For all the fans

Honolulu, Hawaii

Sat 16 August 2008

I think I’ll make all my flights to America in the future via Hawaii. America greeted me this time with an Aloha and a big welcoming smile. The young man at the immigration desk asked about my plans whilst in America with a tone of general interest, rather than interrogation. As I cleared customs and picked up my bags I stepped outside to blue skies, white sand and a healthy mix of the fat and the thin, all lightly dressed as a beach climate such as this will encourage.

The ratio of fat to thin people is about the same as the ratio of Japanese tourists to tourists from the rest of the world, in other words, there are a lot of fat people. Despite this, and being unable to check in for seven hours, my initial impressions of Hawaii are good. My first purchase, which I’m sipping on right now, an iced kona mocha, is delicious. I’m sure the many purchases I’m yet to make in this idyllic sunny paradise will be equally as delicious.

But I’m jumping ahead. I’d taken off from Sydney six hours from now, and courtesy of Jet Star and the International Date/Time line, have arrived before I left. While at first glance this seems like the greatest thing ever, my inability to sleep on planes has left me a little tired, with my last sleep a restless one some time in the future, about 24 hours ago.

Rob White had come seen me off at the airport, making a normally boring wait in the departure lounge a delight, accompanied by a couple of beers. Jet Star, as far as budget airlines go, wasn’t too bad. It was my first experience with them, and it was as I expected, except the in-flight entertainment I had pre-ordered took the form of a giant playboy, with a limited selection of movies. The lack of free alcohol would be my only other gripe.

I’ve just seen a free shuttle rock up, and am considering running after it. I still have about four hours to kill before I can check in and grab a couple of hours sleep before checking out the Honolulu night life on offer. I do have one major concern: since my last exaggerated adventures, I’m now a year older. I don’t know if I can still handle the hostel scene, and the alcohol-fuelled adventures that accompany such a scene. That’s still a worry for later this evening. For now, as the free shuttle has left, I’m considering a walk up to Diamond Head, a crater that looks approximately three miles away from where I’m sitting now, under the trees opposite the Surf-Rider resort, which looks more like a mansion than a hotel. With my iced kona mocha gone, it looks like it’s time for me to go.

Sunday 17 August 2008

From a reasonable distance, it’s quite obvious I was wearing a singlet yesterday. A tip for new players, expired sunscreen will not work as well as unexpired sunscreen. My arms, neck and shoulders are red, but my chest and back are as pale as ever. The walk up to Diamond Head was worth the view, and taking the long way back around the crater showed me a different part of Honolulu. The walk all up took about four hours, and only after I had stopped in at a beach bar at the back of the Surf-Rider Hotel did I realised that no matter how much expired sunscreen one puts on, it won’t protect you.

The rest of the day was taken up with a ride around to Sandy Beach and the other side of Honolulu, away from the crowded tourist beaches of Waikiki. I’d met a pseudo-local, there for the summer, on my walk up to Diamond Head the previous day. She’d never been to Sandy Beach either but had been keen to check it out and was happy to show me around. The six-foot waves at Sandy Beach broke very close to the shore, onto submerged and later revelled very painful rocks, except for a small stretch which was taken up by a large local scene. This is where all the tanned and attractive people were hiding. I wasn’t able to take too much notice however, as I was given a lesson in body-surfing from one of the locals there, who didn’t want to see another tourist killed on his beach. I had a couple of painful dumps, one which completely flipped me and landed me high up on the beach in a perfect ten point gymnastic dismount. At that moment I decided for a small break, casually strolling from the surf and another potential rib-breaking situation.

The Rest of Hawaii

I was suffering a hang over on the Monday after a fun night out and an introduction to Tequila Rose’ a too few hours previously. Breakfast in the form of chicken, mahi-mahi and steak from a favourite local takeaway helped alleviate some of this feeling, washed down with flavoured shaved ice. This is all the rage in Honolulu, but it didn’t really do much for me, and reminded me too much of yellow snow. The rest of the day was pretty chilled, a bit of shopping, casual drinking, eating and a dip in the Pacific. It was during my relaxing float off Waikiki that I saw a giant green head swim past me. Not knowing what it was, but being a bravely fearful man, I bravely fled to the shore in a fast, but not panicked, semi-freestyle fashion, abandoning those who had been swimming near me to their fate. From the safety of the beach, I could see the children that had been gleefully playing in the water where I had seen the monstrous head continue playing. No one else seemed to panic. I later realised it had been a turtle I’d seen, and not some sort of green shark with a particular taste for tourists.

I flew the next day to San Diego, a one-night stopover on the way to New York and the reuniting of the Hawketc team. I’d failed to surf once in Hawaii, owing to a combination of crowded surf beaches, late sleep ins and not much on the wave front where surfboards were available. But here in sunny San Diego, one of my favourite American cities, I became the awesome surfer I always thought I could be. My time in San Diego was far too short, but thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a place that I’ll have to come back and visit again. The weather is warm, the people friendly, the wearing of t-shirts only optional and the women in bikinis. I hear also it has a zoo that’s not too bad, one day I will have to get there and check it out.

It was time to leave, and travel to the greatest city in the world, New York City.

A Reintroduction

It’s been some time since the Hawketc blog was last updated, disappointing many of our loyal fans. I have a new more portable, more blogworthy laptop, which I’ll keep with me throughout. It should make it easier to keep the blogs coming, assuming there is room enough in the pauses of adventure. There was some criticism last time our Exaggerated Adventures weren’t updated regularly enough. I will aim to maintain the high standards set by our previous blogs, but this time spread out over a greater number of blogs.

For the record, both Hawkins and myself defeated the New York Bar Exam, and are now certified as New York lawyers. Now we need to complete the next step in the New York law challenge, finding a job.

Hawkins has been in New York for some time now, under the pretence of looking for work, but to my knowledge, not to any great extent. For his earlier adventures leading up to his arrival in New York, check out http://hawkinsvslife.blogspot.com/.

I returned home in late February 2008 after working in a café in Whistler, British Columbia from November. The biggest reason for my return home was a financial one, but now I’ve scraped together enough to begin a whole new line of exaggerated adventures. I’ll be heading to New York soon enough, whereupon the Hawketc team will be reunited once again.

The cruise – Bahamas

Put quite simply, cruises are fun. Very fun. We left Jacksonville on the M.S Celebration with high hopes and fanciful dreams of fun and adventure on the high seas.

The high seas turned out to be a little higher than we expected, and Dave instantly fell victim to sea sickness. While Dave took sea sickness tablets and slept, Corey and I soberly stumbled our way to the dining room. We met our servers, Kenneth and Raymund, as well as our Southern dining companions. Judging by their disapproving glances (we were drinking Foster’s from 750ml cans and wearing thongs and singlets), it seemed impossible to think that we would all be great friends by the end of the week.

The next week was spent drinking Foster’s and hanging out with our new found friends Jason, Andre, Ali and Shayna. We taught them as much as we could about Australian culture, and by the end of the week, they still couldn’t copy our accents.

We managed to sleep through a lot of our day at Key West, FL, but that was the ship’s fault for arriving at 7am; ridiculous. From our couple of hours on shore, it didn’t appear that we missed all that much.

Our day moored at Nassau, Bahamas was another matter entirely. The water was as clear as any I have ever seen before, and the day was packed with adventure. We hired some mopeds and proceeded to explore the island. This was when we found Cabbage Beach, or as I like to call it, ‘that awesome beach with the really nice water’. While leaving the beach, Unlucky Dave gave us a lesson in falling off a moped. So with some smiles, blood and anger, we all headed to the Atlantis resort.

Atlantis was impressive, as was its’ aquarium lobby. After some time and effort, we managed to get out of Atlantis and head towards the more touristy beach. Though more crowded, the water was just as nice as Cabbage Beach. More importantly, we hired jetskis. Jetskiing was amazingly good fun. I was a jetski ninja and enjoyed every minute of it.

Back on the cruise ship, we continued to eat and drink to excess. Most of the food was quite delicious, and there was heaps of variety. They had a $3/6 limit Hold’em table which I took advantage of to pay for a good deal of my drinks. I learned one of life’s important lessons; cruise ship passengers aren’t good at poker. Unfortunately, I also learned that limit Hold’em is pretty boring, so I didn’t really play all that much.

In summary, I can highly recommend the cruising lifestyle. It was a fun filled week and very cheap. Oh, there was also heaps of fun and adventure on the high seas.

Quick Quick Catch-Up

New Orleans, Louisiana

Hi to all our loyal fans, for if you're still checking this everyday for an update, being continually disappointed, but still checking, you are surely a loyal fan. I'm in an internet cafe in New Orleans at the moment, just off Bourbon Street. It's not an inexpensive cafe, so I'll keep this short. Hopefully I'll have the time to come back and fill in the gaps.

After we bought Bluely, our beige buick, in Portland, we took off to Philadelphia, home of the highest proportion of hot american chicks, american colonial history and the Philly Cheese Steak. In short, Philly Cheese Steaks are delicious, but better in New York.

From Philly - to Washington and the usual tourist stuff, White House, Lincoln Memorial, etc. From there to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina to catch up with some friends of Angry Dave.

Washington to Gainesville, Florida. A big uni town and the home of my colleg football team, the Gators. I like college towns, cheap booze and a good night life.

Gainseville to Miami - which I'd describe as a city that was spewed up by Night at the Roxbury. The music, dress and club scene was exactly like the movie. It was a little too expensive for me ($12 a beer plus tip!) but lots of nicely dressed pretty people, lots of money and lots of topless chicks on the beach.

Miami to Orlando and home of some mouse. We went to Wet 'n' Wild water park, got really sunburnt and then went to Jacksonville.

Jacksonville I liked. An unassuming beach city, and nice nice people. From Jacksonville we went on what is easily the highlight of the trip - a cruise to Key West and the Bahamas. The cruise was awesome, and pretty cheap, except for alcohol. But we managed to smuggle some on board. Then we discovered that everyone else does exactly the same thing. The cruise consisted of sleeping, eating, drinking, eating, drinking, drinking, sleep. Nassau in the Bahamas is great, the nicest and clearest beaches I have seen, outside of Australia. I'm definitely going to have to go on a cruise again some other time. The other boys are in much agreement.

Back to Jacksonville after the cruise, dinner with some of the boys from the cruise - and then we were put into contact with a girl in Atlanta who is friends with another friend we made on the ship.

When we got to Atlanta, Angry Dave's wisdom tooth caused him great problems, and so he went off to hospital, while Hawkins and myself went to the Coke factory. It was surprisingly fun, and Angry Dave was then drugged up for the next few days.

From Atlanta, we went to New Orleans, and here I am now. Hopefully I'll fill in more details later, such as photos of the cruise and such, but for now, here is one of Bluely, of chariot of adventure on this great american roadtrip.

Buffalo to Boston

The problem with having so much adventure, is that it takes time to write down. This becomes more of a problem when you decide to leave your laptop in Maine, and from then on need to rely on internet cafes, which, unlike in Europe, are not all that common in the US. It also makes it harder to put up photos when you impulse stop to write up a blog, but hopefully I'll add some later.

Buffalo, New York

21 August 2007

Angry Dave and I arrived in Buffalo on what I think was a Tuesday night. Angry Dave had booked a hostel on Main Street and I had decided to just wing it and hope for the best. It worked for me in Europe, but unfortunately things are different in America. We were worried that we'd made a terrible mistake trying to find the hostel, as Main street was deserted. I'd never seen a more dying town. Even Garema Place in Canberra on a Sunday evening in winter has more action. After telling me that there was no room, the guy working in the hostel told me of some rooms he knew of above a pub a couple of blocks away. I left Angry Dave to check in, and I went over to check it out. It was the worse hotel I'd ever seen. Cats were roaming the corridors, and the man managing the pub told me he normally doesn't let it out for one night, it's normally for homeless people and druggies. I checked out what he said was the best room he had. As I went to unlock the door, it swung open, and I was greeted by a bare floor and a cupboard. There was no bed, and no lock on the door. I was done. I thanked the guy for his time and checked in at a cheap hotel a few more blocks away. Angry Dave and I went to where apparently the action happens in Buffalo on a Tuesday night. There wasn't much going on, except for one very awesome thing: $5 pitchers of beer. We'd been paying four times that much in New York City, here it was the same price as a pint but we got a whole pitcher. Needless to say, we got drunk. We also had Buffalo Wings - this was the town that invented them after all.

The next day we were hung over, but were resolved to visit Niagara Falls, only an hour bus ride away. It was definitely worth it. We jumped on the Maid of the Mist, a tug-boat which took people right into the middle of the falls. We got absolutely saturated, but were very refreshed. Niagara Falls were very impressive. Angry Dave and I then decided to walk to Canada for lunch. The Canadian side of the Falls was much better than the US side. It was like a mini-Atlantic City, but with Canadians. Angry Dave was very impressed with Canada, and happy with the new stamp in his passport.

Early the next morning, after I couldn't sleep, I decided to leave Angry Dave; he had booked a flight to Boston, and I walked down to the Bus Station. After checking the next bus departure time, I was on my way to Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland, Ohio

23 August 2007

Cleveland doesn't have any hostels, and so again I booked into a cheap motel. Cleveland was similar to Buffalo, it seems this whole area has a slowing economy, but it had one big advantage, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I checked it out, listened to some Hendrix and the Doors, and then ticked it off the list. It was time to get drunk in another town, this time by myself. I found a bar which was actually pretty good, with $2 beers and made some friends pretty quickly. Unfortunately, my thongs had been slowly breaking, and occasionally break when I walked, causing me to trip and then stop and fix them. This happened around 3am in the bar in front of the bouncer. He assumed I was hammered and kicked me out. Disaster. Oh well, time to go home.

I hired a rental car the next day, as I had to get to Boston in about 3 days time, and it was too expensive to fly. The Hertz rental woman was struck by my aussie accent and taste for adventure, and upgraded my car to a Mazda M6 - it was a nice ride. As an aside, I ended up returning the car late in Boston, and my aussie accent saved me again, this time the extra day rental charge.

I decided to drive to Rochester. I had no maps, and no idea what was there, except I'd heard it was a university town. I had a vague idea where it was, and figured I'd wing it, if worse came to worse, I'd sleep in the car. On the way, I wanted to check out Amish country. After stopping a couple of times for directions, I ended up having lunch at an Amish restaurant. I ordered an Amish 'favourite', Noodles on Mash Potato. It tasted exactly like it sounds, and moved on, a little disappointed. Most Amish it appears have embraced the 21st century, and drive around in big Ford Pick-Ups, parked in their garage next to their buggy. They still dress traditionally, and make the best pretzels in America.

Rochester, New York

24 August 2007

I arrived in Rochester about 9pm, with no real struggles, except having to have a nap on the side of the highway for about half an hour. I drove around the town looking for an area that looked like it had some bars. Eventually I found a likely place, parked the car somewhere that looked safe but would be quiet enough if I needed to sleep. I'd been in the car all day, and was in desperate need for a shower and a beer. Unfortunately the shower was going to have to wait.

Within 10 minutes of arriving at the bar and ordering another bargain priced pitcher, I was offered a place to crash by some locals. I'd also been roped into playing a game of 'cricket'. Cricket in the US is a darts game, which scores a little like bowling. It took me all night to work out the subtleties, and just aimed for what my teammate told me. I hadn't played darts for a few years, but I didn't let my country down. The guys I was playing darts with were having a clam bake the next day, and I scored myself an invite. I also managed to get another offer of a place to crash - it was only a couch, but much better than sleeping in the backseat of the rental car.

The next day I made my way out to the suburbs of Rochester. The area is quite nice, big houses in quiet neighbourhoods. A clam bake is the Maine version of a barbie, but with clams and beer pong. Beer pong is massive over here, and I think I'm an addict. The Americans need to harden up though, and put more than just a couple of sips into each cup.

I had planned to drive to Boston that night, but the clam bake was good fun, and I was told that I was more than welcome to crash. I took them up on their offer, planning to set off at 5am to get to Boston in time to return the car. I woke at 8 - I hadn't had much sleep the last few days, and returned the car about 4 hours late. But as we know, it ended happily.

Boston, Massachusetts

26 August 2007

After I'd had my luck with returning the car, I was looking forward to Boston. It seemed my run of luck had turned good. How wrong I was. I arrived in Downtown Boston and spent the next two hours walking around from hostel to hostel trying to find a spare bed. Eventually I ended up just out of downtown at a place that used to be a hostel. They put me onto another place, and for the price of a hotel room, I had a shit bed in a crowded hostel.

It didn't really matter about the bed, as I only got a few hours sleep in it. That night, while eating a late night slice of pizza with a co-hosteller, I met Moroccan royalty. He took us to some classy hotel lounges and got us some after hours drinks. He was pretty classy, and was known by all the hotel managers. He'd invited us to a party the following night, but we never made it, as we were too tired, and just played some lazy pool. I met back up with Angry Dave that day, and he crashed at the hostel too. We decided at that point that while the hostel scene is good, a hotel room for the same price is much better, and we'll just make friends the old fashion way - by getting drunk and talking in an aussie accent.

Boston as a city was quite nice. Very similar architecture to Brooklyn in the nice suburbs, but dripping with American history and Irish bars in downtown. But two days was enough. We went to the famous Cheers bar, got bad service and expensive beers. Boston - tick. It was time to go to Portland, Maine to meet back up with Hawkins and buy a car.

Hawkins buys $7 cargo shorts!

Team Hawketc buys a car.

After 2 days of often frustrating car shoppingin Portland, ME, the team (Hawkins, Corey, Angry Dave) managed to buy a car; let the road trip begin!

We had dreams of a soft-top Jeep Wrangler. Our dreams did not come true. We will be driving across the country in a triple-beige Buick Century. I think the average age of Buick Century drivers is about 75. We've dubbed the car "Bluey". Photos to follow.

The AC - Part 2

Hawkins and Corey drink $7 cans of Corona all afternoon.

Hawkins plays poker in singlet, plays well but without luck, and is called "trailer trash" at one point. Hawkins plays a second tournament, comes 5th and breaks even for the night. Tries to find Corey. Corey is uncontactably intoxicated.

Corey runs shirtless down the boardwalk, and is turned down by numerous food vendors. Corey is finally given pizza and gatorade; he cannot hide his excitement.

Filthy room has no bathroom, but does have wash basin. Corey falls face first on floor. Begs for help. Corey is angered when Hawkins helps him up; he wanted to stay there. Hawkins drifts off to sleep. Hawkins wakes to Corey smashing plastic cup against wall. Hawkins drifts off to sleep. Hawkins wakes to Corey vomiting in basin.

Hawkins and Corey wake, and take short swim at the beach. There are old people everywhere. There are always old people everywhere in the AC. Hawkins loses money playing poker. Hawkins quits poker forever. Hawkins and Corey spend afternoon drinking. Hawkins and Corey spend evening drinking. Corey offends waitress. Waitress forgives Corey. Milosovic jokes - too soon.

Corey and Hawkins return to filthy hotel room. Corey and Hawkins vow to wake at 6:30am and leave the AC on the first bus.

Hawkins and Corey catch first bus out of AC.

The End.