It all began back on September 20, 2010 with a remake of Hawaii Five-0 and it's premiere. The Pilot episode exploded onto my t.v. set with such a force, I was blown away and I wanted more, much more. The cast: Alex O'Loughlin as Steve McGarrett, Scott Caan as Det. Danny Williams, Daniel Dae Kim as Chin Ho Kelly and Grace Park as Kono Kalakaua played off each other so well, I was hooked.
I had to learn more about this cast and the show. I decided to join the 21st century and set up a Twitter account around March 2011. I began to follow some H50 fans little by little each week. We'd talk about that week's episode, the cast, and what we'd like to see happen with the storyline. We'd watch faithfully each week. Passing around behind the scenes pictures from our insiders on the island of O'ahu (@LisaLisa98) where this was filmed. As my followers grew, I found that many of us had a growing love for the main character Steve. Actually, more realistically, the actor who portrays him, Alex O'Loughlin. I'd get a daily picture from my friend @Terrysagirl and began to save them. Now my computer has more than 1000 pictures of the actor archived on it.
As the months progressed, I found myself conversing only with specific individuals. New friendships grew from these conversations. This is how I met Stacey, Ellen and Deb. Ellen is from California, Stacey is from Washington state and Deb is from Illinois. I am from New Jersey. We'd talk and exchange pictures daily of our favorite 5-0 Alex, and from that our friendship grew. You'd never know that we never met each other in person or have not known each other prior to meeting on Twitter. Today, we're thick as thieves and best buds. A day doesn't go by that we don't tweet or Facebook each other. Occasionally, we'd even video chat.
With the season of Hawaii Five-0 coming to a close, we were wondering how we'd make it through the summer not seeing our man Alex. Yes, there would be repeats but no new pictures or stories to tell. This is when we found Executive Producer, Peter Lenkov on Twitter. He began to tweet us updates from the H50 set and tease us with behind the scenes pictures. With each tweet, he intrigued us and made us really wanted to be there with him. He had built up the finale so much, we didn't know how much more we could take. We began to hear a lot more about SOTB or Sunset on the Beach. This was how they premiered the pilot episode last year to the people of Hawaii. We knew we just had to be there for the premiere this year after watching the season finale. This is when the trip to meet came about.
The cast and crew left the island for hiatus until filming would begin for season 2 in August 2011. During the early months of the summer, we found out where our favorite actor(s) would be. Scott Caan was heading back to L.A. to do some acting on Entourage and other projects. Alex O'Loughlin was also heading to L.A. for a friends gallery opening party he was hosting called "Convergence". When we all found out, we wanted to go. It was too far for some of us, but right in Ellen's backyard. She decided she was going to go.
Ellen was the first of us to have her "Alex experience" in L.A. Alex was hosting the party for his artist friend, Kent Williams. She got her name added to the "private party" list and off she went. We cheered her on and lived vicariously through her the whole trip. When she began to tweet pictures of her with Alex, we just about died and went to heaven. She said he was the nicest person and felt so at ease when she was next to him. We think we would have passed out right then and there. That Aussie accent alone would have put us over the edge!
Her pictures were a welcoming breath of fresh air. We craved anything new that would let us see our H50 or its actors.
I began to ask the other ladies if they could get the time off to go since they all worked. Little by little we discussed the idea of meeting up in Hawaii in September for SOTB2. At the time we found out about it, I was unemployed and didn't care that I had no money, I really had a good feeling about wanting to be there for season 2. The dream somehow became a reality for all of us. We worked ourselves up into a frenzy about how to get the trip planned and how to save for it. With that, amongst our twitter Ohana, we found @AlohaBruce, a travel agent for 30 years in Hawaii. He saw us speaking to each other about the trip and said he'd put something together for us. That whole trip idea was blown up times 1000 and SOTB2 became the place to be. Bruce got so many of us excited for this trip. He began by finding us a host hotel for us to stay in. In addition, he planned many fun events around the H50 premiere happening on September 10th.
Somehow, scrimping and saving and selling items on eBay and Amazon, we all had our dream come true. Trips are paid for, bags are packed and the screaming has begun. We will finally met each other for the first time at the Park Shore Hotel in Waikiki, Thursday afternoon (9-8-11) Screaming and hugging abounded. We we all pinching ourselves wondering if this trip had finally come to fruition.
Mahalo to everybody who helped us get here. Aloha for now.
P.S. We were interviewed by Mike Gordon of The Star Advetiser. Our story was in today's paper on the front page of the Today section. Mahalo to Mike for sharing our story with Hawaii. Thanks to Jools of The Five O's for posting it on her blog page. Star Advetiser post
Can't wait for more including loads and loads of pictures.
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