Well, this is embarrassing – last night I’d invited some friends out, including an old classmate who had just moved here, thinking that the Chinese New Year block party would be the happening place to be. Well, we arrived at a fairly empty Chinatown in Honolulu, discovering that most of the New Year celebrating had happened the night before and now everyone was down in Waikiki at that other block party.
Happy Year of the Horse, here’s some NFL mascots.
The Pro Bowl is pretty much the only big sporting event that happens here, if you can call a fake football game an event. Hawaii has no professional sports teams of its own, nor are most of the college teams any good at the moment, so unless you’re a die hard fan of the University of Hawaii women’s volleyball team or are really into high school sports, you’ll just have to settle for this. (This isn’t a diss on UH volleyball, by the way. I’ve heard that they have a following akin to a religious cult; my friends who have attended the games have reported fights breaking out in the stands and everything. I guess that’s what happens when your football team is 1-11.) At least it’s usually pretty easy to score tickets, especially if you or someone you know is affiliated with the military since ITT has pretty good deals every year, and it can be a good opportunity to get autographs.
In other news, we got hit with the largest swell in decades last week, which had brought 50 foot waves to the North Shore. I’d wanted to drive up there after work to check it out, especially since I have yet to see any of the big surf that comes in the winter (I’m always reluctant to fight the traffic to get to the surf competitions, since there’s only one two-lane road and parking is difficult even on a slow day.) However, since I’d gotten roped into a mandatory fun work function that afternoon, I had to skip the road trip. In retrospect it had been a good thing: apparently everyone else on the island had made the pilgrimage to the North Shore, and people had gotten stuck in gridlock for over two hours on Kamehameha highway. Additionally, parking had been nonexistent, and the giant waves had washed sand up onto the road.
Boom. (Photos from Hawaii News Now)
That can’t be good for the car.
Hope you didn’t have any plans for the rest of the week.
Of course, that didn’t stop everyone. All together now:
You IDIOT!!!
The experienced big wave surfers had been smart enough to stay away that day, since the weather had been pretty bad with lots of strong wind gusts and choppy waves. But of course some amateur still wanted to get his surfing street cred or whatever – you know, the same guy who thinks it’s a gnarly idea to go paddle out in a hurricane. Ah, Darwinism.
Trapped in Paradise 