Sunday
Woke up. Early. Jet lag and studying for finals week messed up whatever internal clock we have. I was hoping to take some long exposures of the beach before sunrise. I left my tripod in Washington so I just rotated a beach chair around and tried to not move the camear. Didn’t work out so I just waited and took pictures while the sun was rising for that panorama.
Then I just did the #1s and #2s then sat around for a while until the others woke up. I would make some attempt at a clever comment about how I don’t mean ‘the others’ from Lost or something of that sort but I don’t watch the show. Something like: “I sat around for a while until ‘THE OTHERS’ woke up and I don’t mean the ones from Lost!” Me and Russ ran along the shore in the soft sand of the beach. Sounds gay but well when in Rome. Anyway, we ran back to put our swimming gear on. Sandy areas were hard to come by and swimming on top of rock isn’t that cool, so we stood in the shallow end and got plowed by the waves. For like forty minutes. Man that was fun.
Then it was time for a hike. The view would be worth it they said. The view from the bottom was nice already. It was pretty much StairStepper Extreme for half an hour. But McKinley did it so we shouldn’t have trouble with it. That’s what I was told. I thought that was sexist because McKinley’s a girl. And also dog. The view turned out to be pretty nice. Then we were supposed to rock climb.
Chris showed us how to get to the top and acted like it was a ladder. But then I remembered he’s a former Marine so he used to do it without ropes. But also with help from ghosts that give the ‘call me’ hand sign afterwards. Then Russ went and lost his grip and swung back and forth like a pendulum. Then he kept climbing. I was fired up to go afterwards. So I strapped in and imagined everything that could go wrong. Then I unstrapped. Curt’s turn! He made it to the top. I made it like six feet out of fifty. You’re supposed to trust the rope but I don’t even trust myself and you can’t trust anything if you don’t trust yourself. Words of wisdom from me.
We hiked back and tore camp down. While stuffing everything into the back of the pickup, another truck came by (there’s a huge dirtbike sort of thing not far away) and honked and a guy inside gave us the hang loose sign. Then I said ‘AWESOME!’ and high fived Russ, hopefully sending the message back to them that we were cool also.
We went to Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck and ate at some beach at what I think was near the beginning (or end) of the North Shore area. That’s some good shrimp. Especially if you enjoy butter and garlic. I enjoy butter and garlic. Then we hopped onto some boogie boards. It was sweet, except that we can’t boogie board. And we were reminded of that every time a wave came by, throwing us off our boards onto the sharp sharp coral. This was probably the ocean gods punishing me for saying things like ‘tubular’. The best part about this is that there was always some seven-year-old cruising by us on surfboards while we screamed in pain.