A Wedding in Hawaii - The End...For Now

so we got up at 4:30 and met up with Kelly and Micheal.  Kelly is very pregnant and wearing flip flops.  It's really dark.  we start walking down one street where we think the entrance to get to the pill boxes is and a guy says out the window in the darkness says "the entrance is over there".  We say sorry and it is over there.  Another weird wes anderson like moment, as if Jason Schwartzman was in the window all annoyed at us.  I would be too if i had people tryin to get to the pill boxes every day at 4 am waking me up.

when they say hiking in Hawaii they mean business.  It wasn't the easiest at all to get to the pill boxes, especially at night.  I thought there was no way a pregnant Kelly in flip flops would make it, no way.  But she did!

Kelly and Micheal are somewhere at that 1st pill box.

by this point there are more and more people coming up here, so it was nice to be up here when there were only a few.

after breakfast and clearing out the house and checking out I went with Steven and Bob to the north shore.  On the way we had to try this famous dole pineapple soft serve ice cream.  It's super sweet and not my thing.  I was also super exhausted and 2 weeks in Hawaii finally caught up with me.  I was garbage all day.  Like soooooooooo tired.

Steven Hedley, the master of finding ergonomic spaces for himself

more Giovanni's Shrimp truck.

#jasonloveyoo hashtag on their truck, which is the wrong hashtag, you're fired bob.  It's #yoolovejason

who knew pineapples grew like this?

jumbo garlic chicken musubi.  really wanted it but went classic.

gecko on the garbage can

there are chickens everywhere in Hawaii, this one just just takin a dirt bath

we finally make it to the north shore and everybody is surfin'

except for the modern wizard Steven Hedley.  "Somebody's ready for a swim" - anonymous beach heckler.  

the gentle sub-tide was coming up really high so Stevie had to stand wayyyy back on the beach so everyone could make fun of him

Jen's dad got us a room at the super nice Kahala for our last night in Hawaii.

we ate at Alan Wong's, the best restaurant in Hawaii they say.  Good stuff and wasn't that expensive.  We did a butter tasting too

so they have dolphins and sea turtles and other sea life at the hotel.  The space the animals have is so small though.  For the turtles it is apparently small, they have almost no room or water.  The dolphins just swim around at night clamping their jaws down making a weird slapping sound.  Its sad.

dolphins are also weird.  Is he looking at me with rapey eyes or just the normal if i had legs i would kill you for incarcerating me in this small tank eyes? (dolphins are known to rape)

our last 10 minutes in Hawaii at ala moana beach before driving to the airport.

so that's it for Hawaii, for now.  It's forever ruined for me because how is it ever going to top that?  I spent two mostly carefree weeks here with my best friends and fam and got married!  I'll be back though and maybe it will be cool because I won't have to worry about being here or there or having to allocate myself to different groups of people.  I know I didn't put in that much time with my family and Jen's family and I feel bad about that.  So my closing thoughts about Hawai'i:  I don't think I could live here at this point in my life while i'm still trying to hustle and accomplish stuff and need the energy that NYC has.  Later on maybe I could.  I don't see Honolulu having that metropolitan buzz that I like about NYC and Tokyo.  I guess it's the closest to being another country whilst within America because of the culture being and island and having a history of Hawaiian culture.  I haven't spent enough time in Hawaii to be able to read it and the people and know what's safe/cool/not cool/nice/classy/etc...  Also there are a ton of Japanese people and Japanese tourists.  It seemed like half of the tourism industry was allocated for the Japanese.  It also seems like Japanese immigrants did really well because I saw the names of a lot of buildings and stuff bearing Japanese names.  Japanese culture is seen everywhere here especially in the food.  I love Japan so this adds a point for Hawaii.  Well I'll be back for more!

A Wedding in Hawaii - Free Day

we decided to go to Koko Head and climb it because Jen said its a must do and awesome.  Only thing is was got going so late that we hit the mountain at noon, the hottest time of day.

Cockroach Cove on the way.

surfing rashes of fire, kayaking on coral, at this point steven said if he can go one day without getting injured that would be great.  Seconds later I told him jumping off that thing looks fun I just saw some kids do it.  A minute later he jumped off, hurt his foot cuz it's so shallow and said if he had waited just 3 second later he would have heard the person before him pop up and say ouch damn that's shallow.  Hahahahaha

the start.  It used to be a tramway.  Chris did not look so happy at the end of this super sweaty needlessly difficult hot hike.  It's basically doing lunges for half an hour going up those railroad ties.

shooting range.  most scenic in the world?

view from the top.  Worth it?  I don't know.  Definitely not at the hottest time of the day.  Seriously sweaty as balls.

beer and lots and lots of raw fish thanks to kelly and micheal for picking it up

petanque playing and being amazed at the many kinds of stuff that grows out of other stuff in Hawaii

Met up with Jen's College friends from when she went to school here at Mai Tai bar in the Ala Moana center.  Justin Chon happened to be in Hawaii at the time too.  There were a lot of huuuuuuuuge guys here and only a few of them were bouncers, the rest were just, Hawaiian.  Fu said it's bouncer island, the island produces lots of bouncers.

Justin made a timelapse 360 degree contraption out of a timer from ikea.  good idea i'm gonna steal that.

after everyone bounced out Steven said he wanted to see a real Hawaiian bar so we went in search of it around Chinatown.  we peeked in to a few places and it was the same not knowing how to judge if a place is normal or sketchy or not so then we just ended up at Smith's Union Bar, the oldest bar on Oahu.  And unbeknownst to us also really racist

example 1, it's already horrible that foreigners, including the US Navy took Hawaii but then they have to deal with this too.

also this is really bad.  Smith's Union Bar in Chinatown We Speak Engrish.  There was pearl harbor and military stuff hanging all over the place so i'm betting the proprietor was a military guy and got dropped into the middle of a lot of cultures by the military and just stayed in Hawaii with his racist ways and set up a bar.  The bar was filled with weirdos singing Karaoke, bars in Hawaii are bizarre (only went to 2 though).

the 3 of us made a pact to wake up at like 4:30am to climb to the top of the Lanikai pill boxes just behind our house for sunrise.  Only 3 would make it.  Our Lyft driver home was from Hawaiikai, Jen's old neighborhood and we talked to him about Hawaiian independence and all that.