Improvisation: How to carry a boogieboard on a moped.

This one has been baffling me for a week or so, so I just set out to apply my good Boy Scout sense to it. Turns out the solution is absurdly simple.

You will need:

About 12′ of nylon 1″ strap (or rope, or seat belt material, or rubber bands.. I’m sure anything will work if its relatively strong)

An adjustable buckle (I used 3 of them since my 12′ strap was actually 3 4′ straps snapped together)

A boogie board

Fins

Another bag is damn handy.

Step 1. place the center of the strap about 1 foot below the nose of the board

Step 2. Pick up the board and put it on your back, maintaining the placement of the strap.

Step 3. Cross the tailing ends of the strap over your chest and under your arms

Step 4. Thread your fins onto the strap, one on each side for balance, or both on one side for ease.

Step 5. Click the buckle together behind your back and the board. Tighten any loose slack in the arrangement. You are now ready to roll.

I prefer to add a large semi waterproof fanny pack to the mix. Its large strap helps hold the board tightly to my back and it gives me a place to keep junk. It also fits under the moped seat for convenience when out in the water. Makes it slightly less convenient for people to steal your wallet and stuff.

Study the pictures below and you’ll get a feel for the way the rig works. I suppose a dedicated surfer could also use the curvature of their spine to help shape the rocker of their board.. The stiffness of the board provides the leverage that keeps the whole setup in place.

Get it? Nothing to it. Cost: About 6 bucks (even in Hawaii!) board and fins not included.

So much for today’s supplemmental. It should be warm enough by now to hit the beach. Hang Loose!

Some more random stuff I took pictures of

I sent this to a lot of you via cell phone, but check out my little canaries! Wild, mating pair hanging around the cigarete butt at Kapolei transit center bus stop. Hawaii is awesome.

They have to come from somewhere I guess.. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen em in the wild (or in the gheto bus stops) before today..

I’m sort of thinking of getting this Honu design tattooed at some point. Been sort of looking for the turtle I’d want to live with for the rest of my life and saw this on a guy’s ie lavalava on the bus after seeing the canaries.

Couldn’t get a real great pic of it, but you get the idea..

Got today off. Thinking of a body boarding trip to Medical Waste Beach and maybe a trip up Fort Weaver Road to check out the Highway Inn. I’m supposed to try something called “Humbug” which (if I followed the conversation right” might include tripes in its ingredients. What the hell is a tripe?

Catch up post..

Sorry for the long wait between new posts. Was busy having fun and then busy managing some personal weirdness..

So here’s a few pictures.

Diamond Head crater from Ala Moana beach park. Body surfed the waves you see on the left.. Long damn swim for small damn waves, but still fun.

Part of the lawn at Ala Moana beach park by our picnic spot. We Barbequed and had a great time. Reggae and meat and kids running around.. All we lacked was a Hacky Sack.

Went to the World Famous Swap Meet again, at Aloha Stadium. Here’s the stadium.

I was sort of looking for an ukulele, but found this instead.. Not something I would expect to see in Hawaii.. Perfectly appropriate for Minnesota though..

The viking’s WHAT?!! Maybe there’s a plaque missing.

Here’s my moped. Vento Triton R4. I put a new battery in it and its working great again. Yay!

So there. Gotta get to bed. John and Kat have good news, but I’ll clue ya in on Wednesday

Boogieboard adventure v1.0

Finally got a boogieboard so I could utilize Medical Waste Beach to it’s fullest. All around the island surf was flat to 2′ except on my own south side where reports had it at 3-5′. The pic above was just the first set of waves I saw. Note the surfer for scale.. There were several waves much larger than these while I was out.

Damn tiring swimming out against them, but I figured out how to dive under them to maintain momentum.. Had some trouble catching the waves here.. They came in a lot faster than they seem to at Kahe Beach Park, and I was flapping my fins as fast as I could get em moving but was catching ‘em too high I think.. I’d get moving along a bit then off the back of the wave.

As you can see in the pic there’s basically 3 break points out there. All about the same size, but the middle one is pretty much perfect. The shore break is probably a bad idea due to the rocky bottom, but can’t resist when you’re aiming for shore

So now I have something to do just a mile or so from home that gets me wet, is tons of fun, offers opportunities to improve a new skill, and makes the ladies swoon (Well, they might swoon more after I take my fins off.. No one looks studly in fins).

Battery worked just fine, moped’s back up and running good as new. Spent the day boogieboarding and listening to Hawaiian music and napping. Just got off the phone with my mom. Hi, Mom!

Tomorrow we’re gonna pack up the car with our grill and all our random beach crap to spend a day at Ala Moana Beach Park downtown.. Beautiful beach, large shallow reef, sometimes good surf, plenty of room for Avery and Fa’u to run around, meat, sun, and shopping across the street if we get bored

Should be plenty of blog fodder for tomorrow Stay tuned.

Battery safari

So despite the ability to start my moped by kickstarting I just didn’t trust the thing. So I called Mopeds Plus, described my symptoms, and asked if I should be bringing it in for repair or what my best options are. They said it sounded like a dud battery, and that they were getting a shipment of batteries just today and would I like to leave my number and they’d call me when they got it charged up and ready to go?

Why yes I would. Sounds great.

A few hours go past and I cant help but think that they’ve had plenty of time to get their batteries back to the store so I call ‘em. Sure as shit, the batteries are there. Just forgot to call me. By the standards of moped hassles for me in Hawaii that’s not much. So I jump on the bus and head to the store.

Closed.

What? I asked ‘em if they were staying open til 1800 (as advertised) and they said yes and we had it all worked out. (I’ve learned to pin Moped repair guys down on all the details before even trying to count on them to do what they say they will) So I call ‘em.

“Yeaah. Neva got ‘um open today. The guy didn’t come in to work.”

“Umm, ok. So you’re at the Kapiolani store?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. Well, I guess I’ll be by tomorrow to pick it up then (I’d spent almost 2 hours getting to the closed store on the bus and wasn’t willing to try to find the other store without the aid of google maps).”

“You got cash, brah?” interjected the moped guy.

“Yeah, actually. How much you need?”

“40 bucks even”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Then stay dere and I bring one battery to you.”

“Sweet. I’ll be there.”

Which is how it went down. The guy pulled up on a moped and we did an alleyway battery transaction. I got back on the bus, he went back to work, and I have a battery. Of course, not wanting to push my luck where mopeds are concerned (My luck with this stuff is notoriously bad as any reader could tell you) I haven’t put the battery in yet. Figured getting good service from a moped repair place is as far as my good moped luck can stretch in one day.

So I’m up early and thinking about sticking the new battery in there. Stay tuned, and wish me luck!

Hilo roundup..

Back from Hilo tonight. Not too bad a run. We were very busy, but managed well. Good staff out there.

I really like the Big Island. I have a couple pics of random junk, but I wish I would have had the time and energy to go to Queen Lilioukalani Park in Hilo.. Japanese jungle garden.. Fantastic, and not all that far from the hotel, but it was getting dark by the time I got back last night

This is Blane’s Drive Inn. There are quite a few little restaurants built on this model over there. Eat “in” at picnic tables on their lanai or in your car or whatever.

Damn fine omelettes!

This is the view of pre-sunrise from the lanai at Naniloa Volcanoes Hotel where we stay when we’re in town.

Hilo is damn rainy, but the clouds were broken up enough that I actually got to see the peak of Mauna Loa from the ground in Hilo for a little while. ENORMOUS! (No pic though.. didnt do it justice).

Here’s a grasshopper I befriended over the last couple days. He was sitting on one of our beds (they’re green) probably thinking he’d hit the mother lode of all leaves. Alas! He couldn’t eat it! So I relocated him to this potted bamboo (I thought it was a fake plant until I saw the dirt and stuff, and realized that plants like that grow just great down here). As you can see, he tore into it like a buffet.

As you can also see, I have yet to really adjust to macro shots with my new phone.

I may have mentioned before that it rains a LOT in Hilo. This picture was taken while the radio was announcing precautions to take against the (I shit you not) drought conditions they think they’re experiencing.

By Wyoming standards, that’s flash flood weather!

Was scheduled to work tomorrow, but Steph took my shift (Thanks!) and the moped appears to be running alright except that it needs to be kickstarted. So I think it might be time for a turtle odyssey again..

Condolences to Jamie on the loss of her father..

Hilo. Day one.

The clouds broke up a little this time and I was able to see the entire height of the mountain here.. Enormous! It’s hard to get a sense of scale because it’s just so huge..

I love every bit of the big island I’ve seen.. Check out these trees.

Was gonna crop the cars out but they’re nice to show scale.. The entire street running up to our hotel is lined with these guys.. Shady lane indeed!

Naniloa Volcanos Resort is where we stay. A lovely hotel on a protected harbor.. I posted up some pics of the grounds on my last trip here, but I think I’ll go look around some more tomorrow when I’m not quite so tired. Long day today.. up at 0200, blogging at 1900.

At least the front desk guy let me bum an ethernet cable so I can update the blog

OK. Gonna pass out now. Thanks for reading.

Hilo bound.

Hey. It’s 0230 and I’m about to head to the airport to go to Hilo for 3 days. Each of those days are something like 14 hours long, so there might not be a whole lot of updates to the blog for a few days (plus the internet at the hotel we stay at is not wireless, so unless they can supply me with an ethernet cable I might not be connected). Phone doesn’t work all that well there either. But I’ll be too exhausted to get into trouble and I’ll try to get lots of pictures for when I get back.

Dead Battery, Breakfast, and Flowers.

Moped battery died over the last few days. Seems I just can’t keep a moped running to save my life. Bought a float charger and have the battery hooked up to it.. Hopefully it’ll work. Otherwise I’m not real sure how I’m going to get to the airport tomorrow for my flight to Hilo..

Anyway, I decided that I should go get some breakfast rather than sitting in the garage watching my battery charge, and on my way saw some pretty nice flowers.

Apparently something’s wrong with WordPress’ photo uploader. Check back in a few hours for the pictures (hopefully).

Still not working right, cant seem to charge the battery strong enough to actually start the bike, my life sucks and I’m sick to fucking death of things not working out for me. I don’t ask for much. I need a way to get to work. I’m perfectly content with a moped. I don’t ask for a Lexus. But I need the moped to fucking run.

I’d have a nervous breakdown but I can’t afford the fucking doctors bills. Fuck this.

More random shots

King Kalakaua Building across the street from Iolani palace. We were here for today’s blood drive.

Some flowers

The more I think about it the more I think this phase of the Hawaiian Experiment may be drawing to a close. If I come back I’ll have a much better idea of the challenges I face and the things I need to do to meet those challenges, as well as a reasonably good map of the state in my head, which counts for a lot.

So much of the first few months here were spent in a depressed, bewildered state because I simply didnt know where anything was.. I feel sort of like I’m wimping out, and maybe I am, but I just don’t think that I can take the upstream struggle against money and job and crushing loneliness that my life here has been. I need four things. I could perhaps tough it out here until I attain those four things, but I think I need to regroup and relearn how to be with people.. I’ve been running from ever since my marriage blew up. Time to start running to.

To what? Well, I guess we’ll see!