Many of us locals have had time to trade stories and log in our “book of life” where we were and what we were doing regarding the “false alarm” we all received on our cell phones on a recent Saturday morning regarding the “missile launch”. Yes-it was probably painful and or stressful for a lot of people so I do not mean to be too light hearted with my experience but instead hope to illustrate what happens when you have no clue as to what was happening.

As most of you know-I like to surf-maybe too much but that’s the way it is… 🙂 Saturday morning early was no exception. Surfline was reporting massive swell (40′-60′) into Northwest shores and for those of you reading this and not familiar with our location-we live on the NORTHWEST shore. I checked the buoy report for buoy #51101 which gives us some indication of what’s coming in at a NW direction and all results pointed to-get in the water! 🙂

I paddled out before 7:00 am and much to my surprise no one was out-strange. My friends are usually there at the same time or before and I had texted my friend Melissa, as I had told her I would do the previous day and give her a “wave report” which was, ” clean, steady, shoulder height and nobody out-hurry up” or something like that…no response from Melissa.

I headed out and “bombed” for 1.5 hours by myself except the manta rays and green sea turtles cruising underneath my board-super cool-and the whales breaching behind me. Exceptional-what else can you ask for-really-other than where is everybody? I noticed that my wife Lissette was coming across the Fishponds around what was 7 something waving at me on her morning run as she left the house just before I headed out. I caught a wave all the way in, she waved even more furiously so I continued catching every wave I could in order to prove this old man can still surf and giving her a “shaka” every time I paddled back out. I soon noticed some other friends walking over the fishponds that were also waving which isn’t so unusual but they were really waving furiously.

Thirty more minutes passed by and sure enough Melissa paddled out. I said, “where have you been, I texted you, it’s bombing and no one is out?!” She responded that there was a “missile launch-then it was called off” to which I responded “what missile launch”. She said she had sent me a text with the notification and “did you get it?”. “Nope” I said but “Lissette and other people were waving at me and maybe they were trying to tell me something-not sure.” I really didn’t think of it passed that point as the surf was so good-who cares-I’ll get the details later.

We surfed until the surf school headed out and took over our break and of course the wind picked up and I was ready to get out. Lissette greeted me with the same “missile launch” news and I checked my phone and sure enough there was Melissa’s text…see her cute puppy photo above. Needless to say the news has dominated our local channels. Great opportunity for our local “leaders” to make themselves important I guess.

Bottom line…sometimes it’s better to just “surf” in life and let the details including “missile launches” take care of themselves-haha!

Written by Rick Oliver on January 19, 2018
Posted in: Hawaii Life | Tags: missile launch