Thursday, Mar. 13, 2008

A Little Catching Up

Let's back up to the beginning of the trip to Kauai. Chelsea and I got to the airport in plenty of time, so we were able to take our time and feel relaxed about the trip. The flight over was an uneventful half-hour. As we were getting off the plane she said, "oh, by the way, I thought I should tell you that I don't know the name of our motel. I left the paper home." No problem! Sounds just like something I would do. She assured me that she had all the info on her laptop and all we had to do was find a Starbucks and get online. Okay.

While we were going through the process of getting the rental car, the attendant asked what motel we were staying at so she could put the info into the computer. Chelsea and I just looked at each other and shrugged. Either the attendant had a good sense of humor or she just wanted to get rid of us fast, cause she went ahead and processed our paperwork and let us get on the shuttle bus.

So the bus driver helped us off the bus with our bags and said that we should just wait here because someone would drive the car over and give us the keys. We weren't in any rush, so that was fine, until 45 minutes later I decided to go inside and see what was holding things up. The girl looked a little panic-stricken when I told her we'd been waiting 45 minutes--she went to the key board, found the key, walked outside and pointed in the complete opposite direction to our car. hmmmm

After asking for directions to the nearest Starbucks, we headed out, glad to finally be on our way, when Chelsea calmly informed me that she just realized that she had forgotten to get her tripod off the luggage carosel and we had to go back to the airport to get it. Okay, no problem. So, in order not to have to park and pay, I circled around about three times, verrrry, verrrry slowly and voila, there she was. Well now, we were ready to go, I hoped.

We found the Starbucks, she got online and found the name of the motel. We programed the trusty GPS and away we went, happy that we might finally be able to check in. Happy that is, until we turned down the grungy street toward the motel. (Chelsea booked the motel online, and you know how that goes--the photos show a quaint little establishment, with charming rooms and lots of ambiance--sure thing!) Well, it turned out to be not too bad. It was clean and secure and bright and breezy and we didn't have to park on the road. And it was very charming to be awakened by the rooster across the road each morning.

It wasn't check in time, which we knew but we hoped they'd let us in if the room was already cleaned. It was and they did and we dropped off our luggage. That's where we found out about going to the "grand canyon of Hawaii".

So I've already posted about Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was our check-out day and there really wasn't anything on our agenda, so we decided to take a ride up to the north shore again so I could get some shots of a taro field with my infrared camera.

Let me digress one more time. The night before, while in the motel, I was cleaning my lenses and fiddling with the camera, when I decided to see how a long exposure hand-held would look. This is the result. Pretty funky! I'm going to have to try that some more with other compositions.

While driving back toward Lihue (airport location) we passed a small surf shop with a row of surfboards outside the shop. We turned around and parked and spent about 1/2 hour photographing surfboards. These are some of my favorite images of the three days.

We said our goodbyes and I headed over to Leah's place. I stayed there last night so that I could be there early in the morning to take her to get her wisdom teeth pulled. She looked a little done-in when they wheeled her out in the wheel chair, they even took her all the way down to the car so she wouldn't have to walk--I don't think she could have. We got her prescriptions, went back to her place and she began her recuperation.

I think I've caught you up on all the news, so Aloha for tonight.