John Mee – Some programmer in Sydney

January 7, 1993

Hey, I’m at the airport again. Flying to Seattle with Northwest on a ticket that cost me AU$150!!! At home the travel agent tried to convince me to buy a ticket there for US$500. I got this one through the paper. Its someone else’s ticket of course, but I’ve checked in with no problems so far (my name is Chris Donnelly).

What was I rambling on about? I suppose I’ll get right to it again and get on with the highlights and major embarassments of Hawaii. In short Hawaii was fun but I’m relieved to be going. The surf was not up to expectations, I had my surfboard taken by a local, and a brazilian guy at the hostel wants to beat the crap out of me. The surf was not up to expectations, but I’ve covered that. Ohhh, while I think of it.

I went out on a large catermaran sail just before sunset and we saw a whale. It just stuck its head up and said hello for about a minute then sank away. It was a humpback I think and blew its spout and all. On another day, while I was watching the Pipeline Masters, I saw a whale do a full leap out of the water. It was pretty good.

Big event #1 that I’m glad to get away from.

Since the surf was so poor on the North Shore I eventually sucumbed to the plea’s of surfers staying without transport and organised a trip to the east side of the island where the surf was better. So off we went. It was not that much better but we went out anyway. There were a number of big local dudes out there, and as I paddled out last I didn’t notice that they were alone before our busload of tourists turned up – about 10, half of them boogey-boarders. I guess they weren’t too happy. After about 1/2hr in the water, I was thinking – its too crowded and moved to the shoulder and started picking off the leftovers. In short I took off on one wave I could see that the two guys paddling on the other side of a 20m section where not going to make it. Since you have to paddle so hard, I never looked to confirm my assumption and just put my head down.Phil can guess where this story is leading. I dropped in on a local hawaiian – an extremely dangerous thing to do.

He came around the section, saw me, saw red, and deliberately rammed me. He ended up getting a small fin chop on his rail, and I came off unscathed – so far. The ensuing verbal exchange, his part not fit for mothers ears, my part being a pathetic display of pleas not to get beaten up, was a little tense. After much discussion, threatening, and begging, an unsatisfactory agreement was reached – he keeps my board in payment for the small ding he received, and he won’t beat the shit out of me. In truth I thought he would just take my board to the beach and jump up and down on it and leave it. But I guess he could see it was a good board, and I a complete wimp. He walked up the beach with both boards and drove off. I thought this arrangement a trifle unfair and rumbled off to the police to file a robbery report so I can claim it back on insurance. Luckily this happened only a week ago, the surf has been totally forgettable, and I had another board (which I’ve sold along with my board bags). Hopefully the insurance co. will pay up – Liz did you ever get that receipt sent to you for my surfboard? I think I’m going to need it.This incident was/is mainly embarassing, but I didn’t end up in hospital and it means I don’t have to lug a board around now, so no big deal.

Incident #2 that I am running away from happened on New Years Eve.

Everyone was very drunk and there were various other drugs floating around. There was a brazilian guy and his not that good-looking girlfriend here. At some point during the night some guy tried to kiss her or something not particularly serious. So the brazilian guy – blind drunk whilst on anti-biotics (and possibly LSD) got in a fight with the offender. “So what” you say?

Well two days later somehow he’s decided that the offender was me. I remember the whole night and know what happened – but try to tell him that. Sure this guy looked a lot like me, but he was a good 6″ taller! So, being an arrogant bastard who doesn’t listen to what anybody says, he threatens to beat me up (“But I can’t because you are so small”) and for the past week whenever he see’s me he yells abuse until I disappear from view. To make matters worse he is the guy replacing me in my little cleaning job! Luckily I also met some more reasonable Brazilians so I won’t write off the entire race yet. As for the surfing incident I was taking particular pride in not having gotten in anyone’s way at all, and being particularly gracious to those who got in mine. That was a real blow, not to mention a real surprise. I’d forgotten all about localism, having been on the North Shore for so long – where everyone’s a tourist and and drop-ins are generally ignored, cause no-one knows who the offender is. The rest of the staff at Backpackers weren’t a bad lot, although mostly aussies, but I’m thinking that there’s going to be aussies no matter where I go. There were a couple of South Africans, Americans and a german but we all got on reasonably well.

That’s enough on Hawaii – I’m getting lazy but too bad.

December 30, 1992
North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii

Hi Guys,

I suppose its about time I got around to writing about Hawaii. Especially now that I’ve decided when I’m leaving. The weirdest thing here is that I keep having to remind myself that I’m having great fun. It doesn’t always feel like it, but I know I’ll look back and say “those were the days”. It hadn’t occured to me before but now that I think about it, its not all that different to when I was living in Newport. The surf is better, but still just across the road; the surf is crowded; the supermarket is just down the road; I share a room with some-one not entirely unlike Rhonda. The only problem is the expense.

I booked a ticket today which should see me fly to Seattle on Jan 7th. That means I’ll have spent 7 weeks here. I’ve done that by working here at the backpackers. The routine is to get up about 8am. I have one building to clean so I usually start about 8:30. What I do is change sheets, sweep and mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, take out the garbage, and chase people up to do their dishes – that sort of thing. If you do it all properly it does take a good 3 hours, so I can usually be finished by about 11:30. In return I get to stay in the staff hut for nothing. If I work extra hours then they pay me $5/hr. I’ve been a little slow to catch on, but apparently the go is to claim a few extra hours every week, regardless of whether you did them or not, which provides a little extra spending money.

A much easier way to make money is to use the vans to take trips. The one’s I’ve been doing is in to Rosie’s – a mexican restaurant in Haleiwa, the nearest town, Pizza Hut or down to the Turtle Bay Hilton – the only hotel on the North Shore. This surprised me, but the North Shore is really just a country town. Foodland is the only supermarket – and alledgedly the most expensive supermarket in the U.S. aside from two small ones in Haleiwa. Haleiwa is just a spread out collection of small shops – nothing over one story high. Paradoxically whilst its pretty much unpopulated and not touristy, its still pretty hard to find locals – or rather people who have been here since birth. No shortage of people here for a year or two.

As I was saying by charging people for a lift in the “all-you-can-eats” at Rosies or Pizza Hut or whatever, provided you put petrol in the van the driver keeps the money paid for transport somewhere between $10-$50. Other ways to make money are to feed people. For a while there I was having all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts where I charged $2 and made people pancakes. Unfortunately another guy here already has a monopoly on the best money maker here. For about 3 hours work Pete does an all-you-can-eat spagetti night. At $4 each he can profit about $50-$60 every week. He’s even got it down to a fine art of running out at strategic times and making more, then people have to wait for more spagetti to cook. Whilst waiting they get distracted, or think that maybe they don’t really want that 3rd plate, or just can’t be bothered waiting and all generally loose their appetite. He’s also found the perfect plates – small but don’t look too small. All terribly devious and don’t worry there’ll be a new batch of turkeys here next week.

It’s difficult to remain friendly towards everyone. There are so many slobs, whingers, and freeloaders come through it gives you the shits. I imagine most of the compaining comes from people travelling from Australia/New Zealand, where everything was a third the price and double the standard. The slobs are mainly people who’ve lived at home with parents and haven’t had to clean up after themselves. The rest of the distastefuls are just people who don’t care. They know they won’t be here very long and don’t care what mess or attitude they leave behind. You get the impression they do it constantly, always moving on just in time. Still there’s a few very pleasant people come through but they never stay very long.

Going back to money. Over in Kauai people are making their fortunes in the rebuilding after Hurricane Iniki. Apparently its not quite as flat as Darwin was, but pretty close to it. Streams of guys are going over for labouring, roofing, plumbing, electricians – all the trades, even if you don’t have one appartently you learn it quick enough. People with no experience are getting $18/hr. Generally they live in the house they are working on, or in a tent, and have nothing to spend their money on. US$400/day is common. Saving well over $1500/week is normal. Guys who are going over on their last pennies without a care in the world are coming back talking about putting a deposit on a house.

The surf. It was only a matter of time wasn’t it. Well I’ve been waiting all this time for some REAL hawaiian surf, but it has never arrived. In the first month somewhere there was 12-15ft Waimea. Big, but nothing more impressive than I’ve seen before. In the Honolulu papers they were calling it 20ft, but no-one here believes that. In general the surf has been lousy, totally lousy. At first it was good. 6-8ft and offshore, not as good as Uluwatu was when I left Indonesia, but still excellent. Since then we had 2 north swells which are the wrong direction, and almost dead flat. To top it off the last week it has been onshore wind. For non-surfers it has rained every day, with little exception. Still its never cold and since its winter here, never too hot.

Whilst talking about waves I can see the difference now that a continental shelf makes. At home a 2 metre swell at sea means maybe 1/2m surf at the beach. Here a 2 metre swell is 2 metre surf. At first I couldn’t really notice the difference in the speed the waves come in, but I realise now how much harder you do have to paddle. I guess I just thought it was the extra crowds before. And yes you do need a bigger board – mainly just to paddle on, beat the rest of the crowd and manage that first bottom turn. I bought a 6’8 from a guy who was leaving for $50 – great board – and was using it always when the surf was good. When the contests were on, you couldn’t even look at the surf without seeing countless pro surfers. They might still be around, but the surf has been shit for weeks now so I don’t know.

My favourite spots would be:

1. Rocky Point – a long shallow right hand barrel (Yes I pulled in and made it out)
2. Sunset – which is always bigger than anywhere else, very crowded, but bearable, and not as dangerous (shallow)
3. Velzyland – supposedly a heavy local spot, but there were always plenty of “haoles” around, and it was always pretty obvious who to avoid.