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Helicopter Ride
Jim invited me on a helicopter tour of kauai when a few seat were free I was not excited to be back in Kauai. It was like starting all over. there was nothing new. i was going back to the same farm, which had the same people. i had grown hadnt i? i had started onward and upward. i was on a roll. it seemed like a step back, but i fell back into the island rhythm. from the airport i had no ride or numbers to call. so i just started walking and managed to hitch back to the farm.
jim saved me from jumping on a boat or a plane and leaving. he took me along with him to his friend, shannon's house for christmas. he invited me to take a helicopter ride around the island for free, as he was working on the house of a coowner of the helicopter tour company. shannon and i had become friends and she invited jim and i to go to a new year's eve party in her big white van.(i was DD on the way home) jim and i made and ate meals together. we read Bukowski or comiserated at length. we fasted together. he broke down halfway through when he was invited to his
boss´s extravagently catered house party, which he invited me to. we had coffee together, philosophised, played ping pong, worked, obsessed over peak oil and the world economic meltdown. my upbeat cynisism somehow worked well with his happy-go-lucky nihilism. jim and i were at shako tacos on a friday night for our weekly jazz, when my sister rachel convinced me that i should go to south america. so there it was. a plan. i would work in hawaii and go to south america on my earnings. the problem was that there were no jobs to be had. i worked 20 hours a week for geo´s farm so i had to work around that as well. for the farm i planted gardens, harvested fruits and avocados, transplanted starts, painted/rustprotected equipment, sharpened maintained implements, made trellises for new tomato plants out of bamboo, fertilized plants, worked on the irrigation systems at the farm and at geo´s minifarm in moloaa, strimmed, put up fence, riveted aluminum to a trailer, put in a garden around the kitchen, set up wireless internet network around the farm, and near the end did a lot of computer work for geo. but to make money, shannon and i picked
Hanalei Bay from Chopper
Hanalei Beach was recently voted world´s best beach guavas from the woods and some lemons, starfruit, and oranges. we sold these at the market that is held every wednesday afternoon in kapaa. after vendor´s fees and gas money for her huge van i ended up with 2 dollars cash in hand for the 8 hours of work. shannon also picked up a couple moving jobs with her van with which she needed help. time was passing swiftly and i hadnt taken any steps toward south america. so i decided to buy a ticket to south america with no money for spending. no matter what i did to make the price of tickets less, the price would increase. but when i did something that would naturally make the price increase, it ended up being less expensive. i started with a simple ticket to chile that would cost $2G. after much trial and tribulation, my ticket went from kauai to honolulu to portland for a couple days thenfrom portland to houston to buenos aires and the return was from quito, ecuador to houston to portland for a few weeks then from portland to akron, ohio. all that surprisingly cost $1400. strange. how are those prices figured?
the day after
Jim Leaning
We tore out all of the trees and sold them and worked the ground for a kitchen garden i set the dates in stone i got two side jobs. one was construction for my friend bob who was building a house on top of a hill with maybe the most spectacular view on all of kauai. i did cleanup, taping, painting, heavy lifting, tile floor installation, and a path of mammoth cement slabs moved, placed, and leveled. my friend kathy saw me working on geo´s computer and asked if i could help her with her business website. we changed the look of the site, added pics, changed text, added video, and worked on many measures to increase traffic to the site. both bob and kathy needed more help than i had time for. i couldnt find work for months then the day after i set my dates i got more work than i could handle, but i worked nonstop. i worked for geo in the morning then i would ride a bike for 45 min to bob's at 9 then ride an hour and a half to kathy´s at dusk. i worked to the very last minute when jim and shannon took me to the airport in lihue.
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