The First Adventure

Before I start my next epic tale, you should know that I have an official BYU-H mailbox. If you love me, you will send me goodies.

Daxon Levine
BYUH #1704
55-220 Kulanui St.
Laie, Hawaii  96762

Friday (cont'd)
After 2 1/2 days cooped up in Honolulu watching little girls (I can't complain, can I?), I was dying to get outside and start adventuring. Luckily, my new roommate Cameron is something of an adventurer himself. I unpacked, ate lunch, picked up my ID and my mailbox key, etc. and then Cameron asked if I wanted to swim out to Chinaman's Hat. What is Chinaman's Hat? Click this link to find out! That is when I began my first official adventure on the North Shore.

Chinaman's Hat
To get to Chinaman's Hat from Laie, you need to take the bus, so Cameron and I walked down to Foodland to catch it. While we were waiting I bought some reefwalkers. Then Kylie and Sara showed up to join us. Fun Facts about us: Cameron is from Arizona, Kylie is from California, Sara is from Texas and I am from Utah. We caught the bus and the ride was long, but I was in good company and high spirits, even though the waves out the window where tantalizingly close and painfully out of reach.
We made it to the beach and I jumped in the water for the first time. Oh, how I have missed the ocean! It was a long wade/paddle/swim to the island, but I was just glad to be in the water. Once we reached Chinaman's Hat, we started the climb to the top. Cameron showed us the easy way up the mountain, but I was constantly taking detours and shortcuts, always looking for more challenging terrain. It made me miss Stansbury Island back home. It was a fun climb, and the view at the top was Gorgeous! We were enveloped by ocean, looking across multiple shades of blue water across the bay as the sun started setting behind the cloudy mountains to the west. We would have stayed longer, but daylight was quickly running out and we made our descent.
On our wade back to the shore, I was walking next to Kylie as she disturbed a little ocean creature. I noticed this little black cloud in the water behind us. Then, that litle black cloud expanded into a flurry of ink shooting straight at me! I sidestep and narrowly avoided the attack. Then Cameron noticed an octopus furiously swimming away from us. Kylie spooked an octopus and it nearly inked me! First day on the North Shore, not bad.
By the time we made it back to the bus stop, it was officially dark, with no bus in sight. Sara tried to hitch hike, but Kylie and I both had a horrible feeling about it so we waited at the bus stop for a while longer. Three PCC buses passed us, getting our hopes up and crushing them in turn. We finally saw a city bus coming our way and it totally blew us by without even slowing down. We knew it would be 30-60 minutes before the next bus came, so we started walking. The horrible feeling about hitch hiking was gone and we let Sara flag someone down.
I'm glad we didn't hitch hike right away. When I get a feeling like that, I follow it. We could have been picked up by crazy people. After the buses passed us, the prompting was that we would be okay. I'm glad we listened, because a few minutes after the Spirit gave us a green light to hitch hike, a BYU-H Alumni on his way to a Scouting event in Laie picked us up. The car was small, but he was the nicest guy and had the funniest stories about life at BYU-H. I'm really glad we ran into him, and thankful that we made it home safely. Thank you, mysterious nice guy!
After making it back to campus (having missed dinner at the Caf) we made our way back to Foodland to buy pancake mix to make at Kylie's Off-Campus apartment. Nothing like late night pancakes after a day of hitchhiking, regular hiking, swimming, rock climbing, bonding and overall adventuring!
First day on campus, and I already had two girls' phone numbers.
I think it was a great start.