...You are having fun. 2 weeks has passed already and it feels like I have been here for 3 days! Gabe left this morning at 6 or some horrible hour like that. He has been trotting the globe with his skateboard and camera gear for the past 6 months and Hawaii was the cap off for his travels. 

Since the last post we have been pretty active. The secret tree house is under construction and on it's way. The first platform is almost finished and it's looking good! We found a Jackson Cameleon in the tree while building one day. He was friendly enough to let him crawl up your arm and transfer from shoulder to shoulder. A really cool animal! A couple of days later Nelly came home with one she had found up the local mountain. He lived in a plant in the lounge room for a night before being released back to the outdoors. 

We have been skating a lot more recently too. Some fast night runs, mountain passes, alleys, driveways and all the rest. It's been fun and the board is beginning to feel like an extension of myself again. Not wearing shoes is also becoming easier although skating barefoot down slopes is still freaky!

Sandy's which is our local beach has become a more regular hangout place too. It has some of the biggest waves I've ever been in and you are constantly on your toes, waiting for the next monster to either surf in or duck under. If you screw it up you are tossed, as if you were on the inside of a washing machine back to shore and dragged through a sand bar which leaves you with sand in any place you can imagine!

Harvesting s still a regular part of every day and the taste of coconut, star fruit and avocados is a regular one. 

On Saturday we checked out a local outlaw race named ''Scorcher''. I don't know if it's called Scorcher because of the heat of because if you were to fall off on the truly terrible pavement of the run it would surely scorch your skin to a crisp. The hill was basic and nothing special on the outside. A slight left after the start line followed by a long straight which leads you to a tight right and then straight back to a left. The road seems ancient though, full of holes, trees and grass growing from the tarmac and a surface which just upwards with sharp stones! The race was run quickly and efficiently by one of the locals, Mackenzie. It was un eventful for me as I was knocked out in the first round due to personal error. It was a fun heat though and close at the line. A couple of young locals shredded their way into the finals and walked away with a ton of swag and cash.

Currently I am trying to go skating but I am watching a cloud in the valley creep ever closer to the house. Once it passes I will head out. Think that's all for now, hopefully I will get some footage organised this week and be able to throw some videos your way. Don't forget that if you want to see more photos and raw clips then check out THIS page.

 

OK, gonna focus on the lifestyle a little this time. Lifestyle is important and it's hard to find the best one. Hawaii's lifestyle or rather, Ethans is pretty close to perfect.

Today I woke up to a cloudless day, blazing sun and... The smell of Gabes feet. Wandered up stairs and ate cereal with Almond milk. It was awesome! After that, a quick skate down the hill in front of Ethans and I was at the pool. Swim and back to the house. From their I headed up to the top of the local mountain. The mission, find a tree worthy of hosting a well hidden and impressively built tree house. After some hours of picking Avocados, Guava and searching the jungle for a tree (yes we found the perfect tree!) I did a solo skate down the mountain. It was rad! 

From there, we drove into town to a marine shop that sold chains, shackles, ropes and all the other things needed to build a tree house. We spent a while playing in the shop with all the rope and what not. After the shopping adventure we headed to the car park of Best Buys and picked a whoooole lot of coco nuts! A serious amount of coconuts!

From there, with a ute tray full of loco coco's we headed to Sandy's. Sandy's is the nearest beach to us, it has a sand bar really close in to the shore and big, powerful waves. I don't really know what to do with waves or sand bars so I spend a whole lot of time under the water being spun as if I was in a washing machine. It's epic!

After 40 minutes of swimming (or being pummelled by the waves) we went and ate. The others were to slow to shop and eat so I went to the car and opened my first coconut. It went swimmingly, I kept all of my fingers and it was easily the best one of the day.

Back at the house now, eating starfruit and drinking coffee. It was a good day.  

Got some time tonight so why not write an entry. If I can keep these entries regular then I can hopefully keep them short for you. As a quick note, I'm only uploading a few photos at a time to this blog, if you wanna see all the photos then head HERE.

So as the title says, today was the first full day of skating. The weather was perfect which you might think it always if here but things are actually quite strange here weather wise. Sitting in the back of the ute (truck) you are liable to get wet. Rain clouds here are small and you could run from one side of a down poor to the other in a few seconds. Although they are small, they are pretty regular so things are wet pretty often. That being said, the rain is warm and you are guaranteed to be in the sun again within 5 minutes so it aint not thang. Roads can be patchy here though as most wind up through the shadows of the jungle so it can make skating downhill a bit trickier.

No rain today though. We headed up to a local road, maybe I should say THE local road. It takes about 12 minutes to skate from top to bottom. A top speed of maybe 70, sweepers and switch backs and close to perfect surface. We had a good crew, maybe 6 of us in total. I'm taking things easy at the moment as far as roads go. Traffic and drivers are different everywhere you go and it has been a while since I have had any real speed on a board so I'm making sure I have things dialled before I start mixing things up to much. The others were all down the road close together though, taking turns as pack leader, drafting and passing. Looking forward to mixing it up with them in the next couple of weeks.

After a few runs on the hill we headed to a local skatepark called ''Hawaii kai'' (will add it to the parks page soon). The park is rad, it's got a wild paint job and is nothing but bowls and transition all over. Dropping in from any of the 3 bowls which are about 7 or 8 foot high you can exit and slash around the rest of the park before heading back into one of the bowls. Endless lines and I'm looking forward to heading there again. We had Miles with us again who shreds the transition, Ethan of course who was smashing it barefoot style. Frontside grinds, spine transfers, clean carving to the coping and all the rest. Dope! I managed to wipe a kid out who put on such a show I thought I had murdered him! A couple of minutes later he picked himself up and was all good, he may have a future as a soccer player.

We went coco nut gathering again too, so we are well stocked up with about 15 coco nuts. One of Ethans friends who we were skating with named KJ showed us some trees. Within minutes he and Ethan were up there with machete's hacking down the ''orbs''. People say some classic words over here. If I heard people speak the way these folks do anywhere else I think I would find it pretentious and exaggerated. Here though, it is understandable and seems more natural. I am fighting the urge to use words such as orbs so I don't move onto the next country sounding like a white man trying to be an Islander of some kind. I might draw up a list of words one day actually.

Well, trying to keep it short so I guess that's about it. Ate some good Thai food for dinner, sitting here now eating dragon fruit,  drinking coffee and watching Ethan carve his knife handle into something good looking. Good vibes as the Hawaiians would say, I'm not gonna though!  

I think it's been 2 or 3 days since I landed in Honolulu. It's hard to keep track, things are pretty timeless out here. I am usually the type to stay up until 1AM and not wake up again until 12 in the afternoon. Here though, I am in bed by 10PM and awake by 7. Unheard of for me!

The last few days have been dedicated to just settling in in getting to know the place. I am stating with Ethan Lau and his girlfriend Nelly. If you don't know of Ethan, he is a sector 9 skateboarder. Born and bread in Hawaii he skates how you wished you surfed and shreds anything from fast downhill to backyard pools in bare feet and with a style that is hard to find anywhere else. He is also obsessed with fresh fruit and foods and spends his days skating between ''harvests'' and collecting every type of fruit you can think of. Spending a day or more with Ethan will really show how good he is at finding food from the land.

The night I arrived is a little hazy. The flight from Finland was crappy and by the time I landed I was ready for bed. First thing to do thought was check out a couple of local roads. Epic skating can be found here. After that we went to a Korean place for dinner, not really a restaurant but not really a butchers. Damn fine chicken and fish though, service with a smile and what I know will be a regular place to eat. The coolest thing that night was the ride home though. In Hawaii it is legal to ride in the tray of the ute (truck for you Americans). The smells in Hawaii vary so much and riding in the ute is the best way to smell all there is to smell. Even the airport smelled of honey...

The next day we headed out to the East side of the Island with Ethans mate Miles. We hit a road with a loooong fast straight and a gnarly little technical section at the bottom. Hitch hiking to the top of the run is no problem so we caught a few lights up before heading to the beach at the bottom of the hill. Waves in Hawaii are powerful, very powerful! After that, more time was spent collecting fruit. We managed to find a Jack fruit in the front yard of a house. Ethan offered to buy it from them  but they gave it to us for nothing. Ethan climbs tree's like a monkey and he spent a good half an hour in the tree, making his way from Jack fruit to Jack fruit, feeling and smelling for the best one. In the end he took the biggest which is probably the biggest piece of fruit I have ever seen except maybe a water melon. 

Gabe arrived that night, he is a dude from Australia. I have skated with him a few times around Australia, an all round rad dude. He also skates with Sector 9 and is a shredder. If I can ever learn to put a board sideways like Gabe does, I will be happy!

The next morning, Gabe and I were up at 6am. We didn't really know that it was 6am though. We sat around for an hour or so before heading to the the nearest supermarket to get some breakfast stuff. Gabes all about the Hawaiian vibes and it was insisted that we ride the minis with no shoes. It was freaky. I don't really skate with no shoes, especially down hills with no gloves either. There is basically no way to stop and although the road isn't actually more than a slope, I have no idea what was coming.

After getting breakfast stuff we made our way back up to the house. On the way up we spotted a swimming pool. We scoped it out a bit to see if we could climb a fence or something to get in but then realised the gates were all open. We spoke to the fella at the office and asked what we had to do to swim, ''take a shower and jump in'' was the reply. No charge, no nothing. Right across the road from the house. Golden! The rest of the day was taken up with collecting coconuts, bamboo shoots and avocados. We also headed to a waterfall in some strange gated off park. There was an 8 to 10 meter jump into the 9 foot water below the waterfall. The water was awesome, the jump was awesome.

Again, the next day and today were spent collecting fruit and especially bamboo shoots. Everything is done in bare feet and my dogs are barkin'! I am told I will build a callous up and be able to walk over anything in a couple of weeks. I am still trying to work out why I want to walk over anything with no shoes on but perhaps I will learn that later.

Tomorrow we are heading to a skatepark to skate some bowls. Looking forward to it and I am gonna try and sneak some shoes on my feet when nobody is watching!