Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Slackness Prevails

Tuesday

Okay, I admit it, I am getting slacker with these updates. But I have good reasons. First, I can't type worth a crap since I busted my finger surfing those knarly rips on the north shore :-) Second, I've just been too busy & third, it may have something to do with all of the Mai Tais I've been sampling.
Hmm, where to start. After my personal pity party about my finger (you have know idea how many times I just retyped this last sentence ... stupid finger), we checked out of our hotel and headed up to Paia. Paia is a funky hippy surfing town on the north shore. It is home to a mixture of counter culture drop outs and Gen X (or maybe Y or Z) hard core surfers and windsurfers. The weather is not as mellow as southern Maui, but that is the way they like it. We stayed at a funky little place called the Paia Inn, which came complete with a Granite counter kitchen and a iPod clock radio. The owner is an interior designer and everything was well thought out, including the private path to the beach adorned with your very own tiki palls. But we didn't stay there long and head out to the wind surfer beach to watch some of these guys practice. It was blowing 20+ knots and these guys were doing their stuff. We got to see a couple of flips and other crazy things.



It looked like a hell of a lot of fun.

The main reason to head to Paia is that it was close to the Maui Arts Center. This is where Jimmy Buffet was playing tonight and we were not interested in driving to far. Our friend Teressa drove down from Lahaina to meet us for the concert and after heading to the local Mexican place for an early dinner and some Margaritas (after all it is Jimmy Buffet), we headed to the concert. The weather was threatening to rain on us a bit, but with a couple of offerings to the tiki gods, we were able to abate the rains. Teressa was able to get us seats pretty close to the front.



Thye had a special place set aside where you could get a drink or two, but they kept on running out of Margaritas. The bartender gal said that they didn't expect to sell so many Margs. Hello. Thjis is a Jimmy Buffet concert. Anyway, they ended up running out of mixer, but had plenty of tequila, so they ended up serving tequila a lime. Overall, I think that was probably one of the best concerts I have been too. He ended up playing most of the songs that I like best (except for Jolly Mon) and he definitely wasn't mailing it in.
After the concert was over, Teressa ended up staying at our pad to avoid the drive back to Lahania. The next morning we all slept in and hunkered down a bit to avoid the rain. Ahh, the rain. It does rain here in Hawaii, especially on the North shore, and we ended up getting a pretty good storm with wind gusts up to 45 kts. The windsurfers loved it, and were out in full force. Kathy and I ended up donning our rain gear and went hiking up in the mountains. Reminded me a bit of Bellingham in the summer, except it was a bit warmer. That afternoon, we went down to the kite surfing beach to watch some of the guys (and gals) do trick. I had big plans to take kite surfing lessons, but was thwarted because of my stupid lame-ass finger. These guys are pretty amazing.





That night I followed my brothers suggestion and went to Mama's Fish House for dinner. Way over priced, but worth it. The food, ambiance and location are as good as it gets. Definitely worth a trip if you are in Maui.

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