as a groomsman, a lot of the time i was in hawaii was spent helping out to prepare for the wedding. one of the other groomsmen for the wedding was my friend kevin, who charles and i were classmates with at calarts. it was a lot of fun hanging out with him after not having seen him for a few years. he got married about nine months ago, so i also got to meet his wife, ari, for the first time.

monday, may 15 in the afternoon we had a rehearsal for the ceremony the following day. after that we had the evening free, so kevin, ari, and i set off to try to get some pictures while there was still some light.

from the spot we'd stopped at, we decided to walk up to another higher point. it ended up being somewhat of a perilous walk along the narrow space along the road that quickly fell into the rocky lagoon below.

we couldn't exactly figure out the purpose of this offering, or if it had any specific religious significance. i know hawaiian culture has its own differences from anywhere else, mainly due to the fusion of so many different cultures and belief systems over a relatively short period of time.

that camera kevin is holding in his hand actually has quite a funny story to it. it's a leica camera, quite a nice and expensive film camera. probably around at least three years ago charles was visiting LA from the bay area and he and kevin came over to my apartment in burbank where i was living at the time. we ended up chatting in the living room for a while, and at one point walked somewhere close for dinner. at the end of the evening when we went out to charles' car as they were leaving we discovered that someone had broken into it at some point during the night.

for whatever reason they hadn't stolen the car or taken much of anything, but they did grab kevin's camera, which was in the back seat in a camera bag of a cheaper camera. we had the burbank police come out and take down all the info, but they told kevin that he probably wouldn't ever get it back, that was just how these things went. i felt really bad since on our quiet little street we'd never had a problem, and here someone visiting got their expensive camera ripped off.

well luckily kevin had a record of the serial number, and miraculously about a year or two later he ended up finding someone selling the camera on ebay. because he'd filed a police report and kept the number of the detective he'd spoken with originally, he was able to let them know and they ended up recovering the camera within 24 hours. so now it's back in his possession and i feel a lot better that he didn't end up losing it forever.

we decided to go for a really nice dinner, and we chose a spot called roy's that we'd seen along the main road. it ended up being very delicious and a good find. we also bumped into some other members of the wedding party who'd gone there as well. they thought we were following them, and ended up telling us that roy's was quite famous, so we'd lucked out that we'd just happened upon it.

it was that kind of fancy restaurant type food where when you first see it it seems like there's not much food. but then when you start eating it you realize that every sauce and every little bit of it is made to perfection and by the end of it you end up feeling quite full. i probably still gravitate to the more hole-in-the-wall kind of places with great food for a decent price, but this was still and excellent meal.

above all, it was also just a nice evening spent with kevin and ari, an old friend and a new one.