Epiosde 13 The Waipio Valley

The Waipio Valley is one of the real jewels of the Hawaiian Islands. A true Shangri-La that looks like something right out of the movies. This valley is surrounded on three sides by mountainous walls and the ocean on the other side. I was joined on this trip by a friend of mine, Cassie Joseph, who is also a traveling nurse working here at the Hilo Medical Center. We took a guided van tour to the valley floor with a very unique tour guide. We also stopped off at the Parker Ranch in Waimea and Akaka Falls before heading home.

Soundtrack: E Ku'u Morning Dew by KImo Watanabe

Episode 12 Hawaii Part 2- The South Side

On this trip, I drove south out of Hilo along Rt.11. This road takes you along the south side of the island, through Volcanoes National Park, and continues on to the west towards Kona. Along the way I stopped at one of the Big Island's best black sand beaches and also drove to the most geograpically southern point in the entire United States. I finished in Kona with a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

Soundtrack: Sanoe/Awaiulu Medley by Kimo Watanabe

Episode 11 Hawaii Intro

I left South Carolina in November and am now working on the east coast of the big island of Hawaii in Hilo. I will be here until Feb. 2007 and hope to bring you lots of cool stuff from this great volcanic paradise.

Episode 10 Philadelphia

I wrapped up my work in Rhode Island and decided to head back to South Carolina which is where I call home these days. I tried to break the trip up and thought that Philly would be a good stopping off point. I hadn't planned on Tropical Storm Ernesto having the same plan as me. So, although it was a little rainy this day, I still had the chance to see a good part of the city. It just meant I got to see the insides of some places I might not have gone if it was sunny. The Reading Street Market turned out to a great place to spend a rainy afternoon.

Episode 9 Nantucket

One of the nice things about getting to work in different parts of the country is when my family comes to visit and we do some exploring togethor. My mom recently spent two weeks with me and we got to spend some time out on Cape Cod. On this trip we spent the day exploring the beautiful island of Nantucket.

EPISODE 8 MARTHA'S VINEYARD

I have always heard great things about Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, so I was excited to have a weekend off to go explore. It turned out that not only was it a great weekend, weather-wise, but the it was pretty windy coming back on the ferry and made for a great sailing day for lots of people.

EPISODE 7 BLOCK ISLAND

In June, I made the move from Washington DC to Rhode Island. They call Rhode Island the "Ocean State" and once you spend some time here it's obvious why. There are a lot of great beaches and many small islands that are close by and accesible by boat or car. This trip was to the southern end of RI and a neat tourist destination called Block Island.

EPISODE 6 THE FDR MEMORIAL

This is the last of my videos from Washington DC. It took me awhile to find this memorial that is sort of hidden away on the banks of the Tidal Basin, opposite from the Jefferson Memorial. It's a beautiful tribute to President and Mrs. Roosevelt and what their service to our country meant. The soundtrack is taken from a CD that I found that has many of FDR's famous speeches and fireside chats.

HIT THE BRICKS UPDATE

Sorry to be away so long. I have had some technical problems with the server that was hosting my videos. I finally discovered YOUTUBE.COM that makes things much easier for me. Now you can come to this site and seee what's new, or you can just go directly to youtube and look for my new videos.
Just a word of caution about youtube. It's a great website that allows anyone to post their own videos to the net. It works perfectly for what I want to do. It also is supposed to be able to monitor the content that is posted and reject anything objectionable. Unfortunately it has become very popular very quickly and it seems as if the filters have not always able to keep up with the contenet.
I will always post links here first to my new videos, so the easiest way to find my new stuff is to come here first. If you want to search for me on the youtube site you can just type in "hit the bricks" under the search site and you can find my videos there. While you may get a lot of different hits under this search, you will know my videos because they will start with "Hit The Bricks" .
Enjoy! and thanks for watching!

Steve

Episode 5
Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

I had the oppurtunity to attend the laying of the wreath at Arlington National Cemetery this year. It's really awesome to see all of the color guards and the Marine band in one place. Arlington Cemetery is always an impressive place and it takes on a special significance on the day that we honor our military veterans

Episode 4 The Bowie Baysox

I was excited about the beginning of baseball season this spring. I went to the MLB Washington Nationals home opener but was really disappointed. The tickets were too expensive, the stadium was run down and the lines were way too long. Thankfully I found out that the DC Metro area has a bunch of great Minor League teams and recently got the chance to enjoy baseball the way it was meant to be.

Episode 3 Washington Monument Take 2

I returned ,early this time, to the Washington Monument and was able to get a "golden ticket" (it was actually more gray colored). I went up inside and was able to film some of the city from up high.

Episode 2 The Washington Monument

Welcome back! Washington is a city of great beauty and architecture. I hope to be able to show you some of these great buildings and I thought I would start with one of the most well known.

Episode 1 The Intro

Welcome to the very first installment of "Hit The Bricks", my video blog or vlog. Vlogging has grown like wild fire over the last few years as editing software has become incredibly "dummy-proof". I never would have thought that I could put togethor a "show" like this, but thanks to some great help from web sites like Freevlog and the inspiration of others like
Roxanne Darling, Josh Leo and Steve Garfield, this was much easier than expected (and a lot of fun!) So be sure to check back for more fun installments of "Hit The Bricks".