To Hawaii | 24 August 2004 | Shocka

It’s been a long 30 hours so far. To give you an idea, we left our hotel in Seattle at 5am yesterday and most of us haven’t been to sleep. Why? Well, originally the itinerary had us flying directly from Seattle to Hawaii. That’s what we like to call, “Good Routing.” Good Routing is a very elementary concept—a band is playing in Charleston, SC on Thursday night. Should they book a gig in PA on Friday and another in SC on Saturday? Or would it make sense to play another show in SC, or maybe even NC before heading to PA? Obviously the latter. Yes, “good routing,” is a policy we’ve come to embrace in Jah Works. However sometimes embracing the policy isn’t quite enough.

The biggest issue with bad routing is time—time to contemplate when the next shower will come, the next home meal, or the next visit with family and lovers. Now I know that all of you are thinking, “There’s no way that he’s complaining about being in an airplane for hours traveling to so many exotic destinations. That’s the price to pay for the reward.” It’s just that too many hours being unsettled becomes a mental game because at the end of every trip nothing is certain. Will all of our equipment be okay? Will the rental vans be ready? Will the hotels be easy to find and in a good location? Will people come out to the shows? We’ve had plenty of those hours between yesterday and today. That’s where we are now—marinating in an exhausted stew at 35,000 feet above the earth. See, instead of leaving Seattle for Hawaii, we all had to fly back to Baltimore for approximately 8 hours, pick up the rest of our equipment, pack for 6 weeks, and then reconvene at 4 am this morning. And reconvene we did.

In these days of heightened security, Tom Ridge and the entire TSA ask that we travel as light as possible. They ask that we take great care to avoid bringing any items to the airport that might cause added check-in time, or arouse suspicion. So in the spirit of that request we arrived at BWI this morning 3 hrs ahead of departure time with approximately 37 suspicious looking pieces of luggage and equipment; 19 of which were over the weight limit allowed by any airline. Here’s where it’s great to have a consummate diplomat in Kevin. Where I go from zero to impatient in less then five minutes, Kevin has the patience of a saint and I fear we’ll need a lot of that in and out of every airport.

There was a little dispute about some of the heavier equipment but Jah Works was fortunate enough to find a gentleman with United Airlines who not only understood our plight, but was very accommodating in making us feel special. He bumped us all to first class on the flight to Chicago and genuinely took time to show that he cared—not enough of that now-a-days.

So here we are on the 9 hour flight from Chicago to Honolulu. To my right, Scotty P. wears his Lone Ranger sleeping mask (minus the eyeholes) and safety orange ear plugs. He finished off the whole ensemble with denim shorts, black socks, and some slippers. Kevin is just behind him in between nods and I’m wallowing in some sort of exhausted phase where simultaneously I need sleep, but can’t sleep. The rest of the guys are further back in the plane in varying states of sleep. Next stop Hawaii.

Kauai | 25 August 2004 | Shocka

Today was our first show day of the trip and everyone finally got a little bed-rest last night. For me, it ended up being about 50 hours between the hotel bed in Seattle and the cabin bed in Kauai’s Barking Sands, the first military base of the tour. The accommodations are great; four person cabins, with kitchens, and about a 25 yard walk to the beach. To tell you that Hawaii is beautiful would be a disservice. Words cannot describe the red clay mountains and canyons nor the clear blue coral-bottomed water. Swimming is tough in that there are tremendous undertows and there is reef everywhere that can easily cut through flesh in an instant. I love to swim in the ocean and usually have no fear of swimming very far out, but here its better to be cautious.

The show went very well, all things considered. We’re traveling with rented sound gear and that of course caused a little anxiety because the band has very high standards to always sound as good as possible. Luckily we also brought Big D (Derrick Parker) our primary engineer who made all the rental arrangements and the show went off without a hitch. There was a little tension and I’m not sure if that’s due to stress, exhaustion, or crankiness from not partaking in British Columbia’s chief export. Regardless when it came time to play the show, we all came together and vibes were right back where they needed to be.

Barking Sands Base is small so there weren’t that many people at the show but the energy was awesome. The highlight of the night was definitely a 7 year-old girl named Zanaya (hopefully pictures will be posted) who stole all of hearts. That smile of mixed baby teeth and adult teeth I various stages of growth could warm any room. We joked with her New Zealander mother that we were gonna take her on tour but I’m pretty sure there might be some labor laws against that, so Zanaya, we’ll pick you back up in 11 years. Everyone there was so wonderful to us and Jah Works really gave it up to show our appreciation. So to all of you at Barking Sands, we say thank you for having us as your guests.

The whole day was a massive success. The day started earlier than usual for all of us when our hostess/attache Terri took us on a tour of some great Kauai lookouts—the first atop a massive red clay canyon and the second atop a mountain that overlooked Waimea Bay and he Pacific. I’m sure we’ll post pictures as four of us just got digital cameras and took about 300 pictures between us. Unfortunately this has been a quick stop and tomorrow we fly out to a very remote island in the South Pacific named Kwajalein for a nice four night stay.

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