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My life is a little strange: I’m an artist who travels back and forth between Canada and Hawaii.  I’ve been a resident of both in the past and now I divide my time between them equally.  I love both places, I love surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding… this is a way I get to live it all.  The extreme differences between the two locations also helps keep my perspective fresh and my inner artist hungry for new experiences.  This is my first blog ever, so I don’t really know what I’m doing….

I guess I’ll start with my most recent trip back to the Island, which began in early July:

My first weekend back, I did an art show at the Wyland Gallery in Waikiki with my friend and fellow artist Heather Brown.  We were both comped rooms at the beautiful Wyland Hotel, but there was a mix-up and we ended up having to share a room.  What started out as a bummer, ended up as an epic sleepover!  Both of us are used to living on artist budgets so a weekend in a nice hotel was like sending us to princessland.  We took advantage of everything that was offered including the late night chill out room, with massage chairs, Xbox, underwater videos (strangely set to early 90’s era Alanis Moresette)… After a day of surfing and an evening of schmoozing at the Wyland art show, it was pretty great.

That was actually my first surf in a while since I’d just gotten back from a long stint in Canada, so of course we surfed Pops, possibly the longest paddle out ever and my good paddling technique was quickly replaced by 2 slabs of meat for arms hacking at the water like I imagine Helen Keller would look if she surfed.  It probably didn’t look as bad as it felt, but sometimes it’s hard taking such long breaks from surfing and having to re-teach my body how to do something my mind already knows how to do.   I caught a few good waves in the end and the best one was one of those perfect time and place situations: with virtually no paddling I was up and slicing effortlessly between bobbing tourists.  After that, my arms miraculously felt stronger and we continued until both of us were burnt and hungry.

On our second night, we were going to skate to the art show like a couple of badasses, but weighed out the possibility of getting a $75 ticket for unlawful skateboarding and decided we were too poor to be badass.  The show was way more relaxing the second night and sales abounded.  I met some awesome people and rediscovered brie cheese. 

After the show we went in search of a drink to celebrate a successful weekend. We found ourselves on an accidental tour of Waikiki’s high end prostitute district before realizing that every bar was closed and ending up at Signor Frogs (meant for the tourists in Hawaii who wished they were in Mexico during spring break?)  The vibe was definitely military men and expensive drinks. We met some cool Aussies though and may have even gotten a few dances in except I was starting to feel queasy from drinking my beer on the tire swing and we decided it was time to hit up the dollar menu.  It was a satisfying and amazingly cheap end to a surprisingly expensive and less than satisfying night out.

After splitting a breakfast platter at Denny’s, we packed up our gear and headed back to the NorthShore.  It was a weekend to remember and we were sad to leave but it was on to the next adventure….