Armed, but not very dangerous.

We got us some guns! The little gang that has emerged here with the Mikes and I, now have some weaponry. We all got different kinds of air-soft guns. Mine is a semi-automatic/single shot spring/battery powered thing, Mikes is a CO2 powered pistol, and Michaels is a spring powered pistol. They’re pretty fun except Mike is being a kill-joy and won’t let me shoot it in the car or in public anywhere. Something about not wanting to get arrested. Whatever. (It’s really difficult to convey sarcasm via the written word). The gun shoots through leaves and I shot a chicken kind of by accident and it wasn’t very happy. But, I did shoot myself in the foot and it’s not that bad. Anyway, endless entertainment shall ensue…

   That’s the big news for the day. I did have this whole plan to go to the Kona side to see the woman I met on Sunday, but it didn’t work out. Bummer. I’m starting to make some friends that I recognize around town and it’s nice to be integrating into the community. It helps that I hang out at the beach, I was there yesterday and it was glorious. There was a guy who was playing the flute for awhile and it was just beautiful to hear nice music and watch the waves and the horizon. He was also the guy who told me I looked lovely while I was naked. That was a first. I’m not used to the attention that I’ve been getting from men here, but that’s a-whole-nother post…

I definitely feel like I’m becoming part of the family on the farm though. Becky really likes me, which I knew she would, and that is apparently a pretty rare thing. She also has a shop in Pahoa called Jungle Love (who are the #1 sellers of Pure Hemp Rolling Papers in Hawaii) and I’m going to help her to screen print some t-shirts AND there is a christmas parade that they make a “float” for and my participation is mandatory.

I feel extremely lucky to have ended up where I did and with whom. I really feel like I took a shot in the dark (totes into this gun thing…) and ended up here and it was as if I was just meant to come here.

My big weekend out…

I had a really great weekend hanging out with new friends! On Saturday, I went to see the place that my friend Briana was staying at (she moved on Sunday), which was this really cool eco-tourism hostel type of deal called Hedonesia and there was a giant crater on the property. Very cool. Then we went to Hilo for the block party music festival. Hilo is about 25 miles away from Pahoa and we had an incredible hitch hiking experience getting there. This guy named Mark picked us up and he was just cruising around but he gladly drove us all the way there and not only that, but we spent 2.5 hours with him as he drove us around Hilo and showed us all the incredible spots that I have got to get to. He blazed us out and was so incredibly friendly, it was incredible.

We stopped on the beautiful coastline and I cannot believe I live in such a beautiful place. I, of course, went hopping across the rocks to get to the waves and it was funny to re-realize that most people don’t hop around the way I do.  Here are a few pictures of how incredible it was.

Here are Briana and Mark inland…

And! a rock with a bunch of Olivine in it! Olivine is a really cool volcanic green mineral.

Then, he took us to the Boiling Pots, which is a sunken out lava tube filled with fresh water. It’s called the boiling pots because there are really really deep channels and canals under the surface that produce really strong currents that spin the water and make it look like the water is boiling. Apparently, it’s kind of dangerous sometimes to swim and people have dove in never to surface again. It was an incredible sight and I will definitely go swimming there sometime…

 

Mark dropped us off right where the action was just beginning and Briana had a great time listening to the music (mostly reggae and Hawaiian music) and we met up with some of her friends including this really cool family, who we ended staying with on Saturday night in a town called Volcano. I was all amped up to try and camp out in Hilo, but Briana thought I was crazy and even though I brought a sleeping bag, after it rained for awhile and I saw how many cops were there that would have been likely to kick us out, I conceded and we slept at a house. With walls. It was kind of weird, I’ve gotten really used to sleeping outside with the bugs and the sun. It was actually cold up there, at about 3,500ft, and it made me glad to live in the jungle. The family we stayed with have lived all around the world and one of their daughters was with them who is my age. They’re really neat hippies who have lived in Australia, Greece, India, and all over.

Anyway, since we slept in Volcano, we didn’t go to Liliuokalani's birthday celebration, which I was bummed about but Sunday was a really good day anyway. After a lot of shenanigans with the family we finally made it down to Kehena beach for the afternoon. The waves were especially entertaining and the beach was pretty busy, which was fun.

I made a most incredible connection with this woman that I first met about a week and a half ago, who showed up a little before we left. She is just visiting from Colorado, but the moment that we met, we had this incredible palpable connection that just expanded as we were talking on Sunday and I was saying all these things that I knew she needed to hear. I’m not sure where all the sageness was coming from, but she’s in a transitionary period in her life and I could see the things that I was saying were positively effecting her. I don’t know. It was just incredible and I really hope that I see her again in my life.

As amazing as it was to talk to someone who I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet, what happened next was even more of an experience.  I went to krishna pizza, which is a chanting session and a free dinner sponsored by this guy who owns a really big organic farm/hare krishna community. This wasn’t a regular hare krishna thing, It was rock n roll hare krishna with guitars and drums and a keyboard. I really got into it and dancing and stuff, there is something about chanting with a bunch of people that really makes meditating easy. I really enjoyed the experience and the food was sooo good. There was home made pizza and dal and greens. It was so good and the community that gathered there are really interesting and I can’t wait to go again.

The whole weekend I had really good luck hitch hiking. For instance, after krishna pizza, it was really dark and I was nervous about hitching, but the first car that passed picked me up and it was so easy.

Conclusion: The aloha spirit is incredible.

Ding Dong the pig is dead…

 

(I’ve tried to post this a bunch of times and I’ve changed it because things have become irrelevant. I got a bit lazy, but I’ll try and be better for who ever is out there reading this)

Monday morning, Becky was on the phone with this guy who was going to come and deal with the pig and take it and process it for meat when suddenly pow pow pow pow pow pow. The crazy neighbor, whose name is Iam (like I am- I’ll tell you the story later) had shot it in her garden. But she didn’t just shoot it, she unloaded a whole round from a pistol into it’s head. Oy. But the reign of the pig has finally ended and it has made a marked difference in the calmness level on the farm, especially in the mornings. Becky was so excited she went out and got a cake!

The other day, we went to visit the family of pigs that were left behind and I collected a bunch of fruit from the ground and all over to give to them. I gave them star fruit, coconuts, lilikois (passion fruit), mangoes, and noni fruit. They were so hungry… but hopefully, the guy who came and took the dead thing and is making it into sausage for us, has a pig farm and might take them so that they can be cared for better. Today, I was the only one around when the kid finally came and he asked me if I had seen a big pig running around. I was like uh… But I told him and he was not very happy about it. Ruh row. Here are the cute babies…

 

The other day I saw this incredible rainbow as we were driving back from the ponds. It went from the ground to ground and it had all the colors. There was even a shadow rainbow too. Very cool. This is right at the driveway into the farm from the lava viewing access road.

 

Oh my gosh, this post has taken me entirely to long to put up. I am really going to try and do better. This weekend I’m going on an adventure in Hilo with a new friend. We’re going to a radio station concert on Saturday night and then a hula festival on Sunday morning to celebrate Liliuokalani's birthday in that park that Michael and I ate lunch in a few weeks ago. I will definitely post pictures and next week I will be more diligent.

Lastly, a few more highlights from this week:

~I saw an eel in the hot ponds! and it was opening and closing its mouth. I swiftly swam away.

~ Still no guns, but we’re working on it…

~I tried Rambutans- a wonderful interesting looking fruit that is related to lychee. Very delicious.

~In the greenhouse, I’ve been tending to the keikis and they are growing up fast! They look great and pruning/weeding is pretty fun and the repetition and individual care to each plant is sort of therapeutic. Becky and I also made some mulch/fertilizer/soil that we use for just about everything from a lot of horse shit, microbacteria, cinder, etc including a lot of natural additives that will promote quick decomposition  and a healthy biological environment. Way cool.

~The tomatoes that we grow here are seriously some of the most gorgeous delicious tomatoes I’ve ever encountered. They’re incredible. Here, be envious…

How Rude!

It's hard to believe that I would be in the middle of the jungle in the early morning sweating profusely as I chase a rogue pig down the road with a shovel.

The pig was back again this morning. The pig has been back every morning for a week, actually. I was awoken at about 6:30 by him (his name is Bouli apparently) crashing around the jungalo. Becky has been chasing him away every morning and trying to re secure the pen down the road at the farm where he belongs but he keeps breaking out. Anyway, I chased him away but he went towards the greenhouse and Becky is paranoid that he's going to get in there and if he does he could cause thousands of dollars in damage. He already has broken two of the water containers for the dogs (he drinks from it and then knocks it over and rolls in it, because he's a pig) and eaten the dogs and the horses food. Anyway, Becky comes around and grabs a shovel and chases him down the driveway, but she's wearing a dress because she's getting ready to go to the store, an she is getting really pissed about this situation. Well Bouli came back not 20 minutes later and this time went under the house, where he could easily knock pipes loose and stuff, and Becky ran to get a firecracker while I watched him. The firecracker didn't phase him at all and it could have lit the house on fire, but he finially came out and I chased him away with a shovel. Apparently, the owner hasn't been feeding them or giving them water and so Becky feels bad, but they're not her responsibility and Bouli has been wreaking havoc.  The owners father lives down the road and he told Becky to shoot it to show his son what happens when he doesn't take care of his animals but Becky has resisted all week. I think this morning she had it though and I think Roach and Wolfgang are coming over later to shoot it. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be here for that so I'm about to get ready to go to the beach. Going to Kehena on Sundays has become something that I look forward to all week...

In gun time, every day is a fucking year.

I’ll go in order. The day before yesterday, we went over to one of Michael and Becky’s friends house who lives a couple streets down from Eric. We had to be in the area because Eric owed Mike money and he has been dicking him around- (side note- if you’re following the saga- conclusion made: Eric is a sleaze ball and nobody really likes him)

Anyway, get this: the guys name (self proclaimed-duh) is Wolfgang VonBongclogger. HA! His real name is Gary. And I met their other friend, Roach, who used to be a bull rider. He has really cool tattoos that I’d emulate. But Wolfs girlfriend, Kathy #3, showed me all the cool plants around. Here’s a real live pitcher plant!: They’re carnivorous and you could see the fly guts in the pitchers.

  

This is called a Hellaconia- it was really cool and I split one open and looked inside, which was also really interesting.

These! are what the seeds of a bird of paradise tree look like. You know those cool flowers that look like birds? Of course a flower as cool as that would have little orange pom pom seeds.   

And this is another tiny frog that I captured in a bowl of water. They’re baby coqui (because they make a co-kee sound) frogs, which are an invasive species and they are really loud at night.

 

And yesterday I bought a bike! I found one on craigslist and we went to Hilo and I got a bike for $50. I haggled it down from $60! It’s pretty nice too.

My other purchase from yesterday was airsoft sub machine guns on the internet for the Mikes and I. We sort of have a gang. It’s very exciting and I can’t wait until they arrive.

Today was pleasant, I spent the morning weeding and cleaning out an outdoor garden and then I shoveled a shit ton of horse shit and dumped 5 wheelbarrows full into the soil to help prepare it for when we plant beets in there.

Then as per usual, we went to the ponds. Swimming everyday is so glorious and this water is so easy, floating and swimming about is easy and the water is usually pretty warm. It’s so pleasant and relaxing and it was a good way to get off all of the sweat and dirt and residual manure that accumulates during work.

I had an interesting experience today where I met two little kids. They had short hair and so I assumed they were boys and when I asked the guy with them if they were his boys he said “they are their own girls”. At first I didn’t understand and then I felt like and asshole for acting so unenlightened about gender and succumbing to stereotypes. Unclear. They were really nice though and they go there a lot, so I think I made some new friends today. Keiko is 8 and Keely is 6 and I tried to teach them front flips even though they were really good at back flips.

Until next time…

I guess he’s more of an X-Box and I’m more of an Atari

…gotta love Cee-lo.

I was really worn out from my hike on Sunday but it didn’t really hit until yesterday, but I crashed out at like 6:30pm and slept right until 6:30am. It was crazy, I woke up at midnight and thought it was really late but had already slept 6 hours. Needless to say, woke up well rested and ready for work. Apparently I even slept through the giant pig coming back and Becky chasing it away from near my cabin with a broom.

I really enjoy work and it feels so good to be able to say that. There is no reason not to be doing what you want to. I feel like I was a piece of a puzzle with a pretty obscure shape and I fit perfectly into a little notch on this island. Apparently, I’ve been reduced to analogies.

Anyway, this morning I planted 500 tomato seeds including the Geronimo variety :) and I continued to work on hanging string from the greenhouse ceiling and clipping them to the keikis for support. Here’s a picture of the progress.

I also decided that I’m going to make a stop frame movie charting the progress of tomato plant growth in the greenhouse. It’ll take a few months to take the pictures, but I think it’ll be really cool. I know you’ll be holding on to your seats in anticipation. But in the meantime, here are some of the beautiful tomatoes that are ripening in another area of the greenhouse

 

I saw some guys surfing yesterday and I really got to thinking about it and how much fun it looks. I really have to try it. I am such a water baby and why wouldn’t I want to play on the water and go really fast on a board? It’s on the list. Here’s the beach where they were surfing…

A cat has adopted me! It’s name is Boo Bear, but I call it Boo Boo. It (unclear of gender, but who cares, anyway?) just started hanging out at my cabin rubs against my legs whenever I come through. Boo is really cute and when it wants me to keep petting it, it gives me a little love bite on my finger. Pretty cute, but I haven’t decided if I want it to live in my house with me yet. Boo keeps scratching at the front screen and I feel a little bad. Here we are…

I also saw the tiniest frog… so freaking cute.

What a day

So I was trying to sleep in on my day off but at about 6:30am I heard a commotion in the driveway in front of the tree house. Well Becky was yelling about something and I had to go to the bathroom anyway so I got up and when I walked over, there was a fucking huge pig that had escaped it’s enclosure next door at another farm. It was this giant male pig who was not having it when we tried to put him in the chicken pen. He burst his way out and it was quite a sight all of us running around trying to figure out what to do with this pig. And as this was happening, of course the heavens finally open and it rained for real. A good down pour but sort of inopportune. Hopefully we’ll keep getting rain like that. Here’s the pig and Spider Man, who finally came back!

Then for breakfast, Michael and I had extra special cookies and today was deemed the lava walk day. We’ve been trying to go out there for days, well actually its only been a priority for me, but I got Mike and Michael to come along with. Well, it took a little bit more time to get across the lava field because everything just looked so incredible. The colors were fantastic and I saw a lot of rainbow lava rocks, literally. I also saw this heart shaped lava rock that I really liked…

We had a nice snack and a break when we got to the coast before we walked along it to get the new lava. The waves crashing against the coastline emitted the earths heartbeat and I could almost feel it. 

Then we walked up the coast towards the lava and I don’t think it matters how many pictures I take, it cannot capture how truly incredible a sight it is to walk up to this giant plume of steam coming from the lava entering the ocean. As we were walking we came upon a newly deposited black sand beach. Tiny particles of lava spew into the ocean during the eruption and the currents carry them down shore and throw them up and form a beach. Michael said it wasn’t there a month ago. So we hung out for awhile on one of the worlds newest beaches…

It was phenomenal, and then we realized that the sand close to rock that I was sitting next to above was radiating heat. We went around the side and tried to dig a hole in the sand but it was too hot to touch. Cool. But actually, Hot.

Then we walked towards the lava and we walked on a lot of really fresh flow. So fresh that remnants of the trees in the path of the lava were burned down all around.

My favorite were the holes that were left in the lava from where a tree was taken but by the time it had fully incinerated, the lava had cooled into a hole.

There was this really cool old Hawaiian rock wall that had also been partially taken:

And then we went closer to the most real cloud factory ever. I have so many pictures but none of them can really do this incredible sight justice

   

In those pictures, the higher ground is the old coastline and all of the lava lower down are all new flows. So, I was also standing on some of the newest land on earth too. Here are some of the old coastline where you can really see the new flow coming over.

 

The yellow there is sulfur deposited on cracks from gas seeps.

All in all, we were out hiking for 6 hours. It was a really good time and when we got back, Michael and I decided to get burgers and beer for dinner and it was just delightful.

Now, I’m exhausted and so ready for another week of work to start.

I’m Alive!

Hey friends, sorry for the hiatus. Did you think I had given up already? Did you think that I had fallen into the lava? or that I fell off the coast? Nope! The interweb wasn’t working since Monday but I just fixed it! Turns out I just had to unplug and replug everything back in…

Anyway, I’ll try and give a brief update of highlights from this week:

I’ve sort of fallen into a routine and it’s working out well. I usually wake up at about 6:45 and I go into the greenhouse at 7:30. I predominately work in there with the tomatoes that we’re growing. The project that I’ve been working on this week has been hanging and moving cables that are hanging from the supports on the ceiling. Strings hang from spools on the cables and then are clipped onto the stalks to provide support to the plants. So I’ve been climbing up and down this ten foot ladder moving and hanging strings. It’s a big project and it’s really hot in the greenhouse, especially near the top so it’s pretty slow going but necessary work to do before the keikis that we planted last week grow enough to need support.

Then after work, Michael, Mike and I go to town and get something to eat at the Malama supermarket (They have really good fresh fish poke and sushi and other really good cheap stuff. Then we eat somewhere, sometimes at a park or by the beach or in the truck if it’s that kind of day. Then we go to the hot ponds. This place is quickly becoming one of my favorite places ever. The water is usually really warm in the ponds area and you can even go sit on the wall where you can feel the really warm fresh water coming in. Anyway, I snorkle about for a while and look at all the fish and stuff but i spend the majority of time there by the channel that allows the ocean water in. There is a rope there because the current is really strong, so I play on the rope and let the tides pull me in and out and I look at all the fish and the rocks and stuff. My favorite is when a big wave comes in and a rush of really cold water hits you and then there are just tiny little bubbles everywhere. It’s amazing. I definitely need to get some underwater camera action going on. Here’s a picture from the back of the ponds looking at the ocean and the breakwater. It was really high tide this day

Then i shower at the ponds and we go to the Kalapana cafe and store and get beer or ice cream. I applied for a job at the cafe on Tuesday! It would be really sweet to get  a gig there because it’s like 1.5 miles away and it’s the only place of commerce within like ten miles…

And then in the afternoons, I just chill out and read and stuff. I’ve been hanging out with Mike and Michael a lot. They’re really cool and we laugh a lot. I’ll have to tell you more about them.

More highlights: The other day I tried to put Mavis away. She gets fed special food outside of the enclosure in the driveway and Michael puts her away when she’s done. Well I thought that I would be helping by getting her back in the pen but since I’ve never worked with horses before, I wasn’t very good at it. I tried to lure her with a mango and it kind of worked but I was sort of nervous that she would bite me and she wasn’t really following me. Anyway, I finally got her close to the pen and I tried to open the gate and get her inside but Mabel(the donkey) came up and she knows that I’m trying to get them to like me by giving them treats so she almost got out before I could get Mavis in and then she freaked out and ran away. I was like shit, so I ran and got Michael and apparently whenever they get out, they always go right for the mango trees at the end of the driveway. This is Mavis escaped and gorging on mangos..

Haha, oh man, it was pretty silly me trying to coax this horse back. Turns out she has a lead that Michael brought down and as soon as you put it on she follows you. Farm fail.

This was after I thought that I had lost one of the cats. There are many many cats on the farm and one of my favorites, Spider Man, followed me down the driveway on tuesday when I was walking out and I told him to go home and he followed me about 3/4 of the way but stopped and then cried and meowed at me to come back. I felt awful but figured he’d go home. Well I didn’t see him the next morning and kinda freaked out and thought that I had lost the cat. So I run down the driveway calling his name or whatever and Michael tells Becky who says that he follows her down there all the time and he’s fine. I still haven’t seen him though… eee

The other day when we were in Pahoa, I was eating my lunch in the parking lot and this guy and his girlfriend were sitting on their car next to me and we sort of talked a little but they were obviously fucked up. Anyway, as we’re leaving he comes over and hands me this HUGE ball of hash for free. It was incredible. Seriously.

Michael has a bunch of old comic books, like cool ones and completer series and stuff and he’s tired of trucking them around so he’s scheming with Mike and I and we’re going to sell them on ebay. That’s where I come in. Apparently I’ve got the most computer skillz and so I’m going to work on the that and make some money, hopefully. But in the meantime I’ve been reading some oldies like Hell Boy, Vampirella, Red Sonja, Amethyst, and She-Hulk. Pretty cool.

Yesterday, we went to Hilo, because Mike and Michael found rapid fire pellet machine guns for like $20 last week and we’ve been talking about them ever since. So we went to get the toys (which they were out of but don’t worry it’ll happen) but stopped at Ken’s house of pancakes for breakfast. The pancakes were bomb and they had coconut, papaya, and passion fruit syrup (pictured below), it was amazing and I also had a loco moco, which is like a Hawaiian rice bowl breakfast gravy thing. Delicious.

Here’s Michael(left) and Mike(right) mid chew. The best.

What else? This afternoon/evening I’m going back out to the lava! But this time with Becky and Michael and a couple of their other friends so hopefully, they’ll be able to get us back here and I can take tips for how to go out alone.

This area that I’m living in is incredible. It has a really long history, which I’ve been learning about through a book about the area and a movie that Becky rented for me about the lava. Firstly, this area has a rich native history and native populations here at the time of contact were the largest in all of Hawaii. The land is plentiful and generous and there have been many villages in this area where natives subsisted and basked in the natural beauty and glory of black sand beaches and natural hot pools. Then as usual some fucked up land partitioning shit happened and natives were essentially kicked out. Then Kalapana gardens subdivision was built in the 60s and all these beautiful dream houses were built. But Pele’s fire wiped out the town in a span of a few years in the late 80s early 90s. The ruins of the town, sign posts, fence posts, etc are evident in the flows, which are about 8 feet thick, across the street from my driveway. It’s incredible and the highway that used to go through here was taken and so were beaches and the ponds etc. This recent flow, which is making the newest land on earth, is flowing through a lava tube into the ocean but isn’t coming this way. It’s so amazing to live this close to such an incredible volatile natural wonder. I’ll try and take more pictures tonight.

Okay, I think that was exceptionally long and I’d be surprised if you even made it all the way down here.  I’ll leave you with a picture of Mocha, she has laminitus or something like that and has trouble standing sometimes…