Aloha Days: Jared Eberwein and the 50th state.
“In the middle of June I received a phone call from All Wheel Sports, asking if I might be available for a show in Hawaii?
My response was, “Um yes! Whatever the dates might be, I’m available! HaHa. But “let me invite my wife first.”
I called up my other half at work, let her know about the opportunity, and right away got to work on a plan for our boys being watched and making the trip happen. We made our trip a couple days longer than scheduled, the event only requiring us to be on the island for 4 days, but we went a day early and left a day later.
Luckily we both have some friends that live out on the island: my friend I grew up with for a few years in BMX is from Hawaii, Danny Chambers. He told me he didn’t have a place for us to stay on our first/last day but he had a car we could drive around. Only catch was that the car he had was manual, and I’ve never really driven manual much. I’m only familiar enough to get by with it, and there’s no way I’d go to Hawaii and learn how to get by driving in a place I don’t know.
So my friend back home let me borrow his car for a few days, which is stick. I drove it, didn’t stall once, and didn’t enjoy any bit of it, I don’t know how anyone likes a manual car. My wife Devin also had a friend living in Hawaii who she knows for socal waterpolo growing up, she let us stay at her place our first/last day. The days in-between those we had a hotel room from the venue that brought us out for the show. I honestly still can’t tell you what/who hired a BMX show, it was a Japanese company I believe, but I could be wrong. Besides not knowing much about it, everyone was super nice and very appreciative of all of us.
Practice time was Wednesday, show Thursday night and Friday night. We pretty much had all day, everyday, to do whatever we wanted until the few hours we were called upon. We did some typical tourist things, restaurants, visited certain beaches, beautiful lookouts, and then my friend Danny took us to a semi-local waterfall and cliff jump. That ended up being damn terrifying and somewhat painful EVERY TIME I jumped off of it. I did a total of 3 jumps, ended up with a bruised hip, sore right foot, and a fulfillment of cliff jumps for a very long time. We were non stop during our trip, just taking full advantage of it, but also had the pleasure of resting giving that we didn’t have our little boys with us to look after. Grateful of our family to help make our trip happen, and happy AWS invited me to come perform and represent them.
Can’t wait for the next adventure, where ever and when ever that may be.”
-Jared Eberwein