that last spring when I went to Sweden and Iceland for a few weeks, I failed on the travel reporting on that one. So... if anyone cares to follow along, here you go.

YEEEAH, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

Thursday, my birthday, was our first full day in Hawaii. We had arrived in town (Wakiki) the afternoon prior and had spent the evening gathering provisions and getting our bearings. Thursday we awoke to the bright sunlight outside and went out on the balcony of our condo to have coffee. From there we were going to grab breakfast from the bakery down the street and walk over to Diamond Head for a hike. After polishing off our ham and cheese croissants, we were interrupted by a salesman who was trying to offer us vouchers for free meals to popular local eateries in exchange for going to hear a spcheel about "vacation packages" or something. We knew to be weary of anything he had to say and figured that that was twenty minutes of our vacation that we were never going to get back... but at least the salesman informed us that Diamond Head wasn't open on Thursdays as apparently all Hawaii State Parks are closed on the conivient days of Wednesday and Thursday (go figure). Well... at least we didn't waste an hour walking to the place. Instead, we decided that it was high time that we seek surf.

FINDING SURF

Initially, Sam had found a good surf rental deal online, but when we tried contacting the people... we got no answer and no call back. Thereby, we were considering just having to rent from the folks on the beach. We didn't really want to go that route since we figured those people had the biggest mark-ups, but we also didn't want to spend all of our valuable time walking around. I had suggested that we try to find someone off the main drag as they might have better rental prices, but once again... we were running short on time. So, en route to the beach to be gouged by surfboard rental places, we passed by a window with "surf lessons" painted on it. It wasn't really a store front per-say and to go inside you had to walk up a short set of stairs, but we figured it was worth checking out. And... we're glad we did. We asked some questions about pricing for multiple day rentals and the friendly dudes at the desk didn't really have a set answer... or.... I wasn't happy with the answer they gave us. So, I pulled out the old "well this other guy that we talked to was willing to do this and that for that price...can you do anything like that?" And the two dudes talked it over and finally gave us an offer too good to pass up. As a result, we got two nice 9ft + epoxy boards for two days of all-day surfing for $90 (not too shabby for the tourist hot-spot of Wakiki if you ask me).

We found a nice spot to set our gear out in front of the grand pink Royal Hawaiian hotel and happily paddled our boards all the way out to the "Canoes" surf break. I had a blast. Within no time at all I was catching waves and riding them in and enjoying the warm sun gleaming down upon me. "Wow"....I thought, "what a way to spend my birthday! Here in Hawaii, in my bikini, surfing with my girlfriend and actually catching legit waves"... and then I looked over at Sam, who... in my opinion, did not seem to be enjoying the experience as much as I. In fact, she was getting so frustrated trying and trying to catch wave after wave unsuccessfully, that it was almost painful to watch. Quickly I realized that her frustration took away any good chance I had to gloat about how easy it seemed and how stupidly happy I was. I tried to offer her helpful tips and words of encouragement... but I think they all washed over her shoulders like the slow white frothy waves from New Zealand that we were playing in. From here it was just my role to play supportive girlfriend and keep my mouth shut.

HELLO MISTER!!!

One highlight that I didn't mind sharing with Sam during the Thursday Surfing Ordeal (as I'd like to call it) happened as I was glancing over my shoulder watching for oncoming waves and keeping an eye on Sam. While doing this, I noticed something pop out of the water beside me and looked over to see a giant, pre-historic looking head. My jaw dropped in a stupefied manor... thinking "what the hell..." and then it dawned on me what it was. There, slightly beneath the surface of the water was a giant shell... and inside the massive shell was a friggin huge sea turtle... (probably a yard and half long) and in my mind, just floatin there on the water, like in a Disney cartoon, the turtle popped up to say hello to me. So, I sat there straddling my board with a big grin on my face and kindly waved back to the big guy, thanking him for his birthday wishes before he disappeared under the water again.

DINNER OUT

Later that afternoon there was reading on the beach, sunning oneself (or in my case.... burning.... apparently spray on SPF of 30 needs to be reapplied more often than I thought), more surfing, then more reading and sunning and drinking Corona's by the pool. For dinner, I wore my very most favorite Patagonia morning glory dress because it looks good and it packs like a breeze (sadly it didn't hide my massive sunburn though) and then it was out to see the sunset and set off for the Hula Grill. The Hula Grill was a very nice place, not too stuffy and not too campy either. We grabbed some cocktails at the bar and waited for our table on the balcony overlooking the ocean, to be ready. Sam had a big tall drink called the "backscratcher" which, yes... did come out with a backscratcher, while I resorted to my summertime favorite, the mojito. Our table was excellent, directly overlooking the ocean with nothing else aside from a pine tree and a brightly lit moon in sight, and the food was amazing as well. Both Sam and I got a fish dish and enjoyed them. The waitstaff was friendly and overall, it was an amazing dinner.

From there, Sam and I went back to our condo and drank wine and smoked cigars on the balcony while fireworks exploded in the distance. Overall, it was a good day to turn 31.