On my way to Hawaii with no surfboards! WTF!

Note: Couldn't find any free WiFi in all the airports yesterday so I'm posting a day late, but I'm in Kona, Hawaii, having a blast!


I suppose I should explain the details of my last post. Here it is in a nutshell.

My closest cousin, whom lives in Portland, Oregon, went through the unfortunate event of breaking up with his girlfriend toward the end of last week. Timeliness was not good in this break up as he just booked a vacation for two with airfare, hotel and rental car to the Big Island of Hawaii. Rather than lose his money (non-refundable) and not go he invited me to drop everything and step in probably knowing I'm a good candidate for an adventure that should cheer him up. Yesterday was a blitzkrieg of madness with me basically trying to accomplish a weeks worth of work, planning, covering, packing and stressing all in one day. And on top of all that the feeling of sadness that I'm leaving Jenny behind on this adventure although we talked about it extensively and agreed I should seize the day.

So here I sit somewhere over southern Utah at altitude in route for LAX where I'll board another plane to KOA (Kona) in a few hours. My day started at 4 a.m. on 4-hours of sleep. Man, it's going to be a long day. I feel like it should be night time and it's still technically morning. I've traveled around the world on a ship, but the longest series of flights I've ever gone on in one day was a Eurotrip from Orlando to Boston to London to Vienna. Today is definitely going to rival that day. I've packed four cameras to fuel my shutterbug habit, a dive mask and snorkels (fins were too large for a carry on), lots of boardshorts (I definitely intend to find some waves), T-shirts, hiking shoes, Brooks Cascadia trail runners and that's about it. I just purchased a guidebook on Hawaii in the Salt Lake City airport. I had no time to research anything on the Big Island before I left and sadly, most of my knowledge of Hawaii comes from reading surfing blogs, magazines and such, which pertain mostly to Oahu or Maui.

Expect pictures!
Expect a good story!
Expect randomness!

Two cousins and life long friends are going to be on the loose in Hawaii!

Kona?

Looks like I'll be making a last minute trip here on Tuesday for a week....

Kona...

Big Island of Hawaii...

Anyone know of anything awesome to do here???

-Your TallGuySurfing about to be totally stoked!

House cleaning...

Recently, I did a little house cleaning. While attacking my closet I sorted through a nightmare of shoes. Yes, I have far more shoes than your average guy. Not as many as Imelda Marcos, but far more than average. I learned long ago that it's well worth the money to treat your feet right and pay extra for good shoes than suffer injury and pain from the cheap ones.

After sorting out a bunch of my "pre-runner" shoes, the shoes I ran in before becoming a serious runner (pre-2008), I was left with six pairs of shoes currently in the rotation! SIX PAIRS! Yes, I think I do have a running problem. I don't even currently own six surfboards. Well, I almost own that many, but still... I'm not buying anymore running shoes for a least a few months. Yup, I'm putting my foot down!

So what about all those other pre-running shoes? The old Adidas, Nike & Timberlines (I'm pretty hardcore Brooks-everything these days)? Jenny says I should donate them to be recycled at a local running specialty store or at an race expo. I have my own shoe recycling program. It goes something like this:

First - Use as casual walking shoes until they really start to break down.

Next - Move to the back porch and hide under the table. Now they are used as yard work or lawn mowing shoes never to see the inside of the house again. They stay here until they break down further and then are moved to...

Finally - Emergency boat shoes. I shove them into a small compartment on my boat or kayak. If I need them to walk through mud or across oyster bars they will serve me well.

If the running specialty stores want them after I'm done with them they can have them.

So what do you do with your old running shoes???