The sunshine coast is kind of cool because it’s this little strip of highway only accessible by ferry. It was not too busy and the people who were around were all really friendly.

The one thing I didn’t like was how so much of the coast has been developed. Houses and houses up and down. At least the lakes are wonderful.

Funny story: We biked from West Vancouver to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal. I had taken tent poles from Faron’s trailer and strapped them to the back of my bike because I wanted to help out with the weight (I’m always scared to sneak a lift of Faron’s packs because he usually takes everything for us). About 5 km from the ferry terminal we stopped on the side of highway 1 and I had unstrapped things from my bike to get a snack from my panier. Then I put everything back together and we continued on.

Around 10:35am and after buying tickets for the 11:10am ferry I looked at my bike: “where are the poles?” “Faron did you take the poles?” “Yeah I have them.” (Does he know I took them to carry?) “Do you really have them?” “Yes…let me check.” No poles. Crap. Poles flew off my bike. I can buy new set. Tent company no longer exists, poles irreplaceable. Crap. I’ll bike back and maybe they came off somewhere around the terminal. Ferry boarding in 25 minutes. Seems hopeless. Crap.

I felt so horrible. Horrible enough to get in a cab and drive my shameful face away. And then I realized that was our only hope. I got into a cab and had him drive me back down the #1.

How happy I was to see a long purple sack laying on the side of the road!! We picked them up, return to the ferry terminal, still caught the 11:10am and had a tent to camp in!

The food highlight of the trip: President’s Choice White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese. It had been too long since the last time I ate it:

Food runner-up: breakfast was pancakes made with rehydrated dehydrated saskatoon berries and shavings of a Fruit & Nut Cadbury chocolate bar, topped with saskatoon berry / chokecherry syrup.

Some things I learned (other than the moral of the whole tent pole ordeal):
- Pedal “cages” are not cages but clips and this is why clipless pedals can be called clipless. (Even though they’re quite clippy no?)
- Translink may refuse to let you take a bike trailer on the bus. Something about it having wheels. Yeah…sure. (Boo.)
- The coffee crisp ice cream at the shop on the boardwalk in Sechelt is not Coffee Crisp as in the chocolate bar but ice cream with crispy coffee flavoured bits.

The first three nights we stayed at Salt Pond Beach Park (with the cats). The area behind our tent is where salt is harvested from the ocean (the only natural salt pond left in Hawaii):

Campgrounds were different from the ones we are used to here. You don’t get your own private nook in trees with picnic table and a place to pitch a tent. Instead you park off the road and choose any spot in a grassy park area for your tent. The campgrounds were not very busy so we had a lot of room but it was by no means private room.

It was quickly obvious that the public campgrounds are where locals come after work and on holidays to BBQ, play cards, drink, watch tv (somebody brought one to entertain a group at one of the picnic tables), and so on. This was a little unsettling because before going I read and heard so much about how the Hawaiians are not particularly fond of the tourists running around their islands. Driving up in a PT Cruiser and stepping out with marshmallow-white legs, there was no way I would blend in. But during our second night and morning a few men came over to chat with us and that was really good. We were from totally different worlds and lifestyles but they were interested in us and they seemed to enjoy telling us about themselves.

One came to our breakfast table around 8 a.m. We were eating pineapple and mini wheats and he had a beer in his hand. He told us that it’s really tasty to cut up pineapple and put it in your cereal. Then he told us that when they eat pineapple they often dip it in salt (from the pond) to subdue the sweetness so that you can taste the pineapple’s real flavour. You can’t buy the salt in stores but he brought some over for us to try. It was…salty. I think I may have over-dipped but I could taste what he was getting at.

After Salt Pond, we stayed one night at Haena and the rest at Anini Park. All three parks were next to the ocean.

Spending the whole week outside with the exception of car driving time, grocery stores and sitting inside restaurants a few times made sure that we saw most of the early sunsets. From Anini:

And from Polihale Beach:

The Polihale sunset was cool to experience because it’s the furthest west you can go in Hawaii and you really get the impression that you are at an edge, saying goodbye to a day that millions have already had their last words with.

If you forget the overpriced Mexican food our hungry souls settled for as a first meal and the cheese and cracker supper later, our first real Hawaiian meal was pineapple for breakfast:


(…and mini wheats with soy milk.)

All winter we looked forward to fresh tropical fruit and we were not disappointed. We found fruit stands on country roads operating on the honour system and masking tape prices:

I learned how to eat lychee (not whole like below):

and was astounded by how bananas grow:

We went to the Kauai Coffee Company to buy green beans for friends that roast their own. The samples we tried were good. Surprising given the coffee served by cafés on the island. It was pretty bad and made us proud of what we could produce with store-bought grinds and a coffee filter held over a travel mug.

On to cooked food…

The first distinctively Hawaii meal we had was the teriyaki burger from Duane’s Ono-Char Burger. Note: when I say Hawaiian in reference to food I don’t mean Hawaiian as was originally on the island but Hawaiian mixed with Japanese and American. Hence the teriyaki burger. We waited for 20, maybe even 30 minutes at the small road-side kitchen with order window. It wasn’t waiting in a line-up, just for a delicious burger to cook so it was worth every minute.

That would have been my fill of burger for the trip but I had promised myself that I would try the loco moco. Oh boy. Rice topped with two hamburger patties, gravy, and two friend eggs. It came in a plate lunch so there was the traditional side of macaroni salad (I substituted a regular salad that was essentially iceberg lettuce swimming in macaroni salad mayo-dressing) and a side of noodles. I ate wondering what people on the island do to burn these calories. Probably something that I wouldn’t be doing that day so I saved half for dinner. My conclusion was that loco moco was tasty and satisfying in a carb-meat-fried-sauce way but I felt really out of character eating it. Like I do if I eat chicken pot pie or other meat and pastry combinations.

Later in the trip we tried plate lunches from Fish Express (a place you have to try if you go to Kauai). I had the kalua pig:

Kalua means to cook in an underground oven and Kalua pig is shredded pork from a salted pig cooked underground all day long (think luau pig). To me Kalua now means the best pig you will ever ever eat.

Faron had the Laulau. This is pork wrapped in taro leaves and cooked in the underground oven. It was tasty but if you try it, don’t eat kalua pig first because the laulau will not compare.

The pink cubes on the side are salmon and tuna poke: an appetizer of marinated cubes of raw fish. Common marinade ingredients are salt, soy sauce, nori, and sesame. Another must try in Hawaii.

A final dish of note was the saimin, a noodle soup dish much like ramen. We had it at Hamura’s Saimin Stand so I assumed it was mostly from the Japanese but it did have wontons in it. Wikipedia: “The dish is composed of elements taken from each of the original sugarcane and pineapple plantation laborer ethnicities of the early 20th century: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Portuguese” Ahh. I was worried that I’d compare saimin to ramen but it stood strong as a noodle soup of its own. Plus the atmosphere at Hamura’s was great. U-shaped counters and closely packed stools always occupied by tourists like us or locals.

Okay! That was a lot of post. I guess we ate a lot of food in a week. And still made room for dessert:

Shaved ice. I think this is the Japanese kakigori but in Hawaii, particularly at JoJo’s Shaved Ice in Waimea (not the newer one run by the punk white guy but the one around the corner), they have perfected ice shaving so that the treat melts in your mouth (of course) but like butter. I can’t remember the name of this combination but it had vanilla ice cream on the button, strawberry cheesecake, vanilla, and banana syrups, and sweetened condensed milk drizzled on top.

I’m waiting for a plane in Calgary. Michael Jackson died and when they show news reports everyone watches. That’s impact.

It took 3 seconds for me to respond “Yes”, we booked our flights and that’s how I made it through the long stretch of dark evenings and frosty roads.

Faron’s choice of Kauai was informed by his sister who lived there for a period and learned how to surf from a man name Ambrose. Ambrose has a shop on the East side of the island where he builds, paints, and rents/sells boards. He’s also a pretty wicked artist as you will see below.

We rented two boards from him that we got to pick from the surfboard tree:

While we were choosing, some other guy dropped by to check out a board that Ambrose was working on for him. The artwork was incredible:

I was pretty jealous and thought, “if it means being able to eventually ride something that looks like that, heck I’m gonna be standing up by the end of this week!” (I would also browse skis at MEC to motivate myself to learn.)

The swell was fortunately on the smaller, beginner side. It was also so so nice to be out there without a wetsuit and to look into the water and be able to see the coral-covered bottom.

But the coral could also be a bit of a hazard – a number of times I wasn’t careful getting off my board and my feet got pretty scraped up. I’m still not able to stand but my paddling and catching waves and general relationship with waves are all getting better. It was a little sad leaving Hawaii not fully “able to surf” yet but it will come.

Mount Rainier:

Mount St. Helens:

Alaska Airlines serves complimentary microbrew and wine. I counted the contents of my airline snack to make sure they were not skimming the fat elsewhere to make up for the cost. Nope, it all looks good.

We double thanked them on a comments card, blinked two more times an then we were in Portland.

We drove down to Oregon for visiting, surfing and (for me) to see where Faron is from. After staying in Portland Friday night we headed straight west and spent the rest of the weekend playing on the coast and in Newport.

The beaches were amazing. North-west getting a bit warmer. Sand lighter and oceans brighter greens and blues.

Sea lions have invaded the Newport harbour and lounging and barking tell you who is really the king of the sea.

I got into the water 3 times. Faron another time on foggy Saturday (I excused myself for a jog due to fog-chills-can’t see waves coming-excuses-excuses).

My second time out I was riding some waves or should I say the long board was riding the waves and I was on top of it? From there, standing up had always seemed a long way off. I can jump to my feet but I stay on all fours. But this time I had a moment where I realized something stopping me from standing: I’ve been using the board as something to keep me afloat and because of that, I never want to lose my hold on it.

Instead I need to use it as a vehicle.

I was able to stand for, okay just a second. But it was a totally different and amazing sensation. Free.

Of course the next day my body still felt like this:

The other realization? I think I’m afraid of being under water. It might have something to do with tubes in my ears for years and childhood years and doctor’s orders to always keep my head above water. But whatever the cause – I need to work on that.

Let’s move on to try something else. A complement to skiing: surfing. We went to Tofino last weekend and despite the rain and despite standing on two feet being a possibly long way away it was great medicine. Though the one thing the showers discouraged me from doing was taking a lot of pictures. So I’m going to cheat and pull some from our February trip out there as it was pretty much a sunnier version of this past weekend.

Waking up in the volvo on Saturday morning.

Drying wetsuits on Sunday morning. (Didn’t have so much drying action this weekend but the warmer weather made it less painful squeezing into damp skins.)

Another jay! A stellar’s jay who came to watch us make macaroni and cheese for a late beach lunch. Not as friendly as the gray jay.

It was hard to come back and made me nostalgic for summer holidays from school and long weeks spent at the cabin.

Anyway, I was nervous enough already. Not so much because of concern over high scores but more because I knew there would be many formalities and this being my first time competing, I knew little. Indeed, to jump ahead, I was like that little kid who starts walking off the stage in the middle of her line. Her parents are standing at the side of the stage mouthing her next words and waving their hands “get back there!”. Well, not completely like that but, I had some things to learn and this was the chance to learn them.

And I got second place!….in a two person division : P (How can I not use that statement ordering to joke about my second place-ness?) Only competing with another girl (and a friend) from my club helped cure the nervousness but…I hope I get the chance to compete with people outside of the club soon. I imagine you can learn a lot from it.

On a note not completely related to the tournament – it was so interesting to travel in BC. I guess I have not done that so much. It’s easy to stay inside the big city walls and start to think that IT represents the province. But there is so much else around and strikingly different too. I do need to get out more.

On the way to Nanaimo – there is a little village with pubs and coffee and giftshops called…”the village”. You park your car in line for the ferry and while waiting, can leave and go to the village.