ICONIC COINCIDENCE

A WORLD CAPITOL

GROUND ZERO

HALEIWA

    1,860 miles from the nearest continent, further away from "mainland" than anywhere in the world is a funky surf town that is a premier sports capitol of the planet. 

   As fate would have it, just a few miles down the road is ground zero for an Industry that is now world wide. In 1899 recent Harvard grad James Drummond Dole came to Oahu and began what became Dole Foods, the folks who turned Pineapple into a major crop and built an empire in the process.

Dole

Courtesy of Dole Foods

Kahanamoku

Courtesy of www.nnbd.com

   The creation of modern surfing is attributed to Duke Kahanmoku, born on Oahu nine years before Dole arrived.
In many ways their lives paralleled. Kahanmoku was a champion swimmer, actor and a businessman. 
    Surfing and Pineapple-icons of the Islands. It is a cosmic coincidence these vastly divergent influences share roots on Oahu and both attract visitors from around the globe.

    At a Disneyesque location just a few miles down highway 99, people cue up to ride on the Aloha Express to view the red oxide volcanic earth that helped Jim Dole take the Pineapple from Paraguay and make it as Hawaiian as the North Shore has made Surfing.

     Dole is now about a lot more than Pineapple.

   Surfing is also an industry. Dole and Kahanmoku are revered. Their iconic legacies remain neighbors in North Oahu where Kings and Queens were once the royalty and where chickens strut on the court house lawn.

   Aloha!

   See you down the trail.

ONLY THE BEST

THE BANZAI PIPELINE

       The north shore of Oahu is one of the world's premiere athletic venues.  Only the best dare try it here.

  Before the sun was over the mountain, surfers were in the

 Pacific, looking for a ride before the "Backdoor Shoot-out" Championship, part of a 50th anniversary tribute to Duke Kahanamoku.  Kahanamoku is the Olympic champion swimmer who created modern surfing.

 As the sun finds the line, it turns the Pacific from gray to blue.

  Team surfing competition begins at 8 AM. The professionals tune up.

  On this day conditions are near perfect and the waves are 20 foot tall.

   The power of the ocean is thunderous. The danger is underscored by the deaths of 21 surfers and photographers at the Pipeline.

    In this sequence we see a shooter deploy for his spot in the big water to capture dramatic footage of the champion surfers inside the shoot or tunnel of water.

   Here he is cut loose where he will attempt to survive the swells as he watches the board artists take on the sea.

 As only the best ball players make it to the all star game, only the best surfers in the world have a chance to survive here.

 At the pipeline, the beach rumbles and explosions roar when some of these 20 foot walls collapse. 

    If you look closely in the frame below you will see a surfer emerge from the curl of the back wave. This perspective reveals how solitary and fragile these athletes are as they compete against a primal force of nature.

MELLOW ON THE BOARDS

   A few miles away in Kawelia Bay, inside the reef, the board work turns to yoga.

ALOHA EVENING

   See you down the trail.