Getting LOST in Hawaii

Island Hopping Time

2010-03-08T08:24:00.000-05:00

Our flight was late-morning, so that gave us time to shower and pack up our things, plus we had to return the rental car. Both of us were looking forward to the Big Island…but since we had been lucking out so much with all the Lost stuff almost didn’t want to go.

Of course like most any driving in Hawaii, it was next to impossible to find the rental agency to return the car. After a few u-turns, we finally found it and got on the shuttle to the airport. All was going smooth, until I noticed the little red ‘delayed’ notice on the monitor for our flight. Uh oh. Then an announcement came on that our flight was delayed for an hour. The only reason we could deduce was that there weren’t enough on our flight, so it got bumped to the next one.

Since we had time to kill and it was lunchtime, and the food cart didn’t look appetizing, we went to the bar to see what was to be had. We ended up getting a thing of nachos that were seriously delicious, with Kahlua pork (I'm actually making some today in my crock pot). Well, the salsa wasn’t the best, but I’m not the biggest fan of salsa anyway and the pork was very, very yum. I had zero problems bolting down half the platter.

Here’s me texting with my mom while eating:

Finally it was time to board and here’s a shot of me boarding:

I’m not sure what that expression is on my face, but I feel like all I need are a couple of gold chains and maybe a clock around my neck to complete the image:

The flight was short and smooth and it was open seating, so we moved around to see the other islands we were flying over:

Coming into the Big Island (Kona), you can see the lava fields everywhere:

After renting the car we then made the looooong drive across the island and saw some rather interesting things along the way. Not sure what this movie is about, but I don't need to watch a movie about yoga.

We meant to buy some of these, chocolate covered macadamia nuts, which I'm sure are out of this world.

It was a nice drive of course,the road hugging the coastline for the most part.

We stopped several times to check out the views, how could we not? From one overlook we saw this pier off in the distance we were curious about, with what looked like a beach off in the distance:

As we drove alone we discovered that we could pull in and park there, so we did. It was very cool to walk around on the lava and an added bonus was seeing a whale feeding off in the distance. No breeching but we saw the plumes and its back as it dove down several times (didn't get a picture of it of course).

Not sure what kind of tree this is, but it was huge and beautiful.

Sometime later we pulled off at some small, locally owned veggie and coffee stand. They grow their own coffee and he gave out free samples and I have to say it’s some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. I don’t even like black coffee and drank mine right down, it was just that good. At the time I was really jonesing for some coffee too, so it just hit the spot. We also tried some dehydrated macadamia nuts and ended up buying a pack, again it was seriously delicious. Our plan was to hit the place on our way back to Kona when we left, but it was unfortunately closed. I wish I had bought some coffee there when I had the opportunity!

On we drove, finally nearing the active volcanoes; the stench was enough to alert us to that, not to mention the vog. That and how we were going up in elevation, until we were at 4000 feet above sea level. It was dark now and we were getting nervous about finding an open store for food and more importantly booze, since everything closes so early, so we ended up at some small, local store. One of the places that is primarily for campers probably, in fact we could smell the wood smoke (though since we did go back to eat there, the smoke could have been from their wood burning oven for gourmet pizzas). It had old wooden floors and all the basics you’d need when camping, including alcohol thankfully. I bought some sugar and half and half for our coffee, along with some local brew, a tasty red ale.

After driving forever and stopping at a stupid McDonald’s for dinner because by now we were starving and had to eat something, we finally arrived at the tree house. Well it is very remote and was difficult to find in the dark, on a winding road with no shoulder and no street lights. Even with the map on the iPhone, it was difficult. We passed it and then lost the internet connection on the phone, so had to use flashlights, but in the end found it okay. Good thing we were already on the right street, I’ll just say that.

A very friendly white cat was there to greet us, part Siamese and part tabby. It was nice to see a friendly cat, I missed my cat Lestat a lot on my trip so it felt good to pet a cat again. I ended up calling him Wheelchair, not sure how I came up with that name, something to do with Locke no doubt. I took these pictures later on, but the cat was there to greet us most times we came and went during our stay.

The house is all open concept, as well as part of it being open to the outside, meaning it was only screened in with no glass on the windows in the living room area. It’s decorated in a contemporary style, mixed with natural wood and nicely decorated, a nice blend of new and rustic (I'm feeling rather lazy right now to get pics up of the house, but I will first thing next blog entry).

Downstairs were the two bedrooms and bathrooms, I loved that my bathroom shower was outside, with two frosted glass walls, but otherwise open to the outdoors. The only drawback we both found was that none of the windows had any blinds or curtains, which would have been nice for the morning when the sun was shining in. As far as privacy, there was plenty of it so I didn’t worry about anyone being able to see inside. The house was near the end of a dead end street and felt like it was at the end of the world. Very cool.

There was no TV and no internet connection, but I really enjoyed being cut off from technology a bit. We sat in the dim lighting and listened to the night noises, and in the distance you could hear the ocean.

The Day We Met Josh

2010-02-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

I got up around seven – Paul was getting up around five every day, but that fit in with the time difference for him – and after parting ways for us to run separate errands, we headed back up to the North Shore. Our plan was to find Charlie’s banyan tree that Ethan strung him up in, back in Season One, and of course bang around our favorite part of the island.

We weren’t 100% sure where it was, only the general area, and knew we could go to Turtle Bay Resort to find out. After hitting the bathrooms there (on the North Shore when you see a decent bathroom use it, otherwise you’re stuck with the nasty and very questionable surfer bathrooms where you may or may not have toilet paper and don’t bother using the sink because it may not be there for one, much less with soap) Paul went inside to see if he could find out where it is, while I took a few pictures.

Paul found the location and surprise surprise, they were doing some filming there that day. The crew guys were pretty cool with us, obviously they’re all used to Lost fans coming around on a fairly regular basis. When we asked which tree there was the Charlie tree, the guy was pretty cryptic. He said something along the lines of how they use a lot of trees and it could be this one, but maybe it wasn’t. When we asked if we could take pictures, he said that he couldn’t say yes or no. It was public property and no actors were there, so Paul went and took a bunch of shots. Something weird happened to his camera though, because the pictures simply disappeared.

We hung around on the beach for a bit and saw a huge group of extras dressed up as Others a ways down. Then a bit later I glanced over my shoulder and happened to see a white van drive by, with none other than Terry O’Quinn sitting in the front seat. Right after that I saw Josh Holloway (Sawyer) come by, standing in the back of a pick-up truck. At the time I wasn’t 100% sure it was them but was pretty sure it was, and later learned that it was indeed them when another Lost fan confirmed he had seen them too. The beach we hung out at:

A couple women were there, who at first were okay, but they got kind of annoying with how disrespectful they were of everything. The guard kept on telling them to stand back, and they would, but then they’d creep right back up. Filming was going on, and one of the producers came over and asked us to move back a bit, since we were showing up on the film. We did, but these two women kept on creeping back over. They did get their picture taken with Josh, but did so annoyingly. I didn’t get my picture taken with him at that time, but did get a wave and a smile from him when I waved. I did take a picture of them getting their pic taken though:

Ana and her family had found their way to the beach by now and the five of us hung out, along with other Lost fans that were around. It was a closed set obviously, but we were staying on the beach and hanging out, not really doing much. Then we noticed a group of people walking out, followed by someone higher up on the Lost staff food chain. I didn’t really care at the time, but it turned out that Dennis Quiad was there learning how to surf. Talk about random! He was there with his (very young) wife, seriously we all thought she was his daughter, and apparently he needed to learn to surf for a movie he’s going to be in that’s filmed in Hawaii. I didn’t get my picture taken with him (kind of wish I had now), but I took a picture for Pat. Apparently to her Dennis Quaid is my John Locke, she was certainly getting the vapors afterwards and I was really happy for her.

Not much was going on other than that, and it was getting towards sunset. Paul was out taking pictures and I was standing around with a woman that lived nearby, she was there with her husband and three young daughters and we were talking about Lost and Hawaii and parenting. I glanced over my shoulder and who do I see walking on the shore? Josh Holloway.

Okay, I’ll admit that my initial reaction kind of rates on the lame scale. I turn to Michelle, the woman I was chatting with, and point him out, and she and I start running over there like a couple of fangirls. Paul was trying to be cool, he had seen him and was mentally trying to get us to stop, which we did thankfully. Josh had of course seen us, hard to miss two women running all excited out of the woods onto the beach. He had been walking along the beach and then cut back into the woods, and I thought we had blown it, but then he apparently changed his mind and came over. More like sauntering over, with a big old Sawyer smile on his face.

I was the first one there and was trying to not act like a tool, so sort of stood there not sure if I should go up to him or not. He kept on smiling as he walked towards me, I’m not sure if he was waiting on me to go over or what, but finally he came up to me and said “Hi, I’m Josh”. Because I don’t know who he is…by then the others were there, Pat calling her kids on their cells to get the hell back from wherever they had wandered off to. He then asked everyone if they wanted to do pictures and like we were going to say no to that.

When it was my turn I asked him how fatherhood was treating him (he and his wife had a baby girl last summer) and his whole face lit up and he told me it was great. I think it must have been a nice break for him to have a fan ask something like that instead of the usual ‘I’m such a huge fan!” he must hear all the time. I joked to him to wait for the toddler years and stepped away to let others get their picture taken, but he kept on talking parent stuff with me. He wanted to know if mine was out of the toddler stage and how old she was, then asked if one of the kids there was mine and I told him no, that mine was back home up in Canada. I of course think it’s very cool that he kept on chatting to me about that sort of thing, while taking pictures with other people, not that he didn’t pay them attention, but kept up the conversation with me regardless.

This is my picture with him, I was asking him how he was enjoying fatherhood when it was taken:

Unfortunately the other pictures taken didn’t come out very well, it was twilight, not the best time to take pictures with lighting like that, so I’m glad mine came out so well. Here are some that did turn out good, I felt really bad that Paul's didn't though.

Then the producer came over and it was time for him to get back to filming and by now the sun was setting in earnest. All of us decided to move inland a bit, around the side so we could see if we could watch any filming. As we were waiting, a van went by that contained Jorge and Emilie de Ravin (Claire). Shortly after that Evangeline Lilly (Kate) and Matthew Fox (Jack) walked by about two feet in front of us, but they didn’t stop or even make eye contact or anything. Understandable, they were getting ready to go to work and didn’t have time, but I still think a smile and polite nod would have been nice of them, considering they were literally two feet away from us. Ana would tell us a day or so later that they did meet Lilly and she wasn’t very pleasant, told them “I don’t do pictures” when they asked for one. Whatever I guess!

Anyway, we happened to be standing by a huge lighting crane, not the safest place I’m assuming, and were asked to find someplace else to watch for safety reasons. Since it was dark and late and had a long drive across the island, we decided to head out. On our way back to our hotel, nearly at our hotel I should say, I glanced out at the boats harbored in the marina there and just happened to see Searcher, the boat used by Penny to find Desmond. We naturally pulled in to take pics just to make sure and it was indeed the same boat when we compared it to screen shots. So glad I happened to see it!

This was our last day on Oahu, the next day we were flying to the Big Island.

Semi Lost Stuff And A Great Day On The Island

2010-02-24T14:23:00.001-05:00

No filming this day, a Sunday, so it was a day to do regular Hawaii stuff that wasn’t Lost-related. Oh okay, who am I kidding, the whole reason we went there was for Lost stuff, so we made our way back to the Hawaii film studio. During our talks with various fans, we learned that the sub was there, but we hadn’t seen it our first time around.

Sure enough, we did see the sub, a very cool thing for any Lost fan. The back of the studio butts up against both a park and another business and we had to climb down a rather steep hill to get the shots of the subs but this time we were wearing sneakers and not our flip flops so it was a tad bit easier than last time.

We also saw Jughead, which was there the last time we came to the studio, but somehow missed it. How, I don’t know, maybe because we were in a tither over seeing the FDW and trying to peek inside the building so we could see the latest prop being built. I must say that Jughead didn’t look nearly as impressive as it did on the show, especially with all the peeling paint. Still, cool to see both and we were still happy.

Our next stop was to hike Diamond Head, which wasn’t quite what we thought it’d be. Of course it was very busy with tourists, aka stupid humans, but I suppose that’s to be expected on a Sunday. Here's a picture of a sign there, with a good aerial shot of the crater:

Here’s a picture of me by the main park sign:

The hike itself was pretty easy in my opinion, but then I enjoy hiking mountains and have hiked tougher terrain in my time; this was basically a clear path up that wound up the side of the volcano. It was very hot and humid though, and another hazy day, but we had plenty of water with us.

A bird I saw at the beginning of the trail, not sure what it is but we certainly don't have them up North:

Other random shots on the way up:

So the hike was pretty easy up until we reached the Stairs From Hell – 74 steep and narrow steps – which were quickly followed by Tiny Claustrophobic Tunnel Of Terror, a very long and narrow low ceilinged tunnel that went right through the crater.

I was ahead of Paul a bit and started in, but then felt that panicky feeling squeezing my chest and turned around, telling him I wasn’t sure I could do it. I’m very claustrophobic, to the point where I feel like I could get a panic attack and have in the past. So I really wasn’t sure I could find it myself to go through that tunnel, but then I stood there for a second thinking to myself “Wait a minute Steph, when the hell are you ever going to be here again, hiking a volcano? Never.” Not only that, but hiking Diamond Head was on my must-do list while in Hawaii.

Still, at first I tried finding out how long the tunnel was so I could mentally prepare myself, but the women I stopped didn’t speak English very well. Paul was being really nice about it, it’s kind of embarrassing to be in a situation like that and he took me very seriously (maybe I looked freaked out? I dunno). In the end I found some courage and told him I’d see him on the other side and went in, keeping my head down so I couldn’t see over the visor of my hat, my eyes on the floor and just didn’t think about what I was doing. Let’s just say I walked very, very fast, nearly trotting and tried not thinking about where I was or the looming rock over my head that felt like it was pressing in on all side. I felt a bit panicky so was pretty close to breaking into a run, but then I was suddenly through the other side. Once through I decided not to think about how I’d have to go through it a second time around, but let’s just say I wasn’t looking forward to it.

There was a lookout we stopped at, with a nice breeze which we both sorely needed as it was friggen hot and we were sweating bullets.

All was well until we saw The Stairs From Hell Part Two: The Revenge Of The Stairs. Very steep and very narrow and seemingly never ending when you’re walking up them especially since by now everyone is sick of friggen stairs. Ninety-nine of the little bastards on the second set and it quickly turned into The Incident #3 (Incident #2 by the way was trying to find a stupid grocery store using google maps). Finally at the top:

Still, worth it for the view of Waikiki and just the fact that I was standing at the top of a crater like that. Even hitting my head on this big metal thing up there was worth these views:

The city of Waikiki, which is where we stayed. The boxes that you see are pillboxes, used in WWII:

Crater done and being super huge Lost fans, we then headed to find the place where in the show Desmond accidentally killed Inman, a place called China Wall. I remember watching that episode for the first time and telling Dave it’d be fun to walk around there, and sure enough, it most certainly is. By then the sky had cleared of haze to blue and we had a great time climbing around. I’ve never seen rock formations like that and probably never will again unless I go back.

After a bit of detective work via screen caps, we found the spot where that particular scene was filmed and had to geek out even further. Yes, I actually posed on the rocks like I was dead Inman and no, you cannot see the picture of it. It’s bad enough that there were other people there, no doubt wondering what the hell I was doing. It was also very uncomfortable and I skinned my elbow on the rocks, which is of course actually lava (duh). Still, we got some good pictures of non-geeky things too. A lot of them:

This is the spot where the actual scene was filmed:

As you can see the shoreline here is pretty crazy, the water not exactly safe to swim in. I'm pretty sure this is the area where the signs say not to pose with your back to the ocean, so you don't get swept in. It's pretty wild as you can see:

Once done with that we took off again, driving along the East side of the island on the coast. We saw the Pala Ferry Dock, which is on private property so you can’t get out there, but didn’t find a place to stop to take pictures even from afar. Both of us wished we had turned around to find a place to stop, but oh well I suppose.

Some shots I took on our drive:

Rabbit Island:

As we were driving along I saw a sign that said baby-back ribs for $7 so very urgently told Paul to stop, that I just wanted a ‘snack’. My snack turned out to be a huge plate of very yummy ribs, with rice and macaroni salad. A typical lunch plate, as they call it there, always has rice and mac salad. The mac salad sucked, but everything else was very tasty and we fully enjoyed our food. Not bad for seven bucks from a truck on the side of the road and I of course ate all my ribs, but then, I don’t think I’ve ever left a rib behind on a plate in my life.

Here’s me waiting for my order to come up. It smelled so good there, I’m surprised there’s not a puddle of drool at my feet:

After that we finally made our way back to our favorite place, that’s right, the North Shore. Clearly that was our favorite spot on the island, probably my second favorite place on the planet after Sterling Pond, part of the Long Trail, on top of Smuggler's Notch. We hit a Starbucks and I was feeling pretty tired and quiet (I had woken a bit hung over from the drink on the night before), so when we pulled off at a likely spot as the sun started to set. I sat by myself while Paul took some pictures, the one for my avatar for this blog is a picture from this spot, here are a couple more:

I really enjoyed sitting there watching the waves and just thinking as I inhaled my mocha java. Some guy was surfing out there and I watched him for a while as the sun finally slipped over the horizon.

My sunset pictures I took, they didn't come out great but are still decent:

Once Paul got the shots he wanted, and the sun set we left for our hotel; I was still really tired and flipped around the TV until I found Office Space, one of my favorite comedies. It was badly dubbed and I mean horribly. Some of the key terms that had us rolling were “What the hand” instead of “what the hell”, “Pound you to ash” instead of “pound your ass” and “Suck my eye”, I can’t even remember what that one was supposed to mean. We of course ran with those terms for the rest of our trip but by now we had already deduced that our maturity level had dropped about ten years from our general silliness.

The Second Best Day Of My Life

2010-02-22T12:17:00.001-05:00

We headed back up to the North Shore again the next day, we just had to. Both of us utterly fell in love with it and were on board with driving the hour one way it took from where we were staying in Waikiki to spend the day there again. Plus it’s us, we caught wind of filming being done up there and weren’t going to waste an opportunity to see some.

This time we were smart and parked at Papailoa instead of the five hundred mile trek from the other beach. Nothing was going on that we could see, no white trucks or vans or what appeared to be any filming, but that was okay. We were still very happy to be by the beach camp, and to just be on that particular beach period.

So we sat in some shade and just hung out. It was one of those great times where you can sit with someone in contented silence and it’s okay, no need to fill the air with meaningless chit chat, both of enjoying the view of the ocean and the waves rolling in. Again there were a bunch of sea turtles sunning themselves, and a huge bonus, a humpback whale breaching the distance. I pulled out my binoculars and watched it flap its fine and show off its tail, very cool to sit on an incredible beach in Hawaii and watch a whale breaching.

We met a bunch of people that we’d end up seeing throughout our trip, including the family of three we saw at Banditos (the day we got to watch the filming on the monitors), Ana, her brother Stephen and their mother Pat and they showed up. By then we knew that there was filming going on, but not at the beach camp, it was inland a bit, but not by much. We saw the trucks going by, could see the cast trailers in the woods, but no cast unfortunately.

One couple that we met were from Spain, very nice people and very enjoyable to talk to. He was a bit more of a Lost fanatic than she was and we spent a good amount of time talking about the show, the beach, Lost and things like that. Eventually they moved down the beach a bit, towards Eko’s church, while we hung out with the others. Paul decided to go back to the car for some food and more water while I stayed behind and I eventually wandered down to where the Spanish couple was.

As soon as he saw me he got very excited and came over in a full lather. He started saying to me, “You’re not going to believe it, it’s huge, it’s very huge, you won’t believe it!” Over and over, until I was just like “Tell me!” and his wife gave him a swat telling him to spit it out. Turned out that they were sitting there minding their own business when a woman came over and started chatting with them. She asked them if they watched Lost and if they were fans of the show; they said yes, that they flew in from Spain and extended their stay to go to the premier. She went on to say that her husband worked on the show and they figured it was some lacky, but no, she said it was none other than John Locke, and that she’d go see if he could come out and say hi on his break, which was coming up in a few minutes.

Well. You can imagine what kind of reaction that got out of me. Even writing it now is getting me all worked up as I remember it. When I looked down the beach I saw that Paul was coming back and was waving him over. I could tell he was hot and tired and only wanted to eat and wasn’t in the mood to walk up to Eko’s church. I can certainly tell you that I wasn’t about to walk down there to get him and miss out on Terry! So I kept on waving him over and he finally came up the beach and I told him that Terry O’Quinn may be coming out.

Not much time passed before Terry did come out, maybe ten minutes later. I was so excited and that’s putting it mildly, I couldn’t believe that my favorite actor was coming over to say hi to us, that I was actually meeting him in person. Okay, I’ll admit it that I was so thrilled and worked up that I was literally shaking, I know, I know, lame. But I’ve never met a famous person like that before, much less the one that plays my absolute favorite character on my favorite TV show and my adrenaline was pumping.

He was very, very gracious with all of us, by now a crowd had formed (kind of a bummer, one second it was the four of us the next about a dozen people were there from seemingly out of nowhere). He made sure to talk to everyone though, asking questions such as where we were from. His wife was also there; she was the one to take most of the pictures for people when he posed with them, a huge smile on her face the whole time. These are mine:

Terry's wife Lori using my camera to take a picture:

When Paul and I got our picture taken together with him, Paul told Terry he came down from CA, I said I came from Canada, but that I was with him. Terry kind of leaned down to me and said “Lucky guy” but of course Paul didn’t hear, not that he would since Terry is pretty low spoken. Anyway, all this means is that ‘lucky guy’ = Terry thinks I’m pretty. Good enough for me!

On top of the pictures, a bunch of us got his autograph. Paul had printed up a bunch of 8x10 color pictures of various Lost actors, but they were in his backpack, in a folder and though he tried to get them out as fast as he could, Terry had to get back to work. Unfortunately Paul didn’t get an autograph, but I did. I tore a piece of paper out of Ana’s journal she had with her and here it is:

Too bad he didn’t slip me his phone number, but oh well. I’m going to get it framed, along with the picture of him and I. Right now the autograph is in a safe place where I can’t spill water on it or anything terrible of that nature.

Once Terry was gone, we all sort of freaked out a bit from being so excited. Again I’ll have to admit to being a bit of a loser, maybe I sort of held my cool in front of O’Quinn, barely, minus the visible shaking that I know he and his wife saw when I handed my camera over, at least I was able to speak coherently to him. Afterwards there was some jumping around and light screaming I think, not just from me so I wasn’t the only tool in the group. Mostly we all just told each other story of how we just met Terry O’Quinn even though we were all right there witnessing it, and of course sharing pictures and email address to send each other pictures.

Eventually everyone calmed down and we settled back down in the shade. The day was beautiful and we continued watching sea turtles and whales, talking with the other Lost fans (basically bragging about meeting TOQ). Not sure how many hours passed, all day essentially, not that it mattered in such a location as that. A bunch of us compared stories and tips on filming, one of the guards was bored and talked to us to kill time.

Ana, Stephen and Pat were hanging out with us when suddenly some guy came over, asking if any of us had any water, that his friend had become overwhelmed by the heat and sun. We gave him some and she ended up being okay, apparently they (her and her boyfriend, plus this dude who asked us for water) had made the insane trek down the beach that we had done the day before, but with no water. Apparently they were told by that same surfer guy that the beach camp was just a little bit down the beach, someone really needs to tell that guy that he’s way off base with that.

Obviously all of us had one very important thing in common being Lost fans, and one thing I learned while in Hawaii that Lost fans can be very cool people indeed. Sure, some are know- it-all douches, but for the most part the other fans I met were very fun to hang out with. These three were there for a bachelorette and bachelor party, but wanted to see the beach camp and when they heard how we had met TOQ and that he was there filming, decided to stick around in the hopes of seeing him.

The last man I’ll mention was an English guy in Hawaii on his honeymoon, and as the afternoon wore on he was getting more and more antsy, since he had told his new bride he’d be back at a certain time and he kept on staying later and later. I found it amusing and figured if she had married the guy knew he was Lost fanatic, turns out he has a blog or something in the UK and goes to Hawaii on a semi-regular basis for spoilers, one of the guards told us there’s a picture of him up in the production office as one of the ‘people to look out for’. We had met him the day before and he drew a very inaccurate map in my journal, not even sure now what the map was for now actually. Possibly a Starbucks, but I really can’t remember.

All in all a good day...

That was about to get even better. Soon we noticed some action going on by a snack table that was visible through the foliage. Turned out to be Terry O’Quinn on a break, so we all rubber necked and took pictures. Mine were pretty fuzzy and not overly impressive.

All of us were standing around in a group, about ten of us I’d say and though we didn’t see any actual filming, we could hear it. Gunshots, the director yelling “cut!” and things like that. Filming was about done for the day, it was around five thirty or so at this point, and low and behold, who was coming over to say hi again? You guessed it, Terry O’Quinn, but this time he was dragging Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond) to come greet us too.

Oh joy, not only did I get to meet Terry once, but twice! In one day! And now Desmond! Who is totally hotter than I originally thought. Again, Terry was great with us fans, making small talk, joking around. Poor Paul’s camera was acting up so he couldn’t take any pictures, but mine was working fine. I let others that weren’t there earlier in the day get their picture taken, especially these four that were supposed to be elsewhere but had kept on hanging out hoping to see Terry O’Quinn.

The English guy, he was telling them about his new bride waiting for him and they were laughing about it.

The group of three that were two hours late meeting friends on the other side of the island an hour away. I'm sure it was totally worth it for them:

I could tell that they (the actors) had to go soon from the way they kept on looking over their shoulders, so I hopped over to get my picture taken with both of them. Ahhh....the perfect sandwich with me as the filling:

They were both hot and sweaty, they both still had their makeup on and Cusick looked like he came out of the wrong side of a fight. It’ll be cool to see what scene that was being filmed when the episode airs. They took a few pictures with a kid that could have been an extra on the show, he was dressed as an Other:

Then they had to leave...here's a nice butt shot for you Desmond fans.

I’m happy to report that there was no lameness on my part the second time around, just me being very happy.

What a thrill for Paul and I to not only meet our favorite actor on the show once, but twice in the same day. Let’s just say we went back to our hotel and celebrated with a good old fashioned drink on.

The Island Finally Decided To Test Us Or The Post With A Gazillion Pictures

2010-02-16T11:09:00.002-05:00

There was no new filming that we heard of again, but both of us were eager to head up to the North Shore. This is a place where a lot of Lost had been filmed including the original beach camp of the Losties, among other things. We also planned on swinging by the film studio, which wasn’t far from where we were staying, to see if any props were outside. We were both hoping it wouldn’t include twenty u-turns like all our previous driving experiences so far.

After drinking our coffees and tooling around with the panoramic settings on our cameras to test things out, we left. Thankfully it was pretty straight forward to the film studio, right next to Diamond Head, the extinct volcano on Oahu.

There was a handy public park by a community college that we were able to park in, that butted up right against the film studio's back lot. At first it just looked like a bunch of junk, which admittedly a lot of it was – until we saw parts of the Temple. We recognized the hieroglyphics on them, not sure what scenes these were used in, maybe the one where Richard took Jack and Sayid to Jughead? (By the way,if some of the pictures look like they're cut off, just click on them to see full size. Guess I need to size them a bit smaller to fit in the parameters here.)

I got really excited when I saw the outriggers used in S5 when everyone was skipping through time and being shot at (still wondering who was chasing them).

Then the biggest thrill: seeing the Frozen Donkey Wheel, just sitting there outside against the wall, lounging around. Seriously, we did not expect to see something that cool, the device Ben used to move the island.

Not sure what this was used for in the show, but it’s obviously Lost-oriented.

There was an open door that we tried to peek in where they were building a new prop, but couldn’t see much. The yellow drum thing next to it is also a prop, used in The Incident when they were drilling at the Swan station.

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Obviously a new prop was being made, but the angle was bad and the lighting terrible. Not that we cared, we were still happy about what was outside in plain view. Too bad we couldn’t take something as a souvenir, say the Frozen Donkey Wheel, but that would make a pretty weird carry on item on a plane.

Once done with that it was off to the North Shore. On our way we had planned to hit Dillingham airfield where we heard the fuselage from season one is stored. It’s a small airport, for private planes not commercial flights (think rich dudes with their Cessnas) and as we drove by we didn’t see much, but were determined to find it. There were two entrances and neither said it was private property and there were no “no trespassing” signs, so we drove right on in. I’ll admit it was pretty weird to drive around an active runway, around the back like we had every right to be there (which I suppose we did since it’s public property), until we found in the waaaaay back a fenced off area with old and managed plane parts.

There was a huge covered something that was very obviously part of a fuselage. The fuselage, it could only be the one from Lost, but unfortunately covered in a big black tarp. There were signs posted to keep out around the back, so we didn’t venture around like good little law abiding citizens. In hindsight, I wish we had just gone around the back, as we heard others had, but oh well. Here’s one of the pictures that I did take though:

One very cool find was the plane that Eko burned, the drug runner plane, the one Locke had Boone climb up to and Boone heard the radio call from Bernard. We double checked screen caps and confirmed that this was indeed the plane.

Now, it was incredibly hot outside, full sun with little in the way of a breeze, plus there was only so much to do there, so we left. In Hawaii, especially on the North Shore, there’s an abundance of places to turn off so you can hit one of the endless beaches there, and that’s exactly what we did. The views are just incredible, the water green and so blue it almost doesn’t seem real. Just gorgeous. And you guys wanted pictures, well, here they are.

I love this shot I took, of my footsteps on the shore. Too bad a couple of stupid humans are in the shot.

And finally some of me walking around the shore.

I was really enjoying walking in the surf, since I live inland it’s not like I get to see the ocean every day, so whenever I do it’s a thing I don’t take for granted and I fully appreciate it. I would have appreciated it even more if I hadn’t gotten soaked when a huge wave came crashing in too. My own fault, I saw it coming but didn’t get out of the way fast enough and was more worried about my camera than my clothes. Thankfully it was hot and sunny and didn’t take too long for my shorts to dry out when I stood butt-first into the sun. To kill time while waiting to dry off, I ate some of my sandwich I had brought along (very glad I brought my soft cooler with me to Hawaii and was able to squish it down in my suitcase; we used it daily.)

Then Paul noticed something, a tree that looked suspiciously familiar. Since Hawaii is known for its car break ins, we didn’t want to leave the car there, so hopped back in and drove down to investigate. Sure enough, it was Christian’s tree, as seen in early S1 when Jack was chasing him into the jungle. I’m sure you all remember it, and geeks that we are, I stood to pose. This particular beach we were hanging out at is also where the premier was filmed.

I guess originally there were two trees there, but by now it had been years and storms had their way, plus someone apparently burned one down or so we were told. Bummer. So it looks a bit different than on the show by now, but at least we confirmed it was the right tree.

Next on our list was Camp Erdman, a YMCA, or as you all may know it: New Otherton. Instead of walking around a busy camp – at the time there were buses loading up with kids and a lot of staff walking around – we went to sign in and make sure it was okay to take pictures. We meaning Paul while I waited outside. This sign also prompted us to sign in at the office, you know, since it says to sign in and all.

The place where Lost had done its filming was across the street and instantly we recognized the Barracks, extremely ‘weathered’ now. One of the staff said the crew did that to the buildings a few months back, made them look older than they really are, and after watching What Kate Does and the scene with Sawyer and Kate there, I now know why.

We wandered around taking a gazillion pictures and here are a few. Alright, more than a few:

Me in New Otherton, looking dorkily happy to be there. Which I was of course.

The insides of each cabin is just a bunch of bunk beds, a typical camp for children, but I think we all knew the inside of the Barrack houses were all filmed elsewhere. Still, it was fun to recognize the buildings from Lost, to see the playground (empty of course), the gazebo, the paved pathways and everything else. We also saw the rec room where Kate was being held, where Locke came in to say goodbye and tell her he was going with the Others.

Once done with our ogling of Dharmaville, we bought some ice cream and chowed it down while sitting in the shade before deciding to leave. By now we were hungry for real, so found some random place to eat lunch and as we were tooling along in the car afterwards, happened to spot one of the white vans that Lost uses to shuttle around actors and crew. Not thinking it was really them but wanting to double check just to make sure, we drove over and sure enough, saw the tell-tale yellow shirt of a Lost security guard. It happened to be on one of the many surfer beaches, so we parked and went over to talk to him.

He was very talky, most of the guards for Lost are very friendly I found, but then, when you’re standing around by yourself for an eight hour shift you must get bored as hell. He was long winded, but the gist of it was that he was guarding the entrance to a huge area that houses seven active sets for Lost, including the beach camp. Since all beaches are public they can’t prevent people from walking out to the beach camp, so he told us where it was, just a short drive up the road.

Still, we were suspicious that he gave the information so willingly and weren’t sure if he was just trying to throw us off. Some surfer guy that was sitting under a tent had overheard our conversation and he told us that it was just a short walk up the beach from where we were, not far at all. He was incredibly friendly, gave us bottled water, chatted for a bit and told us he gave surfing lessons and had apparently taught several of the actors on Lost (not sure I believe that one). We thanked him and after a very short deliberation decided to walk up the beach according to the surfer guy’s instructions, since we figured the security guard wouldn’t give us easy directions to find the beach camp.

Well, that surfer guy was way off base. Or maybe a short walk to him differed greatly from what we considered a ‘short walk’ through sand and in direct sunlight in the middle of the day in Hawaii. We walked. And walked. And walked. In the baking sun with no breeze, sweating our asses off through sand, the only shade scant and infrequent. Anyone who has ever walked on sand knows what a workout it is, and even though I’m in fairly decent shape, it was trying, especially for a Northern girl that had recently left winter and was now in summer (it was 80F that day). The island was testing our faith in how much we really wanted to find the beach camp set.

Thankfully we had plenty of water, one thing we made sure of before setting out. Still, it was so damn far, we had already gone far enough where it was foolish to turn back, and we kept on thinking ‘just around the next point’. Then I saw it, not the beach camp but something almost better: a new prop being built. A HUGE one, which I won’t talk about here but we were pretty damn excited about it and took many pictures and were the first to break it to the Lost world, via Ryan from the Transmission, and eventually to DarkUFO.

Our trek was well worth it after seeing that and we found renewed energy to continue on to find the beach camp. I’m not sure how far we hiked, at least a mile or more one way, which I know isn’t that far but feels tripled the distance when it’s in sand and full Hawaiian sun. Let’s just say that even with 85 sunblock on, I ended up getting sunburned that day. A ways past the prop we saw it, a loooong ways away but we finally found it: the beach camp.

Eko’s church:

Lostie’s Graveyard (they have a sprinkler going on that and the church, to try to green it up):

And finally, the Beach Camp. The orange fence is to keep us geeks off the set:

The beach camp is one of the places I had really, really wanted to see on my trip, so I was ecstatic to be there. In the show all the beach stuff was always my favorite, it brings me back to the early days of Lost before the Others, before the Barracks and the freighter people and time travel. Granted, the original beach camp is gone forever and this was the second one, the weathered and abandoned one, but still. It was a huge thing for me to see in person while it’s still around. Even fenced off and closed to the public, I didn’t care.

I suppose I'll mention here that the turn off the guard told us about, Papailoa, turned out to be about a five minute walk up the beach from the Beach Camp. I can't really say we walked for nothing the looooooooong way, since we did see that huge prop being built, but suffice to say that the next time we would come back here, we'd park on Papailoa. It's a dead end street - incredibly nice, million dollar homes I might add - but there's also a public parking spot towards the end of the street, that puts you very close to the set.

There were also a bunch of sea turtles around, we saw several sunning themselves on the shore. They’re huge, a couple hundred pounds I’ll bet. Paul took this picture of me standing next to one for size comparison. I’m a 5’6” average size woman.

We hung around for quite a while on the North Shore, for regardless of one of the most famous Lost sets, this particular part of the island is simply amazing. If I could just pick up my whole family and make an easy move there, I would. Yes, we’d have to independently wealthy, but a girl can dream.

No Lost Stuff Today, Sorry

2010-02-11T10:40:00.000-05:00

The only news about filming that we caught wind of through our little birds was that it was what sounded like a huge scene with a ton of actors…but on private property. We’re not above hanging around outside a restaurant on a public street for hours on end, but draw the line at trespassing. Not that we’d get anywhere anyway, the Lost security guards do their job well, and we’re not psychos about it anyway.

Our first stop was to have breakfast at a restaurant that was in the tour guides Must See list, a place called Shore Bird. It was right on the ocean, the dining area literally open to the elements, which was of course the beach and the sea. We had a couple of birds keeping us company too.

So far so good as far as atmosphere is concerned, but we were both pretty disappointed in the buffet. Not at all what I’d call a Must and we weren’t impressed. After eating there we walked around a bit and were coincidentally by the store that sold the rings I was going to pick up for Dave and I. Super cool to finally have the rings we really want. They made of titanium and Koa wood - a tree the only grows in Hawaii and the wood used to be only reserved for royalty.

Wish we had gone into these shops that we saw as we meandered around, the names alone made me curious.

Since we weren’t sure if they were done the Locke scene or not, we then swung by the school to double check and everything was gone, including the base camp. No major let down, we expected that and had alternate plans to see some of the Hawaiian sights anyway.

Our first stop was driving to Kane'ohe on the East side of the island, which is where the Valley of the Temples is located. This is where the Byodo-In temple is located, or as you all may know it, the place where Sun and Jin got married in Lost. The drive there was gorgeous and I know these aren’t the best since they were taken from a car and it was very hazy, but the view was incredible.

Like I said and you can see, it was very hazy that day and like a couple of idiots we didn’t go in to take pictures of the temple. Why? Because we said that we’d come back and do it. So unfortunately no pictures of the temple, or of anything of the Valley of the Temples really. Oh wait, there’s these that I took we were leaving the parking lot we ate lunch in (and I was introduced to the extreme yumminess of Chicken Katsu), which overlooked the Valley.

And of course the road leading to the Byodo-In temple…where we decided, nope, let’s just come back to the other side of the island another day never mind that we’re RIGHT HERE now. We both regretted not going in because it was hazy out and we were worried about not getting good pictures.

So much for that.

Next we hit the Pali Highway and again seemed to think we’d be making the drive back because of the haze. Wrong again. Still, the views are incredible here with the jagged mountains and valley and the sea. There are a few lookouts, which some are easy to miss since the signs aren’t posted in advance to give warning...a very common thing in Hawaii. One we blew by (the speed limit was around 50mph I think) so we hit the next one we came across. Again, sorry for the picture quality, but it was hazy out that day.

Me enjoying the view. Well, posing for a picture anyway but the view behind me is quite nice.

We left that lookout to go back to the one that we passed earlier. This proved to be more difficult than we thought, since there’s no place to do a U-turn, traffic was thick and fast and we had to drive back down the highway a lot farther than we thought. There was one lookout we saw, but only pulled in quickly because the view was whatever so we didn’t stop. Finally we found a place to turn around and drove back up the highway, finding the turn off. It was a long and winding road, going through thick jungle with some SUV pulled off to the side in a place you wouldn’t ordinarily pull off (sketchy to say the least), an old hot tub thrown away by someone (because this is a spot to unload a hot tub, out in the middle of nowhere?), and finally we came to the lookout…which turned out to be the same lookout we had stopped to take pictures of. So much for that!

By now it was getting on in the day and we decided to head back to the city, hitting Costco on the way. Our plan was to get some food and water for the rest of our stay, so Paul did a search on his phone and plugged it into the map. Only, the first location brought us to a very residential neighborhood and where the map indicated Costco should be was in fact the sheer face of a cliff. Time for plan B and we were following the directions…where the street ended abruptly in a concrete wall instead of going under the highway. This was just getting better and better.

After a quick turn around and re-routing, we were on our way to the second Costco. All was going well until we realized that the map said it was located in the same lot as the Iolani Palace. Somehow this just seemed wrong to us…. Gee, wonder why?

It had turned into our own little Incident, but in the end we did eventually find a Costco, but by then we were wiped out and hot and only wanted to get back to the hotel. We walked around Costco for a bit and got a couple of things, but realized that for the time we had left and only two of us there, there was no way we’d eat everything. A thing we probably should have deduced before going in.

After getting some water and garlic shrimp, we hit a grocery store, then back to the hotel and some refreshing adult beverages.

Ah, Finally some Lost Stuff!

2010-02-10T12:40:00.002-05:00

I woke up feeling refreshed and excited, if really needing coffee because, well, it’s me and I can barely breathe without the stuff, much less function properly. While Paul was showering so we could get going with our day, I sat out on the balcony with my cup of coffee and tried to write in my journal. Let’s just say not much got written since I was seriously distracted with the view and kind of stared out at nothing for a while until I hopped in the shower myself.

Finally, it was time to go. I won’t go into major detail about it, but suffice to say that it’s very annoying to drive around parts of Hawaii. All we wanted was to get on the highway. Sounds easy, right? If only it was so, but it’s downtown Waikiki. Two of the ramps were closed with no signage, just a cop car blocking the way. So we found ourselves paralleling the highway looking for an on-ramp, saw some old lady pull out across two lanes of a busy street without looking, and a potential place for Dave to work if we were ever to move to Oahu:

Wait until you see the picture of the potential work place we saw on the North Shore.

Finally we made our way to where we had caught wind of some filming being done. Again, without giving away too many spoilers, we located where the scene was being filmed at an elementary school and found a decent place to park in the surrounding neighborhood. Once there we asked the producer if it was okay if we watched (he appreciated us asking and was very cool about it) and staked out a decent spot that wasn’t in the way. At first it didn’t seem like anything huge was being filmed, but it was very cool to see what goes on behind the scenes during filming. It looked like nothing spectacular was going on basically...until we saw that it was Locke-stunt scene that is. I’ve put the details of this scene in the spoiler section of my site if you’re really interested in finding out exactly what we saw being filmed.

Aside from giving away the scene, we both got to see Terry O’Quinn (Locke) lying on the ground. Funny that his stunt double was wearing a light blue shirt and him a dark blue, but thankfully someone on the set noticed and he changed for continuity. We were to say the least very thrilled to see a scene being filmed of our favorite actor and character on the show.

It’s kind of hard to see, but he’s lying on the ground in front of the guy with the khaki shorts on.

They broke for lunch and we decided to see if we could find their ‘base camp’. Well, we did and as we drove by I nearly had an aneurysm when I saw Terry O’Quinn walking out of a trailer. After a quick turn-around we parked across the street and it was a near thing for me to go tearing ass across the street when I saw TOQ again, but thankfully Paul talked me out of it. Bad enough we were sitting there like that, much worse if I ran over like a crazy woman so I settled for snapping a couple of pictures. They’re obviously taken from a car and not high quality, but at the time I was just too excited to see TOQ so close (he looks a lot farther in the pictures than it was in real life).

It was still very cool to see the trailers for Hurley and Desmond and to later see them walking out to go into makeup, or get food or whatever (didn't take pics of that). We saw Jorge Garcia leave with his little Chihuahua in a pink blanket, cute that he brings his dog to work like that, but then, that wasn’t the only dog I saw on set (no, not Vincent either.)

From there we left as that particular scene was done being filmed and it was onto the next we had heard about at a restaurant downtown. On the way we saw one of the most random things ever in the city: a huge dead boar strapped to the back of a pickup truck.

The guys saw me staring at them, and at first the one in the passenger seat was giving me an odd and slightly dirty look, but when I smiled and gave him the thumbs up sign he grinned back. From what I understand, hunting boar is serious business and they’re pretty nasty prey. Of course Locke makes it look so easy on the show…

After our lunch where I finally learned how to use chop sticks and actually was able to eat with them the first time, it was back to watch some filming at the restaurant we had heard about. We got there and all the gear was set up outside, the scene being filmed inside, but we hung around and chatted with other Lost fans that showed up. This particular scene was a Hurley scene, but it’s very telling and again, check my site if you want the full details.

Eventually we moved from one side to the other for a better vantage point – originally we were standing by a Denny’s but thought we’d have a better view from the other side. We got to talking with someone that worked on Lost, a man I’d rather keep nameless since he did a huge favor for us and that was letting us go over behind the director and watch what was being filmed inside on the monitors. He also gave us the low-down on what was being filmed and some details (see spoiler section) about the scene and who was in it. Now, I got the impression this isn’t the norm, but hey, we weren’t complaining. All we had to do was watch and keep our mouths shut, which is exactly what we did. Still, felt like winning the lottery. Well maybe not that big but big enough for hard core Lost fans.

Then they broke for lunch and we backed off a bit; everyone was eating there at the food tent including the actors, though Jorge seemed content to text his heart out since that’s pretty much all he did. Paul and I were standing there minding our own business, some other Lost fans were nearby (we’d actually keep on running into them during our stay), and suddenly I’ve got some kid that was an extra on the show trying to hit on me. Really, he did come out of nowhere; I’d peg him at sixteen or seventeen, obviously still in high school.

Now, I know I don’t necessarily look my age which in my mid-thirties, but I certainly don’t think I could pass for my late teens or early twenties. Apparently this kid didn’t care, or really thought I was younger than I really am, for he starts trying to impress me with what he knows about the show. Which of course I already knew, being the Lost geek/fanatic that I am. Finally I dropped the term ‘my husband’ into conversation and he eventually went away. Next to me Paul asked if I wanted some more alone time with him and if so, that was okay. The other three Lost fans – Ana, Stephen and their mother Pat – were also laughing at the “twelve year old” hitting on me. We all got a good laugh out of it and I’m still not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that he has so much confidence.

Things wound down on filming and we saw the actors leave, so decided to call it a day ourselves. Besides, we were hungry and ready to go back to the hotel and chill out. For our first full day in Hawaii, a trip that was planned around Lost, it was off to a very good start.

Inside joke time:

Crazy Hair Guy
New Moon
Twelve Year Old

I’m sure you can all deduce what the last one means. For the rest, you’ll have to ask. ;)

The Night That Leads To Day One

2010-02-09T10:30:00.001-05:00

My traveling companion Paul was already there waiting for me, he tossed my suitcase in the trunk and we made for our hotel. I was tired yet giddy, glad to be off a plane and already enjoying the sights of a new city, if it wasn’t what I expected it to look like. He had plugged in our hotel into his iPhone – a device I would quickly fall in love with – and we had little trouble finding our way, even though it is a bit of a confusing city to drive in. Anyone who’s ever driven in Boston will know what I mean.

Our first stop was by a Popeye’s, which in the same lot happened to be a grocery store and some other places to eat, like L&L (which I never did get to eat at). Popeye’s was closed, the other places were closing, and it was then we really understood that everything really does close early in Hawaii. I’m talking seven or eight o’clock at night closing times, odd for such a place that depends on tourism. Even in the touristy areas things close really early.

Paul was excited to show me that he met Jorge Garcia that day (Hurley), and got to see the tail end of some filming while he was killing the four hours waiting for my flight to arrive. Very cool, he got some good pictures of him and Jorge, but I’ll keep things spoiler free as to what he saw being filmed. Mostly I was just really excited at his good luck to meet someone from Lost right away – little did we know that this would foreshadow major good luck as far as Lost stuff was concerned for both of us.

We decided to hit the grocery store, both of us too tired to do a big shop, but hungry and especially wanting some booze. Now, those that know me know that there are only three things that really annoy me about living in Canada: the pepperoni, how we can’t use debit cards as credit cards (such as for shopping online) and how you can’t buy beer or wine in the grocery store like civilized human beings. So you can imagine my joy and excitement to not only see beer and wine, but liquor as well! And cheap!

After making short work of picking out our booze and food, it was off to our hotel. Since it was night there wasn’t much to see, oh alright I'll admit that I was marveling over palm trees since let’s face it, the closest I get to that living in Canada is seeing them on TV. Actually, I was really taking in all the flora, since it’s just so vastly different than from where I live now or where I grew up. Anyway, we got to our room and threw open the sliding glass door to check out the view.

Okay, so it was dark at the time and I took that picture the next day, but you get the idea. Nice view of the ocean and marina, and of a nearby park that we kept on saying we wanted to go see but never got around to. Both of us were a bit miffed to find out that a big scene for Lost was shot right at the very marina we would have overlooked a week before we arrived. What a bummer for us, huh?

We settled in by changing into pajamas, mixing up some drinks and digging into our food. My grocery store sandwich was actually pretty good, that or I was just too famished to care. The only thing I didn’t like about it is how everything kept on squirting out the other side whenever I took a bite. Not that the sandwich lasted very long.

A few drinks later and closing in on midnight, we decided to call it a night. Neither of us wanted to A. get seriously drunk and be hung over the next day or B. sleep in too late. Thankfully we both fell asleep quickly considering how jazzed up we were to finally be in Hawaii, and of course all our Lost-related plans, which we were going to start first thing the next morning.

Note: I promise the Lost-stuff starts in the next post.

Day Almost One: Travel Day AKA Flights From Hell

2010-02-08T11:02:00.003-05:00

I should have known what to expect when I boarded the plane at Syracuse. For starters, it was snowing, not a lot, but snow is never a good sign no matter what the situation is unless it has to do with skiing or snowboarding. I was doing neither and sat by the window feeling nervous. Everyone knows I’m an anxious flier, and this was no exception, especially when the pilot came on and said we needed some de-icing.

At about this time I wished I hadn’t gotten so into that show Mayday (on Discovery, not sure if it’s only aired in Canada or available in the States too) and thought about one plane crash that was caused from being de-iced twice and sitting on the runway too long. Not exactly pleasant thoughts to be having just before takeoff while being de-iced, so I switched tactics and noticed the time and started thinking about the fact that I could very well miss my connection in Detroit, since it was taking so fricken long to get going.

I wasn’t very far off from that either. Once we took off, there was minor turbulence but then the rest of the flight was smooth. Only, now I really was freaking out because it was taking so long to get to Detroit. Every time I look at my watch I just knew how close I was cutting it, but what can you do in a situation like that? Nothing but sit back and hope for the best.

By the time we landed I knew it was crunch time in a big way. My luggage was going all the way to Hawaii so thankfully I didn’t need to deal with that. Instead I found a map of the airport and realized I needed to be two terminals away from where I was – and they were already boarding my plane. Crap.

There was only one option and that was to run, so I ran as fast as I could through that bloody airport. I did feel kind of foolish, but hey, I wasn’t the only one running and it’s not like no one has ever seen someone doing a mad dash like that to make a flight. People were cool about it, got right out of my way as I ran up those moving pathway thingys, ran up the escalators, out of breath and panting. I’m not sure how I managed to stand still in the tram, which is of course faster than a human can run but I was ready to give running a shot since my nerves were so jacked up.

Once off the tram I took off again and I’m so not a runner, even if I am in shape and work out regularly, my lungs were burning. I was also wearing my hoody sweatshirt, a fleece and my backpack, so I was sweating like you read about. To top it off, I had to pee really badly, but didn’t want to take the time to do even that, and good thing I didn’t or else I really would have missed my flight. After running through this trippy tunnel under the runway (very trippy, including the weird music and lights) I finally came to where my gate number was and rounded the corner, still running. Some cleaning woman looked up at me and asked. “Twenty-eight Thirty-three?” meaning my flight number of course. I only nodded since I was too out of breath and panicked since I knew time was seriously running out. She only said one word: “Run.” So I did.

I was the last person on the plane, they closed the door behind me when I boarded. Talk about the all time close shaves of missing a flight. I didn’t care, I was just glad to be on board and the other passengers were kind of laughing when they saw me. It was pretty obvious from how out of breath I was that I had to book it to the gate. Not too shabby since my other flight had landed less than ten minutes ago. Once in my seat I promptly took off my fleece and sweatshirt, since I was sweating bullets. I had the aisle seat, which was annoying but whatever I guess. My original intentions were to slap on my ipod and ignore everyone else around me, but it turned out my seating companions were pretty cool guys.

It was two of them, Tommy, a twenty one year old on his way back home from a bad year spent in Rhode Island, and Kenny, a guy around my age on his way to LA on business. The three of us got along great, chatting about music and movies among other things, and that’s always a good thing on a long flight across country. Tommy did open up to us about some things that you would think freshly met strangers wouldn’t…such as how he met this girl on a WoW chat board so moved across country to be with her, only it turned out she was bi-polar, cheated on him, and got jealous when he called a friend honey-bunny, so burned all his clothes. Let’s just say Kenny and I were giving each other many sideways WTF looks during all this.

Regardless of that, he’s still a good kid, just young, and considering his mother died unexpectedly a year before, I get it. Besides, on a flight where you’re stuck in your seat for the most part, you make the best of the situation, and it wasn’t all bad, we had some good talks. One thing that sticks out especially to me is the three of us looking out the window at the Grand Canyon. Very cool.

The flight had been pretty good, all things considered, until the captain put on the fasten seat belt sign and came over the intercom to alert us that we were approaching some ‘mild to moderate turbulence’. I didn’t know this was pilot code for ‘get ready for a half hour of sheer terror while we may or may not crash in a nosedive-death spiral into the ocean’.

Mild to moderate my ass! At first it was just the regular shaking that comes with turbulence, but that didn’t last long. If only it would have been only that. Outside it was dark and raining, not that I was spending too much time looking since what I saw didn’t exactly make me feel better. Especially when Tommy was going on about how the rain was going sideways, granted, that’s probably how rain always looks from inside an airplane, but still. It looked ugly out there.

Anyway, the ‘mild’ turbulence quickly went to the ‘oh shit we’re going to die horribly’ levels. Not only was the plane shaking, but it was swaying from side to side, the wings tipping up and down, and I lost count of how many microbursts we hit where we’d just drop a few hundred free straight down so your stomach flies out your mouth. I’ll fully admit I’m a wimp when it comes to any amusement park rides, but at least with those you’re not 30,000 feet up, and those only last a few minutes. Our flight still had a half hour until landing.

Basically I clutched onto the armrests with both hands and really, I was pretty terrified. I wasn’t the only one though, by now the plane was dead silent, no one was talking (which is what dead silent usually means lol) and when I glanced around, I could see that I wasn’t the only one who was scared. One woman had her eyes tightly closed and she was grabbing onto her arm rests too, some other dude that had previously been sleeping looked just as freaked out. We were seated near the front, one row back from where the flight attendants sit to land, by the bathrooms. They were calm at first, but I’m sure in flight attendant training school or whatever is they take they’re told that no matter what, to look at ease.

Well, they weren’t at ease for long because after ten minutes they both put down the magazines they were ‘reading’ and one of them wasn’t looking very happy, in fact she was looking pretty pale to me. The plane was still all over the place and by now I was clutching onto Kenny, but that’s okay since we were already old friends considering our tastes in music and how we were both wearing DMB shirts. Hell, he was nervous too, even though he kept on laughing, his palms were just as sweaty as mine were. Poor Tommy sat with his head between his knees and covering his head with both hands, eyes closed. He really freaked out when the flight attendant asked the guy in front of us if he could see the shore. Apparently we had flown around LAX over the ocean to land, due to the wind direction I assume. Tommy thought she was asking if we could see the wing, like that would fall off or something, I dunno what he was thinking, he was pretty freaked out.

Landing was very rocky as you can imagine, but we finally did land. When we did everyone started to clap, you could just feel the tension leaving the air once we were safe on the ground. I must say, I’ve never heard of people clapping after a landing before, but after that hell ride, I’m not surprised. Tommy just looked at us and goes “Dude, that was really fucking scary. I mean, I was really scared!” Just glad I wasn’t the only one!

I’ll note now that later I heard from Paul that there were tornado warnings in the area. No kidding! I’m surprised we didn’t see Dorothy’s house winging by as we landed. On my flight home from Hawaii, I happened to sit next to a woman who’s daughter happened to be on my flight (very weird coincidence). Her daughter is pretty well traveled, and told her mom it was the worst experience of her life and that she threw up when we landed. So wimp as I am, I guess I had good reason to be petrified that last half hour. Why we weren’t re-routed, I don’t know. The woman who’s daughter was on my flight told me that her own flight was re-routed away from LAX, same day/time as mine. Maybe we were one of the last flights in during that storm, I dunno.

After getting off the hell-flight, my first stop was for food. Well, I texted some people as I checked out what was to be had for food, such as my husband and friend Michelle. My next flight out was in that same area so no mad dashes through the airport thankfully, and I had over an hour to relax anyway. I picked a restaurant I wished I hadn’t, but it was empty (wonder why) and the others were full, so I figured I’d have faster service. My sandwich was just god-awful, even by airport standards. The beer was good old fashioned Sam Adams though and I had two of those, but figured I deserved it after that last half hour of my flight.

The last leg of my trip was about to go underway. I boarded a very full flight to Honolulu, which included some high school volleyball team. I think they won, if not first place than something because I saw some sort of trophy, and they were all in very high spirits. At first I was supposed to sit smack dab in the middle of them in the tail, but one of them asked me to switch so I did. When I went to that seat, they asked me to switch again, and I said as long as I have a window I didn’t care.

The flight was pretty unremarkable with the exception of someone seated near me wearing patchouli. Really, who the hell wears patchouli on a plane?? Or wears it period? It’s one of the heaviest smelling scents there is and also one of the most offensive for those with a nose and any normal sense of smell, that stuff reeks. To top off that loveliness, someone around me was passing gas endlessly, the silent but deadly kind that stink of eggs. Hmmm…it’s a tossup over dealing with that for six hours over a half hour of severe turbulence. Still undecided which was worse. I just hope no one thought it was me stinking up the plane.

We followed the sun setting and that was nice to watch from a plane, though it set fully before we reached the islands. Finally we were coming into our landing and I was so excited to finally be there, both to actually be in Hawaii since it’s a place I’ve always wanted to go, and also because my butt hurt so much from sitting in an airplane seat for so long. By this time, I had been traveling for over nineteen hours, including layovers, but still. Long ass day.

The airport there is incredible, all open to the outside and let me just say that the outside in Hawaii is very nice indeed. I went from winter to summer in an instant (well, barring the nineteen plus hour travel time from the north east that is), and feeling the humidity of Hawaii felt great for my skin and sinuses. Anyone who knows anything about winter knows how dry it is, it just felt so good to feel that moisture in the air. I had to shed my layers of course, and I was pretty tired, but it just felt great to finally be there. I remember walking down a catwalk and looking out at the palm trees, smelling the warm air…just awesome. When I left Ottawa, it was very cold and gray, seeing lush greenery was pretty sweet.

All in all, I was pretty psyched to have arrived.

The Day Before Day One:

2010-02-07T10:44:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, I recently took a trip down to Oahu, Hawaii, to check out the various filming locations of Lost (and see some other island stuff now and then). Instead of writing email after email detailing it, and knowing that way more went on than could easily fit into a series of emails anyway, I decided to write a blog about it. Some of you requested that I do so too, so here it is. While I was there I kept a journal on me at all times, one that I nearly filled up completely. This isn’t word for word from that, since some of it was quick notes, or I was writing late at night after tossing back a few, and lists of things to remember and silly/geeked out events that are better left unsaid (such as Incidents 1-5).

Like any vacation, it starts with the travel time to get from point A to B. In my case, this meant a three hour drive to Syracuse, NY to catch a 6am flight to Detroit. After a flurry of activity in the morning with last minute packing and goodbyes to my pets, we left and had a smooth drive to the hotel. The border gave us the third degree, which is unusual, but I think the girl was in training. The guy there with her was mostly talking to me about the different islands down in Hawaii, since he used to live there.

We reached the hotel and got inside so I could check in, when – in typical Stephanie fashion – my suitcase tips over, which had my backpack on top of it, which had a beer bottle in the side, and the bottle smashed all over the place. Beer everywhere. The smell was just wonderful in the hotel lobby, I’m sure they appreciated it.

I wasn’t so much embarrassed as pissed off that my beer was now gone, since my plan was to take half a dose of Nyquil and drink a beer so I could fall asleep early. My flight was at six, and I wanted to be up at three, but in order to get a good night’s sleep that would mean being asleep by at least nine. Plus it was rather a pain in the butt to get all the glass out of the mesh water bottle holder on my backpack, not to mention the smell. Once in my room this was the first thing I started dealing with.

I won’t go into too much detail about my goodbyes to my family, only that it was a huge conflict of emotions considering I was super excited to go to Hawaii. They came up to my room with me and my daughter really didn’t want to leave, and when I walked them out to the car, I’ll fully admit it was rough to say goodbye. As thrilled as I was to be leaving for Hawaii soon, the mother in me hated my daughter crying and saying “I want you in the car!” Likewise it wasn’t much fun watching them drive off and her little face looking towards me the whole time until they drove out of sight.

Still, I’m practical and it’s not every day you’re going to Hawaii and I knew she’d be alright so I tried not feeling too guilty. Once back in my room I spent some time picking glass shards out of my backpack and washing it in the tub with some hotel shampoo. At first I thought that leaving it on the heater would dry it in time, but no go. The heater was one of those huge pieces of crap that have two settings, high and off but off seemed to be the main function, so I used the hotel hair dryer to dry the bag. That lasted all of two seconds before I burnt it out, so switched to my hairdryer where I was much more careful. (Don’t worry, the hotel hair dryer only needed to cool off, so I didn’t break it.)

When I went down to dinner, not very hungry but knowing I should eat, I ordered my meal and a couple of beers and what a shocker, knocked the second one over and spilled it all over my lap. Wonderful. These were the jeans I was planning on wearing on my flight since they’re comfy and I only brought those and my cords since I knew I wouldn’t be wearing pants much on the island. Once my meal was done it was back up to my room to spot wash my jeans with hotel shampoo and dry them with a hair dryer. Thankfully I got the beer stench out of both my backpack and my pants, and both were dry by the time I needed them.

Finally it was time for bed, around seven, but one a and a half beers (half because I dumped half on my lap) and half a dose of Nyquil later, I was starting to get sleepy. I watched boring TV and read, but dozed off around nine. The old clunker heater kept on waking me up though, so I finally shut it off, and I’m not sure if it was me or the guy in the room next to me that woke me up snoring at two in the morning. Probably him, I hope anyway.

Speaking of waking up, I’m very glad that I set the alarm clock on my cell phone, or else I would have missed my flight. Dave had set the hotel alarm clock for me, and when I checked in I asked for a wake- up call. The clock didn’t go off and no call came, so I’m glad my contingency plan for my contingency plan worked. When I mentioned to the front desk clerk that I never received my wake-up call, he didn’t seem very bothered by it.

I sat and waited with a couple of guys on business who happened to be from Ottawa, and we took the shuttle to the airport. My trip was about to begin.