I wasn't in Haleiwa to surf. I didn't much care whether the surf was breaking at Jockos or not. But

There are many alternatives I ve found. No one system is the ultimate answer. If one route is blocked off there is another way to go. I ve learned to live without things and alone. The ability to live in a variety of styles, city or country, with people or without, in different languages and cultures, marina park inn kemah texas with enthusiasm for the small luxuries, gives me a power over the future, whatever chaos the world comes to. -Audrey Sutherland
But, first, I sat on my black, vinyl-covered banquet chair at a red, Formica-topped table and ordered food--a veggie omelette with spinach, onion, mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini and egg-white substitute.
Then, I flipped open the Honolulu Star-Bulletin , nearly elbowing the surfer next to me. Two guys sat at the table to my right. They wore surf trunks, oversized t-shirts, and when I looked at the black-and-white, checkerboard linoleum floor, I noticed sand still stuck to their feet.
"Looks like it might be a body boarding day," the older one said. The tables here were jammed so close together that I couldn't avoid listening in on their conversation. Fine by me. Eavesdropping tells you a lot about a place.
On Oahu's North Shore, Haleiwa is known as a surf town. The restaurant's colorfully-painted walls pay homage to the waves for which the North Shore is famous with oversized marina park inn kemah texas canvas prints by local artists. The waves here draw surfers from around the world. When the waves are firing, professionals marina park inn kemah texas come in droves, from all points of the globe, like pilgrims to Mecca. Particularly when the new-fangled god of surf predictions--Surfline--beckons.
Surfline is a website marina park inn kemah texas that provides comprehensive surf reports and forecasts on a daily basis via mobile applications and the Internet. In the world of surfing, Surfline is as much a necessity as the surfboard itself.
The report said: Small conditions for North Shore as residual mix of N/NNE swell and trade swell providing rideable surf at select locations. Jockos doesn't favor the northerly swell angle so look for other spots for ride-able waves.
I wasn't in Haleiwa to surf. I didn't much care whether the surf was breaking at Jockos marina park inn kemah texas or not. But I did want to know whether Jocko's mom was around. Surfline couldn't tell me that. I'd have to find out for myself.
There is a sensuous marina park inn kemah texas joy in being alone delight in the simple animal pleasure of blowing my nose with one knuckle, peeing in the moonlight, and trying a Tahitian dance step with only myself to snicker. There is a smug ironic satisfaction in finding an ingenious solution to a problem which was caused by my own inadequacy or stupidity. - A.S.
I searched for the book on Amazon, and discovered it was published in 1978, got 4.5 stars out of five, and was still in print. A collector's copy sold for $140.83. But I bought a used library hardback for considerably less. When it arrived in the mail, I was packing for a trip to Maui, where I savored passages in snatches while sitting on the lanai at the Royal Kahana Resort . I gazed off into the distance at the very coastline that Audrey, marina park inn kemah texas first, swam and, then, kayaked. I stared at the pinpricks of rocks off Molokai's north shore--Mokapu Island, was it? And Okala Island?
I've since recommended Paddling My Own Canoe to my posse of readers and writers and outdoor enthusiasts. I've blogged about it here. At first, I berated myself over and over, "How could I not have known about this book?" Then, I moved from a question to a statement: I've got to meet her.
Back in the days of my mainland career, I spent my fair share of time around famous people in their fields. Some names you'd recognize; others you wouldn't. Sometimes I sat around board rooms with these people--or, marina park inn kemah texas in one case, at a nationally-known basketball coach's personal desk in his team's locker room. Sometimes, I escorted these folks to dinners. Other times to autograph signings. And, yet, I cannot once remember asking a single person for their autograph.* No 8 x 10 glossies adorned my walls. No signed, first editions lined my book shelves. For some reason, and I don't know why--except that I just wasn't born with the gene--I am neither an autograph-seeker nor a celebrity stalker.
Men and women are more alike than different. Women too need to feel the coyote wildness, the pleasure of muscles moving in coordination, the sweat and the weariness, and the uncertainty of what the end to that effort will be . -J.S.
The sun was cresting a line of palm trees that line the far side of Chun's Reef when I scrambled over a stack boulders tossed down by Pele sometime in the not-so-recent past. As I hopped and crawled over the rocks, I periodically perioscoped my head over the hedge of naupaka marina park inn kemah texas bushes dividing beach from private property. marina park inn kemah texas I felt like George Clooney in The Descendents snooping on his wife's lover, only I wasn't looking for a cheater. Hardly. In the world of epic kayaking adventures, Audrey Sutherland is well-known, having made appearances and talks at outdoor conventions and gatherings, and she was my new hero.
I'm not sure why I had this urgent desire to meet Audrey Sutherland. But after reading her book Paddling My Own Canoe , I felt some sort of connection with her. A kinship. Maybe we belonged marina park inn kemah texas to the same tribe--the I-am-my-best-and-most-satisfied-self-when-I-am-alone-in-nature tribe.
Always I come back from these trips feeling like a skinned-up kid, feeling like a renewed, recreated adult, feeling like a tiger. All that basic nature, all that use of animal instincts, marina park inn kemah texas arouses some very earthy desires. -A.S.
Audrey raised four children marina park inn kemah texas and held a full-time job, but every few vacation days she could sling together, she packed a bag--or waterproof, typewriter box--and headed to Molokai. Alone. She'd hitch a ride to the remote east end and start rock-hopping marina park inn kemah texas along the coast--destination Kalaupapa. The trip was not about the destination but the journey. As she hiked, when she got to a dead-end--a vertical wall of rock--she'd stash her shoes and clothes, slip on her finsmaskandsnorkel marina park inn kemah texas and swim around the point, her box of gear and food tethered and floating behind her. This was the 1960s. Eventually, in the 1970s, outdoor gear caught up with Audrey, and she discovered inflatable kayaks. And dry bags.
On one of my periscope moves, I recognized Audrey's house from a photograph in the magazine article about her, and I dropped my backpack marina park inn kemah texas onto the sand in the shade of a palm tree. I sat back against a rock to stare at the sea. As I sat there, a rock morphed into a turtle. Then, one emerged from the sea. The more I watched, the more turtles I saw. Several marina park inn kemah texas ebbed and flowed at the tideline, heads below the water, noshing on seaweed.
Across the bay, the voices of a pack of beginning surfers marina park inn kemah texas floated on the air as waves rolled toward shore in gentle sets. An orange diver's flag bobbed on a float outside the reef. Out of the corner marina park inn kemah texas of my eye, I saw some kind of bird buzz low and inland.
marina park inn kemah texas I imagined she was watching me from her window, and I made sure to give the turtles plenty of distance. In the Hana Hou article, she kept a sign that said, "Please stay six feet away from the turtles." I looked around, but I didn't see it.
Should marina park inn kemah texas I just go knock on her door? The front door would be better than the back. Traipsing across the back yard, past a hammock strung between two palm trees, onto her lanai, by a picnic table where she s probably eaten hundreds of meals, and banging marina park inn kemah texas on the back door would be an invasion of privacy. marina park inn kemah texas Inappropriate.
marina park inn kemah texas Would Aud--she calls herself that in the book--be honored if I knocked and told her how much her book touched me? Or, would she be annoyed? This was why I wasn't a good journalist. I don't like to bang on people's doors, cold call without an introduction of some kind.
I made sure to stay a minimum of six feet away from the turtles. That's why, when a woman came bounding from somewhere behind me, heading straight for the turtles, I called out, "Hey. Watch out for the turtles."
She was tall, with salt-and-peper hair that managed to look wind-blown even for its short length. She hopped on a rock to get a better view and tapped a finger in the air. "Seven," she said. "I only count the ones on land. Not the ones in the water."
Part of Audrey's success marina park inn kemah texas in the wilderness came from her tenacious planning marina park inn kemah texas and research. She put great faith in lists--packing lists, marina park inn kemah texas as well as life lists. One rather infamous list of Audrey's supposedly still hangs in her bathroom and was written back in her child-rearing days. It's titled, "What every kid should be able to do by age 16" and includes:
One item on her packing marina park inn kemah texas list that I didn't understand was lipstick. Audrey was too practical for lipstick. Too practical for vanity. But Audrey pre-dated technical gear. If Audrey was headed out today on an 87-day, 887-mile paddle marina park inn kemah texas through the Inside Passage of Alaska and British Columbia--the subject marina park inn kemah texas of her forthcoming book--she'd include this item on her list: Lip balm with SPF 15. Lipstick as lip balm. That's my theory, at least.
I felt something inside me jerk awake. My animal nature? The ever-alert eye of the prey animal, perhaps? But this was my opportunity, wasn t it? The reason I'd driven all the way up here from Honolulu to the North Shore? Right?
Wait. No, I wanted to say. But I didn t say anything. My mind whirred. Was I embarrassed? Suddenly marina park inn kemah texas shy? Or was I realizing something else. That the Audrey taking a nap inside was not the Audrey I met on the pages of Paddling My Own Canoe . Of course, I could do the math. I knew Audrey was no longer the spry 40-year-old. But in my mind right now, Audrey was this amazing, larger than life woman. My idol. My role model. My aspiration. Did I want to meet today s Audrey? The stubborn, forgetful, maybe arthritic, a few short years away from death Audrey? Or did I want to live in my heart and mind with the supple, rock-hopping, swimming naked at the base of waterfall, marina park inn kemah texas crawling under a cabin and shoring up a sagging floor Audrey? I didn t know.
I left shortly thereafter,