Big Island Volcanos

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Rachel

Norm and I took a day trip to the Big Island of Hawaii to take a helicopter tour of th active volcano areas. There wasn’t as much active lava flow as we thought there would be but during the tour there were spots that would break open and expose the molten lava but by the time we’d swing around to take another photo, it would get hit with rain and cool down an turn black in seconds. It was amazing.

Click through for more photos!

This is where the lava flows like waterfalls into the ocean. You could feel the heat from the helicopter. We flew in a helicopter with the doors off. It was insane. The pilot said that they claim the water can be as hot as a thousand degrees. The color changes in the water was amazing. It was like a rainbow of blue and green due to the varying temperature differences.

This is a plume of steam from the lava hitting the ocean.

Toxic sulfur fumes leak through cracks in the surface of the cooled lava.

This is the only house left in a subdivision that wasn’t hit during the eruption in the 80′s which destroyed every home. The same person still lives there. He hikes out 2 hours to the nearest road and hitch hikes into town to get supplies. He has no running water, electricity or anything else. He doesn’t even cook on propane because he can’t get the propane back to his house. 2 hours of hiking just to get to a main road. It’s insane. The house is surrounded by lava flow. There is a black line of lava on the other side but this was the best photo I had of the house. We saw another area where they’d tried to rebuild. One house got rebuilt only to be destroyed completely 3 weeks ago. The other one only got the foundation finished which all you could see was six posts coming out of the lava. I’m not sure but I don’t think I’d go rebuilding in an active lava flow zone!

This is a waterfall just east of Hilo that we saw on the way back to the airport. All of the islands that we have been to are full of beautiful waterfalls like this. It’s definitely an amazing state. I don’t have any photos of us to stick in here as “mod content” but I thought they were cool enough to share anyway! Have a great weekend!

On the road to Hana

Posted on November 21, 2009 by Rachel

I don’t remember exactly what day it was this week but Norm and I decided to drive from Kehei to Paia. Once we got there we thought we’d drive to the first roadside waterfall that we could find. At each waterfall we decided to go to the next one until we were finally in Hana. One blink and you could have missed the town entirely. We refilled the gas tank and decided to be adventurous and take the road that the maps said were dangerous. It ended up being an amazing one lane unpaved road heading the opposite way back around the island that we’d come from. I’ve been to Maui several times and had not taken the drive out to Hana. The scenery alone was worth the 3-4 hour drive. If you have a reason to come out to Hawaii, I suggest you do!

Norm was surprised to find that his septum was still at least a 00ga. Click through to see more photos from our trip and the rest of this amazing tree.

The tree Norm used to check the gauge of his septum piercing.

Our route driving around Maui where we saw all of these amazing waterfalls that you’ll see photos of below!

This was one of the few waterfalls that had a large pool below it that you could swim it. Due to it being water from the mountains it was way too cold to actually go swimming in though we tried!

Norm is a bit of a rule breaker. On the other side of where I took the picture was a huge sign that said “Do not stand on this wall”. It was probably there because of the 60 foot drop down into a raging river on the left side of him.

Over looking the cliffs at the Garden of Eden Botanical Gardens.

Below is a photo from the beach in Wailea at the hotel where we stayed.

And another shot from in the pool. It’s a fresh water pool for those asking how I was able to open my eyes. Even with your eyes open though you can’t really see into the viewfinder to take photos so it was very hit or miss!

The internet here has been pretty hard to stay connected to. I’ve spent the past few hours trying to upload some photos to get posts going for tomorrow. I’m also in the process of uploading a video to post on Monday but it may not make it up at this speed until Tuesday. It’s an interview with Mike Rubendall and I hope you guys like it! We’re off to Tim Hendricks wedding tomorrow, which is why we’re here in Hawaii to begin with, I’m glad he’s getting married to an amazing girl both because he’s a rad guy and an amazing tattooer as well as it gave us a reason to get out to the island that is the farthest from any continents in the world!

Aloha and Mahalo for supporting BME!

Greetings from under water!

Posted on November 21, 2009 by Rachel

I’m still in beautiful Hawai’i for another couple of days. Some of you may have noticed that our billing is down. Someone has been successful in getting all of BME’s merchant accounts deactivated and I’m working to resolve the situation. While this happened on Wednesday, it’s now the weekend so it most likely won’t be resolved until after the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m not going to let anyone’s accounts expire. If your IAM page comes up for renewal, please email Jen at [email protected] and she will add more time. BME accounts will not expire so enjoy the free time you’ll be getting with your account until we get the billing issues resolved. BMEshop won’t be able to accept any orders during this time either. I was planning on having a huge Black Friday sale so hopefully we’ll be back up and running by then so you can enjoy the holiday savings and stock up for Christmas.

I’ll be getting a couple posts up over the weekend but don’t forget to take a look at this weeks video interview with Henning Jorgensen which is the third episode in BME’s new video interview series. I can’t wait to get back home and work on the rest of the videos we have in the queue. There should be a ton of photos from my trip with my traveling companion and tattooer extraordinaire Norm which I’ll post over the weekend once I’ve got them all prepped. For now, here’s a quick shot from in the pool. I blow pretty sweet bubbles out of my nose.