Hawaii - Part 1

Sorry I haven't blogged about Hawaii yet, but we got home at 5am on Sunday (which was 11pm Hawaii time) and hadn't slept at all. I tried to nap some on Sunday, but then I had to drive to Lansing, MI for a client meeting. Painful. Anyway, I am finally past my jet-lag, and I will start my Hawaii blogs!

This is where we stayed, Dawn's house. The 2nd pic is her gym & rock climbing wall. She runs a bootcamp for people to come live with her and workout. Dawn's place was very much in the "jungle" part of the Big Island. Tons of mosquitos. Yuck. And they loved me. I must be like corn-fed Angus beef to those bastards. We had been using this crappy "natural" bug spray, and halfway through the week I had to upgrade to the OFF Deep Woods.

There were wild chickens & roosters all over the place. They just cluck around waiting for scraps to eat. They were funny & cute until sunrise when they cock-a-doodle-doo you out of bed way earlier than you want.

Our first full day there, we went to a huge farmer's market, which had some pretty cool stuff. We each got fresh coconuts with a bamboo straw to drink all of the "milk" out of it. Pretty tasty! Then Dawn used the hatchet to open it up so you could eat the coconut "meat".

From that first day at the farmer's market, I could tell... The Big Island would be CFunk's personal hell. There were hippies EVERYWHERE. My mom & I came to the conclusion that no one on the island has a normal job. They all do random things, like one guy that we met who:
1. Does dream interpretation
2. Catches frogs and removes them from peoples' property
3. Gives tours of the volcano/island
4. Runs a home for bulemic girls who need to recover

We also met people with hippie/Hawaiian names. Like Dawn is called Kieba. The guy I was talking about above was named Tyco. We met a guy named Mantis. We even met a guy named Energy. My mom & I decided that we were going to give ourselves Indiana names. She was going to be named Cornfield and I was going to be Silo.

In addition to, or as a result of, not having normal jobs, a lot of the people there didn't live in normal houses. Some people lived in sheds. Tyco lived in a tent. A lot of them had small huts. I never thought I was super high maintenance or anything, but I sure love my running water & A/C!

Anyway, we saw a lot of really cool sights, so I will continue that in a later blog. Back to work!