mudfootball

to begin, we left at like 3 PM on Sunday (sleeping in until noon and taking two hours to eat breakfast is wonderful). after i wanted to cry and die, i mean, after 25 miles of biking or so, we ended up here:

except it specifically said on a big sign, NO CAMPING BEACH. but there are so many beaches on hawaii, and almost all of them are no camping, so we figured nobody is going to go around and check EVERY beach. so we waited until dark to put up our tent, thinking we would draw less attention to ourselves that way.

what it really meant is our tent went up completely wrong, the tarp was on it backwards, and we slept with the top of the tent smacking our faces all night. the wind was so insane; it would blow huge gushes of sand on top our tent every now and then. we both woke up about every hour throughout the night, we only had enough space to bring one, single small blanket so i froze and spooned the heck out of andrew. haha it was fff fff fweezing.

next morning we woke up, laughed about the entire night, and biked more. we biked about 30 miles, stopping every now and then to go swimming at random beautiful beaches. here are some from that second day:

THEN came night, and we had planned on sleeping at kaneohe bay, but we ran into this guy who warned us that it was dangerous to sleep there. so we back tracked to another beach, which had already taken us like 6 miles to get away from. we soon discovered that that beach had no tree coverage and barely any shore, and by that time it was dark and already 8 PM. we panicked a little, but not really, we just didn't have anywhere to put up our tent! we decided to just treat ourselves to a motel or something because we hadn't got any sleep from the night before. so we got on a bus to take us back to where we thought we'd seen hotels, but when we got there, it was already 10 PM and we found out they were condos you had to reserve in advance. so we were majorly SOL! almost. we found a church with a really large lawn, locked our bikes to the bike racks at the condos and hopped the church fence. we didn't even set up our tent, we just covered ourselves in bug spray and crawled into the tent which was really just like a big, netted sleeping bag. i don't know if that makes sense, but we slept inside the collapsed tent with only one blanket in a little corner of a church lawn and it was hilarious.

by this point we'd biked over 60 miles. we woke up at daylight, slyly put away our tent, and both looked at each other and were like "let's take the bus and grab mcdonalds for breakfast."

we stayed at that mcdonalds for about four hours. at this point, we had made it to north shore, where camping grounds are everywhere. so after breakfast/lunch, we got on our bikes and rode to the nearest camp site and set up camp. it was 2 PM and we were totes magotes not going to bike anymore :) haha we swam for two hours, took our first shower in a few days and ordered a pineapple dominos pizza with breadsticks and rootbeer... to our tent.

turns out camping is "not allowed" wednesday mornings starting at 8 AM until friday night at 8 PM (a necessary law.) so at 8:30 the next morning, we woke up to a lady telling us we needed to pack up. no big. we caught a bus back home, grabbed lunch at the cafeteria, and i have never enjoyed living like a homeless person more. (seriously, i used a grocery store bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth in, whilst other customers were in the bathroom as well. no shame.) this trip was a blast.

on another note, my mom is coming to visit me and arrives TODAY :)

from the clouds

So there is this little pool, about five minutes from our dorms. It gets closed around 5 PM and then completely abandoned. It's enclosed by a wire fence, and tucked behind some tennis courts and a little building. It's barely lit up by the street lights, and basically, it's completely secluded.

You got it, we walked (barefoot) over there, climbed the fence, stripped down, and bailed in that pool tonight.

Moving here has been the most freeing thing I have ever done. I would never have done stuff like night swimming back home. It was always: be home by this time, you can't do that, because that's "bad", guilt trip, guilt trip, you can't do that because you won't fit in, don't do this, don't do that, blah blah BLAH. I had to act perfect for my relationship, my "reputation", my parents, etc. and it was always about pleasing everyone, never about doing what pleased me. Now I just don't have to play the games anymore. I wake up, and I'm like Jess, what do you want to do today? How do you want to treat people and how do you want to think? How do you want to live your life?

The really great thing, is now I have a friend who happens to want to do all of the crazy things I think about doing, too. Night swimming? He's really the one who suggested it. After our lab today, we were on the roof talking, saw the pool, looked at each other and both thought of doing it at the same time. This is also the friend who I spontaneously went swimming in Waikiki with, and who is basically always on the same wavelength as me. Instead of limiting me, every time I get some idea of something I want to do, he's always behind it, 100%, never doubting me, and always making it much more enjoyable. But you don't even need a friend to do the things you love. Even if it's alone, you should really try following up on those little ideas that pop into your head--those things you want to do.

STRAIGHT from the clouds--such good words, Jack!