This was a strange day. Why? Because it was my first bona fide day off in a very long time. No cameras, no microphones, no interviews, no big band shows, no crew (with the exception of spending some time with Sean and Mindy at their house, post knee surgery - Sean is my Field Producer). It was a nice day, starting off with a SKYPE call with Mary and her kids. If you haven't heard of Skype yet, it's the coolest and FREE service where you can chat live with anybody, computer to computer (as long as you have a video port) and you can see the people you are talking to. So if you have friends anywhere in the world, I strongly suggest you jump on board the Skype train. It takes about 5 minutes to download and again, it's FREE! So cool!

We had a very successful, yet uber busy shoot on the Big Island, or the Island of Hawaii, as the BIVB would prefer us to say. We were there to feature the Kona Brewers Festival, which was a hoot! Ran into some people from Portland, including Christian who owns a micro brewery in SE, HUB I think? Anyway, they had a "Trash Fashion Show" which you'll definitely want to check out when it airs on PDXposed on May 2! We also filmed Hawaii's most visited tourist attraction, Mt. Kilauea, the world's most active volcano and many other fun things. Aston Hotels & Resorts put us up in two bedroom condos overlooking the Waikaloa Beach Golf Course. Mine was a sweet pad and I had Mary and her girls and friend Brenda come over to share the wealth. It was one big happy family! Mary and Brenda fed us well, which we needed after long days of shooting. We truly had no down time and this week was super busy, so you can see why tonight, a Saturday night in Portland, I stayed in and I'm blogging. You might say, "boring" but I say, I needed it!

On Monday, I go to Tahoe for a much-needed ski vacation. They are my very favorite type of vacation and I've not been skiing yet this season, so I'm excited. I fly to Reno to meet Mary and her son Charles and we'll drive up together to meet another couple from Hawaii and their daughter. They are fun so I'm sure we'll have a great time. Yes, this is a good month for spending time with my hottie and better yet, she'll be in Portland for my next big band gig on April 11th. It's almost sold out already so if you want to go, I suggest you book a reservation at Tony Starlight's asap! Last night was sold out and they turned people away!

The photo above is our trip moment! We had a FAST FACT to shoot which relates to the Island of Hawaii having 11 of the world's 13 climate zones, and includes the snow topped mountain in the pic. We had to race the clouds, literally, to get the shot and Mike, Sean and I had to operate like a fine-tuned machine to get the shot. Each of us had to perfectly execute our part or the clouds would have swooned in, within like 5 seconds, and WE DID IT! It was very energy charged and when we got in the car, the song playing on the radio was "Eye of the Tiger" from Rocky. We laughed our asses off and celebrated our "moment" in time. We knew this would be our trip moment! And it was. Ok, I'm adding my golf villa that Aston put me in too!

Ok, it's time to Skype with Honolulu! Hope you all had a nice weekend and I hope you keep watching PDXposed and giving us our killer ratings! THANK YOU!

Make good memories!

Jon