Do you remember the last verse of the last song on the Eagles’ album, “Hotel California”? It’s called The Last Resort, and the verse begins with:
We can leave it all behind
And sail to Lahaina
Like the missionaries did
So many years ago
They even brought a neon sign
Jesus is coming
Brought the white man’s burden down
Brought the white man’s reign
That’s the song that ends with the line “…call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye… Click here to refresh your memory…
I lived on the island of Maui for more than a dozen years, through the 1980s and part of the 1990s. I drove past that neon “Jesus is Coming” sign on Front Street in Lahaina a thousand times.
All of which came rushing to mind when I watched this video of surfers on the North Shore of Oahu catching the big waves. The footage is notable in part for the fact that it was shot with a drone, which provides a really breathtaking angle on Hawaii’s National Sport (FYI, the islands were a sovereign nation before the missionaries and pineapple and sugar growers decided to put an end to that…)
I enjoyed the few minutes it took to watch the whole thing – something I rarely do with online videos. Some of the footage in the first few minutes of the ‘barrel riding’ is spectacular: first the mist blasts out of the curl, then the surfer.