Baseball in Paradise

Hello everybody, I am approximately one week away from heading  back home and I know it’s going to be bittersweet leaving the island.  I can’t wait to be back and see my friends but obviously it is going to be sad leaving paradise.  I could not have asked for a more memorable 7 weeks.   We have our last game of the regular season today, then we have Friday and Saturday off, then playoffs start Sunday.

My parents arrived a couple of days ago so it’s nice to spend some time with them, and my sister is flying out here tomorrow,  it’s been a while since I’ve seen her so I am excited.   I am hoping to go back to Hanauma Bay with my family and maybe get over to the North Shore on my off days.  On our off days this week 2 of the local players on my team took a few of us to the North Shore.  We went over to Waimea Beach and spent the day there.  We also stopped at Ted’s Bakery, which according to the locals is famous, and I can see why.  On our way to Waimea we drove past Turtle Bay, one of the nicest private resorts imaginable.   The locals told us that this was where they filmed Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  They also knew of a few other smaller beaches that we stopped at.  We were also able to catch a sunset on one of these smaller beaches on the way home.

The next night we climbed up a mountain near Kailua.  At the top were Pill Boxes, which are old Coast guard look outs.   At the top was an unbelievable view of basically the whole island.  Next week will be my last blog! Hopefully I’ll have taken some cool trips with my family and I’ll have some stories for you. 

I’m about to head out to my last regular season game right now against the Oahu Paddlers.  Have a nice day! Thanks for reading.

Joe Coyne

Baseball in Paradise

 

Hey there, ever since my last blog I haven’t been able to play much baseball because of my toe.  I was fortunate enough to make All Star team but my injury would not allow me to play in the All Star game.  On the bright side I’ve gotten plenty of rest and I’m going to be able to play today.  With the All Star break we have been able to take a lot of time to do the things we’ve hoped to do out here. 

One of my roommates who has been dealing with an arm injury had to go back home this week, so on his last day we figured we would make the most of it.  We woke up early and rented mopeds for the day.  Without a plan or a real destination we began to just ride and see where it took us.  This didn’t happen to be the brightest idea at first when our curiosity brought us on the Pali highway, one of the busiest highways in the busiest city for traffic.  Especially considering the highway was uphill and our mopeds could barely go 45 downhill… After realizing our potentially devastating mistake we took the first exit back toward Pearl Harbor. 

Since we had already done the Pearl Harbor tour we decided to see what else was around the area.  This brought us to a lagoon right next to the airport.  Here we were able to watch planes take off basically right over our heads.  We were also able to see some small planes landing right on the water.  However, despite our intimidating mopeds, the owners of the wedding chapel right on the lagoon had no problem asking us to move them out of the parking lot because they had a wedding coming in.  So we rode on. 

Another interesting thing we discovered in our travels was that cats run free like squirrels out here.  People come out and feed these wild cats daily too.  We decided to ride directly down the coastline to see what we could find.  We end up finding a few new beaches, and one of the nicest neighborhoods I have ever seen in my life.  So nice that they had a security guard there to tell us we had to turn around… So we headed back the way we came and found a few scenic points (typical tourist stuff).  At one of these points we saw Diamond Head mountain in the distance.  My roommate and I decided we’d climb it.  In our casual, spur of the moment decision to climb it we were pumped!  Then we got to the bottom and realized “wow, this is a lot steeper than we thought”.  But we realized that you only live once so we got after it.  About half way we realized that the decision to climb this isn’t one you make after a long 7 hour day of mopeding, but we trudged along.  Upon arriving at the top we immediately knew the hike up was worth it.  The hike back down was a different story…  Exhausting.

That’s what I did during my full day off, it was a great experience, heres a picture of the view from the top of Diamond Head.

Thanks!

Joe Coyne

Baseball in Paradise

 

Hello! Ever since my last blog a few things have happened.  A few nights ago I ended up cutting my foot when a glass fell on it so I’ve been hobbling around a little bit.  However, it was a great opportunity for me to visit the lovely hospital in Hawaii!  Hopefully my foot will be healed up in no time and I’ll be back on the field. 

On a more positive note yesterday we got the chance to head over to Pearl Harbor, the site of one of the most famous attacks on the United States in history.  At Pearl Harbor there were about 40 of us baseball players, all between the ages of 18 and 22.  The tour guide really stressed to us the fact most of the men fighting for our country that day were our age, making it extremely difficult to fathom what these young men must have went through. 

The other catcher on my team had stayed on the base for a few weeks before the league started as part of his ROTC program and he was nice enough to give us a small tour.  In the museums there were stories from that day and interesting facts surrounding what led to the attack that day in 1941.  After walking around the museums for a while they had us watch a film on the events that led up to that day, the events that occurred on that day, and the impact that resulted from the attack.

After the film they had us take a small ferry to the site where the USS Arizona was sunk.  At the site you could see the sunken ship still under water, still leaking oil since the day it went down.  It was definitely quite the site and it really puts the events we learned in history class into perspective. 

After visiting Pearl Harbor we went to an International Marketplace set up outside of the Aloha Stadium, home of the University of Hawaii football team.  At the market place they were selling all sorts of Hawaiian items and shirts for barely any money at all.  All in all it was a day that will not be forgotten.

Here is a picture of one of the ships at Pearl Harbor…

Talk to you all next week!

-Joe Coyne

Baseball in Paradise

 

Hello everyone, I hope you enjoyed your 4^th of July.  Sorry this blog is a little late, I’ve been having difficulty getting on the internet out here.  Lucky for us, our 4^th of July happened to fall on our off day, Wednesday.  We made it our goal to go to the beach all day and it just so happened that the whole Hawaiian Baseball League and the whole rest of the island decided to have the same goal.  So we left pretty much as soon as we woke up.  Little did we know it was also national float on a raft day out on Waikiki Beach.  So we immediately purchased floats when we found out.

Being rookies to national float day we thought we would be able to blow up our own floats…False…We needed help.  Luckily every store down at Waikiki came prepared with pumps for the floats.  So we had our floats, we had our spot on the beach, and we had a perfect day.  Sorry to those of you who had to deal with the rain back in New England…  We ended up staying at the beach from about noon until sundown when the fireworks started on the beach.  There were literally 100 different sets of fireworks on the beach it felt like.  No matter where you went you were bound to find some.

After the fireworks pretty much the whole island stayed on the Waikiki strip.  People were walking around with crazy American pride outfits and setting off their own fireworks on the beach.  There was never a dull moment.   All In all it was a very eventful 4^th of July and I couldn’t have asked for a better location to enjoy it in.

 

Thanks for reading!!

Joe Coyne