good morning. 5:45am and the waves should be going off today. i’m out of here. woke up at 4am and was thinking about my day yesterday. i feel like spreading the aloha…. have a nice day and see you in the water….
**woke up yesterday morning and checked my email. gosh, how photos can make your day…

remember i told you about my sick backdoor barrel 2 days ago? well, there wasn’t one photographer on the beach so i knew that nobody got that photo of one of my best waves of the season. but to wake up the next morning and see this, gosh, i was super duper happy. my friend neal miyake shot it with his fisheye. this wave was perfect and now this photo will be in my collection forever….

i got barreled all the way through and when i came out, the spit blew me off the board. dam it felt so good…. neal told me he got pounded after he snapped this shot. i believe. i’ve been there and it ain’t fun. but gosh, being on both sides, surfer/photographer, i’ve learned a lot. i learned as a surfer on how to connect with photographers to get the shot. and i learned as a photographer how hard water photographers jobs are. you have to put yourself in the most critical part of the wave to get the shot. you could get hit by the wave, or the surfers board, or the reef. it’s a dangerous job and i respect water photographers 100 times more than i ever did… thanks guys…

then my next email was from u-ske. u-ske sent me these photos from 2 days ago too. this is me sticking my camera in the barrel to get the shot. it’s amazing i didn’t get sucked over the falls. this wave is pretty freakin hollow and big….

this photo is pretty sick too. look how beautiful and blue it is. i feel like jumping in the ocean right now. and that’s what i’m going to do. thanks neal and u-ske for the awesome photos… and thanks for making my day. i owe you guys….

good evening. today is one of those days i appreciate living in hawaii and appreciate the aloha spirit of hawaii. i was swimming at ala moana park this afternoon. then i seen this guy with an underwater metal finder looking for rings and jewelry. so i swam out to him and asked him where he bought the metal detector. why? because i still miss my olympus camera and haven’t been sleeping well since i lost it in waikiki. i was looking all over for a metal detector rental but couldn’t find one. i told him my story and he told me, “let’s go find it”. what? yeah, he said he’ll go with me to waikiki and let me borrow his metal detector while he waits for me on the beach? what? he told me that he just wanted to do something good today. gosh, i was so happy…. so we jumped in my car and headed to waikiki….

i grabbed my fins, mask, metal detector and headed outside by canoes. i swam for a couple of hours looking my hardest. i was getting frustrated because there were so many waves and so many beginner surfers. it was pretty dangerous but i was trying so hard to find my precious camera. after getting run over about 5 times by longboarders, stand up paddlers, and the canoe, i decided it was time to go in. i didn’t find my camera today but i found something more meaningful. the ALOHA SPIRIT is still alive in hawaii. and it’s all because of hawaiians like this…

this is Trip. trip and i have a lot in common. we both like to watch “soko ga shiritai”, we both like japanese food, we both like japanese people, and we both speak japanese. trip was talking fluent japanese to me and i thought that was pretty cool. the only thing trip and i don’t have in common is that big puka shell necklace. i don’t have one like that. gosh, that’s the biggest and nicest puka shell necklace i’ve ever seen. and it’s not for sale…
although i didn’t find my camera today, i’m pretty much over it. i learned that there are other more important things in life. things like giving, sharing, and helping others. that’s the “ALOHA SPIRIT”. trip let me, a total stranger, borrow his $1200 metal detector. i offered him some money for helping me but he refused to take it. he did it from the heart. there aren’t too many people like that out there these days. there was a reason why i met trip today. i think it’s a sign telling me to be a better person and to help others. something i will do for the rest of my life to keep the “ALOHA SPIRIT ALIVE’…..
i gave trip a go-naminori sticker. so if your reading this trip, mahalo for today. your one good hawaiian. and next time i catch fish, i’ll give you a call….

good morning. FLAT WAVES!!! YEAH!! after one month of back to back to back swells, the surf finally went flat. the water everywhere looks like a lake. now i can finally get some work done. like responding to hundreds of emails. sorry so late but i’m a surfer and that’s the way it goes. surfing is number 1 and everything else comes after. today is sunday and looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. maybe i’ll go get a massage, have my nails done, and have my eyelashes curled while drinking a blue hawaii on some beach in waikiki. remember, this is paradise… got a call from kyle last night to do some blue water hunting today but i couldn’t make it. i really wanted to go but sometimes you got to make sacrifices i guess. i hope they catch a lot of big fish and i know they will score because today is probably the #1 best diving day of the year…. another perfect 6-8′ swell hitting the north shores tomorrow. if i wake up and the waves are still small, i’m going diving. if i wake up and the waves are big, i’m going surfing. pretty simple decision… anyway, hope you all have a beautiful sunday. like one of my favorite SPICE tshirts reads, “SLOW LIFE”. today, that’s me…. aloha…
**u-ske is not just a photographer, u-ske is an artist. every single photo he takes has some different angle to it. i hardly see him swimming around when i’m surfing but he always seems to get the shot. one example was a few years at a river mouth in japan. i was surfing all morning and didn’t see u-ske in the water. then a few months later when i opened the magazine, he had the most insane angle shot of one of my waves. i was super stoked…. yesterday at off the wall was just u-ske and i in the water so i was watching the man in action…

not only watching, i was documenting how he does it. this is freaking nuts. while i was swimming for my life going under a freak 8′ set at off the wall, i looked to the side and saw u-ske shooting from behind the wave. i think that’s pretty nuts….

i took an empty wave photo and when i saw it on my computer, u-ske was back deep in the barrel. somewhere you don’t want to be without a surfboard….

then i was checking out his helmet and asked if he drew that on the back. u-ske told me that one day after shooting big pipe, he went home and got out a pen and just drew this picture. that’s pretty artistic. what do i do after i go home after shooting big pipe. freaking sleep….

and last, i just wanted to show you the underwater world. a place i love. if you haven’t been there, you don’t know what your missing. and too all of my friends in japan that went home before the waves got good, get your ass back here. it’s not too late to get the barrel of you life. and now is the time….