electric relaxation

I had no idea that the Award Tour 12″ B-Side has Consequence’s first known verse ever recorded, over the instrumental for The Chase, Pt. 2.

A Tribe Called Quest – The Chase Part 2 (LP Mix)

Back in late September of last year, I visited Brian in Hawaii (he moved there in early 2009). It was my first time in Hawaii. After a half-day or so of biking around and sight-seeing in Honolulu, we headed over to Kauai to complete the Kalalau trail hike.

The route there took a day and a half, because we were slow getting started – we forgot the permits and had to head over to the tourist bureau to get them re-issued. We were also extremely cautious with our water supply, refilling constantly at Brian’s behest – I was lugging around 25 pounds of water for most of the hike, which you can see in the photos below (those are 4 liter platypus bags strapped to my pack). In his defense, I made him carry 15 pounds of food that I didn’t eat, and I lost the stove (though not before we managed to make one pretty delicious meal the first night).

The hike ends in this unbelievably spectacular beach. It’s indescribable. We camped under a waterfall (no joke), slept on the beach, and headed back very early on the third morning. We hoofed it and managed to complete the return in 8 hours.

Anyway, I’m writing about all of this now because I finally got the pictures that Brian took with his DSLR on the trail. We thought they were lost for good when his Mac laptop hard drive started acting erratic, but he managed to recover them and I snagged them last weekend while I was visiting him in Seattle.

So without further ado, check the bullshit. I apologize in advance for the six million pictures of the same sunset at the end, but I got tired of trying to compare them, I don’t really trust my judgment or taste, and I’m too chickenshit to delete any of them because they’re all dope.

P.S. Gallery2 blows so hard. Why do I still use it? I found Zenphoto and set it up; it looks promising but there’s no automatic import from Gallery so it’ll probably take a solid afternoon to convert over and I don’t know if I care quite enough to do it despite the incredibly painful experience I just went through trying to sort through all these Hawaii pictures.

I’m in Seattle for the weekend visiting Brian, who’s in town from Hawaii to celebrate his 30th birthday (and Miriam’s 27th).

We’re all crashing with Raj, who lives in the U district. Last night we went out dancing at the Baltic Room (I think?) and capped off the night with some street meat from the crazy cart with the LCD screens. Today we walked over to the Gas Works Park, which is awesome! I can’t believe I never knew about this place – it’s definitely a pretty fun place to hang out and I used to walk around the area back in the day when I was interning at MS. Anyway, Raj lives right near the park so we walked over and killed a couple of hours around sunset, which made for some decent photo opportunities even when you only have an iPhone.

Pictures from Gas Works Park

Irene pointed out that it’s totally steampunk, which is obvious in retrospect though I didn’t pick up on it myself.