More giant waves on North Shore

From O'Neill World Cup 2009

Another bus ride to the North Shore meant the chance to watch the men compete against each other and the even bigger waves. Great value for the $4.50 to get there and back – and again a very small crowd considering the world class surfing in spectacular conditions going on… I’m sure I will be back – maybe bringing an even longer lens to pick out the surfers amongst the crashing water.

Fourth Island of the holiday

From Kauai Day Trip

Could be the fifth if you count continental USA as an Island during my short stay in the first class lounge in LAX! It was also the shortest flight of the trip – I’m fairly sure I spent more time walking in the airports at either end of the flights than actually in the air! Kauai being the oldest of the large Islands in Hawaii is by far the flattest – the long extinct volcanoes having been worn down by time and rain leaving some fairly spectacular valleys cut into the lava that has almost turned to dirt… Kauai also boast the only navigable river in Hawaii – a good excuse for a tourist attraction!

Round the dormant Maui Volcano

Feeling that I’d just finished fully adjusted to local Hawaiian time – no longer waking in the middle of the night – only when the sun rose above diamond head, I set my alarm for 4:30am local time, to catch an early morning 25 minute flight to Maui… With hindsight I could have declined the hotel pick up and got a taxi to the airport and had another 90 minutes sleep! On arrival at Kahului Airport, on Maui, it looked like the rain of my trip to Big Island might be repeated – but the sun soon broke through the clouds and the over night rain turned out to be a blessing as it caused the many waterfalls along side the road to be in full flood, rather than just potential falls – which is their normal state…

The drive along the Hana Highway was impressive - 600+ turns as the road wound its way along the coast clinging to the step north face of Haleakala. Due to the heavy over night rainfall there where plenty of newly fallen rocks littering the road, and in one place a work crew clearing a landslide from the road – including a couple of the trees that lined the road from start to finish… From the minibus it was impossible to take a picture to do the road justice – a helicopter would have been needed for that – the favoured form of transport for the celebrities that own most of the properties along the road – no two hour twisting ride for them to get to Hana!

The journey down the southern side of volcano was less twisty but equally impressive. The made up road disappeared and hire cars are prohibited from travelling the route… Driving on land formed when part of the volcano rim collapsed allowing lava to spill out, left a landscape similar to that on Big Island – but time and water had created four massive ravens which lead to some dramatic views from the road as it proceeded, sometime very precariously down the coast. The final stop of the day was a winery – one of the wines was an produced was an acceptable traditional Merlot, but the other two – know as Maui Splash and Maui Blanc – originated from pine apples rather than grapes – some how very sweet, yet dry at the same time – the Blanc would be a different desert wine, Splash was more of a alcoholic fruit juice…  The most amazing thing about the island, and what I’ll remember most,  was the amount and variety of vegetation, and in particular trees of all descriptions – below are just a small sample… The last a citrus tree planted by Captain Cook to be used as a mast should the need arise… The climate is just right for growing almost anything – from cactus to massive rainbow eucalyptus trees.  All on a lump of rock that appeared in the middle of the Pacific 150,000 years ago!

Surfing at North Shore

From Gidget Pro 2009

Those of you that know me will not be surprised that I was watching not taking part in the surfing – I left that to the professionals! My last visit to Sunset beach was only for the 10 minutes a guided circular tour of Oahu permitted. The surf was up that day – 30 foot plus and the surf event was unsurprisingly on hold for the day. This time I made my own way to the North Shore via route 52/55 on TheBus. While the surf was smaller than two years ago – it was still high enough to be left to those who really knew what they where doing. I was lucky to get to the beach after the 2 hour journey just as the quarter finals of the Gidget Pro women’s championship where beginning – I found a spot amongst the relatively small crowd watching to enjoy the sun, sand and spectacular. Judging by the number of cars parked along the road – I could have believe that those their had bought a car each some of them two!

I’ve yet to finish proofing the almost 1000 shots I took on a rather shutter happy afternoon… If you’ve got a 32GB memory card in the camera, it would be a shame not to use it and miss a shot! Once I get home I’ll pick out some more of the shots from the afternoon – edit a few and upload them. Hard to do that on a laptop – especially now I’ve broken the screen and have a lovely crack running across it and a small circle of dead pixels in the middle – I assume where my toe landed as I tripped over it, having left it on the floor next to my bed in jet lag induced sleepiness/carelessness…  If the surf is up and the surfing is still on, I may revisit the north shore next week - $4.50 for a round trip is great value for a 4 hour bus journey broken up with the chance to view such a spectacular sport…

Waikiki Thanksgiving Parade

From Waikiki Thanksgiving Parade 2009

It is again strange to have such a strong show of Christmas both in such a non-Christmas climate and so early in the year… It only snows in Hawaii on top of the active volcanoes, to keep the needles on the Christmas trees they import they’re kept refrigerated for as long as possible! Yet there where snow references everywhere from the motorised snow sledge to reindeer…  It is probably a sign of the changes in the economy since I was here two years ago, that the parade was much smaller this year – three or four marching bands, Pearl harbour survivors, two fire engines and most bizarrely a couple of concrete pumping trucks – from all the building work currently going on – maybe that is the only industry on the up at the moment… Hotels and shops appear to be taking advantage of the lower number of visitors to renovate…

Return to Big Island

From Big Island Flying Tour

Since last paying homage to pelehonuamea she has woken up – so a return trip was in order. I’d chosen to opt for a flight in a smaller plane that offer the possibility of a fly past of the now active caldera – but unfortunately the weather didn’t co-operate and a low cloud base made any attempt to over fly the volcano impossible. I did however get a great view of Waikiki and my hotel as the smallest plane I’ve flown in took off along Waikiki beach. For added value, we stopped to pick up additional passengers in Maui – four perfect take offs and landing in one day – despite the inclement weather. The extra stop in Maui did mean we got to see more of the Islands than the clouds would have liked us to have done from high in the air!

Once we arrived on Big Island, we boarded the bus for the drive from the airport to the caldera, via the obligatory stops at various shops to give us the opportunity of purchasing local produce… Despite the best efforts of Big Islands typically cloudy weather – at least on the windward side of the island – we where allowed good views of the column of gases now rising from the new opening in the floor of the crater. At one point while at the steam vends on the bluff above the crater the sun even made a brief appearance – raising everyone’s hopes – which where quickly dashed by the return of the rain and the requirement for me to resort to my “camera coat” to allow the photography to continue…. Apparently there are cracks forming in the floor of the crater that with one last reasonably large earth quake might cause the crater floor to collapse into the magma currently hidden below. If that should happen I’m sure I’ll be back – health and safety permitting to view the spectacle.

Sunshine bound…

From Outbound Flight

After a weekend of watching rugby and tennis, it was an early start on Monday morning to escape the damp weather in London for a second air miles induced very long haul trip to Hawaii. Luckily I appear to be back in the favour of the long haul travel – and unlike the last time, the journey was uneventful. A travel day that started at 7am in London and didn’t finish until 9pm Hawaiian time – 7am London… wasn’t too taxing. Sitting back and catching up on four movies at the front of the plane to LAX, then enjoying an evening meal on the long hop to Honolulu – all first class and paid for by the wonder of air miles!

ATP Tour Final comes to the O2

From ATP World Final 2009

Bringing together the 8 best singles players and 8 best doubles pairings under the roof of the O2 was bound to create a good atmosphere – and make one of them the British number one and you are on to a sure thing. That is the ATP Tour Final, that brings the tennis year to a close… Both the singles matches on the opening night turned out to be cracking matches – both going to three sets – with the underdogs, Juan Martin Del Potro and Fernando Verdasco pushing the favourites – Andy Murray and  Roger Federer for most of the first two sets. Unfortunately – or fortunately depending on your point of view, neither of them was able to put in the final killer shots and pull off shocks! The doubles matches on the other hand where fairly one sides events. The abuse of the sporting spectacle by reducing any game that reaches deuce to a single additional point and playing a “match tiebreaker” if the first two sets are shared seams to devalue doubles – which if anything has the potential to be more entertaining than singles – which can turn into a pure contest of the serve with rallies few and far between, not a problem doubles encounters – even in the artificially shortened matches there where many wonderful rallies that could have gone either way.

Leaving for Hawaii the next morning, I only attempted to get tickets for the first day. Having missed out on the pre-sales competition from the ATP, I managed to get a poor ticket for the afternoon session- up with the gods on the 4th level, and a reasonable ticket for the evening… Imagine my surprise (or lack of it) to receive an email from ticket master - “last minute seats court side available” – this is getting too frequent and very annoying – my guess is that these are tickets reserved to combine with corporate entertainment that isn’t happening at the moment. It is very poor that genuine fans are being sold seats miles from the action thinking they are the only ones left, only for better ones to be freed close to the event.

But at relative cheap prices I went for it and had two seats I could have used for both sessions – the ones I did use right behind the baseline – it felt like the serves where coming straight at me! I also took a chance, and for the first time had my DSLR with me in the O2 – despite the “you shouldn’t use that” from the bag inspector at the door… Once I was in there where DSLR everywhere, and a few video cameras. Events are just going to have to accept their patrons want pictures to remember the event by, and wouldn’t the participants prefer those where the best pictures possible rather than phone camera pictures? They are never going to be able to prevent phones with camera being used, so the cat is out of the bag…  I can understand why artists that are staging multiple concerts with the same content don’t what video of it being put on YouTube – but still pictures for personal use shouldn’t cause anyone to lose revenue – and for unique event such as sport they can only generate more business for the next event!

Rockwell @ The O2

From Rockwell 2009

A fairly diverse group of artists came together for one evening of duets and hits to support the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy at the Rockwell concert Maybe it was the cause or the size of the venue, the atmosphere worked better than other multi artist events I’ve been too in the past. The very doggy comparing by various non-musical contributor added to the entertainment as they attempted to fill the time for the inevitable pauses as each band’s set was arranged on stage.

Lighting up the Thames

From Thames Festival Fireworks 2009

Another chance to try to capture some of the magic of fireworks, this time over the centre of London rather than in rural France The finally of the Thames Festival certainly didn’t disappoint – the fireworks really lit up the Thames. Fireworks with the London Eye, National Theatre or the OXO tower in the background…

Brazil comes to the Thames

From Thames Festival Carnival 2009

Carnival comes to the Thames – and for the third year in a row it was a pleasant late summer evening. Rather surprise given the lousy summer that was coming to an end… It was a mix of the true Brazilian carnival with a few charities mixed in – it is amazing what you can do with recycled materials – correctly light plastic bags waving on the end of long poles take some time to recognise!

Team GB underdogs at O2

From Game On - O2 2009 (Sunday)

I’ve now added Basketball to the sports I’ve seen live, and not only on TV. Adding to my memories of trying to play at school, and never having much success! A sport for tall people – not the vertically challenged… A court side seat to one of the events organised as part of the warm up for 2012 meant I could witness Team GB, current effectively unranked in World – tied 75th in the world, pit themselves against Turkey, Israel and Poland – ranked 14th, 25th and 55th themselves. Given the lowly ranking, Team GB put up strong performances in both matches I watched – but did, in the end fall to the better opposition. In both the matches they put up a good fight – leading at times, before class told towards the end of the games. The game again Turkey was a perfect illustration of why it is rare for a basketball game to finish on a close score. The last few minutes of game time, which Team GB started only 6 or so points behind Turkey, became very disjointed as Team GB repeatedly fowled, to take Turkey to the free throw line for 2 one point shots with the clock stopped. The hope was ,that they’d be able to score two or three points on each of their possessions, with Turkey not always gaining both point from the free throw line – a tactic that got more and more futile as Turkey scored most of their points, and Team GB failed to score on many of their possessions… All in all, an entertaining way to spend two weekend afternoons/evenings – being their in person did bring more of sense of speed to the sport – the court is small, but the action furious – something that isn’t so clear on TV. Bring on the Olympics in 2012 – I hope tickets to events are equally easy to come by… The only down side was that the O2 was half empty, even in it’s reduced capacity format with the top tier unused, which meant despite the best efforts of the master of ceremonies there wasn’t much atmosphere.  It will be interesting to see how four low ranked European national sides compare to my next live basketball – MBA team Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz at the O2…

A 360° View

From U2 - Wembley 2009

A barmy summer Friday evening found me back at Wembley for another evening of music. This time U2 provided the great sound track, friends good company to share the experience with, and Wembley a rocking venue. The stage in the centre, plus fan club tickets gave a great view – lets hope more bands take this approach rather than a stage at one end. This was my first time on the side of the stadium opposite the arch – a slightly longer walk from and to the tube – but added distinctive location details to the view that meant it couldn’t be anywhere but Wembley. The evening finished of with a Chinese in the west end and a walk home along the Thames – things don’t get much better…

Wishing I was there – I was…

From Natalie Imbruglia 2009

The Luminaire was the venue for one of Natalie Imbruglia’s come back gigs – testing new tracks and revive some familiar ones. She needn’t have worried, amongst the relatively small audience of loyal fans every song deservedly went down well. A great evenings entertainment. What a contrast U2 at Wembley will be – The Luminaire is the smallest venue I’ve been to on my journey to enjoy live music in London.  An audience of ~250, and my reasonably early arrival, meant a great view, three rows from the front – for the first time the flash on my camera was effective. But reviewing the pictures, I still prefer those without flash which are more atmospheric – and can be taken without the lag the flash introduces! If I’d know the house policy on cameras, I could have upgraded to my SLR – will know next time. It would have been interesting to have it with me, as I was stood amongst the press photographers for the first three or four songs until they where asked to leave to let the paying audience enjoy the music without them impeding the view! Looked like a white 70-200mm F2.8 lens was the one to have – something to add to my collection…

SFA @ Somerset House

From Super Furry Animals - Somerset House - 2009

Super Furry Animals contrasted to the music from the pervious weekend – I was back at Somerset House – but it wasn’t pouring with rain, and Gruff Rhys didn’t have quite the attitude of either Lily Allen or Noel Gallagher. Having said that it was a very good evening of live music again. I’m very please I’m continuing my policy of going to any event where I’ve at least heard of the band, and that hasn’t put me off… SFA’s brand of psychedelic/experimental rock might not be to everyone’s taste – but in a small venue like Somerset House, on a pleasant Saturday evening, it was a great way to spend time.

No need to stand on the shoulder

From Oasis - Wembley 2009

Rock is what Wembley does best – both the old run down version and the wonderful new plush version. Oasis aren’t too bad at making a large stadium rock – the combination was a great Sunday evening. Added benefit was that I’d splashed out on a “VIP package” – really a fancy name for short cutting the queues for food, drink and loos, and guaranteed good view and conformable seats. I applaud Oasis’ attempts to defeat the touts by not allocating seats until the week before the event – but that does mean knowing if you’ll be able to see the stage or not when you buy the ticket is not an option – unless you splash out on the already expensive seats…  Some people that had opted for unreserved standing, who ended up at the back of the pitch resorted to standing on shoulders – the penalty for flat pitches…  My next visit to Wembley will be for U2 – another guaranteed great evening of live music…

Rain can’t Knock `Em Out

From Lily Allen - Somerset House 2009

It would appear that good music prevents even the heaviest of rain from dampening the spirits of an audience. Somerset House is not far from home, so I was determine to take the venue up on its pledge that the show would go on what ever the weather – and it was well worth it. Not sure who would have been colder – the soaking wet audience or Lily Allen in her skimpy little outfit – the music kept us all warm… Unlike my previous evening of entertainment with Lily, when I was struggling to keep awake due to jet lag, the rain was an antidote to any thoughts of sleep. Not that with Lily on stage there was any danger of that! All in all, it was well worth the soaking. Somerset House is a great venue in the middle of the city – I’ll be going to more events – already booked for next weekend for Super Furry Animals. And Lily certainly can warm up an audience – even in the pouring rain.

Revisiting the Candy Store

From Madonna O2 2009 Part I

Madonna returned to London for a second helping of her Sticky & Sweet tour that I first saw at Wembley as she started another European leg the tour. Yet again the frustration of late releases of the best tickets, and a why not attitude, meant I had tickets for a double bill of hard candy. The O2 showed again why it is possibly the country’s best large venue. Equivalent seat at Wembley had left me too far from the stage to really see the show. Able to enjoy the music, but left wishing I could have seen more of the show. At O2 in the best seats you are definitely close enough to see every move in the show, and the acrostics in the O2 are second to none for an indoor location from any where in the building. Madonna didn’t fail to disappoint – the act was subtlety refreshed, and included several a heart felt additional tributes to Michael Jackson. Two great nights of entertainment. Having said that, Kylie still holds the title of the princess of disco – but I’m sure Madge and Pink are the female royalty of rock. Amusingly, Madonna had managed to convince herself that the 5th of July was actually the 4th, and proceeded to rib the Americans in the audience when they failed to respond to her best wishes on the birthday of the USA – only after a break to admit she’d been reminded it was in fact the 5th… but she didn’t give a f*ck. Would have been good if she’d return to the O2 the next day for a repeat performance honoring the tickets for the 5th…