Airplane Bloggin: I Know Where I Live…

I am up in the air again.  I’m invoking George Clooney, but in coach.  I have my shoes off, an empty seat next to me, and I’ve left most of the belongings I had on my flight West in the West, in Maui.  I’m traveling with just  backpack, crammed with a computer, phone, wallet and a pair of black dress shoes.  The scuba equipment and my clothes are staying in Maui, at least for now.  I gave up my NYC apt December a year ago.  I now have my things scattered, or homes, if you will, in Venice, Miami (at the family apt in South beach), in Las Vegas (at the corporate apartment) and now at Dave P’s place in Haiku, Maui.  Subtract NYC, Alburquerque, add Las Vegas, add Haiku.  What’s next – I’d tell you, but you’re as likely to be able to guess as I am.

The two and a half weeks I spent in Maui were interesting.  Spending it on a ranch, complete with goats and dairy cows, with the former manager for Blues Traveler, who moved their a year ago.  Maui is definitely an interesting spot, attracting forward thinking people and people backing away from previous troubles in their lives.  Definitely out of the loop in some ways, forwards and back.

It’s a place of surpassing physical beauty, where everything seems to grow, and yet it’s a place that confounds on some levels.  It appeared to me to be almost entirely segregated between white and Polynesian Hawaiians and for a place that can sustain so much growth and agriculture, food is remarkably expensive and 90 percent of it, including the bananas, are imported.  Weird wacky stuff there.

What else is Maui?  Lots of good but not great scuba (they have algae problems and chlorine problems), with eels and turtles (but not enough coral).   Lovely beaches, both calm ones south and west, and turbulently gorgeous ones on the northside (where Haiki is).  In fact, the legendary Jaws had a minor break while I was there, with waves upto forty feet, and big wave pro surfers being towed into oncoming monsters via jet ski.  Something to see. 

Maui is also flooded, it seems with young people checking out on society, all ages of pseudo-hippies (not to be confused with hipsters), and folks with various drug addictions, depending on where you go.  It’s certainly a place where you can get away with being one of the foregoing, with being an iconoclast, a rebel or a wackadoo (to use a technical terms).  In those ways, it certainly reminds me of home base Venice.

We met some movers, some shakers, and most of all a fair number of surfers.  Met with Susan Casey about my client’s film about the BP Gulf coverup, “The Big Fix,” at Maui TedX (look it up to hear her talk), the Editor in Chief of O Magazine and former journalist at Outside Magazine.  We also the Mayor’s office on an environmental initiative for Maui, and with decendants to the former king of the Hawaiian islands.  We also met with the guy who pumps out Woody Harrelson’s intestines (among many others).  Things certainly stay interesting.  We’ll see if all of these meetings finally lead somewhere productive. 

I’m on the plane back to LA, then to Vegas, where I am going to watch my (our) Giants in the Superbowl tomorrow.  Apparently Charles has arranged for us to attend a superbowl party at the (hold applause til the end please, not) home of Carrot Top’s manager.  He’s apparently a Charles fan.  How could you not be.  We’ll then be hosting (BriteSol) a company for perhaps our first potentially lighting deal, and then the aforementioned Hawaiians are coming to see the technology in Vegas.  Six of them, which is about a ton of Hawaiians if recent history holds true.  They’re big, but they move fast. 

And then one or two more days back in Las Vegas, and back on a six AM flight back to Maui.  No time for Venice this trip.  No time for my own bed, my own room, my gym, my juicer, my whatever. 

I live where I am these days.  I have good reasons.   Where will I end up spending most of my time – I don’t know, ask the wind. 

Well, the valium I take for flight anxiety is beginning to take the edge off a bit after a rocky takeoff.  That’s good, and since I’m back to flying on Thursday, I’ll bid you an adieu and sign off here.