December 09, 2009

Page 3 - West Side: Barbers Point to Yokohama Bay

 

Ok, the last two stories were more essay than photo. So this time I'm cutting back on the words, ok?

Lotsa pictures, though.

Sleep till 6:30.

Late start.

Jesse wants to surf, and she also wants to check Town spots, including Kaisers and Ala Moana Bowls. So, although the North Shore is still booming, we give that a pass for the day.

I have no idea how to get ourselves to a place where we can check Kaisers. I am not, nor have I ever been, any kind of Townie. Even when I lived out here. Always avoided the place. Don't know shit about it, and don't really care to learn, truth be told.

Jesse keeps me on it and Google Earth to the rescue, and I find what looks like the way.

Never been there.

Depart hotel, go get boards from board locker on Koa street.

2nd day in a row with impossibly clear perfect weather and no wind. Zero clouds over the Ko'olaus. Let's not talk about it anymore, ok?

Boards miraculously fit inside of rental car, no worries about walking away from car for a while.

Drive to where we think it is, and by golly it works. Public parking by the Ala Wai yacht harbor.

Waves are the stink. Kaisers and Ala Moana Bowls, as well as everything else along this stretch, looks like a weak wobbly day in Florida. Yeah, it's that bad.

Long check. Maybe a set will show up?

No. No set ever shows up.

It's hopeless.

So we depart for the West Side, maybe there will be waves over there somewhere.

Through the freeway bullshit.

Barber’s Point, first. Nobody goes to Barbers Point. But I navigate us there anyway.

Barbers Point. Just don't look over your shoulder.		I told you not to look over your shoulder		But the place has plenty of charm anyway

Through the back-road industrial ugliness.

Find Barber’s Point beach park, exit car, walk around all the way to the lighthouse.

We're walking to the lighthouse, tra la la la la		Yep. It's a lighthouse alright. No doubt about it.		Not rideable. Nobody out, anywhere at all.

Swell is wrapping all the way around down here, and it’s glassy with a light east breeze, clean as a whistle, blue water, sun sparkles, the whole works.

	No, there's no surf at all over at Barbers Point		Nope. No siree. No waves. Unfit for riding.		There'd be people out otherwise, right?

Waves going sideways from the west, but not quite fully perfectly organized, and breaking all over the place. Nobody riding. Not another soul around, in fact.

I would have surfed, but Jesse is nonplussed, so we head toward Makaha.

No clouds over Waianai range, either. Absurd.

Jesse, hanging out at Tracks		Pleasant conditions		Check out the far outside, off in the distance

On our way north, we stop and check the waves at Tracks.

Very workable wave		Ahhhh.......

Nice little looper		Scattered peaks, here and there

Chest high and nice, but we don’t go out.

Did I mention the fact that this wave is very workable?		Hawaiian crowd at Tracks		Maili Point, off in the distance

Jesse wants to see Makaha, so we continue to head north.

Stop for gas and eats, and Jesse gets vibed by some of the local tita girls in Nanakuli. Not that she'd done the slightest thing wrong, aside from exist. It was just the standard putting-on-notice that you'll get when you venture outside of your chrome capsule and enter the world of those who live West Side. Welcome to Hawaii, haole bitch. I've never had any problems in Nanakuli, but it's certainly not the kind of place where you can just show up and start acting like you're hot shit or something. You need to respect those who live there. You know, the people who owned the whole goddamned archipelago until the fucked up white guys arrived in their three-masted ships with rum, bibles, and firearms, and forcibly took it away from them.

Yeah, I can see how these guys might not be any too thrilled with the arrival of yet another asshole haole in their neighborhood. I've never been hassled on the West Side, but then again, I've always gone out of my way to take it easy, show respect, and just generally try to behave myself unless and until permission was granted to behave otherwise. Jesse and I keep it cool and understated, and make our departure, low-key. We're happy, the tita girls are happy, everybody's happy. Just a happy kind of place, that's all.

The West Side is not what you'd call a prosperous area. There is poverty here. Hard lives, lived on the ragged edge. When a people has had everything taken from them, they no longer have anything to lose. And people with nothing left to lose can become very dangerous toward those whom they perceive as the ones who took everything away. There are lessons on the West Side, simmering in the heat, but few seem inclined to want to learn from these lessons.

If I had been born a Hawaiian, I'm pretty sure I would have been somebody's worst nightmare at some point along the line, before it was all said and done.

Sigh.

And the white fucks with their floral print shirts and their fucked up ukuleles and mai tais still own the whole goddamned archipelago.

What's up with that shit?

Don't go to Nanakuli, ok? Just stay the hell away from the place. There's people in Nanakuli who will hurt you.

Maili

We head on upcoast and stop to check the waves at Maili point.

 

Looks quite tasty, head high to maybe slightly overhead, clean as a whistle, a few folks out but not many.

 

Maybe later, northward we go, to Makaha.

		Makaha

 

 

 

 

 

 

Makaha has maybe eight or ten people out, is nicely overhead on the sets, breaking on the bowl, glassy, beautiful, the whole works.

Makaha is considered "soft" but you still have to mind it		Klausmeyers, across the channel		Fun zone at Makaha

A nice left, off of the bowl

We've parked along the roadside, down the beach, a pretty good ways away from the point, and there's some folks hanging around, eyeing us, the car, and the boards inside of it, and after not too much of that at all, we decide to relocate up near the point, to a kinder, gentler parking spot.

This guy got hammered....		....and broke his board in half.

Let's go out there and see if we can do this

Ok then, one guy surfs, and one guy watches the stuff and takes pictures of the other guy. I ask Jesse if I can surf first, and she very graciously says yes. Thank you Jesse, you're a sweetie.

This one was pretty fun, too

This one was really fun

I only catch four waves, but that's plenty on a day like this. Fun to take the drops, but I’m more or less simply hanging on for dear life, as my rental surfboard, which was never intended for waves like this, bounces and gyrates all over the place.

Talk a bit with a few folks, friendly vibe, spread-out crowd that increases to maybe 20. Where the hell IS everybody?

Stand up paddle guy tells his buddy he saw four whales, one right after another, all jump clear of the water, outside.

Maybe I can make this late one...		Maybe not.

 

 

 

 

I survive, but the wind comes up from the southwest and it chops out.

By now the wind had gotten on it pretty bad....		....and I just wanted to get the hell out of there

But before the wind screwed everything up, Makaha was quite the tickle.

Jesse is unhappy, 'cause the wind came up and she didn’t go out, although the board she had was very much worse than the one I had and she would have really been bounced around all over the place on it. I'm not feeling all that good about things either, since it was me that wanted to surf first, thereby preventing her from doing so. Sigh.

Oh well. Let's go check Yokahama Bay.

There's only just a few riders, and it's noticeably smaller. We don't even bother to stop, and keep right on rolling.

We drive all the way to the end of the paved road and park the car.

Beauty. Glorious sunny day. Warm. The southwest wind that had wrecked Makaha doesn't seem to have made it up here.

We take it all in, wander around on the rocks, and just generally hang out and enjoy the peace and serenity.

To our north, there are rights grinding down from the direction of Kaena Point, and when I say grinding, I mean GRINDING. It's rifling along, right in front of some exquisitely deadly shoreline. Looks rideable. Looks very rideable, in fact. Looks fucking perfect, in fact. But the penalty for a mistake might wind up being the last penalty you ever get, and nobody is even thinking about getting mixed up with these waves. Have a look for yourself:

 

 

 

 

 

Not too shabby, huh?

Meanwhile, all around us, the fearsome pretty just goes on and on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

		Whoa! Did you see that?

And off in the distance, and up above us, sinister doings were afoot.

		The military is never very far away

This is a strange and wonderful area, to be sure.

Eventually, our time dwindles away from us and we must depart.

And so we drive back.

Jesse becomes unhappy once again, giving herself serious grief for not going out at Tracks, or anywhere else. There is nothing I can do to console her, and so I keep my peace and let her work it out for herself. I'm sorry, Jesse.

		Living hard, West Side

We stop at Nanakuli Sack-N-Save, and stock up on more food. Locals only, natch, but no real vibe this time.

Roll on back, and hit rush hour traffic on H-1 just past the airport.

Deal with that for a while, then ditch the freeway and take Nu'uanu Street to Ala Moana Boulevard to get the hell out of there.

Jesse takes a mystery prank call and it cracks her up, and causes her to call several friends trying to find the culprit, which she finally does. Much laughter. Her mood is its usual bubbly cheerful self, once again.

Back to rental place on Koa street, where get different boards, hoping to ride Makaha again tomorrow.

Nail a parking spot on Ala Wai Blvd., pissing off a couple of people in the process. Fuckem.

Back to the hotel, which is booked solid, and we have to check out tomorrow morning. Need to find a room for tomorrow.

A place is found and a reservation is made for our last evening, so all is well.

Tomorrow is our last day.

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