Desert ATV

Yet another thing I have been wanting to do since I arrived out here, but up until recently didn't have the opportunity, 4 wheeling. A large group of of all decided to go one Thursday morning, but as is expected here when the time to leave rolled around, about half the group dropped out.

The 8 of us headed out at about 10am out to the sand dunes, where there were a line of tents with guys renting ATVs. After a bit of haggling (their set price is 300 SAR/hour), we jumped on some 400 cc ATVs, got a quick lesson and heading out into the desert. Only 3 of the 8 of us had ever ridden ATVs before, so we started out slow as the rest of the group was regularly stalling and getting stuck in the sand. By the second hour everyone was pretty comfortable and we were able to cover some real ground.

We all tried to stay together, which was hard. If you traveled two dunes away from the group you got the sense that you were alone. If you went further than this it would often take a few minutes to find anyone else. Most of us had some small wrecks, but luckily nobody was injured.

The coordinates are +25° 4' 42.26", +46° 42' 31.90"

Edge of the World

It only took six months but I finally made my way out to the desert. We left right after work at 1pm, and made it to the Edge in only about an hour and a half. The Edge of the World is a crazy site. There are huge cliffs and below it the ground is flat, as far as you can see. Words are hard to describe it you have to see the pictures. I got to climb around a bit and really use my 50D. We took off in time to get out of there with some sun to light our way out, but still get some sunlight shots before we were back to civilization. It is a shame we couldn't spend longer out there, it would be a great place to camp out or even just grill out. Maybe I'll get the chance before I leave here, I still have to much time left.

On the way out we saw a bunch of camels chewing on the trees. We got out to get a closer look, and that's when one attacked.

The required Bro photo

Some climbing

The Edge

Felt like this picture would look better

Sunset

Attack Camel

The coordinates are +24° 56' 41.34", +45° 59' 31.86"

Jeddah, KSA SCUBA Diving

I was lucky enough to get out of Riyadh for a long weekend a few weeks ago. While there I manged to get some time underwater. It was my first chance since I left Hawaii. It was also my first chance to use my Underwater Camera I bought right after leaving Hawaii. The pictures are all quite blue, and I lost my USB cable for my Dive Computer, but other than that it was a great time.

This was my first dive outside the U.S. and my first dive not using my own equipment. Both of these things started to worry me a little as I arrived at the dive shop. When I showed up the only questions they asked are; SCUBA or Snorkel and what equipment do you need? Not once did they ask to see a dive liscence or a log book. Back in the equipment room everything looked rather beat up. I thought I would be able to use my own regs, but this ended up not being the case since I have an AIR2, so my hose wasn't compatible with their BC. I didn't realize this until I was on the boat setting up my gear. Luckly one of the guys working for the company had time to run back and grab me some regs. I was able to use my computer.

We did three dives the Cable Wreck, Crazy 8 and one other reef. All we good dives, even if the visibility wasn't great. Bottomed out at about 75 feet. Saw plenty of small fish, got a few good pictures. By the third dive I gave up playing with the camera, because I realized I was spending most the dive following the camera, watchign the screen. I had a great time and made some new friends, who with luck I'll get to dive with again before I'm out of here.

My new Saudi friend

Spotted Ray

Fish that aren't camera shy

Easter in Mullerthal

Spent my Easter up in Mullerthal. Which is known as the Little Switzerland of Luxembourg. It is just my kind of place. Big rocks, little streams with waterfalls and lots of hiking trails. On Easter I dragged two of my roommates up there to take advantage of the great spring weather, and enjoy all the thing I just mentioned about it.
We started off at a little waterfall that is famous with tourist because of the cute bridge over it and because it is on the side of the road. The parking lot for the falls, despite being next to the road is about a quarter mile away. So we took the nice little trail following the creek to the falls, rather than walk along the road like many of the tourist. Upon reaching the falls we looked to see if it was deep enough to swim, or at least get wet from head to toe. It was, about 3 to 4 feet in the deeper holes. This was perfect depth for jumping off the 8 foot tall rock below the falls. The water was very cold but we still managed a few jumps and some splashing around, much to the surprise of everyone else who was there to see the waterfall.
After that we headed to this other really cool place. There are a bunch of rocks between 10 and 60 feet tall with slots between them. The place reminds me of one of my favorite places back home called "rock city"..The rocks are like sky scrappers surrounding the slots that are like streets. We climbed a few rocks and did some jumping along the "rooftops."
After we got a good feel for rock city we headed off looking for a place I'd seen pictures of on a map, but didn't really know where it was. It turns out that my natural ability to snoop out cool places was in over drive that day because I found it. Heading in the direction I thought it would be, I pulled over in a parking lot and headed for the trail. The trail had 4 branches leaving the parking lot. We took the right one and after a nice walk along a really small stream we reached these caverns and natural amphitheater.

Check out the pictures below.

Sorry I've been sucking

Sorry I haven't put anything on here in a while. I hate excuses but here are mine. Bad internet connection and the cold weather has caused most of the little free time I have to be spent in the bar. I have a new camera coming in soon, so that should push me outside a little more.

I haven't been a total shut in. I have been heading over to Bambesch to hike and bike, despite the 0 Celsius temps. I found a few long but not real steep down hills for biking. Next time I go I'll have to bring the POV. I'm trying to get into video editing, to improve the quality of my videos.

Hope everyone had some killer holidays, and are ready to get out and enjoy the new year with some new adventures. I know I plan on hitting up some spots around the alps to get in some snow boarding and some other winter activities.

Keep on keepn' on.

Bunjee Jumping

Bungee Jumping in Southern Cali:
Bryce my brother-in-law and I took this trip that had us hike 5 miles up the Los Angeles Mountains to “the bridge to no where”. This Co. we went with has 5 world records and never has had an incident in 19yrs of business, a legit group. Also, they are the ones who do like 90% of Hollywood stunts with this sort of thing, all of Mtv's stuff and Fear Factor's stunts. Cool people, and one dude was OG...Oahu Grown, anyways. We each got to jump 2 times off this hundred foot beast, arched bridged where you actually bounced back up underneath the other side of the bridge. Pretty scary, but awesome. Got to hike around some pretty cool terrain, really clear water up there like Hawaii but super freezing! We actually had to cross the stream like 6 times on the way up. Our group had about 13 people, we took two breaks, and people were still falling behind. Bryce and I were like holy geez these people are weak.

Bryce, my bro crossing a treacherous stream along the hike.

This is "The Bridge to No Where", the 108ft bridge we were doing our "Lele Kawa" from.

Couple more photos here...on the river and one later that evening. We went to this tight Japanese Res. and ate some killer grinds. Then went and walked the “Hollywood walk of fame”, or whatever it is, with all the stars you know? (This book I have, a 101 things to do before you die, has in there: write your name over a star's name of whom you don’t think deserves one.) Well, I could not find Ellen DeGeneres, Dennis Miller, or Ray Romano, so Britney Spears was the next best thing. Only her star was right in front of that place where they give out the Grammy’s, I want to say the Kodak Center. Thousands of people were around us, but we did it real quick like. Good times, then we stopped by High Voltage tattoo parlor, but tats were seriously over priced, not worth it, the same with clothing there. So we bounced....

Great weekend!

Laters Ohana people.

http://www.bungeeamerica.com/

(link to the bungee place)

Adventures in Time Travel

In no way am I suggesting we hoped in any DeLorean and flashed back to the past. This was real time travel. Two places that were removed from the time line the rest of the world travels on. These two places are the Island of Molokai and the Diamond Head Crater Festival, both of which I traveled through time to reach back in 2006.

The Island of Molokai. There will be another story on Molokai later, now I just want to cover the time travel aspects of the trip. The tourism web site for Molokai describes it as the island lost in time, and describes traveling there to stepping back in time 50 years. I say this is a bit of an exaggeration, but being only 23 I don't know what things were like 50 years ago, let alone in Hawaii. But I will say its like stepping back about 20 to 30 years at least for being part of the United States.

We arrived at the airport on a prop plane, the runway is to small for jets. We walked from the plane about 100 feet over to the baggage claim. The baggage claim consisted of a roof, one wall and 4 large wooden benches opposite the wall. Not sure how we got our bags, being that there was no baggage carousel, we looked out at the plane 100 feet away to see a n old john deer with a trailer pulling up to the plane. After all the bags were in the trailer the tractor drove into the baggage claim behind the benches and unloaded the bags neatly onto the benches.

The island of Molokai has one main town and one main road running for west to east. The main super market looks more like a country store.

The best part time travel wise for me was at the airport on the way out of Molokai. As we waited at our gate what I believe to be a DC 3 cargo plane pulled up. It is one of those WW2 era planes that when parked is at about a 30 degree angle nose up. Well the pilot has a side window which he opened up and gave a shocka to the air traffic control tower to let them know he was parked.

The Crater Festival was an entirely different situation. The Festival dates back to the 70s when it was a free music festival. It was the Woodstock of the Pacific. April 2006 was to be the first Crater Festival in about 30 years. The Diamond Head Crater is a place normally crawling with tourist. As a result of high ticket prices $130 for the lawn and classic rock lineup the festival mostly drew the people who where there 30 years prior that wanted to relive the glory days. This combination of factors made it feel like once we were though the tunnel into the crater we were back in the late 70s. This made for the perfect atmosphere to listen to Steve Miller rock.