Hawaii Day 6: Surfs Up

After a nice long sleep we headed down to Waikiki Beach and signed up for some cheep surf lessons. this consisted of about 10 minutes of beach preparation that went something like this:
1. Lay down on your board. No. Further back. Yeah that’s it. Don’t point your toes.
2. Get up and kneel on one knee.
3. Now stand.
4. Ok, now we’re going to do that in the water.

G kicked ass as she caught, stood up, and rode about 80 percent of the waves she tried for. I was just ok and my arms pooped out early making my paddling weak. I really started to suck during the end. It was a lot of fun though.

Afterwards we headed up to the north-shore to see how it’s really done. Unfortunately we got a little lost on the way and ended up in Hawaii’s sketchy northwest corner. For being such a paradise, Hawaii has a whole host of social problems. The classes are really stratified here, there is tons of racism, a terrible methamphetamine problem, a large number of homeless, and the locals tell us that some what to introduce legalized gambling – yikes. While lost I was able to get my hands on a traditional, drive-thru style loco moco though.

After getting back on track we spent the rest of the afternoon at Sunset Beach – home to the Duke Kahanamoku Classic surfing competition, the O’Neill World Cup of Surfing competition, and occasionally the site of the Quiksilver Big Wave Invitational. We body surfed and got pummeled by 4 to 6 foot shore break pounders all afternoon and loved ever minute of it. Two weeks later we are still finding sand thats been wedged into our ears from getting tossed around in the washing machine waves.

That evening we went to eat at Koe’s which was incredible. But I was too tired to enjoy it.