December 08, 2009

Page 2 - Crystal Clear Ko'olaus and the Eddie Goes

 

Up early, but not as early as we wanted to.

We were hoping to be on the road before the first light of dawn, but we managed to piddle around and although it’s still early, daylight has overtaken us.

Driving in Honolulu is never any fun, and I promptly find a way to make it even less fun than usual. Our original plan was to take H1 west, and then run up the center of the island through Wahiawa to Haleiwa and onward from there to the rest of the North Shore.

Didn’t quite work out as planned.

Our later-than-desired departure gets us crosswise with rush hour traffic, and just as soon as we enter the morass on the freeway, we realize we’d probably made a time-consuming mistake. Traffic slowed to a crawl, with brake lights before us as far as the eye could see, and the prospect of enduring this sort of bullshit all the way to Pearl City, and maybe beyond, quickly became intolerable.

Ok Jesse, perhaps we’ll see this part of Oahu some other time, hmm?

Time for a Pali Highway detour to get us out of this hole.

Which, I suppose, would have been simple enough, except for the fact that as we were headed in that direction, James Fucking MacLaren instructed Jesse to take the wrong turn and we are instantly in the middle of Town, on the back roads and byways, and the Pali Highway is nowhere to be found.

Shit.

We then attempt to get Jesse’s little GPS doodad to help us out, and we’re horrified to discover that the damn thing has never heard of the Pali Highway.

Lovely. Just fucking lovely.

So we proceed to drive like a couple of lost tourists, and things get progressively worse and worse until we find ourselves dead-ended in the drop-off area of a fucking hospital of all goddamned weird things.

Regroup.

The GPS gizmo has a map function, and we can see where we need to be, even if we can’t quite figure out how we’re supposed to get there, and we boldly strike out in the general direction we’re supposed to be headed in. In short order, Jesse attempts to turn left into an oncoming wall of traffic and immediately has to stop, and hangs up right in the middle of the intersection, just as illegal as all hell. A cop drives right past us and does nothing at all. An extrication is performed. And then suddenly, as if by magic, we’ve found the goddamned Pali Highway and we’re free and clear.

Hallelujah!

Up the Nu'uanu Valley, over the top, and down toward Kailua and Kaneohe we go, back once again on my beloved Windward Side.

Where I find a way to fuck up the directions one more time, but it’s not life threatening, and we do a quick u-turn on Anoi Road, and continue on our way.

Pu'u Konahuanui, cloudless

Outside, all around us, the weird weather continues, but today, instead of clouds and rain, and a wonkus wind, we get absolutely crystal blue skies, no wind at all, a most un-Hawaiian chill to the morning air, and a bizarrely cloud-free Ko’olau mountain range.

Unusual clarity over the mountains

And when I say mountain range, that’s exactly what I mean.

The whole goddamned thing, from Makapuu to Kahuku, is completely visible along its entire length, utterly without cloud, brilliantly, luxuriously, deliciously, tropically, green green green, glowing in the morning sunlight.

Pu'u Ohulehule

In the entire four years I once lived here, I may have seen it this clear for a total of two, perhaps three times.

Jesse gets it on day number two.

Just lucky, I guess, although if she starts getting the idea that this is how this place looks on a regular basis, she’s going to be in for a bit of a surprise on subsequent visits.

Trust me on this one, you’re never going to see this again in your life Jesse.

I try my best to photograph it, but it’s just one of those things that has to be taken in through your eyeballs to be properly appreciated. Yeah, the pictures are nice enough I suppose, but they in no way convey the true beauty and majesty of this place.

Gotta love the Hygienic Store

We sail on down the road, and reconnect with the Kam Highway as we drive past the Hygienic Store.

What a name!

Little mom and pop joint that was here way back when, and I’m always tickled to see it’s still sitting right there where it’s supposed to be.

GTFO brown-shoe Republicans!

We continue on toward the Waihole/Waikane area, and it’s good to see that the ongoing battle against greed seems to be more or less being won by the good guys. They were fighting development in this area back in ’72 when I first got here, and apparently they’re still having to keep on fighting.

What the fuck, money guys, what part of GTFO do you not understand?

These people do not want you, your lawyers, your bankers, your condominiums, or any of the rest of it.

Pretty please just leave things the fuck alone, and go do your investing somewhere else, ok?

Pu'u Kanehoalani and Mokoli'i

Kualoa Park

But it’s a never-ending war, and despite three and a half decades of “no, no, no, no, no, no, ……..no,” the motherfucking developer scum, with their bought-and-paid-for politicians in their hip pockets, mindlessly, endlessly, relentlessly, keep on coming.

And these fucks know that it takes only a single “yes” to irrevocably fuck things up on their own selfish terms.

And then, all of a sudden, it’s game over, locals begone, bring on the brown-shoe Republicans with their golf clubs, and that’s it. All over. All done. All mine.

Good godDAMN but do I ever hate these people!

Approaching Ka'a'awa

Die in a fire, every last one of you!

Outside, the extraordinary peace and tranquility belie what’s going on just beneath the surface of things.

Sigh.

If only it didn’t have to be this way.

The car, with us in it (and yes, I know I’m part of the problem here), obediently rolls us on up the coastline.

We get past Kaneohe Bay, and can see that the ocean has plenty of waves in it, with a hard north tilt.

Kahana Bay, with Pu'u Piei in the distance

Looking back across Kahana Bay

Way the hell outside, some fairly large stuff is working its way down the coast, wrapping around the exposed reefs and into the quieter zones between them as it does so.

No one is surfing it anywhere along this whole stretch of coastline.

Might be a bit more north in the swell today, to judge by how it’s hitting over on this side.

The gate, at Myrtle's

We drive through Punalu'u, and as we roll past Myrtle’s, where once upon a time I lived, I take picture of the gate.

Back in those halcyon days, a couple of honest-to-god Hawaiian grass shacks remained on the expansive grounds of her place where I mowed grass and cleared coconuts in exchange for being permitted to live there, and I have had the signal pleasure of dwelling within them for a time. No amenities. Living low, living rough. It was right here that I began my lifelong apprenticeship in learning the ways of “less stuff.”

Myrtle Kaapu passed away years ago, but I remember her fondly, and always will.

She was plenty old back in the early 70’s, and had lived an amazing life.

Among other things, during the 1920’s, her and a girlfriend hitchhiked(!) coast to coast across America, packing pistols in their purses and sleeping undisturbed in graveyards along the way. She told me with a twinkle in her eye that they never once had to take the guns out of their purses during the whole journey, and that people were uniformly helpful and kind at all times.

Eventually she fetched up on Oahu, married a Hawaiian prince who at the time owned most of the valley, and there she stayed and raised a family. David Kaapuawaokamehameha (I do hope I got that spelling at least mostly right) was gone before I ever set foot on Oahu, and Myrtle was happy to exchange a bit of living space in return for the work that I, and others, before me and after me, did for her.

Ah, the stories she told!

I miss you Myrtle.

Up the Kam Highway we continue to roll, through Hau'ula, through Lai'e, and on into Kahuku.

The Kahuku Shrimp Truck

Where traffic suddenly backs up, solid, and proceeds at little better than a walking pace.

Oh shit, I hope it isn’t this way from here to and through the North Shore.

But I fear it is.

Turns out, my fears were groundless and all that’s happening is that school is getting underway in Kahuku, and once we pass that little item, things open right back up and we’re rolling right along, making good time once again.

Whew!

Entering the North Shore from thee Windward Side

Parking lot at Sunset Beach

Past the shrimp farms and through the glorious Hawaiian morning we go, and now we’re entering the North Shore.

First stop: Sunset Beach.

Sun is out, no clouds, and the wind is light offshore.

Swell still slightly uneven.

And it’s still Big.

Size, somewhere outside of Rocky Point

Jesse, with Outside Log Cabins behind her

But not quite as big as yesterday.

The outer reefs are grinding along, but it’s not quite so relentless out there as it was yesterday, and a sort of a gap in the whitewaters has reappeared inside, between Sunset and Kammieland.

But it’s a strictly no-go situation, and the normal breaks are still utterly smothered under a heaving shroud of whitewater, with truly large waves coming over way the hell and gone outside.

We stay and admire things for a bit, and then we get back in the car.

Let’s go see what Pipeline looks like, shall we?

I’m guessing that Pipeline will be out of control, and outside Log Cabins will be going ballistic.

No takers on the outside, still too uneven

Pretty girl. Pretty day.

We finagle ourselves into a parking spot right at Ehukai beach park and get out to take a looky-see at things.

What a surprise, Pipeline is out of control, and outside Log Cabins is going ballistic.

Great surges of water are overturning a mile out there, and then lumbering shoreward, sometimes backing off, and sometimes not. Every so often, a proper lull will manifest itself and the whitewaters outside will disappear and the ocean will regain a bit of normalcy, only to once again be overwhelmed by bombs breaking on the outside.

I scan for people towing at outside Log Cabins, but the unevenness of the swell in combination with the very early hour (the sun has only just come over the cliff behind us) leaves things without a soul in the water, anywhere.

Pipe Masters setup

Take a few shots of that, why not?

On the beach the gear for the Pipe Masters setup, is mostly set up.

Take a few shots of that, why not?

Jesse’s wishing she could get a look at Pipeline, but it’s not to be. Or at least not today, anyway. Game called on account of too much surf.

We continue on toward Waimea Bay.

There are people everywhere, and there are cars parked along full length of Kam Highway, from Ehukai onwards. Never seen that before. Traffic itself is not fully jammed, but the roadside is solid cars on both sides. I dunno. Did these people come up here last night, park, and sleep in their vehicles? Weird.

In days of yore, early to mid 70’s, you could actually surf Waimea by yourself, once in a while, and with only a mere handful of fellow crazies on a fairly reliable basis. I guess you can’t do that anymore, can you? Probably not. Which is ok with me, ‘cause my riding days at the place are long behind me and it’s no longer my problem. Glad I caught the motherfucker when I did.

Lovely but lethal, Shark Cove

Rolling onward, we get to Shark Cove, which continues nutzo with furious explosions of water ricocheting off of the exposed angles and contours of knife-edged stone.

The parking area is just completely sardine-canned, and I’m scanning for all I’m worth, looking for a spot, while Jesse slowly works the car down the road in traffic that has thickened up considerably, but has not quite ground to a halt.

And then, mirable dictu, across from the Foodland, immediately before the fire station, I spy a crevice in the congealed glass and steel, hard by a bus stop, complete with direct public access to the ocean right behind it. Grab that fucker! And we do. Tra la la.

Way to go, fireguys

So ok, let us walk to the ocean’s edge, and see what’s what, shall we?

We shall.

At the end of the accessway to the beach directly behind the fire station, a marvelous bonsai garden more or less sprouts from the rocks, for no reason at all, other than “because.”

Way to go fireguys, whom I presume are the ones who have tended this thing to its present state of serene beauty.

The ocean is a deep rich blue, which contrasts nicely with the brilliance of the whitewaters that edge it.

Hardly anyone around, right here.

Way cool.

Our perch

We admire things for a while, and then the pull of the Bay exerts itself, and we allow ourselves to be drawn to it.

There are people out on the rock point that juts into the ocean a trifle north of Waimea Bay.

Jesse wants to walk down there, and who am I to disagree with a thing like that?

So we go, and as we do so, she figures out how to get out on rock point. Way to go, Ace.

We walk along the bike path for a bit, and then down on the small beach at Three Tables, being careful to watch for sudden surges rushing up the beach slope.

The sand shows clear evidence of very recent water, all the way up into the shoreline vegetation. But the ocean smiles upon us, and we encounter nothing that could have caused us to beat a hasty retreat.

The foot of the point is reached, and the sand gives way to rounded knobs, outcrops, and boulders of inky black basalt, shiny wet from occasional dousings handed out by the ocean.

Mind what's hitting the rocks while you're busy concentrating on watching the lineup at Waimea, ok?

It’s a little less than fully optimal working along the near-vertical margin of the point (there’s a house up on top, and we’re not going to try our luck with trespassing on someone’s private property, thank you very much), with large waves crashing in every so often, and very uneven rocks to clamber across and not fall down and kill yourself or drown, but we make it just fine.

And at the end of the point, or at least the part that’s not being occasionally smothered by violent attacks from the waves, a crowd of twenty or thirty has gathered, with a clear view of the lineup at Waimea, where a small knot of surfers are sitting, and a couple of jetskis linger farther inside.

Every surfer is in a different brightly-colored rashguard, and there’s only six of them.

The Eddie is on

Frighteningly steep drops are the norm at Waimea

The Eddie is on.

I can only imagine the crowd scene in the Bay itself, just around the corner where I cannot see, and, truth be told, I much prefer things right where I am.

I’ve found a perfect perch for myself, and once settled in, I determine to stay put for the duration.

Jesse lingers for a while, but then she decides to get a little closer to things.

Large, ferocious waves breaking almost in our laps

It was blocking out the horizon every so often

And so she works her way across the uneven basalt and disappears from view, around the corner in front of me and to the left.

Ok then, let’s just take this shit in like we’re supposed to, shall we?

We shall.

We’re damn near sitting IN the fucking ocean.

Close as you can get to waves like this without actually getting into them.

There’s very deep water quite close to the shoreline here, and even the very largest sets fail to stand up at all, until the last seconds.

Three Tables beach, back there behind me

Lovely but lethal, Three Tables

As I look out to sea, the “tables” at Three Tables are just to my right, and the lineup at the Bay is not very much further to my left. In front of me, a ceaseless Pacific Ocean is, with infinite patience, winning its hyper-slow-motion battle with the aging black lava.

Between sets, things are almost benign.

Almost.

But even then, the water is moving in a way that it normally does not, and the thrum of vast forces hangs in the air.

When the waves come, you can see them a pretty good ways outside, but they’re very low, very laid-down, and not really standing out or standing up at all. You actually have to look for them to see them.

As they near the shoreline however, they finally begin to feel bottom for real, and now they begin to come sensibly upright.

Uh oh		Violence within violence		After the worst of the fury, a faint piece of a rainbow

And finally, just a single wavelength away from the rocks I’m standing on, they rise up for real, spray feathering off the top into the opposing breeze, sunglint sparking madly, water color going from deep blue to deep green, and then in a paroxysm of mindless fury, they unload, lip plunging, green going white, with an unearthly rumble and roar, malevolently beautiful, and all of that stored energy is released in mere seconds, whitewater spraying into the air as it hits the rocks all around us with the main body of the surge racing past our perch to its final destiny on the shoreline sand.

You may take the above description and throw it away, because it is completely useless.

The malevolence of the angels....		....seeking to draw you into it

This stuff has to be experienced to be understood, and there’s no way around that fact.

Twenty and thirty foot waves encountered at close range are not to be captured and converted into pictures and words.

Wall		Puny humans, pushing their luck		This is not the shorebreak. It's all the way outside.

Ain’t gonna happen, ok?

About all I can hope these words might do is to cause you to take the time, make the time. to come out here and take this experience in for yourselves, ok?

Out on the point, more people keep arriving.

Swinging wide to the far side of the bay		Leaving a white trail in the sky

Over at The Bay, sets swing wide to the near side, and wide to the far side, and every once in a while they hit squarely.

The wall of water starts breaking right in front of us, but in short order things begin to happen a bit farther down.

Below: Slater.

Fat and low. Nothing to it.		Committed, but still headed upwards, not down.		Taking the drop, but not dropping.

Finally starting to break loose as the wall goes vertical.		It's still trying to draw him back up the face, but it can't.		Plummeting now, as the wave jacks up even larger.

Best Surfer in the World, barely in control.		Almost to the bottom, things mostly back under control.		Hidden behind the explosion, but he made it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depending on the size of the set, guys are either setting it up and attempting their takeoff runs, or are scratching like hell to get up and over the goddamned thing before it caves life-threateningly in on them.

You might want to keep in mind that this wave has killed, and will kill again, ok?

Big one, fat and low, again		Although it's large, you have to be in just the right spot		This is the entire six-man heat, right here

White is in the exact right spot		Green tries to back out, and orange commits

Orange is below white, but still being drawn upwards		Green in trouble, white dropping, orange hanging		Emerging at the bottom, only white

Only white, down at the bottom		Green and orange wishing they were somewhere else

Shutter slowed to one-sixtieth of a second to show motion blur and the speed they get as they take the drop:

"Small" one		Rapid forward speed buildup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now adding drop speed to forward speed		Full speed

The perspective provided by my perch allows for a good look at the steepness of the wave as the riders try to control their plummet down its precipice.

I’m looking right down the wall.

And once again, as I mentioned in the story for yesterday, things are very deceptive, the wave at Waimea is a sneaky sonofabitch, and it’s doing its best to catch people off their guard.

And please keep in mind that the people in the lineup are seasoned veterans of big-wave riding, world-class, and no fools.

And yet the wave works its evil magic on them too, often as not.

Fat and low, nothing to it.

And then, at the exact second you’ve committed yourself to the thing, it transforms itself in the blink of an eye into this great yawning pit that you must somehow figure out how to bounce and skitter down into, staying properly atop your board with whatever ragged half-control you can scrape together in less than a second, hoping you didn’t misjudge and wind up behind it, forced into dealing with a nightmare lip exploding into a gargantuan base out there in front of you.

Even when the wave occasionally decides to more or less “behave” itself, and the slope of the face does not appear to be unduly steep, boards with riders atop still come clear of the water and fall sickeningly into empty space. Looking at still or even moving images of this place does not convey what’s actually going on with the drop at Waimea. It’s all a matter of relative speeds, and all too often the forward speed  (forward, not downward) of a rider attempting to negotiate the drop will exceed the forward speed of that part of the wave which is beneath his feet, and as soon as that happens a freefall is the inevitable consequence.

The best surfers in the world are humbled and reduced into a hair-ball scrabble for mere survival by this wave on a regular basis.

This is respectable Waimea.

Which is a different thing entirely from small Waimea.

Different animal altogether.

Heavy water		To look at this single image, you'd never realize that white is headed down, but orange is headed up.

Although small Waimea will kick the living shit out of you too, if you let it.

It’s a long time between proper sets.

Plenty of time to delude yourself into believing that maybe this place isn’t all that heavy or intense.

And then it comes again, the guys in the brightly-colored rashguards begin stroking their needle-nose craft, building up the requisite speed just to simply get in to the thing, the water gathering itself behind and beneath them, and down they go again, some passing, some failing, as the air fills with white mist and the deep base rumble steps up a notch and all the people around you holler and shout for triumph or for catastrophe.

This is true spectacle, no doubt about it.

And I feel very fortunate to be here, watching it at close range.

I enter into a conversation with a young man standing next to me. He’s only been on this island for three months, and has arrived here to attend school. Oddly enough, he’s spent time in Florida, and knows the place fairly well. We only exchange words in between sets. He surfs, but he’s never ridden anything the like of what’s coming in today. The ocean has his full attention, and keeps it.

As far as the surfing at the Eddie goes, I really do not have much to offer by way of any description above and beyond what I’ve already said about this place. The sets come in, the riders chance it, and waves are made and not made.

Nothing to it. Just take off and go.		What's the big deal, anyway? Anybody could do this.

The surfing being done today has almost nothing at all in common with the kind of surfing that most people do, or even wish they could do.

The ride at Waimea is not really a ride at all.

It’s just a drop.

That’s all.

Make the drop, and then beat the whitewater into the clear.

It all sounds so deceptively short and simple.

But it’s not.

And the best goddamned riders in the world are right here in front of everybody, getting the holy shit beat out of them, often as not, demonstrating the complexities of this drop every time they take it.

A made wave at respectable Waimea is …..

I dunno, it’s pretty much impossible to explain. Maybe catch a couple for yourself sometime, just to see how it really works, ok?

	Just about as basic as it gets. Surfing Waimea.

I spend a good couple of hours immersed in it, taking pictures, not once moving from the rock I’ve chosen to stand upon.

Eventually, the sound of a bullhorn can be heard above the background roar of white noise, coming from somewhere ahead of me, around and behind the rocks to my left.

And it turns out to be the fire department, warning everybody off of these rocks.

Get off.

Go away.

The tide is still coming in and your lives are in danger.

Apparently, they really mean it, because in short order a truly surprising number of people begin scrambling into view from around that corner ahead of me to my left, driven like so many cattle before the minions of the fire department.

I watch the scene unfold, and after a while, as the surge of humanity continues to flow around me, I spot Jesse amongst the mob.

We eventually decide to join the departing swarm, and find ourselves a spot in the flow that chokes down to single-file, just a bit shoreward of our position, clambering across the near-vertical margin of the rocky point of land once again, this time with the sea at our backs, stopping every once in a while to permit a larger than average surge of whitewater to pass by, perhaps maybe the smallest bit closer than we might have wished.

But the cameras do not get wet, and nobody is swept into the sea, and we arrive back on the small beach there at Three Tables, safe and sound.

Jesse informs me that from where she had worked herself forward to, there was some guy in the back yard of one of the houses above and behind her with some kind of large drum, who beat on it with increasing vigor as each large wave approached the lineup and then broke. I couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards away from her, tops, and yet I never once heard any drumming. The roar from the ocean had smothered it completely. Jesse said the drumming added to the overall intensity of things, but I’m pretty sure I would have tired of that crap pretty quickly, myself. Nice how it all worked out for the best, for the both of us.

We decide to take a stroll down to the Bay itself.

Traffic on the Kam highway is barely moving, and we walk past a lot of cars.

Which is a good thing, because there isn’t really anywhere to walk that’s safe.

This little piece of road was never intended for this sort of duty, and people and cars are mingling at far too close range.

Eventually, we make it around to where we can see the beach, and it looks like a goddamned rock concert or something over there.

Solid wall of people all the way across the beach from one side to the other, with a set of judging stands set up in the middle of things looking like a goddamned stage where Mick Jagger was expected to make an entrance at any minute. Kam Highway a solid wall of gridlocked automobiles, rimmed with a gapless wall of humans. Tens of thousands of people, easy.

Um….ok. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

I do not like crowds, and the larger the crowd, the less I like it.

Jesse wanted to go down on the beach itself, and give the ocean a look from there.

And so, despite my feelings toward the mass of people all around me, we head on down the road to where the access to the beach is, and take the stair down on to the sand.

And I re-experience another peculiarity of Waimea, for the first time in over thirty years.

From the beach, standing right here on the sand in the corner of the bay where you jump into the water to paddle out, the wave out there doesn’t really look to be all that large.

Guys are taking the drop, so it’s not like there’s no perspective on the wave, but it still somehow manages to underwhelm.

When I first encountered this place, this little bit of weirdness imprinted itself on my brain and has remained there ever since. I do not know why this is, but it must be real because it was noticed by other people I was with back then, and discussed, but nobody has ever been able to offer a proper explanation for it. So if you ever find yourself standing here with a board under your arm, contemplating the paddle-out and thinking that the waves aren’t all that big, take note, ok? The place deceives on multiple levels, and the deceptions begin even before you get your feet wet.

We remain for a while, but eventually the blazing sun, coupled with the crush of people and a lack of proper breeze in this protected little area, turns up the heat to a point where we decide to head on back home.

So we retrace our steps and head on back to the car, all the way down just past the fire station.

By the time we get back, I have had way more than enough crowd for this, or any other, day.

Guess I’m just not cut out for that kind of thing. I’m ok with people as individuals or by the handful, grow increasingly uncomfortable with them in the dozens or the hundreds, and absolutely loathe and detest them in the thousands.

I’m sure there’s some psychologist out there who has a ready explanation for that, be it right or be it wrong.

Back at the car, as we’re trying to get out of our crevice, I’m outside of the car, spotting Jesse, and a fat unpleasant Hawaiian girl in a truck that’s stuck in traffic right there next to us, actually stops and takes the time to get out of her stupid truck, walk around behind it, and give Jesse a ration of shit about “don’t bang into my truck!” We’re not planning on it, Miss Tita, but she seems unconvinced. Welcome to Hawaii. Never forget that aloha also means “goodbye.”

We finally work our way into traffic and head out going the wrong way and cut across into the Foodland parking lot so we can get something to chow down on for the ride home. After the time is spent getting the comestibles, standing in line in the packed store, getting back out and into the car, and getting back onto the Kam Highway headed toward Sunset Beach, we spot, to our delight, the same fat unpleasant Hawaiian girl in the same stupid truck, still stuck in traffic. Hadn’t traveled fifty yards in all that time, and she was probably on her way to Wahiawa or Pearl City. No wonder she was in a pissy mood. Have a nice day, ok?

Jesse at Kahana Bay

Kahana Bay

Back around, Windward Side, heading home.

Cloudless sky. Full range of Ko’olau mountains completely visible. Rare. Very rare. I keep saying how rare it is. Jesse probably gets sick of hearing it.

Back up Pali Highway.

On the way uphill, we stop and admire the view at the roadside lookout where you can see Olomana and Kailua. Nice soft grass, bizarrely warm, sunny, and calm. “Hey Jesse. Did I tell you about how weird this weather is?”

Southeast Windward Oahu is spread down below, all before us, bathed in radiant sunlight.

Impossibly benign conditions for up here. What the fuck? “Hey Jesse. Did I tell you about how weird this weather is?”

We hang out for a while, admiring the view, and then head on uphill.

Through the tunnels, start down the Nu'uanu Valley, and then take the anonymous little cut that lets us reverse our direction, and head on up to the parking area at the Pali Lookout.

Park the car, continue to marvel at the uncannily serene weather, and mosey on over to the lookout.

Nu'uanu Pali like you'll never see it in your life

It is, as usual, an amazing sight, and even moreso this day owing to the utter lack of cloud cover, with crystal clear visibility down along this vast bite taken out of the side of the island, to and beyond the end of Kaneohe Bay.

The sheer precipice of the Pali never fails to amaze me when I look from it and look at it, and today it’s even better than usual with wall to wall sunshine that turns everything a surrealistically verdant green.

You can stand here and try to imagine the forces and time that went in to creating this vista, but the human mind isn’t particularly well-adapted for such work.

Too large. Too powerful. Too much depth of time.

Standing here, looking at the serenity and the beauty, but knowing what had to happen to create it, causes my mind to boggle.

People think of these islands as being hazardous because of erupting lava, but there’s more going on with the Hawaiian archipelago than mere lava flows.

At some point in its history, the Ko’olau shield volcano collapsed, taking the summit caldera and almost the whole eastern flank of the mountain with it when it went, in what may be the largest event of its type ever found on this planet, removing somewhere around twelve hundred cubic miles of rock, and sending it out in a series of vast avalanches of debris across the ocean floor for well over a hundred miles to the northeast of Oahu.

Included in that avalanche were several large blocks, one of which, the Tuscaloosa Seamount, all by itself, is nineteen miles long, eleven miles wide, and over a mile thick. Try to imagine an almost twenty mile long mountain, eleven miles wide and over a mile high, along with a lot of the surrounding countryside, one fine day up and deciding to take a fifty mile ride out into the depths of the ocean, just for the hell of it.

Musta put on one hell of a show when it went down.

Glad I wasn’t around, though. I’m guessing it would have maybe fucked up the neighborhood a little.

The Pali is not the direct result of that titanic avalanche, or avalanches, but is an indirect erosional result of the crash. No matter how you slice it, it's pretty impressive.

Ok then, let’s take a look around, shall we?

When the Pali Highway was first constructed, back in 1897, it followed the old Hawaiian path over the top of the cliff, switchbacking down to the Windward Side. A new road was constructed later on, with tunnels blown through the top of the precipice, and the old road was abandoned.

Which means there’s this ripping cool old-timey road hard against a sheer cliff of rock up above you on one side, with an equally sheer cliff continuing down below you on the other side, that has moss growing on it and vegetation encroaching from all sides, that you can saunter down any old time you want to. If you let it, it will take you all the way down to the Ko’olau Country Club in Kaneohe.

Jesse and I take a walk down the old roadway for a ways. Scenery to die for. There’s places where you get out away from the general line of the faces of the Pali to the north of you, and you can see them standing there, sheer and majestic. Beneath you in the distance, Kaneohe. Off in the far distance, Chinaman’s Hat floats in Kaneohe Bay. Green green green. A zillion tropical plants all around you. Aged roadway beneath your feet, and not a car to be seen or heard, anywhere. Stand up on the concrete guardrail to get a better look at things through the encroaching vegetation, but don’t fall over the edge, ok? We wind down and around, and at a fair distance from the parking area, we encounter an old lady and we stop and talk a bit, just the three of us. How nice. How very very nice. All around us, the beauty is content to just be, and all the while the sun continues to blaze down miraculously, unimpeded by any cloud cover. On all scales, from very small to very large, the raw beauty of Hawaii unrelentingly assaults your senses in every direction. Hella cool place!

We finally decide to turn around and head back, although I’d be perfectly happy to remain in this place for all the rest of my living days.

The stupefying scenery unfolds past us once again, in reverse this time.

The contrast with the walk we’ve just taken could not be any greater when compared with the drive back into the depths of Honolulu.

Yeesh.

Back in town, we drive to a small surfshop on Koa Ave., and rent a couple of Takayama popouts, but they’re in nice condition. This is by far as good as we’ll get, so we settle for it.

They have an outside board locker, where you can access your boards after hours, and we put our boards in the board locker and drive boardless back to hotel. Pretty cool setup, if you ask me. Koa Board Sports is a neato place, and the lady who took care of us was a complete sweetie. If you’re out here sometime, maybe pay ‘em a visit.

We depart in the car, find an excellent parking spot on Ala Wai, and walk back to hotel from there.

Drop the gear and return on foot to the board locker, grab the boards and walk to beach. No cameras, so there will be no pictures from here on down. Hope you liked what you saw, up above.

Wax up the boards in soft green grass directly in front of Duke statue at Waikiki.

The whole scene here is just completely uncanny.

You’re right in the middle of a major metropolis, with swarms of people surging up and down the sidewalks and great goddamned big buildings looking down on you from all around, but just over your shoulder is a goddamned full-size bronze statue of Duke Kahanamoku with leis strung across his outstretched arms, and beyond him the sun is sparkling on the fucking cradle of surfing civilization.

Weird as all hell.

Welcome to Waikiki.

Everybody who surfs needs to come to this place, and ride this wave, at least once in their lifetimes.

Even if you do not understand why, or think it’s lame, or can’t afford it, or whatever, just DO it, ok?

Understanding may not come all at once, but eventually it will soak through and you will thank yourself to the end of your life for doing so.

This will be Jesse’s first session at Waikiki, and I’m fully stoked for her.

This is where it all got started from, kiddo. The whole works. Right here.

This is where surfing passed through the eye of a needle at the end of the eighteen hundreds, very nearly becoming extinct.

The fucked up missionaries in their fucked up three-masted ships HATED surfing, and did their dead level best to stamp it out after they arrived here and had subjugated the population.

The assholes.

But they didn’t quite pull it off, and by the narrowest of margins, surfing survived.

Duke Kahanamoku was instrumental in the revival of the sport, but he wasn’t alone.

Read your history, goddamnit, and you’ll discover that guys like Jack London had a hand in it too.

And the life that sprang back into vigorous globe-girdling health all sprouted from this one little stretch of sand and water.

Surfing, in case you didn’t know it, is the oldest continuously-practiced sport on earth. Nothing else even comes close, in fact. There’s guys out in the water somewhere, right now, as you read these words, on solid wooden alaia boards, that are getting rides that are in no wise different from what some Hawaiian was doing, right here at Waikiki over a thousand years ago.

Think about that.

So be glad, and the next time you catch one, think about what went down before you were ever born to allow you to partake of the pleasures of surfing, ok?

Today, in stark contrast to the other side of the island, it’s mostly flat, maybe knee high, crowded, and the wind’s weird, coming in from the west, but light, although it’s still got a bit of a crinkle on it.

Doesn’t matter.

Not in the fucking slightest.

We take our ridiculous rental surfboards and enter the water.

Queen’s Surf at Waikiki is farther out than people expect.

Quite a bit, in fact.

And so it’s a nice long paddle through perfectly pleasant water, occasionally admiring Diamond Head off to your left, threading your way between fat white tourists floating and bobbing around in the water, watching the crowd outside where the waves are dribbling along, trying to get the sense of things figured out before you arrive and take your place in the lineup.

Jesse is simultaneously stoked and disappointed with the size and quality of the waves.

But she’s still young, and understanding will come, all in good time.

The main thing is that she’s out here.

We ride a few but they’re really weak, and in short order we decide to take the long paddle to Pop’s, which, although not looking “good,” is at least looking “better.”

Jesse has now ridden Waikiki and nobody will ever be able to take that away from her.

Again, it’s an oddball thing, and if you don’t get it, don’t worry, ok?

Maybe someday it will be your turn.

Out at Pop’s it’s bigger, up to once in a great while belly button high, and some fairly long rides are had.

Sprinkling of people in the water with us, half dozen or so.

Me and Jesse both hate our boards, and trade, and then we still hate them.

And then Jesse trades with some guy in the lineup.

The guy who winds up on my board seems quite taken with my backwards shit.

We surf, giggle, talk with stand up paddlers, and other folks. The crowd varies from three or four to maybe a dozen, all spread out. Waves are VERY inconsistent. The sun starts going down over the water, and it’s real pretty.

The trade wind half-heartedly returns, and tries to brush it clean.

And we’re having fun, way the hell out in the middle of the ocean. Pop’s is even father out than Queens.

Between sets, you just sit and take it all in.

Can’t really describe it very well.

Which seems to be quite the common occurrence out here on this trip.

Finally we decide to call it a day, and Jesse catches one in.

Takes me a while, but I finally get one. A soup. Fuckit and let’s go, ride with one of the guys I’ve been talking story with, laughing as we go.

The wave takes us a pretty good ways, but there’s a looong paddle to the beach from there anyway.

No Jesse in sight.

I arrive on shore right behind the Royal Hawaiian or some damn monstrosity, and walk along the sidewalk thing atop the seawall behind it. No sand on the beach in this area.

Beautiful sunset.

Finally arrive back at main area of Waikiki and there’s Jesse, shivering.

Low humidity, and cool, with the sun gone down, most very unHawaiian weather. Weird as hell.

Jesse’s shaking like she’s stranded at the North Pole, and as we’re working our way across the sand, she asks a tourist fat lady for her towel, to dry off and warm up, and by golly the lady gets off her towel and very graciously hands it over. Amazing. Very nice. Jesse shakes the sand off of the towel, dries herself, and very thankfully returns the towel to its bemused owner.

I give her her board to hold, and take mine to the water and rinse the sand off.

Get back, and trade boards again, ‘cause mine is much lighter.

We walk back to the board locker on Koa street.

Jesse shivering the whole way.

Stash the boards (how cool is this shit anyway?) and then walk back to hotel.

Back in room, hot shower time, and then look at a zillion pictures on the computers.

Good sore feeling from all the paddling and catching weency waves.

There’s no time to write, and I just sort of throw this together, scaffold-wise. I hope I can fill this out later.

Well now it’s later, and it looks pretty damned filled out to me.

So there.

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Hawaii, December 2009, Contents MacLaren's Images & Stories