The Thrill of Being Where You Aren't Supposed to Be

Today we visited the world famous Banff Springs Hotel, which is about the closest to Hogwarts you will get in Canada. Instead of doing what most people did, which was stay on the ground floor and get lost, we got lost in an entirely different way: we went to the 12th floor. Most people will say (if they know the hotel), “There is no 12th floor.” Wrong. You have to take these steep little stairways high up into the eaves of the attics. Apparently two other groups of students were kicked out by security on the 9th floor as the entire floor was under re-decoration and renovation. In all, it was fun exploring the lesser known parts of a historical hotel… Do it if you ever get the chance: Take the lift to the 9th floor, get off, go right and find the stairs. Go up. As far as you can. There you will find room 999 (On the 12th floor).

The End of High School

Tomorrow morning, I will wake up like usual at about 0600, but to leave on the last trip I will go on for high school, the Banff Rocky Mountain Music Festival. I attended for two years in 2010 and 2011, and I have never had a better time with my friends, nor have I experienced such immersion in music as then. This year is my last year in a choir, my last year doing a solo, my last year traveling at the expense of my parents. And tomorrow the end of that will begin.

It is strange knowing that next year I won’t be coming up to R. E. Mountain Secondary School with a backpack with a few binders and a crappy TI pocket calculator, that I will most likely be halfway across the province in University. It’s strange thinking that I will know no one, that I won’t be able to greet the teachers after the Summer and ask them how they are, but most of all I will miss the general feeling of the place.

Sure, I hate high school, and anyone who doesn’t should be checked out (I actually sincerely mean that), but where else do you make closer friends? Yes, I hope I make friends in university. But being stuck in the same building with the exact same small group of people for the entire day, every day, gives you a chance to truly find amazing people out of the sea of adolescence (literally and figuratively). Where else do you get more time in classes to learn alongside people you have gotten to know for possibly ten years - maybe only five, but that is still more that university will grant you.

Here ends government funded education, here end the bands and choirs that you can join on a whim. Here ends the guarantee that all your friends will be less that an hour away. Here ends the first day of school, where you give hugs to the friends who you missed because you only ever see them at school. Here ends the time that you will spend with the friends that are younger than you.

It feels strange to know that I will probably not be living with my parents next year, that I’ll actually have real seasons rather than Wet and Mild (the eternal season of Vancouver); that I’ll be cooking every single meal I eat.

Although I still have a good month and half left at Mountain, I think it really ends here.

Hawaii: Day 4: Oscar the Grouch, and, well... Oscar the Grouch

I have decided my dad’s problem. Everything, and I mean everything matters. Whether the person in front of him driving signals will piss him off enough to set him on an hour long rampage of huffing about and flooring it out of every light with wheels spinning. This guy honestly has no respect for relaxation and the speed of life in Hawaii. Then again, I’ve never seen him use his turn signal when there wasn’t a cop nearby. He hates my grandpa, I guess because they are so exactly alike.

Today we decided to drive the northeast loop of the island, via Waimea, the Saddle, Hilo, Honoka’a and finally Waipio. The saddle was amazing, as it always has been, but today we got to see a whole new perspective of the tropics: snow. Snow in Hawaii. I’ll be posting some photos of this phenomenon over the next few days, and I hope it’ll hit you as hard as it hit me. It was beautiful. I had my GoPro mounted on the hood of the car the whole way, although the video file split in the middle for some reason (not sure why). That will be on YouTube to bore you to tears soon. However, there is one thing I got with the GoPro that might not bore you, and that’s the Old Mamaloha Highway. A winding road built in the days of sugar farming, winding its way through deep chasms and gorges along the north coast, it will not fail to impress. A lot of it was one lane wide (although the brilliant County of Hawaii put a double line down the middle of it to divid your car into two halves). 

Further along we visited Lapahoehoe Point, a dramatic and melancholic piece of land down another beautiful winding road. Back when the bigger tsunami hit about 50 years ago, an entire school full of kids was swept out to sea and never seen again. Today I don’t even know why someone would want to live here, what with the extreme nature of the waves around here.Their explosions frequently measured over 30 feet and sounded like constant thunder. Some numbnut put in a boat launch here, and even behind the monstrous breakwater there is 4 food chop. I would pay to see someone successfully launch anything other than a military landing craft from that ramp.

One grumpy hour later, we were overlooking the superb Waipio Valley, which I hiked to at the age of either 9 or 10, prior to the trail unfortunately being closed to the public due to and earthquake in 2006. Frankly, I would do anything, including trespass across the “private” (every god damned square inch of land in Hawaii is “private,” they could learn a bit from Canadians) land that leads to the trailhead. Good memories and anger at my parents for rolling their eyes verbally (if you know what I mean) to a guy who was planning on hiking to Waimanu, which is in fact one of my life dreams. My parents just don’t believe that anything beyond what they would be willing to do from the comfort of their thirty thousand dollar rental car. Jesus, travelling alone with me would be frightening. Anyways, they gave this guy shit indirectly and then started talking rudely about a local guy who was talking to his dog and having a swell time. My parents don’t understand what simple happiness and leisure is.

I was relieved to discover that I had thrown in a pair of headphones with my camera in the backpack, and I plugged myself in to some Louis Armstrong so that I wouldn’t have to hear my dad’s bitching about how stupid the car was and how slow the speed limits were and how narrow the roads are and so on. I just want to enjoy life, stop complaining about everything. It seems like you make up 100% of what I complain about, so I don’t know if I’m a hypocrite for wanting you to shut up, but I’d say I am because I only get pissed about one thing while you get peeved about everything. 

Dinner was fishlike substance, let’s not get into that. Also, I love palm trees, I want a pet one that I can name Earl III (Earl I & II were the original pianos at my school, I don’t know why). If my dad doesn’t stop being such a wet blanket about everything I swear I’m going to steal something while in Hawaii just to watch him go nuts again.

Hawaii: Day 3: Snowstorms and Spiders

I am from British Columbia, which is supposed to be cold (it was until about five years ago when Al Gore visited and brought global warming with him). Coming to Hawaii is a real treat, because even when it is pouring rain and windy, it’s warm. I love it here. This is the reason that this morning, when I visited the NOAA’s website, I was disgusted to find that Mauna Kea, at a mere 13,796 and being the largest mountain on earth, was engulfed in a massive snow and ice storm. And we were supposed to visit it today to look out over the clouds. Two inches of ice on the roads. Temperatures with wind chill of minus 40 (celsius or fahrenheit, your call. I think they’re the same, aren’t they? Anyways, I was peeved, because that might keep up all week and that is NOT good cricket, Hawaii.

Instead, we went to do something we hadn’t done before on the Big Island (oh god forbid we try something new): hike along the uninhabited shoreline in a beautiful and rugged area. This proved to be amazing and some of the photos, still to follow. I got thoroughly soaked by one absolutely massive rogue wave, well in excess of 15 feet, hitting the cliffs. I counted 10 sea arches and over 15 blowholes (I feel ripped off, Andrew Doughty promised 12 sea arches. Well, to court we go!). Altogether an amazing hike. I highly recommend it, as long as you have a waterproof camera (I own two). Speaking of which, a GoPro makes an excellent camera to hold in over a blowhole, I don’t think my $900 Canon would get the same results (and survive). 

For the drive to the hike, I attached my GoPro to the hood of our GMC Uglyasfuck. WOW did the footage look cool - I’ll be uploading it to YouTube tonight (search “Painted Church Road GoPro”).

I believe Agent Smith works as a security guard at the resort. HE even has the facial expression. SIngular. So now we have the other half of a day to waste away, and I have no bloody clue what we can do. I really want to go tell the clouds to screw off and let the 23 degrees become an ocean-sports permitting 28 degrees like it usually is here in Kona at this time of year. 

Finally the clouds opened up in the late evening and gave me some of the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen or photographed in my life. A random guy walked by while I was barbecuing dinner and said that I should also photographed the spiders. I hadn’t noticed but there are spiders here that are more beautiful than the sunsets.

To conclude, I truly wish we had risked our insurance policy and driven as high up Mauna Kea as possible to experience the sort-of rare occurrence of snow in Hawaii.

Hawaii: Day 2: iPods and Illnesses

Ah, Hawaii. The place big enough that you aren’t likely to have time to see everything but small enough that you will see the same cute girl, on two different days, in two completely different places. The world is cruel, is it not?

My mother is horribly ill, meaning that we can’t do anything. I mean anything. We ca’t even leave the condo for a walk (well I can leave, but not my dad or my mum). It’s pissing me off - we fly all the way to Hawaii to be cooped up in a soviet-era condo. However, I can hand it one thing.

I have never walked across a golf green in my life. The first reason being I don’t have the money to play golf, the second being my interest in golf is similar to my interest in professional hair styling. However, last friday, the golf course (a full 18 holes) in front of our hotel shut down and the fences were taken down. It is still maintained since it’s still a perfectly good golf course and someone might want to buy it, but you don’t get kicked off for not paying. I can do cartwheels all the way across it (actually, I can’t. I just needed to throw that in). What were the highlights of the day? Well, for starters, we bumped into (literally, I stubbed my toe upon walking onto the property) a massive abandoned hotel. It’s called the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort. The grounds are perfectly maintained and there are security guards who we talked to and asked about the hotel (it shut down on Halloween). 

From the grounds, we watched, astounded, as a 747-200 did an approach with the landing gear down from almost 5000 feet. That’s right. Five. Freaking. Thousand. Feet. Usually landing gear goes down around 1000. 

Every story, however comedic in nature, must be crested with tragedy. This morning I woke up and wanted to listen to some music on my iPod, as well as read some of the things we were going to do out of the wonderful Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed app. To my dismay, I could not locate the iPod. Soon the entire hotel room was upside down (the earthquakes here are terrible), and still no iPod. I thought, “maybe it’s still in my pants from last night.” It wasn’t. But the pocket that the iPod was so cozily nested in has an iPod sized hole in the bottom, which means that either those son of a bitches at WestJet found it when cleaning the plane and chose not to try to contact the owner, it’s sitting on the tarmac being shredded by the engine of a 747, or any of the three places we were last night. There are literally only three places I could have lost it: airport, car rental, or hotel lobby. I pray it shows up. 

On the other side of the news, I got some splendid photographs of some heritage totems near the Outrigger, as well as watched the tide start pouring in. I realized that one of the factors leading to the demise of the hotel could have been the Tsunami form Japan, which hit Kona pretty hard and destroyed a lot of businesses. 

Costco here is brilliant. In Canada, you walk up to a big long counter and one person takes all the orders, then one person gives out all the food, and there is like a 2 person support staff in the kitchen. Here, there are 5 windows, each with a separate cash register. 

After discussing the similarities between my stuffed hamster Hammy and an upturned hippo with my dad, we threw a pizza in the oven and enjoyed a nice cold fruit juice cup of (that sentence was poorly formed and I’m too lazy to fix it. Instead, I will now type half a paragraph of this). As I was sitting alone on our front porch finishing my last piece of pizza (number 11), I look up just in time to see a guy almost walk into our suite. I pipe up: “I think your’s is the next one over.” He responds: “Good man. We need more like you,” and returns to his condo. He came back to meet my father and I, and he’s from the next town over, Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. We come all the way to Hawaii and meet a guy from down the highway. 

After dinner, I went inside and opened my briefcase, and my iPod fell out. Somehow, it had embedded itself into the side of the bag, between sewn layers of fabric, and morphed into the seventh dimension and conversed with beings from Europa (I made some of that up, namely the part about the layers of fabric). Anyways, I recovered my iPod. Conflict resolved, which means the drama is at an end, meaning that the story is over. Thanks for reading if you wasted your time doing so, and screw you if you didn’t!

Hawaii: Day 1: WestJet and Rental Cars

Flights are always really freaking awesome. We took WJ1882 (I have that number memorized, this was my third time on that exact flight) from YVR to KOA or PHKO depending on whether you’re actually intelligent or not. It was a disgusting day in Vancouver when we left, way too hot for March 15th. 17 degrees was the high. Welcome to spring. 

After skipping most of my classes for the day because they would have been pointless, I drove home and got to witness the ultimate display of grouchygrumpnuts. My father seems to be more stressed on Vacation than at work. I don’t get it, I’m the opposite (along with 95% of the world’s sane human population). 

We got to the airport after having to listen to my grandpa ramble on about how he had found these amazing devices - E-Readers! He was also musing over the fact that he could plug a USB drive into his car and play music… and then I showed him my iPod and he asked what the point of that was. Enough said. Not white, actually - he also spent the other half of the drive through the Massey Tunnel rambling about this amazing new technology, rechargeable AA batteries (the lithium ion type), that should never have been invented because it’s going to destroy the world or something. Just for comparison to how behind my parents are, my mother was agreeing with him (although quite frankly she doesn’t know what a Lithium ion battery is). 

Airport security was dull except for the really grumpy and bored checkpoint staffmember named Lovely, whose name, when read, came out the other side of my brain in the most sarcastic tone of “oh, well that’s lovely.” Partially from her mood, partially because I’m a twisted and judgemental freak.

I spent an hour at the airport doing three things: taking pictures of planes (stay tuned for a crap ton of posts over the next two weeks), figuring out why my camera wasn’t taking pictures of planes, and trying to order a simple sandwich from a Tim Hortons woman who spoke about two and a half words of English. I did not end up with what I ordered, but they gave me the more expensive sandwich instead of the cheap one I chose, so I’m sure not complaining. Finally, we found my mum lollygagging (I just had to use that word, I don’t even know what it means) around the other side of the airport, and we boarded the plane.

The flight was awesome. I watched two episodes of David Attenborough’s epic as shit voice talking about humping hippos (aka, Planet Earth), ate my sandwich and then my mum’s (she was not hungry/sleeping). Then I ate a tube of Pringles. Then I ate half a kilogram of dried fruit. There is about as much potato in the dried fruit as is in the Pringles. I swear they’re made of styrofoam and crack. Then I tried to get some rest while being kicked by the little bastard in the seat in front of me (it’s possible, don’t ask how). Thank god for WestJet and their legroom or I would not be hiking this week. 

And then, welcome to Hawaii, land of way to disturbingly friendly airport security and rental car shuttle drivers. Hawaii, I swear, is the only place in the world where the skinny Asian dudes are the cool guys, they drive the pickup trucks, and they run the place (other than Vancouver, possibly). But let’s get to the point: 

Hawaii is so freaking laid back. I’m watching people doing their after work shopping at Safeway in Kailua Kona (Google Map it, you stalker), and I mean, in Langley, when people move slowly into a grocery store it’s because they either physically cannot move faster or they are way too freaking lazy to pick up the effin’ pace. Here, it’s the speed of things. Einstein’s theory of relativity applies: everyone moves slower, so time passes slower. Science has paid off, ok? 

Apparently we’re having all of the Kona coast and Kohala for breakfast tomorrow, since my parents were supposed to get the fixin’s for breaky and returned with a shopping cart overflowing with chow. 

As an aside, I’d like to talk about our rental car, a new enough for me to call new GMC Arcadia (as our paleozoic rental car guy called it). I got to peek inside the cockpit of the 737-800ER that we flew here on, and I know for a fact that this car has more buttons than the entire flight deck. And I know the flight deck of the 737 pretty damned well (I was dictating the landing checklist as we were on approach, my dad was giving me disdainful looks). What happened to dials? The fan control even uses buttons. It even appears that there is a button that activates a giant peanut maker directly above the driver’s head, but I can’t be sure.The only thing I like about this lump o’ junk gas-guzzler is that it has radio and climate controls specifically for the back, in the back, that actually work. Don’t ask how GMC came up with the logic of separate RADIO controls. We were supposed to be driving a Ford Escape. 

To close of the laid-backness of Hawaii, it’s just after 11 when I’m writing this in the car on the way to the resort and I have seen a total of four cars. We have driven 1/10th the length of the island. 

Anyways, mahalo for reading and aloha!

If you found any part of this post offensive, and I apologize for your sorry oversensitivity. It’s a humorous journal, not a philosophical text.