Kauai trip #2

I really dont know what I am going to do now. I sat down to watch TV (or really watch one of my DVDs from netflix since I dont have Cable) and my freaking DVD player is broken. I really dont want to buy another one, but I cant just come home and work every night, so i might have to just pony up and buy one. Especially since i just got season 2 of entourage on DVD and I was in the middle of them.
Also, I just got finished IMing with my mom, and I asked her about what happened in the Astros game tonight since i dont get to see all of them at work. She told me the story and also mentioned the fact that they havent scored in their last 23 innings, just like Rice. This is really sad. I was hoping for a little better performance once we got Clemens back. The only good news is that the Braves are doing terrible this year, so my friends in Atlanta cant gloat.

So some new visitors are coming out from home. Next one is my Pop. His one goal is to learn to surf. I promise everyone that I will take plenty of pictures. Seriously, this might be the highlight of my life. Unless he has lost a significant amount of weight, i am going to have to get him a front door to let him get up, but i am planning on doing whatever it takes to get him up surfing. I dont know what else he wants to do while he is here, but that might take his whole trip out here. Also, Megan is coming over here to see me. Im sure there will be plenty of stories when she gets here. I dont know who is more excited, me or Nola.

Monday I just got back from my second trip to kauai. Go airlines just came out with a $19 one way ticket to outer islands so i took advantage of it. i got there friday and Ford was doing a story on the albatross birds on the wildlife reserve out there for the Garden Island, so I got to tag along. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The birds were so unafraid of humans that we were able to go up and touch them. The Garden Island has a link to some pictures if you want to take a look. Honestly it was some of the best stuff I have seen out here.

http://www.kauaiworld.com/shared-content/gallery/?galleryid=8&gallery_page=0

Also, here is the article Ford wrote on the birds.
http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2006/06/25/news/news01.txt

I think Kauai has three bars and one of them closed down a few weeks ago, so Friday we went to their new hangout. It was quite an interesting mix. There were a few randoms doing karaoke at the bar, a couple of total burnout surfers playing pool and some oter randoms in the bar. I think the guy to girl ratio was about 20:1.
The rest of the weekend ford worked, so Jeff and I went on some pretty cool hikes. The place with the tidepools is called secret beach, and is apparently a nude beach. We caught a couple in one of the tide pools while we were walking around. The other pictures are from another hike we did on Saturday. I cant remember the name, but we had to take the only road that goes towards the center of the island to get there. Other than that I caught up on entourage and ESPN. And I did see some world cup soccer including david beckham puking after scoring a goal. I really didnt need to see that.

I hope everyone has a great 4th of july weekend, and I will definitely put a post up after the holiday.

Nola's Back and I am slacking on the posts

Ok, this may be a long one and Im sorry about that, but I have been really bad about putting stuff up here lately.
Big news - i have the puppy back. FINALLY. I got her out a couple of weeks ago and I think she is having fun. The first weekend I got her out, Ford came over and we took her to some of the beaches around town. We got her in the water, and she is not the most graceful swimmer, but she is getting better. She loves loves loves the sand though. Yesterday I took her to diamond head beach and she put her whole face in the sand and snorted the sand and had a minor attack. She was fine and i was dying laughing.
The rest of the weekend Ford and I drove around the entire island going to different beaches. We surfed in a couple of places and I am going to go ahead and say that i am progressing at a quicker pace on the surfboard than he is. he is going to deny it if anyone asks, but dont be fooled.

white trash weekend

Nothing too exciting to report from last weekend. I did go out with some friends to a new surfing spot on the southwest side of the island. It was a holiday weekend - Kamehameha day was Monday - so the beach was packed. We ended up cooking (and by we i mean a few of my guy friends who can cook) some fish and other random food. We had a tent and seriously looked like a white trash family. At one point the flies got so bad because of the food, that one of my friends made a fly swatter out of a stick and newspaper. It was a great beach though - and a great place to surf, so we hung out there from noon to around midnight.
Sunday was pretty much the same except i had a race in the morning. We did better than we had done in the past because we kicked Tubby out of the boat and replaced him with someone more fit. But we still didnt win, and since i wont be able to race for the next two weeks, I wont get to win for a while.
The Taaffe's are here for vacation, so I got to hang out with them Sunday and last night. Other than that, nothing new is going on. Although, if she passes her final vet exam today, i get to take Nola home tomorrow. I am taking the day off since I have to pick her up in the late morning, so I am going to take her to the beach and teach her to surf. Should be interesting. If she is successful I will try and take some pictures.
I have been trying to catch up on the news and gossip lately. Since I just received an US weekly from at least 4 weeks ago, I am way behind what is going on. I just found out that Brad and Angelina had their baby.

I am finally getting surfing down

First of all I want to say how sad I am that all of my teams are losing. Astros are sucking right now and UT and Vandy both got beat in the regionals. The Belmont is on this weekend, and now that Barbaro is out, I have noone to cheer for. I have succumbed to cheering for UH (by UH I mean University of Hawaii) beach volleyball. Apparently they are really good. Along with Pepperdine. Another team I have never even thought twice about. This is really sad. Things need to change on the mainland, otherwise I will come back cheering for the old rainbows since I don’t even know what their new mascot is.

So I finally know how long it takes for the junk mail to find you. I purposefully did not register my address or phone number anywhere so I wouldn’t get junk mail, but on June 2nd I got my first piece and it has been coming ever since. So from May 1 – June 2nd I was junk mail free. One month is all it takes. I have to wonder about the guys who sit around trying to find me when I move. Not a fun job since it happens ever couple of years. Not much has gone on this week other than work. I felt like Alex this week – I think I worked about 100 hours in total. Gross – never want to be an investment banker.

The two highlights of my weekend were seeing Nola finally after a week and really learning to surf. I have to tell you, I really think Nola recognizes me now. Every time I show up to her kennel she smiles. And god love her, it is the ugliest smile in the world. She looks like a damn hyena. Her lips curl under and all you can see is her front teeth. I have been trying to get a picture of it, but as soon as I turn the camera on she stops smiling. If I get one, I will for sure post it. It is the funniest thing I have ever seen.

As far as surfing goes, it started out slow. I haven’t been too much lately because I have been busy, but I finally went on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. After 6 hours in the water, numerous cuts and bruises and 2 near drownings, I finally think I got it. I went out Saturday with a friend of mine and got killed. And by killed I mean after one of my falls a guy looked at me with shock in his face and said “dude, that was bad. By far the best fall I have seen all week.” killed. After about an hour of swallowing salt water and spending more time under water than above, I finally paddled in. Mind you the waves were double overhead, but I still felt like a failure. But I wasn’t done. I decided to paddle out again yesterday, and Im glad I did. I finally feel like I am able to surf. I was in the water about 5 hours and never felt like I was going to die. I caught the waves at the right time, learned to turn, and now have control of the board. I am by no means good, I just am able paddle out by myself and not get worried I wont paddle back in. So I am going back out with some friends on Wednesday and Thursday after work and hopefully will still be able to remember what I did on Sunday.

Other than that, the week was all about work. However, two things I am looking forward to: Nola gets out of jail on June 14 (next Wednesday) and I am taking Wednesday and Friday off to take her to the beach so she can see what is going on outside of her little cell, and Ford comes to visit. Other than him eating nasty mac salad (a local dish with tons of mayo that he loves) I will hopefully be able to kick his ass in surfing.

I hope everyone is well, and congrats to molly and samy on their new baby! I cant wait to see him.

Howen #2 Visits Hawaii

Lanikai beach in Kailua - one of my favorite beaches.

This is a picture of us at the Pali lookout. It is a stopping point on the Pali highway on the way to Kailua. Kailua is about 7 miles away from where I live.

This is the beach out at the North Shore that we were on - Sunset Beach

About to start getting into the boats (i am in green)

A shot of my paddling team on the boat

This is what the outrigger canoe looks like that we race.


To see all the pictures from Memorial Weekend go to
http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=56921149287508727/l=101428399/g=32613520/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

So my little fun friend Elizabeth Bowen visited me for Memorial weekend, officially my second visitor from the mainland. She warned me that all she wanted to do was sit on the beach. So I planned a fun filled weekend of traveling to all the best beaches on the island. We saw Makapu’u where there was a crash landing of a sky diver sort (cant remember the name, but the guys that fly off of the cliffs). They were tandem jumping and landed on top of the guy next to us on the beach. I hope the poor guy got his money back.
Sunday started with my Outrigger race. It sucked. Flat out. There are pictures. We did a mixed race (3 men and 3 women) and one of the guys on my boat was not in shape to do the race. The race is approx. 3 minutes long and he stopped paddling 20 seconds into it. So we basically lost one of the guys paddling and had to drag him to the finish line. Not to mention he was about 250 so when he stopped paddling, the boat started to drop. We didn’t get last, but we sucked, and as competitive as I am, I wasn’t happy. I told my coach I didn’t want to race with him anymore.
Then we went to Waikiki where we sat on the most crowded beach on the island. The only interesting part of the day was when we were interviewed for a documentary. These two hot guys walked up to us to ask us if we could answer some questions for a movie they were doing. The topic – Why women don’t like porn films. We both thought it was a total line, but answered anyway because 1) they were cute and 2) because one of them had a really cute Australian accent. I will be sure and let you all know when the film comes out. And for the adults reading this (especially our parents) we were very G rated, which is so unlike us.
Sunday we went to the North Shore. Nothing exciting went on except we had Mexican food. Not nearly as good as Houston, but it wasn’t bad.
Monday – I cant really remember what we did, but Tuesday we went to Lanikai, now my new favorite beach, with my friend Andrew and his girlfriend Kelly. Again, nothing exciting happened, except that Elizabeth got a good tan to take back to San Fran with her.

All in all it was a low key weekend, and if you are wondering why there are no party stories, it is because we didn’t go out. So unlike EB. We spent too much time in the sun that we were in bed early every night. But I absolutely loved having her here, and I cant wait for her to come back.