Hawaii Five-O - Snark-O

Famous Last Words

2010-03-15T00:48:00.000-07:00

Aloha!

It means hello and good bye. But it’s more than that. The ‘ha’ in ‘Aloha’ also means the breath of life.

I lead a charmed life. Like everyone else, I’ve had my share of the proverbial heartbreaks and hardships. This year in particular, it seemed like more than usual and why is it that bad things always seem to come in threes?

First, after three long years of law school, I found myself deferred and adrift for seven months. And while I was certainly one of the lucky ones to have a job, when so many smarter, more capable classmates didn’t, the realization of the hold a law firm actually has over you was evident when that firm asked our first year class to go away for awhile. And again, we were lucky enough to be sent away with a stipend. I really will be working for one of the classier firms around. Like many others in my position, I tried to fill up the time with pro bono activities and working, although as a Sam Adams tour guide, could we really call that work? More a labor of love. For the love of beer, if you will. But still I floundered. I wanted to be working and practicing law just like everybody else. Instead I felt cut off and aimless.

Second, and it hadn’t happened in a long time so it was probably good for me, but I let a guy get the better of me. At the very least I (re)learned two important things: the first being that sometimes it’s the nice guy who deals you the worst blow, behaves like an utter jackass, and kicks you when you’re down. Twice. The second being there are some things that time and distance just can’t fix. And for everything else there’s Mastercard.

Lastly, it was a difficult year for the Martin family clan. One of its founding members had a frightening health scare in the fall and this knocked all of us for a loop. Fortunately, while that issue eventually was resolved, we were not so fortunate with my grandmother, who passed away at the end of January. I mean no disparagement to my other three grandparents, but my grandmother in particular had a lasting influence on the person I became. She was one of my first role models, one of those people who went to college when so little was expected out of women. A leader of her union and a proactive member of many clubs, she taught me to be a doer and a leader (and to sing in the bathroom, because who really cares anyway?). But most importantly, my grandmother was described by all who knew her as ‘colorful.’ She had the driest of wits and a killer sense of timing. Think about it, ‘colorful’ is just an old-fashioned term for snark (similar to saying ‘dapper’ then when nowadays we mean ‘metrosexual.” Different lingo, same concept). All that snark in me had to come from somewhere, right? I think we know the origin. Man oh man, sweet Lauretta, she will be missed.

All in all, while not a great end to last year into this year, it could have been a lot worse and somehow it all came right. I took some of my stipend and earnings from Sam Adams, and I spent the last five weeks in Hawaii relearning her historically rich culture, exploring the island, and making some life adjustments. And that’s why I’ll sit here and tell you with the biggest, goofiest grin on my face that I lead a charmed life.

Hawaii was the breath of life I needed. I did things I’d never done before and may never do again. I swam with sharks and rode up in the clouds in a helicopter. I went on a sunset cruise for my birthday and tramped around the island in the dark with nothing but a flashlight on a ghost tour and defied state parks and recreation law and carried a pearl around in my mouth. I ate BBQ abalone (file that under “stuff to never put in your mouth”) and sunbathed topless (wait, I definitely did that before and will again). I survived a tsunami. I blogged, I snarked, I gave myself a fat lip juggling poi balls and I finished my book. Not my Hawaii book, no no. That would have been too easy, I came up blank there. Go figure. I just didn’t have a chick lit book in me right now. Instead my inner geek reared its goofy little head and I wrote an urban fantasy fiction novel involving Norse mythology AND law students. Yup, let it sink in. Maybe this is what She meant when She said I’d finish it now, and if you don’t know who She is, go back and read the back blogs.

So when I say my very last night in Waikiki was clearly going to be a bittersweet one, I meant it. On one hand, I was bummed out to be leaving (let’s face it) a tropical paradise, on the other hand, I was eager to get home, start work, settle into a routine.

I decided early on that I wanted to spend my last night doing something that summed up my entire experience there. So I settled on Germaine’s Luau. There would be food, fire dancers, poi balls, intoxicating island beverages, dancing, one last sunset. And yes, it’s a little bit hokey (if you’re being a snob about it), but Germaine’s prides themselves on being a luau for ‘Ohana’ (family) and the escorts (not that kind of escort), make you feel like Ohana.

For instance, our escort, Cousin Jerry, was clearly the Dad of our good-looking Ohana.

He was one part good natured rogue, two parts true Hawaiian gentleman. Chew on that. He inquired protectively about the beaus in my life to make sure they were suitable. He called me little wahine. Once upon a time, Jerry was in a little film called “Blue Hawaiian,” perhaps you’ve heard of it? No? Maybe it’s star, Elvis? Jerry was the little beach boy in brown shorts. When he was older, his parents took him to Vegas to see the King. Not only did the King remember Jerry, but the man from Memphis put Jerry and his whole family up front for the show, paid for their time in Vegas, and hung out with them afterwards. Jerry was a gentleman and a scholar, a true Hawaiian.

And absolutely nasty at the hula.

Did I also mention that as a legend of Germaine’s, Jerry had unrestricted access to drink tickets? So instead of the usual three drink maximum, Snarky had (in no particular order) unlimited access to Mai Tais, Blue Hawaiians, Pina Coladas, Lava Flows. And she made good use of this access. Enough said, mahalo.

Here was my last sunset on the beach of Germaine’s. What a stunner. Palm trees, sand, beach, waves, all bathed in pink and purples and a slight sea breeze.

This was my last pig cooked in an underground oven (Imu) with river stones (unless someone has a backyard and are feeling adventurous. Call me. And here’s my last luau plate: lomi lomi salmon, chicken long rice, kalua pig, poi, and Hawaiian wedding cake. (And yes, mom, that’s my big tiki drink just behind it).

And here’s my last fire dancer. I saw him dance last year. Yes, I have a thing for fire knife dancers. Here’s what it is: THEY JUGGLE FREAKING FIRE. In less than a week, I will disappear into an office with questionable lighting and I will push paper around for the rest of my existence, bother my favorite Marmot for coffee breaks, work out in the tiny gym in the basement and these guys will still rise every morning, throw on a manly grass skirt, grease up, and JUGGLE FREAKING FIRE.

It all comes back to fire. My first memory of Waikiki when I first landed her last year was this: oh my, the entire place is lit by torch fire. That can’t be a good thing. Island or not. So from me to you, please enjoy the fire dance. I certainly did.

So over the course of the evening, I did what I always did one last time, I befriended strangers and found myself adopted into our Ohana by two little old ladies from Texas. Here is what I now know about little old ladies from Texas: They will drink you under the table each and every time, Mai Tai for Mai Tai. And they carry guns. This is a great argument for why one should never mess with Texas.

I’m kidding. Mostly.

So after gorging on the best food on the planet, I settled in for the show one last time…

First, a welcoming by our playful host and hostess.

Then the part where they pull up three suckers, dress them up in coconut bras and set them loose.

The rhythmic tribute to Pele.

The warriors from Aoterroa.

And their women with their poi balls (stupid poi balls, stupid fat lip)

The Hawaiian wedding dance, strangely beautiful and so unlike the touristy trap weddings actually staged on the island.

The Tahitian rump shakers (in yoga pants) and their female counterparts (not in yoga pants, can we say double standard?)

And then it was time for th

at special time of the evening. Germaine’s always ends their luau with the singing of “Aloha Oe.” Farewell to thee. A good bye song composed by Hawaii’s most beloved queen which always gets Snarky a little misty eyed.

Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe

(Farewell to you, farewell to you).

E ke onaona noho i ka lipo

(The charming one who dwells in the shaded bowers. One fond embrace, one fond embrace)

A hoʻi aʻe au

(Ere I depart Until we meet again. Until we meet again)

That night I returned back to Waikiki where I ended that last night underneath the stars in my old, familiar places.

All good things come to an end. That’s what made them good in the first place. This was the end. I woke up at five the next morning, unable to sleep. It was raining in Waikiki, a rarity. Funny enough, this happened last year on the day I left. Obviously, I took this as karmic significance. Waikiki was clearly going to miss me. That’s why she sent me a rainbow.

Aren’t you jealous?

Jealous yet?

Wait, really? It was a perfectly defined arch!

And what’s with the hand thing, Snarky?

(I survived a tsunami -- everything is alright)

(And I have beach sexy hair -- everything is alright)

(And this is me in a Kayak for 1 -- everything is alright)

(And I carried a pearl in my mouth -- everything is still alright)

Enough already...oh just one more

(And this is me surviving the shark cage -- everything is alright)

This is the shaka, the universal symbol for the Aloha spirit, their ‘hang loose’ symbol. For Hawaiians, it means, everything is alright. What a great mantra. Here we use a hand symbol, most frequently traffic. That symbol does not mean everything is alright.

But what a great thing to remember: Everything is alright.

And for me, after what felt like one of the rougher patches of my snark existence in a long time, everything is finally alright again. In 48 hours, I’m finally going to be an attorney. A real, honest to goodness, billing (hopefully), working attorney with absolutely no free time.

And you know what else? When I first got home, I saw my parents, my wonderful, hilarious parents and quasi-wonderful kid brother (you’re not quite all the way wonderful yet, g ive it a few years) and I thought: I love these guys. We have good times together. With them around, I feel like I can pretty much do anything and I’ll always have two people in my corner (okay, so maybe my mom wouldn’t go over the ledge at Spouting Horn, but I’m pretty sure she’d have stood in front of an oncoming tsunami for me).

And after seeing my parents, my totally baller Wilmer friends, who know how to throw a dinner party, threw one down for the March babies and were thoughtful enough to include me. If that weren’t an awesome enough homecoming, on Sunday, the poker crew gathered for a Hawaiian-themed poker night at my place. Seriously, good times. Like my bff Mike says, it’s the best twenty bucks you can spend. There’s no one I’d rather sit around and lose money (and dignity) to. What could beat an evening of the hottest game in town? How bout, the two devastatingly lovely glitter bandits of last year’s shenanigans in Hawaii and three years of law school emailing me to set up drinks for next week? And maybe I've, uh, met someone worth gushing over (don't even think of getting a big head about it, mahalo). So yes, I feel like the luckiest kid on the planet to get to have these kind of people around me. Really, no snark. I mean that. Attorneys shouldn’t get to have it all. But maybe I do :)

It happens to everyone, sometimes things just pile up and we lose sight of the things that make us happy. And sometimes, sometimes, if you lead a charmed life, you get to go to Hawaii, pull your head out of your (well you know) and get yourself right again. I think I'll take my cue from the Hawaiians here. Everything is alright. It’s not perfect. That’s what we have snark for. Everything is as it should be.

And I still got this sweet tan.

So for those of you who read, commented, or otherwise enjoyed this blog:

Mahalo nui loa and Aloha ʻoe, A hoʻi aʻe au.

Airborne

2010-03-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

It was my last morning in Kauai, which meant it was my last day in Hawaii. By mid-afternoon I’d be back on Oahu for one more sunset and one more night of revelry, luau style, on the beach.

I quickly packed my bag, checked out of my beautiful spot on the beach, got in the rental car and drove it to the airport. Only, when I reached the airport, I didn’t turn left for rental car drop off, I turned right for the airfield.

The morning was gray, windy, and rainy. It was afterall, winter in Kauai, which was still a billion times better than winter in Boston because I could still wear flip flops. I parked and walked nervously up to the small office with wooden shingles.

“Checking in, sweetie?” A woman with a bouffant hair style out of the fifties, horn rim glasses with rhinestones, and a little pink sweater greeted me. She immediately won my good favor because she didn’t ask for a parental release form. But then she killed it when she added, “I’m not sure we’re going to be able to fly today, the conditions are really terrible and it makes for a choppy ride. You don’t get sick easily, do you?”

Not unless it’s a shaved ice. “No, I don’t.”

“You don’t have a fear of heights or flying, do you, sweetie?”

A rampant, crippling fear of both, actually, that I’ve been diligently suppressing since the age of 9. “No, I don’t.”

I sat there looking at the glossy photographs of the Na Pali Coast on the wall. This was where I had wanted to go and had tried to raft three times, but my expedition had now been cancelled each time. If couldn’t raft it, the second best thing was to fly over it, just to see it.

A pilot came in, don’t ask me how I knew he was the pilot, but I think it was the cockiest walk I’d ever seen that tipped me off. And he was hunktastic, like Top Gun vintage Tom Cruise. There were eight other people in the room waiting with me for a helicopter ride and the five who were ladies sat up straighter in their chairs, smoothed their hair etc.

Adele, the woman who looked like she had been sealed away in the fifties time capsule, began a deep earnest conversation with gorgeous pilot man. While this conversation was going on, another pilot entered. He wasn’t young or gorgeous like Pilot #1, he was tall with grizzled iron-short hair and creased skin. This was Gary, the seond pilot. He let the door slam behind him carelessly and winked at Adele. “What’s shaking, baby?”

“Oh, Gary.” Adele shooed him with her hands, but you could tell she liked it.

Gary joined Adele and Maverick at the desk and they really had a heated conversation that none of us could hear but that all of us were watching. I had a sinking feeling this was going to end in me not being able to see the Na Pali Coast for the third time in two years. Epic fail. Not by sea or by land.

After much discussion, Adele stood up and came over to us. She kept pushing her glasses up her nose. “Now as you can see, it’s not a very nice weather day. Visibility is poor and it’s raining and windy, which can make for an unpleasant ride.” Her clasped hands broke into a nervous flutter. “Now, we’d like to offer a full refund for those of you who would like to cancel your trip today or we suggest that those of you who have more time with us on Kauai reschedule for tomorrow.”

There was some murmuring. The two older couples (probably from Minnesota or Wisconsin or somewhere wholesome like that where fannypacks are always in style), immediately got up and went to the desk for refunds and rescheduling. A newly wed couple (and yes, they’re always newly weds, and you can tell because they still like each other, they’ve always got that FF glow and oh hey, it’s Hawaii. Honeymoon capital of the word, every third person is a newly wed) asked if we could still go out. Maverick shook his head and at the same time Gary said, “I have room for 5. Four in the back and one up front with me. It’s not going to be a smooth ride, but Uncle Gary will still show you the island.”

I immediately put my hand up. “I’m in,” I said. I liked Uncle Gary. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who crashed planes.

“You all by your lonesome?”

All my life. “Yep,” I said brightly.

“Afraid of flying.”

“Nope.” Liar. Liar.

“Weak stomach?”

“Never.” Unless you’re serving hallucinating-inducing shaved ice on our in flight beverage service. Snark snark.

“How much do you weigh?” I gave him my actual non five pound subtracted weight without blinking. No, I’m not going to list it here. He was a pilot. You’re not.

“Then you can ride up front with me. What’s your name?”

“Jessica.”

“Like the rabbit.”

Yeah sure, Gary. Whatever lights your torch. As long as you show me the Na Pali Coast you can make as many pop culture references as you want.

The newly weds put their hands up. Gary went through the same set of questions with them. Although, I’m pretty sure Ms. Newly Wed lied about her weight. For shame.

Then we looked at the remaining couple. Their faces clearly said they were in disagreement, he really wanted to go up in the air and she didn’t. So hubby said, “why don’t we just go back to the hotel and snorkel, hon. I don’t want to go if you’re the least bit uncomfortable.” He put his arm around her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

Obviously she agreed to go. Men are geniuses.

“It’s settled then, let’s go,” said Gary and we moved toward the door where beyond lay a helicopter. But Adele now blocked Gary’s path in a formidable fuzzy pink barricade.

“Gary, I’d like a word with you,” Adele said, her voice like a disapproving school teacher.

“Adele,” he said.

“Gary.”

In these one word exchanges there was a lifetime of meaning: tussles, harried exchanges, jokes and battles that had been waged and fought in this very small office off the airport.

“Maybe these folks can wait an hour for the weather to clear. We’ll bump up the noon people and…”

“Don’t you sass me, Adele.” Gary through his arms and turned to the two men in our party. “Women. Can’t live with them, too pretty to live without em.”

Adele blushed and let Gary pass. On one hand, I was glad I was getting to finally see Na Pali. On the other hand, I wondered if Adele hadn’t made a fairly good point in the name of safety. It was too late now. And it was definitely too late after we strapped on these bright yellow safety packages to our waists. They were standard issue, ‘please don’t inflate these inside the cabin because only morons do that,’ packs.

We climbed in, the two couples in the back, Snarky in the front. Gary helped strap us all in and then we got really sweet BOZE headphones. The banging, strings heavy theme from James Bond was playing and I relaxed just a little. Gary had a sense of humor.

Once we were all strapped in and secure, Gary came over the headsets and explained to us where we’d be heading (the Hanapepe Valley, Waimea Canyon Na Pali Coast, the volcano and Hanalei) and the issue of potholes. Potholes, because it was windy and gross out, would occur frequently. Gary didn’t explain anything else about them other than they weren’t like hitting a pothole in your car. I didn’t like this. That meant they were really bad. But the theme to 24 with Keifer’s voice over, “my name is Jack Bauer and today is the longest day of my life” started playing. I did like this. I forgot about potholes. I have the attention span of a zit.

Then we lifted off, an uncomfortable lurch forward, a dip back and we were up. You will not throw up on Gary, I told myself sternly. Gary is a bada$$ and he deserves better. But for the first thirty seconds or so, the likelihood of Gary wearing my breakfast was quite high.

“Anyone seen the movie, Jurassic Park?” Gary asked. Everyone nodded. “Anyone want to see where all of the opening shots were filmed, including the waterfall in the opening scene?” Round of nods. The opening strains of Jurassic Park came over the headsets. “Okay, that’s what I hoped you’d say. Now we’re just going to dip into the Hanapepe Valley over here to get to Manawaiopuna Falls. Get ready for some potholes.”

Potholes suck the big one.

You know those rides like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, where you climb up to some great height and the floor drops out from beneath you, your stomach is instantly in your mouth and have just experienced the feeling of what it would be like to hanged (think about that one for a minute). That’s what hitting a pothole is like only the floor keeps dropping out from beneath you. My knees were jelly, but my determined smile was still plastered on my face. But then there we were just yards away from the waterfall (Gary got close, really, really freaking close to the waterfall) and it was just beautiful. Potholes be damned, the coolest dinosaur film of all time was filmed here. The soundtrack in our ears was reaching the majestic main theme with the strings and trumpets.

Gary spun the plane around 360 style and we flew up the valley wall and over, headed for Waimea. I had certain fondness for Waimea, this is the canyon, the “Baby Grand Canyon” as it was called because this was the site of my infamous bike ride down with Kauai’s favorite stoners, the Roach brothers.

The light was gorgeous over the canyon and Gary was playing “Southern Cross” over the head set. We were musical soulmates, Gary and I. If only I’d been born twenty five years earlier and wore my hair in a bouffant with accompanying pink sweater. Sigh, Adele was a lucky, lucky gal.

Then we were off to the Na Pali Coast. I was kind of breathless as we headed toward the coast. This is what I had waited three years for.

It was a take your breath away kind of place. Grand and gloomy in the weather, which gave it an even more mysterious look. There is something so unspoiled and untouched about Na Pali. There are no access roads in, if you want to reach the wild coast, you have to hike in 11 miles over rough, dense terrain. And someday when I’m not traveling solo, I’ll do it. Even I won’t hike in eleven miles myself. That just seems like inviting trouble of all sorts. Although, the thought of me slashing through the undergrowth with a machete, dressed in sweaty stained khakis and binoculars, was kind of appealing.

The water on the coast was turbulent sea blue with lots of froth that crashed up against the dark cliffs. Na Pali looked like a place where things have happened, old things, dark things, secret things.

In the more temperate weather, you can raft here and explore the sea caves (which is what I’d been trying to do for two years now), but now she had her winter game face on and there was no boating near her shores. Gary played music from the Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring). I waited for orcs to start storming the beach but no such luck. It was okay, Na Pali didn’t near orcs, it was cool just the way it was.

And here the sun picked this moment to break through the clouds and the rain and it too was lovely, though I had liked Na Pali in the gloom just as much as in the light.

Seeing Na Pali made the trip for me. The potholes no longer bothered m (liar, they just didn’t bother me very much after that). My fear of flying in a small craft and crashing into the canyon walls, my remains pulverized into bits, became a distant memory I’d left back at the launch pad. This was so flipping cool.

You might ask what could top Na Pali for me. Well, nothing. But a close second was our next stop: Mount Waialeale. Waialaeale (which is a real b**tch to spell by the way) means rippling or overflowing water in Hawaiian. Aptly named, it is the rainiest spot in this hemisphere receiving anywhere from 400-600 inches of rainfall a year. Compare that against Seattle, between 52 and 70 inches a year although the Olympics get up over a 100. That’s a whole lot of rain. So of course it was raining when we got there. But it’s not just a rainy summit. Mount Waialeale, a shield volcano, birthed the island of Kauai. So for the birthplace of Kauai Gary brought out the Braveheart soundtrack. Whoa. For the Love of a Princess. Oh hey now.

Gary got us awfully close to the volcano wall and mumbled something about “them not liking us to do this.” I can only assume by “them” he meant Adele. Surely, she was formidable enough in her fuzzy pink sweater to warrant the use of the plural pronoun “them.”

The cloud cover had moved across the peak, but it was still a heart in throat moment as we climbed up it, my whole body pressed back against the seat by gravity (and if there were anytime we were actually in any slight danger of crashing, I would say this was it. If I had to guess).

After Waialeale, we headed out toward Hanalei Bay, our last stop, the home of Puff the Magic Dragon and stoners the world over. Flying over the area was just like driving through it, everything was electric shades of green and there were taro fields everywhere (purple potato like plant that is ground up to make poi). Gary flipped a switch, “this is me improvising for our little gal up front,” he said over the head sets. And he put on “Jessica” by the Allman Brothers. I grinned and gave him the biggest thumbs up I could manage. Adele had better watch out.

We touched down, took pictures, and said our good byes. That’s Gary behind me giving the shaka, which is still better than bunny ears.

These were my last glimpses of Kauai, a beautifully musically narrated and expertly flown chopper ride piloted by a roguish cowboy of the skies. Not a bad way to say good bye to Kauai. But there was more island left to make my farewells to and so I made my way back to Oahu, the Gathering Place, for one more night...

Kayak for One

2010-03-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

For the first time in nearly five weeks, I woke up in a blisteringly bad mood. I hated everyone, everything, every place including each and every island of Hawaii. This may have had something to do with the fact that I had nearly died in the night. Well, maybe not really, but close. And the point was, I was feeling awful. The weird part was, this was the second time I had been violently ill on the island of Kauai after eating one of these made by this woman. I'm calling her, Bertha (inside joke for Dad).

This is a shaved ice.

Apart from the fact they nearly killed me twice, they are vastly superior to regular snow cones. Last year, I had one of these when my parents were visiting and I became so sick upon eating this that I may have, uh, thrown up cold shaved ice. Through my nose. I had attributed this to the bucket of Mai Tai I had consumed that evening with the parentals. But this year, I hadn’t had a drop to drink. I ordered my shaved ice from the same place (you get three flavors: I went with Blue Hawaiian, Pineapple, and Wild Cherry). I don’t really pick on flavor, but color. They all taste like high fructose corn syrup. Blue, red, yellow are all primary colors and quite pleasing.

I was so stomach sick and feverish that I actually hallucinated; believing there were lizards crawling up the wallpaper and that the ceiling fans were dripping black ink. Looking back, I reasoned that it couldn’t have been the Blue Hawaiian, that’s an Elvis movie. And Elvis was lovely. And Pineapple, well hey, even though it’s not indigenous to Hawaii, it’s pretty much the state fruit. But then again according to a pineapple expert* they can give you canker sores. Still, my money was on the Wild Cherry. Perhaps on Kauai, the word ‘wild’ is code for hallucinogenic mushroom flavor, because that’s how bad and trippy my night was.

So I awakened with an overwhelming desire to kick puppies and skip that day’s event: kayaking on the Wailua. Now, I’d been dying to kayak the Wailua because I love kayaking (from my Camp Nokomis days) and the Wailua, until about twenty years ago, was off limits for kayaking per the government because it had been sacred land. So I debated myself back and forth and finally, kayaking won out over the evil effects of Wild (hallucinogenic mushroom) Cherry. This is my long winded way of saying, I was in a really queasy, weak and bad mood en route to kayaking and would be exhibiting none of my usual social graces and cheerful disposition.

I arrived and as usual, it was immediately made clear that I was an anomaly for being by myself. There were 13 in our group and I was the only one in a single kayak, everyone else was in a double. Kayak for one please.

The guy who was helping us launch our boats eyed me doubtfully and he actually said to a group of four guys around my age, that one of them should be a gentleman and take the single kayak and let me ride with one of them. All of them graciously offered to be in a double kayak with me. I grimaced. I only like sexism when it’s in my favor. Obviously. So, I politely pointed out that I was an experienced kayaker and perfectly fine to kayak alone, mahalo. And yes, given my mood, it took everything I had to be marginally polite.

But the boat launch guy wasn’t through with me yet, he went over to another kayak guide helper and said something to her about me. I knew it was about me because she immediately came over to where I was standing alone with my pea green chariot.

“Excuse me, yeah? I’m going to need your parental release form before we can let you out on the river.”

I looked at her confused. “I need a parental release?”

“You have to be AT LEAST eighteen to go out on the river. So we need your release form or I’m afraid you can’t go out today. When you called us for a tour, we would have asked you over the phone whether anyone in your group was eighteen or under.”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

That was my first thought.

NO REALLY, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

That was my second thought. And my third thought was murderous and unrepeatable.

So, I unzipped my wetbag, shoved my license at her aware that now everyone in our little cluster was staring at me, the little lost orphan child. And I was blushing scarlet. “There,” I said and pointed to my date of birth, “guess I probably don’t need a parental release form.”

She looked me up and down, opened her mouth to say something when our actual guide, a tiny elfin woman with that islander tan and wavy sun-streaked hair down her back, walked between us and said, “don’t bother, she’s the year of the rooster.”

No, I’m not joking, this woman guessed my actual birth year by using the Chinese Zodiac reference, AND as she walked away, she looked over her shoulder, winked at me, and said, “and she’s an Aquarian.”

This woman had had no access to my ID which would have given her my birth year or astrological sign. I don’t believe in psychics, not really. But I was deeply creeped out by her all the same. She had one of those mysterious looks, wide dark eyes and that long curling hair. She would have looked at home right behind a crystal ball and a spangled curtain.

Regardless, I was here, at the mouth of the beautiful Wailua River, the wind at our backs, sun shining. I even got one of the four guys I had refused to kayak with to take my picture and help me drag my boat down. Apparently, I wasn’t totally lacking in all feminine charm. Life was aces again.

We took off and I hung back in the rear for a very simple reason. I can get out of the way of a newbie kayaker better than they can get out of the way of me, and since I don’t think kayaking was intended to be like bumper cars, when I’m in the back, I can see what’s going, stop, and not plow into the boat in front of me.

(This is me cultivating the sexiest water shoes tan ever. Jealous?)

The first thing our guide, I’m going to call her Maya, asked us was to not take pictures of us, something to do with capturing the soul. I was only half-listening to that because the boat in front of me was just godawful, full of the two most coordinated people I’ve ever encountered. In just under a minute, the girl sitting in front seat had managed to whack the guy behind her not once, but twice with the paddle and he had nearly capsized the boat in the reeds. Then they got stuck in the overhang for a good three minutes. Maya tried to talk them out of the overhang, but there’s only so many nice ways to tell people they’re being morons. It was stunning to behold. I imagined this is what it must be like when someone was watching me dance, a slow, grisly car wreck of movement that one couldn’t help but smirk or grimace at.

(Hopeless.)

So we set off and Maya explained to us a little about the Wailua. Wailua translated into the place where the heart meets the soul. We would be kayaking down it, beaching the boats, and hiking to a sacred waterfall where the last queens and kings of Kauai had bathed. I of course, nerd of nerds, was lapping this up, but even I noticed that this woman was off the reservation and I was perfectly okay with this. I liked a little crazy.

My suspicions were further confirmed when she kind of cornered me on the river and told me that I had beautiful strokes and that I was obviously a kayaker. Doesn’t take a psychic to know that. But the ego stroke was nice all the same. Tthen she asked me if I knew about 2012.

I looked at her doubtfully, “The John Cusack movie?”

She looked at me like I’d just kicked her puppy. “No, do you know what will happen on December 11th, 2012.”

I thought, no. Why, do you? Instead, I shook my head.

And she replied, and I’m not exaggerating a single sentiment here, “the age of the patriarchal Pisces is coming to an end and the feminine age of Aquarius is dawning. It’s going to be a golden age.”

It’s all I can do to stifle a giggle because of course I’m now thinking of Steve Carrell in his pajamas at the end of the 40 Year Old Virgin musical montage. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the age of Aquariusssssss. Aquariusssssssss.
But it’s the absolute serious expression on her face that stops me.

Then she says, “this is a sacred feminine space we’re approaching, only the queens could bathe in the waterfall, the kings had to bathe downstream.” (Don’t even get me started on the mental image for that one, all sorts of snarky fun). “Groups from all over the world come here to dance and restore the feminine rites.” I literally had no idea what this woman was talking about, so I just smiled, nodded wisely, and kept paddling. Deeply creeped out.

She pointed to a high green cliff to my left. “That is kapu, you understand?”

“Why is it forbidden?” I asked to let her know I wasn’t a total idiot.

“It is the forbidden cliff, some people must stop there on the journey, they don’t get to reach the enlightenment and feminine wonder that awaits us.” And if you think I’m augmenting the way she talked, you’re just dead wrong. If anything I’m missing some of her stunners.

It got even more fun once we reached shore. Maya started talking to all of us about the Menehune. Now, the only reason I didn’t bolt back for the boat was because each one of us got a really cool walking stick for the hike in and this made me feel like a hobbit (awesomeness!). Now, the Menehune mean different things to different Hawaiians. For most, the Menehune were the race of humans here before the Hawaiians got here. They were little people and not like dwarfs, but just small sized, regular proportion people, only bite sized (like Kit Kats).

The Menehune were expert masons and tireless workers and legend had it that they would only undertake projects that could be finished in a single day. And while that doesn’t sound overly awe-inspring (I know what you’re thinking, you can reorganize your sock drawer in a single day and that doesn’t make you legendary. Just dull.) What I’m talking about are huge projects no one could finish in a day. The most common example of these are the Menehune fishponds. The Menehune were clever little buggers (haha, pun), and they would build fish ponds with walls and the walls would have small holes in them for the fish to fit through. Once inside they would munch on the oh-so-delicious water plants the Menehune would conveniently stock, and they would be unable to swim out the holes again. And the ones that could, well, they weren’t fat enough to eat yet, anyway.

(Menehune fishpond on Kauai).

Legend had it that when the Tahitians came along and brought black magic to the island, the Menehune disappeared into the hills and were never seen again. Now, most Hawaiians believe that the Menehune were legends or at least that most of the stories surrounding them were legends. You can’t dispute the fact that there are in fact fishponds and large stone walls on Oahu, Maui, and Kauai and that these things were built by people with a skill eye (and rumor has it that the measurement used is called the Pyramid Inch, the same type used at Stonehenge). And then you got people like our guide who not only thought they were real, but believed she was descended from them and that we had to make offerings to the Menehune.

Now Maya led us into the jungle with our walking sticks and maybe I was crazy for following her. But again I told you, having the walking stick was so fun. Normally, I made fun of those people on hiking trails, but hey if someone was telling you HAD to carry one, then it was okay. And I felt like a hobbit. So Maya made the rounds and worked the crowd (she wasn’t just being a creeper to me, I heard her tell a young woman in front of me, married 6 days and on her honeymoon, that she would have a baby before the year was out. The woman was actually excited about this news). When she came to me I braced myself for whatever crazy train was speeding down the tracks. And this one was a doozy (although not the biggest one, that was yet to come). She reached into her pockets and handed me some wilted Ti leaves.

I asked her why she’d given me Ti leaves just to her know that I knew what these were. The Hawaiians would plant Ti around their homes and also cemeteries to keep the spirits from getting in/getting out. And she said, and I swear, “a spirit is following you. A woman’s spirit. It’s a friendly spirit but you can’t have spirits following you around. Life is for the living (or something like that).” I was just about to write her off, anyone could say a throwaway line like that, when she added, “I believe it’s the spirit of your grandmother.”

Nope, not making that up. Kinda wish I were though. My grandmother had passed away at the end of January and I’d delayed going to Hawaii a few days because of it. Now I got kinda cold all over, even though it was eighty degrees out. I was also a little angry, quite certain that somehow, somewhere, someone was playing a joke on me and it was seriously not funny and that any moment Stierman, Seth, and Matthew were going to come crashing out of the underbrush with a big “gotcha” sign. No such luck.

But, I’m a logical person so I reasoned that this could have been a throwaway line, she had a 50/50 chance that someone at some point had died in my life and had been a female. It was just the timing of it. She’d gotten lucky.

I chewed that over until we reached the Falls. They really were beautiful; you could see why only queens could bathe here. No sense in sharing this with the common folk. I didn’t care how cold it was, I was going swimming. I was dirty from the hike in and covered in bug bites. But to my dismay, I discovered my bathing suit top had lost its string. A bad omen. This was not the kind of place you could swim topless, so I resigned myself to the fact that I was going in, t-shirt and all.

So I sat on a rock, eating dried pineapple, making small talk with other people on our kayaking trip (I want to point out for the millionth time that I love Canadians, just love them and want to hug them and squeeze them and…). I was getting ready to head into the water, having already handed my camera off to someone who would take a picture of me, when I heard Maya call me over.

Oh great, I thought. Another deeply creepy life reveal. But if she tells me I’m gonna be pregnant before the year is out I’m going to whack her with the hobbit stick. That’s the deal.

But she doesn’t guess the name of the first boy who kissed me or tell me my worst fears or where I’ll be in ten years or the date of my death or anything like that.

Maya: “Jessica, you have a pure soul. I want you to make an offering to the Goddess.”

Me: I got nothing for you. There is so much wrong with that sentence, I’d need a wrecking ball. Also, I have no idea which Goddess you are talking about. But remember, I’m only snarky in my head so I said, “umm okay, sure.”

Maya: (reaching into her pockets and pulling out bits of stone, shells, string, goose feathers, a pearl, and something white and oblong that reminds me of a Good N’ Plenty, but clearly isn’t). “Pick your offering.”

Me: (to myself) Choose your destiny, young one. Sow your own seeds of fate. You are the chosen one. There can be only one. And so forth. I have no idea what to pick, I ended up debating between the shell and the pearl because I like ocean things. Eventually, I decided on the black pearl because the shell had a crack in it and the black pearl has seriously deep literary roots. ‘This one.”

Maya: “That’s interesting. Now what I would have chosen for you.”

Me: (thinking) WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN??? You can’t just say something like that and not explain it!

Maya: ‘Now, you go into the waterfall all the way under the falls, you leave the offering for her and wait for her to take it. Only then do you come out.”

Me: “Okay.” I have a billion questions, like, how will I know if she takes the offering? Are there snakes in the pond? Does the kayaking company know you’re off the res?

Maya: “And you must carry it in your mouth.”

I’m floored. Literally floored, although I do have a passing snark thought, thank god I didn’t take the feather.

This is not my life.

I’m an attorney, a deferred one, but I went to law school, damnit. I’m risk adverse. I eat poptarts. I go to the dentist regularly. I subscribe to Bon Apetit. Occasionally, I argue with the ESPN PTI guys, even though I know they can’t hear me. I jog with an i-pod.

I’m not seriously going to wade across a waterfall with a pearl in my mouth and make an offering to an unknown goddess, am I? Am I being Punked?

But Ashton Kutcher doesn’t jump out of the underbrush with Nikon in hand and trucker hat on head. And part of me, the anal type A part, just can’t bring myself to let someone down even if it means acting ridiculously mystical. I want Maya to know I’m honored that she chose me for this…this…thing. And I don’t wish to insult her.

So I put the pearl in my mouth. Right up front on the bottom row between the two front teeth. You are not going to swallow this, I told myself, just so we’re clear. The Goddess would not be pleased. Then I picked my way down over the rocks to the waters edge. It was deeply green and murky. I’m not such a fan of bodies of water where you can’t see the bottom. I like to know what I’m getting into. So I sighed and began walking out through the cool water.

Then I stopped. I feel like if you’re going to go all crazy train, you might as well go ALL crazy train. So I reach into my pocket, take out one of the rumpled Ti leaves and I place it on top of the water. If it floats, no water lizard. If it sinks, your a$$ is grass, expect a watery death by lizard.

The leaf floats. Safe passage.

I waded out until I reached the falls and could stand under them. Behind them lay a big, black rock that looked volcanic (not a bad guess when you’re in Hawaii). It had a concave top perfect for depositing the pearl. No I didn’t spit it out or lay the pearl on there with my mouth. That was just too much. I took it out of my mouth with my fingers and laid it there. The water cascaded down over it, making it rock back and forth, until a particularly potent jet of water carried it down and off the rock.

Offer and acceptance.

We have a contract.

Snark snark snark. But I’m still calling the pearl sliding off the rock because of the water, a total win. The goddess took the pearl.

I actually stood there for a good, long minute having a peaceful moment. The waterfall felt great and it was loud, the water rushing down, but also somehow quiet. My trip was ending in two days and I felt this wonderful feeling of appreciation and connection, maybe not to a Goddess or anything like that, but I felt incredibly serene and happy. And that was enough for me.

On the way out, I posed for pictures. And yes, I was wearing this Bob Dylan t-shirt last year when I went swimming up at Manoa Falls for those of you who read the blog. Yes, it’s my favorite shirt. And it’s black and won’t show, uh, anything if it gets wet, which makes it ideal for waterfalls, kayaking, and other water recreational activities.

I headed back to the rocks, thankful to have not been struck down by an unnamed Goddess who did not appreciate snark or dragged to a drowning death by a water lizard (remember the Ghost Tour blog? Yeah, the whole drowning child calling for help nonsense wouldn’t have worked on me. You know what I would have done, mahalo). I met Maya at the waters edge. She asked me if the Goddess took the pearl and I nodded.

“That’s good,” she said. “You’ll finish now.” She gave me a mysterious smile, full of promise.

And that was the last thing Maya said to me for the remainder of the trip, other than a thank you at the tour’s end when I tipped her and thanked her for the tour. She did give me a big Hawaiian hug (hug, slight chest bump, cheek kiss) and despite her having really, really freaked me out with the whole, “I know things about you,” shtick, I had kinda enjoyed Matya. It’s good to hang out with people who you have nothing in common with other than being a carbon-based life form.

But I was left with:

You’ll finish now.

Finish what?

(The moon that night, kinda looks like a pearl, doesn't it)

*Leslie Stierman, JD and PE (Pineapple expert. Surprised you didn’t know that).

Incident at Spouting Horn

2010-03-05T13:24:00.003-08:00

Today I returned to my beloved Kauai, my favorite of the island chain. Kauai is beautiful, green, lush and uninhabited by tourists. There isn’t much in the way of shopping or tourists attractions on Kauai. The attractions are natural: the Waimea Canyon, the Na Pali Coast, the Wailua River and they are all stunners.

As I drove along the highway, I rolled my window down and reminisced about my birthday weekend I spent here last year. En route to a sunrise biking tour down the Waimea Canyon, I had called and asked for directions to the site. The stoner/tour guide extraordinaire had said to me: “whatcha need to do is get on a road that looks big enough to be a highway, roll down the window, and stick your hand out. When it gets cold, that means you're getting toward the ocean and you're close." At the time, I was being my typical Type A personality and was annoyed by this lack of direction or landmark (and also convinced there was a man with a hook for a hand in my backseat. Did I mention it was five in the morning and Kauai is a desolate place?) Now, a year older and wiser, I rolled the window down, stuck my hand out, and enjoyed the ride.

(And maybe I took a picture while driving since I was the only person on the road for miles)

I thought a lot about last year’s trip. One of the highlights had certainly been that bike tour led by two absolutely endearing and baked out of their ever-loving mind stoners. I remembered in particular a turn of phrase one of them had used to describe a particular heinous act of eco-irresponsibility: F-ing Motherf-ing Pigf---ing Pigf---er.

You see? There really isn’t an obscene phrase out there that gets it better than that. Use it in a sentence.

Now, in between this reminiscing and the blog incident I’m about to detail, I did two things. I hiked some falls which weren’t technically open to the public because of some mud slides in the area and all I got for my trouble were dry falls, red mud on my socks and some heightened heart racing (I was so certain that I would get caught and get in trouble). The second thing I did was stop at the western-most McDonalds in the U.S. and pick up two apple pies. Why, you ask, did I drive 20 minutes of my way to do this? If you had to ask that question, then we’re not friends. You know why I did it. Because I’m a damn glutton and those are the best apple pies ANYWHERE because they still use the deep fryer from the sixties which has now gone out of vogue because of the war on transfats. Fat kids are ruining everything.

(Western most McDonalds, if you look closely, you can see a McNugget on the loose)

Now on to what shall be known as the Incident at Spouting Horn.

Spouting Horn is a big blowhole. I decided to stop here to break up the drive back to Kapa’a. You drive to it, you get out of your car, walk to the fence, watch it spout water, and then get back in your car and check it off the list of things to do in Kauai. Ideally, you do not step on wild chickens while you are at it. They are everywhere and nest in the park up near Spouting Horn. And it happens to be baby chick season.

Now, I got out at Spouting Horn and the blow hole was really giving the crowd of people off a tour bus a show. I took out my camera, lined up the shot, and inadvertently nudged the brim of Sox cap up. Because it was February in Kauai, the trade winds were blowing like crazy, and a gust of wind carried my hat over the edge of Spouting Horn and down onto the rocks.

The guy next to me, who was wearing an “old guys rule” t-shirt, a wide-brimmed visor, and socks pulled up to his knees (just like my Dad wears them), turned to me and said, “that’s a real shame.”

I fixed him with a plain look. Hemorrhoids are a real shame. Fanny packs are a real shame. Socks pulled up to your knees are a real shame. This was a nuclear holocaust.

I’ve had that Sox hat for almost 15 years old now and it still remains the coolest gift my brother has ever given me. I suspect it is now part of my DNA and that in the future when they start cloning me (and let’s be serious, who wouldn’t want little snark armies of me running around) I will come cloned with the Sox hat already on my head.

My hat predates the 2004 and 2007 victories, which means, I had that hat when it actually meant something to be a Sox fan. That hat has seen the likes of Nomar, Trot Nixon, and Troy O’Leary. I was wearing it when they lost in the play offs in 1999. I was wearing it when Aaron f**king Boone hit the home run in 2003. And I was wearing it in 2004 when Keith Foulke flipped the ball to Doug Mientkiewicz and again in 2007 when Pap struck that guy out (why can I never remember his name) for the final out.

And, I wore that hat to my LSATs and during my first year final exams, both semesters. It hiked Mount Rainier, Diamond Head, Kahtadin and the craters at Volcano National Park with me. I finished my first book in that hat and I was wearing it the day I found out I got into law school (true story). And I would have worn it to the bar exam if the board of bar examiners had let us. But you better believe that it was a constant fixture on my person during those wretched months of studying.

To shamelessly plunder one of the quality war movies out there:

“This is my [Sox hat]. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My [Sox hat] is my best friend. It is my life.”

It wasn’t a question of whether I would try and retrieve it, it was a question of how.

Immediately, I went around to where the fence ended and there was a sign posted that read: “KEEP OUT DANGER BEYOND THIS POINT. FOR YOUR SAFETY THIS AREA IS CLOSED. MAXIMUM FINE OF NOT MORE THAN $100.”

(Note, but no jail time. This might have changed the equation. Maybe. Probably not.)

Now, I looked at the opening of the fence, the jagged rocks, the sheer drop off into the water below and I asked myself two questions. Actually, the first thing I did was to ask the woman hawking jewelry if rangers and cops patrolled this area. She said of course not, the rangers never came around this way.

And then I asked myself two questions.

If she were mistaken, was my hat worth a $100 to me? Yes. Zero hesitation.

Given the rocky topography, vertical drop off, and general klutziness of my own nature, was I willing to bleed for this hat? Yes. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill here. It’s not like I was scaling the Cliffs of Despair Princess Bride style, okay? They weren’t THAT sheer and I wasn’t wearing a mask. But they weren’t exactly a place I’d pick to tromp around. So I scaled down around the edge of the fence and slid a few times on the rocks and the dirt. Once, I really almost fell (on rocks, not down into the water or anything) and I caught myself with my hand on a rather sharp rock and I let loose that perfect obscenity: F-ing Motherf-ing Pigf---ing Pigf---er. It felt great, actually. I’m dusting that expression off and going to circulate it around more. And then I scraped the back of my legs on some bramble and since apparently I’m allergic to bramble, those scratched swelled up something fierce and itchy. But I didn’t plummet to my death, break an ankle, or bite it in a major way.

I did, however, attract a rather unhelpful audience who kept yelling at me from above and behind the fence that I was not supposed to be down there. Yes, I had gathered that, mahalo. And some of them took pictures of me. Hopefully, they caught me from the right, that’s my better side. A few actual helpful people helped navigate me to where the hat lay, easier spotted from above than where I was. It was perched precariously on a rock, swaying back and forth as if it might blow off any minute in the ocean. I was within four feet of my hat when I heard a loud, authoritative voice: “You are trespassing in an unauthorized area. Get out of there immediately.”

That’s what he said, but what I really heard was, “there goes your law license, I’m going to haul you off to a federal prison for people who trespass in our national parks. And I’m going to call your mother, tell her what a complete dumbass you are. And then I’m gonna take your hat and throw it back over the edge.”

So I did what any prudent person would do. I pretended I couldn’t hear him and retrieved my hat. I jammed it back down firmly over my head and thought, now don’t you ever scare me like that again.

Then it was time to face the music.

I’m gonna call the Parks and Recreation guy Ranger Rick (in honor of the magazine of our childhoods). Ranger Rick was one of those gorgeously tanned Hawaiian guys with dark eyes, dark hair, and a perfectly toned physique. I feel ugly just being within 3 feet of him and more so because he was furious with me.

“What’s the matter with you? You not see the sign? You can’t go down there, it’s dangerous. (Something, something, something about what an idiot I was), I’m going to write you a ticket.”

Now, I wholeheartedly believe that all tickets are discretionary and issued at the will of the officer/ranger/authority figure in charge. I came to conclusion this after four years at Colby College where I received 7 written warnings from local law enforcement and staties for violating the rules of the road. To this day, I’ve never actually received a ticket or citation of any kind. So I believed that all tickets were negotiable until written.

When it comes to ticket disputes, I think people can be divided into two basic categories. The first contains those people who just want to stick it to the Man. They will get up in the cop/ranger/authority figure’s face and rant and rave about power trips and the unfairness of the law or whatever makes them feel good. In the end, they’ve stood up for themselves, but they still have a ticket to pay.

My brother is one of these people. I’m not.

I fall squarely into the category of people who believe that I am the exception to whatever ticket is being issued and I will do my best to make the cop/ranger/authority figure see this from my perspective. Given my illustrious record of zero speeding and traffic violation citations issued, I’d say I have a pretty good handle on this.

And yes, as my best friend, Big once pointed out, I have two, uh, assets located between my chin and navel. All girls have them, and apparently, these have magic powers that get girls whatever they want. So if you want to explain it away that way (because you’re a guy and you’re bitter), you go right ahead. This isn’t why I have the knack for getting out of tickets. It’s a whole lot simpler than that.

I like people. A lot. I like watching them, talking to them, and in particular, listening to them tell their stories and experiences. When it comes down to it, I’m all snark and no bite. Being snarky takes efforts. Smiling and conversing with random strangers doesn’t. Why be miserable when you can be nice? (Note: this doesn’t mean if some jerkwad is hitting on you or someone picks a fight with you that you have to be nice. I’m certainly not above bringing the wrath of snark then). But just in general, you never know if you’re going to go out and get hit by a bus. So you may as well be nice to people.

So the way I see it, talking your way out of a ticket is really just forging a connection with someone so that that person would feel bad actually giving you a ticket. Spin doctor, I know. But even if you fail, you still get a good story out of it. And besides, I told you I thought my hat was worth a$100 to me. I was ready to pay that price for it, but not without a fight.

So Ranger Rick and I started the “getting to know you dance.” He got to lead since he has the uniform and one of those old school ticket pads out already (you know the one with the pink slip, yellow slip, and carbon copy). Now, I knew coming out swinging was no way to handle this, it was better to let Ranger Rick lecture me on why it was dangerous to disobey those signs. And he made good points. This poor guy had to deal with countless morons who routinely ignore those signs to get a better picture angle or lose stuff over the edge, and let’s face it, I was one of them. If I had fallen and gotten cut up or broke my neck, then I’d really have made a mess of things for Ranger Rick, so he was in the right to berate me.

So at first I said, “I wouldn’t have done it under any other circumstance. This hat is over a decade old. I was wearing it when the Red Sox won the World Series. Sox fans, we’re just nuts.” I was testing the waters to see if he was a baseball fan. He wasn’t. Ranger Rick remained impassive.

What we had here was a failure to communicate.

That’s okay. I’d had plenty of training for this sort of thing. Like everyone else, I’ve been on some absolutely awful dates where it seems like every other word out of your date’s mouth (or your own) is a conversation killer. Here’s my best one (and no, this was not a first date, I was at a keg party on campus), guy I know says to me: “I love your hair.” I responded politely and said thank you. But he didn’t stop there. “It’s so beautiful that I want to cut it off while you’re sleeping and make a braid of it so I can always keep it with me.” YUP. That was actually said to me by a classmate of mine in my sophomore year creative writing class and he was also a fellow RA with me, CREEPER. So yes, like everyone else, I’ve had practice with conversation killers. Explaining the sentimental value and sports significance of the hat got me nowhere with Ranger Rick.

So I tried again from another angle. “My kid brother gave me this hat,” I added, “and it’s the one thing in the whole world that keeps me from being homesick when I’m away from home.” This got me a little nod from Ranger Rick.

I just assumed I was getting a ticket now. But, I thought I’d give it one more try. And in a moment of pure full circle-ness, It was the stoners from my bike ride who saved me. Those wonderful F-ing Motherf-ing Pigf---ing Pigf---ers. What happened was, a tradewind blew across me as I was talking to Ranger Rick, and I shivered a little and zipped my Sam Adams track jacket up.

Me: “Sorry, I love Kauai, but man, those tradewinds.”

Ranger Rick: “You’ve been to our island before?”

Me: “Oh yes, I came out here last year by myself for my birthday. Then I came back with my parents and here I am again. It’s my favorite island.” (Ranger Rick is now smiling slightly. This is a good sign. So I push on). It’s such a drastic change from Oahu. I love Waikiki, but it’s very touristy and the whole city caters to it. What I love about Kauai is that everyone here works really hard to keep the island the way it is. I mean, yes you guys have tourism, but it’s all eco-friendly. You teach people about the island without exploiting it. I think that’s incredibly responsible.” (Okay, maybe I wasn’t quite this eloquent, but it was close and this was the gist of my message). And yes, I really was laying it on this thick. When you are trying to beat a ticket, you have no dignity. You check it at the door. That’s the rule.

Ranger Rick: “We do try to preserve the natural surroundings that have been entrusted to us.”

Okay, that’s not a slam dunk, but I sense he’s warming to me now.

Me: “When I came out here last year, I went on a tour of Waimea Canyon, a bike tour. It was amazing, but the tourguides (and I leave out the pertinent details about them being total stoners who literally would smoke any plant on the island) told me some really troubling things (and here I was really reaching), something about how you guys blocked the ferry from making a permanent stop here?” In chess, we call this a gambit. We want the other person to take it, but it’s uncertain if they will go for it. I didn’t know where Ranger Rick stood on the ferry issue, maybe he thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t think so.

Ranger Rick launches into a five minute description about how he went door to door and personally collected signatures (from little old ladies who I’m sure were grateful to have a strapping young ranger at their doors).

And then I went in for the kill (thank you, stoners). I said, “that’s so incredibly responsible of you. It’s really a shame when people in your position abuse it. I read about the reef bleaching incident with your head warden.”

Reef bleaching, the process of pulling your boat up a living reef, dumping a diluted bleach solution powerful enough to stun the fish so that they can be collected for tropical aquariums. As you can imagine, this would be like gargling with bleach, it’s bad juju. It kills the reef.

Game. Set. Match.

Ranger Rick and I discuss the deleterious effects of reef bleaching (which, I’ve just told you my entire knowledge bank on the subject, so I let Ranger Rick really go off here).

There is absolutely zero chance that he writes me a ticket now. You see? I've made a connection with Ranger Rick. We've had a good conversation, I'm not getting a ticket, and I've learned a whole lot more about reef bleaching. Everybody's a winner.

But here’s where I almost became the world’s biggest loser. This is akin to pushing all in on a pair of tens when there’s a jack on the flop. You go for it, but you don’t feel good about it, because let’s face it, Big Samarel is probably playing AJ. Jerkface.

“Will you take my picture?” I ask Ranger Rick. “I just want to be able to tell my Dad and brother what I went through to save my hat.” That and it will mean more to me personally if you take the picture, because I can snark all over the place about it later in my blog.

Ranger Rick eyes me carefully. “You want me to take a picture of you?” He gives me what might be considered a disapproving glance.

“Please? I just want to remember this as the day I almost lost my hat.” And talked my way out of a state park ticket by waxing poetic on reef bleaching. Reef bleaching.

He puts away the ticket pad slowly and carefully, comes over and takes my picture. I’m not stupid enough to ask to take one with him, this isn’t Nam. There are rules. Ranger Rick reads me the riot act once more about not violating the rules of state parks (the really, really funny part about this is, it’s the second time I’ve done it THAT day, since I’d already gone and hiked the falls that were closed down). Ho hum, ho hum. I promise to be a little goober, Ranger Rick.

We headed off, just me and my beloved hat. I decided to stop at the Pearl Shack, a notorious tourist trap (one of the few on the whole island) and took turns with a pair of Japanese tourists doing some super corny poses (seen here and here's a fun fact, the female tourist helped pose me by yelling 'stick your butt out'), just me and my hat (my hat did not stick its butt out, obviously. It stuck its brim out).

(Baby, I'm your Pearl)

I Survived the Tsunami

2010-03-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

February 27th, 2010.

6:03 AM: I awoke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. I’m usually up by 7 to go jogging (Marmot, I am working on my 8 minute mile for the 5K, mahalo), but I’d had a particularly late night the previous evening (don’t ask, not important) and so I rolled over and answered.

It was my mother.

“Jess, there is a tsunami coming. What are you going to do about this?”

First, I hate to have some fun at my mother’s expense, (no wait, who are we kidding?) but this wasn’t the first time she had called to tell me there was a tsunami coming. The last time she did so, I was living in Seattle in Queen Anne, which happened to be on the highest hill neighborhood in the fine state of Washington. I literally couldn’t have gotten to higher ground if I tried. So I did then what anyone would do, I turned on the TV to get the news about the tsunami. Then I checked the internet. Nothing. I called my friends to see if they’d heard anything. Nothing. No one in Seattle to this day knew anything about this phantom tsunami. And don’t get me started on the whole Mount Saint Helen’s smoking ash incident.

So perhaps you will better understand my reply: “Mom. It is six in the morning here.”

Second, what do you mean, what am I going to do about this? As if somehow I can prevent this? I imagined myself walking down the water’s edge, banging a staff and yelling at the oncoming waves “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”

But before I can really get snarky, a siren starts going off. Not an ambulance siren or anything mundane like that. It’s a god awful, blaring, get under your beds because nuclear atomic flesh eating zombies are coming your way and not even Bruce Campbell can save you now, kinda of siren. I sighed and told my mother I’d have to call her back. I turned on the news and yes, my mother was right. We were due to be hit by a tsunami at 11:37.

I’m not much of a panicker. There is someone in our family who does enough of that for all of us (Gatsby, obviously I’m looking at you). I’m more like my Dad. I’m a planner. So I watched the news until I figured out what I need to know. For me, it broke down into three areas: Evacuation, Safety, and Provisions.

EVACUATION: There was a map on screen showing the evacuation areas. Most of these areas were along the coastline, naturally, since that is where the tsunami wave would hit. Waikiki was in one of these areas. However, only individuals staying on the third floor of a building or below had to evacuate. I was on the 22nd floor, the highest floor in my condo building. Score one for Snarky, I wasn’t going to have to evacuate (yes, I was imagining Super Dome like conditions) nor was I going to be one of those unfortunates stranded on their roofs while the National Guard went around and rescued them and people watching CNN wondered, who are these morons?

SAFETY: Every other sentence out of the weatherman’s mouth (and clearly, this man had been up all night working on the tsunami warnings because he was wearing jeans and an excited, but tired expression) was “please do not attempt to surf the tsunami waves.” And I thought, what kind of moron would try to surf a tsunami wave? Surely, everyone has more or less heard or seen some of the devastation such waves cause all over the world? Why would you ever got on a board and try to surf it? And then the weatherman cut to scenes of the Coast Guard (in boats and helicopters) ordering said morons out of the water, either surfing or swimming.

Safety wasn’t going to be an issue for me. I wasn’t going within a 1000 yards of the ocean because I actually know what the word tsunami means. Mahalo.

PROVISIONS: This was the area of greatest concern because the two anchors and the weatherman took turns instructing us on what we need, potentially 5-7 days worth of food and water. First, we were to fill our bathtubs with water and then we were to turn our fridges all the way up in the event we lost power. I dutifully went and filled the bathtub, then I noted how disgusting the water was. So I drained it, scrubbed the tub, and then refilled it. It still looked like last resort water to me.

8:12 AM: Here was the rationale with the food. Had the tsunami hit as predicted, an 8 foot wave (which doesn’t sound very big, I mean, c’mon I saw sharks bigger than this), would hit Waikiki. An 8 foot wave of ocean would actually be quite dangerous and had the potential to knock out roads, powers, and systems for days. This I wholeheartedly believed because last year during the power outage, my building’s solution to an outage that lasted over 14 hours was to give everyone lightsticks and free drinks at the bar. So yes, I believed that the island of Oahu could be rocked back to the Stone Age for 5-7 days. Water I had. Food I did not. I went off in search of food (There was still well over three hours before the wave was due to hit us), and to my dismay, so did everyone else as all the lines to every major food store, gas station, McDonalds and Sushi Buffet were around the block. So I kept walking further and further until I saw a desolate looking liquor store with a blink neon light from the sixties that indicated it was open. I poked my head in. The liquor store guy smiled down at me, one gold tooth flashing in his leathery visage. “Everyone needs booze during a tsunami,” he said with a grin.

Having just eyed his ample snack selection, I was actually thinking: “everyone needs pork rinds during a tsunami.” So I bought: chips, salsa, a Snickers Bar, a bag of Peanut M&Ms, sour cream and onion Pringles, Cool Ranch Doritos and a package of Oreos (non Double Stuff, but beggars can’t be choosers). It was enough food to last me at least 3 days, then I could forage for food and eat exotic birds or whatever.

9:38 AM: I more or less spent the rest of the time until the tsunami was due to hit watching the weatherman and g-chatting my mother down off the ledge. I’d left the balcony door wide open so I heard the policemen driving around in their cruisers advising people to go indoors. At 10:00 AM, whomever is in charge of oncoming tsunami damage control announced their plan to to shut down all the major routes into Waikiki. I started to feel a little bit like Will Smith in “I am Legend.” The major arteries into the city would be empty and the zoo animals would run loose and I’d get to hunt them. The Honolulu Zoo had flamingos. I’d always wondered what a flamingo would taste like. Instead I opened up the chips and salsa and went to town.

10:00 AM: True to their word, law enforcement closed the road and sounded another siren. Oh good. Was pretty certain at this point my mother was hyperventilating. I got up and peered out the window. It looked like this. I was quite skeptical. I was expecting dark skies, torrid wind gusts, or a bell ringing atop a Buddhist temple in the movie 2012. I had my way with the Oreos. This was the one hour, the hour of waiting, where I actually felt a little apprehension, a little adrenaline. Sure it was sunny, but I kept waiting for the Seventh Seal darkness and gloom to descend upon us.

11:00 AM: The weatherman was quite excited. They’d set up a live cam on a harbor in Maui. The tsunami was due to hit Maui first and work its way up the island chain to us on Oahu. The weatherman was very excited about what looked like a whole lot of nothing. He kept referring to dramatic changes in the tide levels. I just saw a lot of rocks and some brownish red water. This was the moment I realized the tsunami was going to be a dud. I opened up the Pringles to celebrate.

11:37 AM: The sun was shining brilliantly and though the weatherman seems a little defeated, but he keeps stressing what a historical, meteorological event this is. He sounds a smidge defensive. I look outside. The surf did look a little rough, I guess. I broke into the Pop Tarts to celebrate properly and informed my mother she could breathe again. She informed me under no circumstances was I to go in the water or the near it, kind of a funny concept actually considering I was on an island and staying at Waikiki Beach.

(This is the extent of the waves and the coast guard helicopter)

12:20 PM: The weather alert people at the tsunami prevention were trying to save face. Better safe than sorry. And you know what? I completely agreed with them on the whole ounce of prevention theory. Having studied the law for three years (and people watched my whole life), I’d come to the conclusion that people were morons and if the weather people hadn’t put the fear of god in us all, people would have been out in the surf swimming and surfing and then there actually would have been loss of life. (And oh believe me, in Chile where the earthquake hit that caused all of this alarm in Hawaii, there was a staggering amount of loss of life). So I was not going to be mad at the weather alert people. This was just silly.

2:10 PM: The all clear signal sounded and people went back to walking their travel Kleenex-sized pets in the park across from my place. Now, my mother had expressly forbid me to go near the water, but the weather alert experts had given the all clear. I weighed their opinion against my mother’s, then I went out to explore down at Ala Moana. Now this was cool. The water looked more dramatic down there, grayish and green and swirling with debris. The harbor looked swollen, both with water and boats, I’d never seen so many boats moored in the marina before. In the park, more birds than I’d ever seen were grounded and hunkered down in the grass. I felt like an extra in “The Birds” and made a point to tread carefully lest I step on one. Finally, the harbor inlet was full of fish that were not usually there. I knew this because I jogged there every night and liked to look over the edge and watch the herons pick off fish. Now there were brightly colored tropical fish, including some large angel fish. They looked confused. So again, nothing dramatic, some cool, but subtle shifts down at Ala Moana, but I still I felt like turning cartwheels in the grass. I didn’t have to evacuate or drink any dodgy water from my tub. Win win.

(Al

5:12 PM: Decided to celebrate my miraculous survival of the tsunami at the 31.99 crab leg and prime rib buffet over the Oceanarium. The Oceanarium looks just like the tank at the New England Aquarium. There I pretty much ate my weight in crab legs, oysters, and sushi. You hate me. That’s fine.

6:18 PM: The sunset was one of the strangest I’d ever seen and it was certainly one that bears mentioning here just so I can post some pictures. The clouds were funnel shaped with the sun streaming down and people were out in droves, lined up on walls and rocks to watch it. It was one of the prettiest ones I can remember.

So this is how I came to survive the February 27th, 2010 Tsunami. It was tough, subsisting on Oreos and crab legs, but I managed.

And here’s a fun parting vignette. Check out this t-shirt. Baller, right?

A few days prior to the tsunami warning, I had ventured out for 10 cent buffalo wings, Olympic hockey, and trivia at a local watering hole. Three gentlemen visiting from down South were gracious enough to let me join their team. We won and there was a really nice gift basket for our team, including a gift certificate to Haleiwa t-shirts, which the guys told me I should take (because I got the final question). So I did and a few days after the tsunami I saw this shirt. Limited edition. Entirely free. 1/3rd of the proceeds going to Chile earthquake victims. And as I walked around Waikiki in it, I was stopped by people of all ages and general attractiveness, all inquiring about where I’d gotten such an awesome t-shirt because the ones they were hawking at the souvenir stands were so cheesy. So basically, I was cool for like, a good twenty minutes.

And I know you’re all dying to know what the final trivia question was.

Category: Sports
Question: The only Yankee to win both Rookie of the Year and MVP, this all-star catcher was killed in a plane crash in 1979.
Answer: (will be posted in next blog should you need it)

Why Snarky knows this: My Dad used to tell me stories about this catcher who helped kindle the Sox/Yankees feud in the 60's and 70's, he really had it in for Carlton Fisk. My Dad has just come out of the woods on a hiking trip when he heard this player had died and he was shocked.

Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

2010-03-02T04:04:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: this is going to be a disappointing blog for most of you. First, the good pics won’t come back for awhile from the underwater camera (which was a disposable and may not be any good anyway since there was no zoom). Blow. So instead, I grabbed some pictures from the company’s website of the kind of sharks we saw (Galapagos and Reef sharks) that were close in approximate size and proximity to the cage. When my own come back, I will post those (as long as they come out okay and the sharks look big in them). Second, there’s not going to be a whole lot of snark here. Nothing particularly snarky happened (other than a few barbs traded with babetastic Captain Chris) and I just love sharks too much to do anything other than gush about them. Deal with it or get rent Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus.

So, the two great loves of my childhood were dinosaurs and sharks. I wanted to be a paleontologist quite badly, live out in the desert in tents with goofy Panama Jack hats and little brush tools. I even slept with a red plush dinosaur (his name was Crystal Moonbeam) But ever fickle, even at a young age, I dropped dinosaurs for sharks and from then on I wanted to be a marine biologist (until I learned this profession involved math. And not the sexy kind of math, but actual math. Gross).

Still, a love of sharks stayed with me. Even now, even in the age of DVR, I seldom leave the house during Shark Week on the Discovery channel. You know, just in case the DVR doesn’t work or heaven forbid, I run into someone who already saw the new documentary and they ruin it for me by revealing some major plot point. You know something like: Jess, did you see the part when the abalone diver bled out from his femoral artery after the first ever hammer head shark attack caught off the coastal waters of Florida?

And of course my answer would be no and I would hate that person henceforth. Forever.

I’ve read all the Peter Benchley novels, naturally. And seen all of the Jaws movies even the bad ones. (I’m looking you at Jaws 3-D. Dennis Quaid, you should be ashamed of yourself). And speaking of being ashamed, I’ve seen Shark Attack 3: Megaladon and Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus (don’t snark it, til you’ve tried it). But, I’ve also read most of the accessible scientific books on the subject out there as well. And I follow shark blogs and the like online. I will take shark information however I can get it. So if you ever find yourself wondering about the migration patterns of great white sharks off the coast of California, or why certain sharks breach, or which sharks can be found swimming in the Nile River, I’m probably the person you want to talk as long as you have a few hours to spare.

But last year in Hawaii, though I talked a good game, I just couldn’t bring myself to go in the shark cage. Even though it was billed as a 100% safe and no one had ever actually been eaten by sharks while on a shark excursion, I just couldn’t. It’s one thing to worship sharks cerebrally and from a safe distance on land. It’s another thing to get in the water with them. And let’s face it, nothing is 100% safe.

My reluctance to get in the water with sharks was due in large part to the fact that I value my life. A lot. I have a good time, a really good time in life, but I don’t jump out of planes for the adrenaline rush. I don’t ski off of cliffs for the heck of it. I don’t dive down to unsafe depths for the thrill of it. I like my life a whole lot.

And I just want to point out that sharks aren’t like kayaks.

But it’s a new year and a new Snarky, so I convinced myself to sign up. And then I felt vaguely queasy about it for two days, mainly because I signed on with the one shark encounter company that had actually seen a great white shark (once, like 8 years ago) and had the pictures to prove it.

Now, why praytell is the Great White shark so much scarier even though a bull shark or tiger shark is far more aggressive and more apt to be actually be a maneater? Because of the publicity, lore, and Hollywood treatment that the Great White, and the Great White alone has received. When we think of sharks, we think of Carcharodon carcharias, the brutish body, that ghostly white underbelly, black eyes rolling back into its head, and that permanent grimace of teeth: The Great White Death. And in this moment we are reminded that monsters are real.

And yes, that’s what I was thinking about:

And this:

Now the night before I was to go, I laid out my bikinis for the next day and tried to think about the following: if the cage were to break and I became the first person to ever die in a shark cage off Northern Oahu and bits of me were found months later by a scientist in the belly of the shark (naturally a great white) that had devoured me, which bikini should I be wearing? I ended up going with the pink ruffled one because I thought it was classier than a string bikini. If I were going to be a shark meal, then I wanted to at least be a classy one, the Sel de la Terre of bikinis, and not a trashy string one, aka the Taco Del Mar of swimsuits. And yes, that was my thought process, and no, I didn’t get much sleep that night. You know why? Because the mind can splinter this way: on one hand you know rationally that if people were being eaten by sharks on shark tours, there would be no more shark tours. On the other hand, accidents happen, maybe your number is up today, today is the day the cage splinters, you are eaten by a shark, what are the odds, and you become an overnight sensation on youtube for all the wrong grisly reasons.

Anyway, having slept, oh about forty-five minutes the entire night, the morning arrived and I found myself sitting at a marina out in Haleiwa reading over a waiver for death and injury from shark bites. In general, I’m like every other lawyer out there. We laugh at general release of liability forms. Seldom do they hold up in court and gross negligence can never really be signed away. But it’s still cute to watch companies try. My eye kept coming back to the words “shark bites.”

I had only told a single person I was going beforehand, just in case I chickened out. I reasoned that this person, while he would certainly taunt me for backing out, would at least have the common sense to call someone if he hadn’t heard from me in two or three days (hopefully sooner). I loved the movie, “Open Water,” the little indie flick about the couple that went snorkeling and were left to die out in the deep blue sea. A real heart-warming feel good movie (made seriously cooler by the fact that the actors were actually divers and the footage with the sharks is all real). But there was also an important lesson to be learned from that movie: if you’re going out into the ocean/the Amazon rainforest/ancient Mayan temples or other places from which you may never return: tell someone responsible so you have a chance of being rescued.

I grew even more apprehensive when I saw how small the boat was. Obviously, you’d want something roughly the size of the Titantic to feel safe. This boat was probably smaller than the Orca (if you don’t know what that is, stop reading this blog, rent Jaws, or check TNT for it because it’s always on, and thank me later), although, at least this boat wasn’t manned by a crazy, drunken sailor named Quint with a penchant for singing sea shanties. The captain’s name was Chris (pictured below on the top) and I was instantly smitten. Not because he was one of those perfectly, “I’m not even trying for a tan” islanders with shark white teeth of his own and fabulously, naturally highlighted by the sun golden hair. Nope, that wasn’t why, that would be shallow. Snarky was smitten because anything and everything he said had to do with sharks. Yes, he swam with them all the time. Yes, he swam with them OUTSIDE of the shark cages. Yes, he had swam up close and personal with some of the most notorious species: tiger, bull, and mako. Yes, he actually described them all as “cordial” and “intelligent” creatures. And yes, he actually made an “Open Water” reference. He said, “oh there are twelve of you? I thought there were only ten today. That means we can leave two of you behind and not get in trouble.” Nervous laughter and glance exchange. Yeah, that one actually wasn't funny, Chris. You're good looking, but not that good looking.

His assistant, First Mate Phillip, was a different kettle of fish altogether (haha, bad pun). Phillip (pictured above) was one of these perpetually happy, chill people. He had an uncanny way of scuttling all over the boat (one minute he was beside you, the next minute he was on top of the boat and his head was hanging down through the window). I’m pretty sure that if Phillip had fallen into the water and his leg been chewed off by one of these cordial sharks, Phillip would have shrugged, continued to smile and act chill about the entire thing. The one thing he asked of us was if we were going to throw up, please not throw up on him. I got the feeling from the way he wrinkled up his nose that this had actually happened to Phillip in the past. He spent most of the time on the boat fishing. Not for sharks, but for the fish that travel with the sharks, or rather behind the sharks, because let's face it, behind the danger is the best place to travel.

Anyway, we headed out about three miles out of the harbor and let me tell you, three miles is a long way to swim home if the boat sank. The water was choppy and the swells high (as Haleiwa is known for and frequented as a surfing mecca as a result). Of the dozen people on our tour, several threw up over the side of the boat. Phillip, I noticed, positioned himself strategically downwind from these people. I was not one of these tossers, mahalo very much. I spent most of my summers in or around boats as a Nokomis girl. No weak stomach here. At least not with boats.

I’d done my research ahead of time on Galapagos sharks and reef sharks. They’re not maneaters, although, any shark will eat you if they’re hungry and you’re already dead (sharks are scavengers). They’re found all over the place and prefer tropical warm waters. I also found this helpful fact:

“When provoked or threatened, this shark will exhibit a "hunched back" posture, bowing itself up as if it was hunched at the shoulders. Then it will swim at you in a classic figure 8. pattern. Imagine a fish pressed up against the glass of an aquarium, swimming in little figure 8's as if it was trying to press its nose through the glass. This is the display of a Galapagos shark when it is trying to warn you to leave its territory. So if you see this display and the shark is moving in your direction, vacate the area!”

Okay, helpful survival note to self: if a shark goes all Quasimodo on you, it’s time to move to the other side of the shark cage, avoid eye contact with the shark, or exit the cage (preferably into the boat and not the water where said provoked or irritated sharks are).

As far as interspecies mingling go, they are cordial and mix well together. They don’t swim around and bi**hslap each other like some species (looking at you, penguins). Captain Dreamy, I mean, Captain Chris pointed out that for the most part groups broke down by size and gender. 6 foot sharks did not hang with 12 foot sharks, nor did the genders mix. The group we ended up seeing was predominantly female Galapagos (females being the larger of the breed) and after seeing some of the mating scars on them, it was perfectly clear why the genders did not mix: love hurts.

Finally we approached the place in the middle of the ocean where the sharks were (oh hi fun fact, sharks are anywhere and everywhere about 3 miles off land in Hawaii. Good to know, thank you, Chris). Chris asked for volunteers for the first six to go in. The Corrections officer and the newly weds put their hands up (we’d done that whole, who are you, what do you do for a living chat while waiting at the marina). Chris looked directly at me and said, “since you’re a lawyer, you must be used to swimming with sharks.”

Good natured laugh all around. Hardy har har.

But this relaxed me, my hands stopped shaking and I straightened my spine. It’s amazing what a well-timed taunt can do for you. I finished peeling off my t-shirt and yoga pants to reveal my “in case of death by shark” bikini. And as I passed Chris, about to descend into the cage, he said, “Nice bikini. Is that considered business casual?”

Oh ha ha ha. Pick on the shark bait. I see how it is.

I called upon the gods of snark to say something witty. But it was like that scene in Jaws when Hooper is about to go into the shark cage and the otherwise cocky know-it-all himself looks down at his mask, gets ready to clear it and instead looks up at Chief Brody with fear and vulnerability in his eyes. “I got no spit,” he says.

Yeah, well I got no snark at this moment.

Then I looked left and saw a dark rippling shadow, just before I climbed down into the cage. I couldn’t make out the specifics of fins and gills and teeth, but its form was unmistakable. Sharks in the water.

You’d better believe I got into the cage as fast I could after that. No way was I going to linger in any area that was not the boat or the cage. Given my sense of balance, this just seemed dangerous.

For a moment, I couldn’t even put my face in the water. What the heck was I doing in a stupid cage in a stupid ruffled pink business casual bikini being circled by sharks three miles off shore?

And the answer was simple. I took a deep breath and blew it out through the snorkel. I had come to see sharks.

I submerged into perfect silence and deep blue nothing. There were six or seven sharks by my first count. They were moving gracefully, but not with any haste. Their movements were fluid, thousands of years of evolution showing in each effortless turn of the fins. I was mesmerized. No more fear, no snark, just pure admiration for these animals.

(Yup this is how big and how close they came at various times. No, my abs don't look like that).

Okay, so there was one exception to the “no more fear” feeling and this came when the biggest shark passed under the cage for the first time and I realized (and who knows, maybe it was a distortion caused by the glass, but I swear to you, I absolutely swear to you that one of the sharks was longer than the cage we were in. When it passed beneath us and I saw how damn tiny my feet looked (my feet, my freaking canoe paddle size 9 feet), I almost passed out. The shark was so big and there was just something about it being beneath you. Chris said they’d been seeing 12 footers all week. I’m telling you this animal was either a 12 footer or just shy of it. That’s a big shark. That’s two of me and then some.

(This is taken from the bottom of the cage (clear glass, no bars). I actually took a bunch of pics like this, only my shark was bigger, But this was the feeling of looking down, watching your own two feet fluttering ineffectively as something like this silently slid by)

Of course, even though I wasn't scared, I did keep my eyes peeled for any sharks exhibiting signs of irritation or the "hunchback" posture. You know, just in case. Also look below and keep your eyes peeled for signs of irritation caused by the "plumber's crack" posture.

Finally, in case you’re wondering how it is that the sharks came up to the cage, well, the reason Phillip gave was that the shark boats look like the crabbing boats. And the crabbing boats dump the excess bait/crabs/marine rejects back into the water. The sharks associate the boats and the people in them with a free meal (the crabs, not the people). Did you follow that? Yeah, me neither. I got the distinct feeling that Phillip was leaving out some crucial piece of the explanation. But since chumming had been illegal for two years in Hawaii, I decided to leave well enough alone. And you should too.

And that was that. Nothing too exciting and nothing but love for the sharks. This definitely was one of the coolest things I've ever done, in Hawaii or anywhere else. Being that close to something that lethal and perfectly designed in an evolutionary sense is humbling and awe-inspiring (and yes, I literally mean, it inspires awe and makes you feel like an insignificant speck of dust as a result, which I kinda like. It makes any problem you're having seem a whole lot less important). Also, this was great practice for when I really grow a pair and decide to go see the Great Whites off Gansbaai in Africa. Don't worry, Mom. I won't tell you about it until AFTER I get back. It works better that way.

So now as I depart from shark infested waters, let me leave you with the climatic scene from Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. Yes, that is the Golden Gate Bridge.

Return to Sea Life Park

2010-02-24T02:34:00.000-08:00

Contrary to widely held popular belief, I am not an idiot. No, really. Okay, at least my mom thinks I’m not an idiot. That’s not the point. The point was, as I boarded the bus and headed off to Sea Life Park, I knew there was a good chance I would be hugely disappointed. My first trip to Sea Life Park the previous year had led me to write the beautiful and stirring ballad of Teddy and Miss Baha, two star-crossed dolphins.

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go back and read my blog about it in 2009, mahalo).

Here’s how I knew I wasn’t being an idiot, for one thing, I remembered my camera (unlike last year) and second, I actually showed up after the park opened this time instead of sitting outside on the park bench like a little lost orphan waiting for the gates to open (just like last year).

But, I did consider the possibility that perhaps Teddy and Miss Baha were no longer at Sea Life Park. Dolphins get sick or they get transferred to other facilities or die in freak gasoline fights. You know, whatevs. So I had braced myself for the possibility that maybe the ballad of Teddy and Miss Baha had come to its end.

Still, as I was pretty much the first person in line at Sea Life Park that morning and the staff were still opening up the park, I made a beeline for the arena where I’d last seen Teddy and Miss Baha.

The stadium was dark and forlorn. But there were three silent, gliding gray shapes in the tank (and those freaky renegade penguins on top of the enclosure. Didn’t they have cages of their own? Why weren’t they with the other penguins?). Jackpot. One of the dolphins had a long white belly and a pretty face: Miss Baha!

And then a gray face dipped down in front of me, eyeing me from the other side of the glass. The dolphin was carrying a rubber toy in its mouth. Teddy!

I know, I know. I was being ridiculous with my childlike wonderment. But really, it doesn’t take much to amuse me.

I sat there for awhile watching the dolphins play in the tank and I waited for someone to walk by. Actually, it took two someones to walk by, because the first two Sea Life Park employees didn’t know what I was talking about it when I politely inquired about the names of the dolphins and probably (and rightfully so) thought I was being a creepshow. But the third guy who walked by, I’m going to call him Shaun, was able to shed some light on the situation.

Shaun was in on the dolphin scene, but he wasn’t what I’d called overly friendly or verbose. “That’s Miss Baha,” he said nodding his head to the dolphin with the white stripe. Of course it was.

“What about the one with the toy?”

“That’s Teddy.” Shaun actually smiled, which just didn’t look right on his otherwise disdainful face. “He’s the star of the show.” Shaun tapped the glass and Teddy came over. “I guess he was really easy to train.” Shaun shrugged. “He jumps really high.”

“Who’s the third dolphin?” I hedged.

“Marnie.”

I wanted to ask what happened to the Big Kahuna, Miss Baha’s main squeeze, from the last time I was here. But really, I didn’t want to be creepy. The reason I remembered any of this was because I’d reread all my old blogs before I’d come back out to Hawaii.

So instead I made up my own reason for the disappearance of the Big Kahuna in the ever continuing saga of Teddy and Miss Baha:

One day, not longer after I’d flown back to Boston, the Big Kahuna caught the nomadic itch. He would gaze out over his tank and see the wild blue ocean and think to himself that that was where he truly belonged. So while the trainers were cleaning his tank, the Big Kahuna saw his move and made a break for it, he did a Free Willy style jump and landed in the ocean (mathematically and physically impossible from the actual cage at Sea Life Park, but whatever). There he frolicked in the big blue sea until he was eaten by a great white shark.

(This is how I like to imagine it happening, but of course, I took this pic at the dolphin show and just wanted to work this photo in. Look at the photography prowess on this -- mid-air!)

Abandoned and forlorn, Miss Baha at first mourned the loss of her companion, the Big Kahuna. But then she gradually realized her own self-worth and decided she was better off without him anyway.

Enter Teddy, a rising star from the ranks of obscurity, who had pulled himself up the dolphin social hierarchy through hard work and dedication. At night, Teddy would practice leaping higher than the other dolphins so that one day, Miss Baha would notice him. And one day, she did.

And now, Teddy and Miss Baha were united, living in dolphin domiciliary bliss, except for that creepy third dolphin, Marnie…

I blinked. I really needed to stop imposing human characteristics on animals. So instead I asked Shaun about the penguins on top of the enclosure. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “They’re just there.” Shaun was done with me then and I was about done with Shaun, so I took a few more pics of my favorite dolphins and headed out into the bright sunlight…

And now for a dose of snark lest you think Snarky went soft on you.

Enter Bridget. Bridget wasn’t her real name, but she looked like a Bridget. Actually, since the Sea Life Park employees don’t wear name tags, I suppose there was some slight chance her name was actually Bridget. Let’s just call her Bridget.

I met Bridget over at the tide pool touching area. She was the unlucky volunteer whose job it was to keep people from manhandling the marine life that had been put in the interactive tide pool touching area. It stood to reason that all of the inhabitants of this tank must have done something really, really bad because I can only imagine how hellish their life was being picked up, fondled in weird ways, and then dropped back into the tide pool when something more exciting came along.

Actually, I hung out over at the penguin exhibit watching Bridget surrounded by about twenty microhumans no larger than three feet tall and all dressed in bright purple t-shirts that read “Keiki Tours.” Hawaiians call their offspring, keiki, as if this somehow makes the concept of children more palatable. I don’t care what you call them, a group of children this numerous in quantity is terrifying. To Bridget’s credit, she kept up a smile as she gently pried starfish and sea cucumbers from the iron grasps of Keikis.

When the herd of keikis had migrated away to harass the monk seals (good luck with that, more on that in a bit), I headed over to say hello. I already knew what I was after. What I was after did not reside in the tide pool area but off to the right. As memory served me correctly, this was where they kept the baby sea turtles.

Sea Life Park raises about 500 baby sea turtles each year and 494 are released into the wild to help keep the population up in the ocean. 6 lucky turtles get to stay at Sea Life Park and live the life of luxury, basking in the sun in a clean enclosure and being hand fed lettuce, celery, and broccoli florets with no natural enemies other than keikis.

Baby sea turtles were adorable little buggers and I desperately wanted to pet one. The last time I went to Sea Life Park with a certain gentleman (oh don’t you worry, darling, I use that term lightly), we were THIS close to getting to pet one and then said gentleman told the volunteer they looked tasty. She had put the turtle away after that comment.

(Bridget and baby sea turtle)

Bridget and I started talking sea turtles and yes, she let me pet one. It wasn’t really that exciting, but the turtle made this adorable little “whoosh” sound through his nose holes. Bridget was super excited about being a volunteer at Sea Life Park and was even more excited to talk to someone over three feet tall that didn’t pick their nose (that’s what she thought). In me she found an eager listener about anything marine oriented. Bring on the geek under the sea knowledge.

I don’t remember how we got onto the subject of penguins, but we did and I told Bridget that the penguins at Sea Life Park looked a whole lot happier than the ones back home in Boston at the New England Aquarium. Our own penguins spent a lot of time standing on rocks and making a whole lot of noise. Sea Life Park penguins, as far as I could tell, spent a lot of time floating in their little moat looking pleased with themselves.

“Oh no,” Bridget said. “They can actually get very aggressive with one another. They flippers are well-designed for not only swimming, but fighting.”

Ohhhhhh Bridget, I thought. A little knowledge can be a terrible thing. What I wanted to say to Bridget was, “you mean the penguins can bi**hslap one another with their flippers?”

Instead I said, “that’s really interesting. Do you mean they hit each other with their flippers when they’re irritated?”

“Or scared or feeling threatened. Sometimes, they’ll even hit one of the trainers if they think they’re not being fed fast enough.” Bridget smiled winsomely.

This is a funnier image still, a penguin bi**hslapping a trainer. It’s even more fun when dialogue is added. Penguin to trainer: “hurry up, you mammalian infidel! Bring me my cold filet o’ fish or I shall strike you again!” For some reason, the penguin has a British Monty Pythonish accent.

“Actually, it’s not just penguins either, sea lions have been known to fight with their flippers as well,” Bridget adds helpfully. “Although, as you can imagine, that must hurt a lot more.”

So the bottom line, Bridgey, is that what penguins and sea lions share in common, other than a marine habitat, is the penchant for bi**chslapping each other?

And then I wondered, well what about interspecies bi**chslapping? A penguin might hit a trainer, but would a penguin, if given the opportunity, bi**chslap a sea lion? I’d like to meet the penguin that would try and pull that off.

Instead I said, “that’s fascinating. Tell me about the Monk seals.”

“Oh, the monk seals,” Bridget said with a knowing look. “They’re really, really lazy. It’s hard to get them to do anything. In fact, the trainers will be feeding our Monks in about twenty minutes. We don’t post that as an activity because you can see for yourself if you want that they don’t do anything for their fish.”

I thanked Bridget for her time (and the wonderfully fun mental image of interspecies bi**chslapping) and decided to see it for myself.

Of course, Bridget was right. While other animals had to turn around in circles or jump out of the water or hit a ball for their fish (dolphins)

...or clap their flippers together and bark (sea lions)

...or look adorable and swim over with their mouths open (sea turtles)

or sandwich the divers (sting rays)

monk seals just laid there like lumps and opened their mouths. The trainer would aim the fish into their mouths. Occasionally, the trainer would miss and the fish would miss the mouth and the monk seal would make a face at the trainer.

(Monk seal resting pose)

(Cool, so I'll just lie here and you'll offer me fish)

(Fish into mouth. Monk doesn't even raise head)

Although watching indifferent monk seals and all was all very well and good, at this point, Sea Life had started to fill up with more and more keikis, so I swung by the dolphin tank once more, said good bye to Teddy and Miss Baha, and then headed off to Makapu’u for some beach time.

(Snarky here, over and out)

The Hawaiian Equivalent of King Richard's Faire

2010-02-21T15:51:00.003-08:00

So on Friday, I died and went to geek heaven.

Last year when I lived in Hawaii, I foolishly resisted going to the Polynesian Cultural Center. I’m not entirely sure why, everyone said it was a good time, but the fact that it was a center for learning about the six Polynesian islands, but was somehow run entirely by Mormons, I don’t know. This just didn’t feel right to me. Nothing against Mormons, but it just seemed weird they’d be doing the whole Polynesian thing. But I kept hearing good things and I thought, what the heck, let’s go figure what the Mormon connection is to the Polynesian islands.

Let’s be clear, the Polynesian Cultural Center isn’t all that authentic. It’s King Richard’s Faire authentic. The good parts of the culture have been scrubbed down and made palatable and tourist-friendly. The roots are there and so is the spirit, but let’s just say the average American tourist would rather learn to hula then hear about say, the land struggle in Hawaii with the five ruling estates. Just saying. Regardless, it’s wickedly good fun.

Now here’s where the Mormons really figure in. The BYU students, most of them are from Samoa, are the performers, the fire dancers, the kings and queens of the luau. That’s the Mormon connection. And let’s face it, I’m sure there is all sorts of snarky, hilarity going on behind the scenes and putting up with dumb tourists, but what a totally awesome part-time student job. I worked at a bookstore in college. I ordered text books. These guys get to dance the hula, climb trees, and ride water floats.

I decided to do the guided tour by a BYU student because I heard this got you into special exhibits, shows and a VIP luau. VIP food? Sign me up. Our tour guide’s name was Manny, he was a Samoan by birth and a BYU senior. Manny was the s**t. And here’s how you knew. He carried a big walking stick and at one point early on in the tour, he shook said stick and said “just call me Tom Bombadil.” He instantly won my admiration and adoration (at least for the first part of the tour, later he did something borderline unforgivable to me, more on that later).

Here’s Manny aka Snarky’s favorite Tolkien-quoting Samoan :)

FIJI

The first stop was the island of Fiji. It was a good warm up stop, we all took part in a bamboo stick banging music ritual. It was led by a man playing the nose flute. Yup, that’s right, the Nose Flute. The people of Fiji believed that the breath from the nose was the purest breath, more holy than that which came from your mouth. This gave me pause, as queen of bi-annual sinus infections, this was difficult to imagine. Maybe the people of Fiji should come visit me in the winter, check my nose out, and see if they still think that nose breath is holy and pure.

Fun fact about Fiji that would upset feminists: very much like the pharaohs of Egypt, when the chief passed on, he got to take all of his worldly possessions with him. This included all of his women: wives, pleasure ladies and servants. Here was the kicker: there were three ways to send them into the afterlife: clubbing them to death, stoning, or drowning. The chief got to pick (obviously, he made his wishes known before he passed). I dunno, this probably inspired some sort of womanly obedience in life, because let’s face it: nobody wants to be clubbed to death like a baby seal. But I digress.

HAWAI’I:

We learned to hula and not just total crap tourist hula they show you on the beach. This was nearly an hour demonstration, courtesy of the VIP package. Consider this heavy-handed foreshadowing for later: I cannot dance. The sole exception is tango, for some reason that dance clicks with my brain. For every other dance, I look like a wounded hippo. The hula was no exception. All I can say was, I stood in the back and tried not to call attention to myself. Of course, this would come back to haunt me. Course it would.

TAHITI:

This was a favorite destination of mine because everything we did here involved food. First, we learned to make coconut bread. Excellent. And then we learned about Poi. Poi comes from Taro, which is an indigenous root. It’s considered the Hawaiian potato. It is bright purple in color and when you grind up the roots, you get poi. Now poi gets a bad rap and deservedly so. When you go to a luau, the Islanders think it’s a hoot to put a bunch of poi out. It tastes like paste. What they don’t tell you is if you mix it with something (I prefer pork), poi is actually pretty good because it will pick up the flavor of what you mix with it. The Tahitians flavor poi with coconut milk, which makes it taste delicious.

Mmm. Poi.

TONGA:

Here I died and went to snark heaven the first time. The main event in Tonga was a drum demonstration. This required audience participation. Now the Master of the Drums seen here in colorful feathers and in what I’m calling it a gut catcher (which I’m pretty sure is not the native name for it, but just look at it and tell me that its purpose isn’t to catch the gut), gets to pick three guys from the audience.

Master of the Drum Ceremony with Gut Catcher

His choices are excellent. You know how when you read a fairy tale, the set up is always the same? You have one beautiful princess, but she’s got a flaw, like maybe she’s not the most virtuous one, so you have the second beautiful princess, but the second princess has a flaw, not like she’s not the sharpest jewel in the crown, and then you have the third princess, who turns out to be the hottest of the three, the smartest of the three and the most virtuous of the three, aka the fairest of them all. This is what is was like here.

The first drum beater is a shirtless guy from Seattle with long hair, white socks pulled up to his knees and he’s pushing a baby carriage. Amazing. The Master of Drum’s second choice is a kilt-wearing Alaskan (I knew he was from Alaska because he was on my tour bus. Aren’t you jealous?) This man has got an excellent sense of humor, you would need one to pull off the kilt and white chicken leg combination.

The third pick is the stunner. He’s a mild-mannered Japanese tourist. And he’s wearing the world’s most b**ching fanny pack.

Now, the Seattle guy goes first. The Master of the Drums shows him a few uncomplicated beats. This guy turns out to be a stud drummer and being from Seattle, it’s likely he’s a drummer in some grungy garage band. Percussion-wise, he’s the most talented, so the Master of the Drums kicks it up a bit, but let’s remember, Seattle is like the first princess. There’s a better princess coming.

Now here comes Baked Alaska. Baked Alaska isn’t as rhythmically talented as Seattle, but he’s more daring (he’s wearing a flipping kilt) and clearly has a really good sense of humor. The Master of the Drum finishes a routine by banging his head against the drum (shown here) and Baked Alaska follows the head bang. The crowd goes wild. But again, this is only fairy tale Princess number two. Clearly, the best is yet to come.

Mild-mannered, fanny-pack sporting Japanese guy looks worried. The Master of the Drum does a primal scream. He looks expectantly over at the Tourist. The Tourist gives a weak, nervous laugh into the mic. Master of the Drum chides him accordingly and gives another primal scream. Tourist leans into the mic, a determined look in his gleaming eyes, and he lets loose a yell from the depths of his belly that would make Howard Dean proud. Crowd erupts into wild applause.

But Master of the Drum isn’t quite done with this Tourist. Master of the Drum begins to bang the drum and as he does, he twirls 360 degrees left without missing a beat. Tourist follows and executes perfectly. Master of the Drum twirls 360 right. Now Tourist spins right, but he loses his balance and though I don’t have the right angle for it, I am almost certain that it’s his fanny pack is what knocks the drum loose. It falls from the stand, begins to roll off the stage, Tourist goes running after it as does Master of the Drum, his face alarmed. This is beyond hilarious, crowd is rolling because let’s face it: fanny packs are the devil and will get you into all sorts of trouble. Clearly, this was Princess number three, the fairest of them all. GAME. SET. MATCH.

Drum Roll, Please (and note the fanny pack)

AOTEROA

Aoeteroa, or New Zealand to the rest of us, is home to the fierce warriors who stick their tongues out and scream a lot. Even their women are fierce for these are the women of the poi balls. Now poi balls are bags of poi on ropes that they swing around nun chuck style, only cooler.

We watch a demonstration involving spears. And then we get to throw them. This is fun. I discover that I am quite good at throwing spears. I throw my spear even further than the retired cop in our tour. I win. I’m also about twenty years younger than the next youngest person in our tour, so it’s not much of a victory. But given that I’m so accident prone, I’m just stoked I didn’t injury anybody.

I am not so lucky with the poi ball demonstration. We spread out in the field and Manny brings out poi balls and the girls in green. They lead us through some simple poi ball technique. At first, I’m pleased to realize I’m quite gifted at poi balls. This is amazing! But of course, pride goeth before a fall. We do some move where you bring the left poi ball across the chest while swinging the right one over the head. The next thing I know, I taste blood and have a fat lip. Of course, this is not lost on Manny, who makes a snarky comment of some sort at my expense that I can’t hear. Everyone laughs. Okay, given that we were throwing spears before this, a fat lip isn’t too bad.

Manny and the stupid poi balls....

SAMOA:

Our last stop is Samoa, Manny’s home island, and home of the Happy People. Samoans are considered the Happy Island because in this culture, men do the hunting, gathering, and cooking. Most excellent. Here the men show us to make fire from coconut husks and then they shimmy up the trees to get the coconuts. Everyone in the group takes a collective breath inward, but I suspect the ladies do so because the state of this man’s abs from shimmying up the tree are in a word: abtastic. And he does all the cooking? Sign me up.

CANOE PAGEANT:

Now before we head off to the luau and the night’s show, we watch a canoe pageant from the six islands. I’ve never been a parade kind of girl, never liked watching them or marching in them as a kid. So I plop down expecting some boring, good-natured floats (literally floats, they come through on a waterway).

Float 1: Here comes the Ali’I, the royalty. They look stern and regal. Yawn.

Float 2: Enter the fierce Aoteroa. Girls in green with poi balls do an absolutely jaw dropping display with poi balls while balancing on the floats. This makes me feel worse about my stupid fat lip, but now I’m interested in the canoe pageant again. There’s an element of danger.

Float 3: Fiji. Their costumes are brown. Sigh. Their routine is sedate, they don’t even stand up on their barge. There are no poi balls or other things to swing around. Sigh. This is like the 4-H float. Back to being bored.

Float 4: Tonga. I dozed off. What happened?

Float 5: Hawaii. This is the prom queen float. The most beautiful BYU girls get picked to be Hawaii, wear the sweet costumes, and move through a graceful hula. Okay, I can get on board with this. Everyone loves the prom queen.

Float 6: Samoa, the happy people. They do a happy dance. Life is good in Samoa. Until one of them loses their balance and plummets into the water. Better still, this guy takes a while to fall and he almost takes the whole float with him because his unbalance causes the boat to nearly tip and he almost kicks one of the girls in the face. The happy Samoans lose it, shaking silently with laughter, once the guy has surfaced and appears to be okay. The routine is in shambles. Snarky likes the canoe pageant again.

(And into the water goes Samoa)

Float 7: Tahiti. These girls aren’t the prom queens like Hawaii, but they have a different kind of appeal. I will call this the wrex-n-effex appeal. These girls are the rump shakers and as they gyrate through their routine, shaking it like they have something to prove, every guy in the crowd sits up straighter. Good titillating times. Good way to end the canoe pageant.

VIP LUAU:

Now here is where Manny sticks it to me in a big way. He announces to our little group comprised of pasty mid-westerners, jovial Canadians, and retirees, that he needs a volunteer. I’m no moron. I keep my hand and eyes down. So does everybody else.

Manny looks directly at me. Now keep in mind, I’ve already taken some good-natured ribbing from Manny:

He has teased me for being by myself: “why you have no young man with you? Why you no pick one from Samoa? They cook you know. I’m single. I cook.”

This is fine, I’m used to being on tours by myself by this point and the Canadians from BC have more or less adopted me as a surrogate grand daughter. I love old people.

He has teased me at the coconut bread making activity: “you learn how to cook, Boston and maybe you get yourself a man.”

Haha. I think I cook just fine, but I let this slide. I’m in good-natured, non-Snark mode.

Finally, he has teased me for hitting myself in the face with a poi ball (this was completely warranted).

I’ve proven to be a good sport and he knows it. So he says, “hey, Boston. How bout you represent our happy Ohana (Ohana is Hawaiian for family). You do us all proud and maybe we get called to dinner first.” Everybody on the group is on board with this.

I have a sinking feeling. “What do I have to do?”

“You just have to dance the hula. I saw you dance the hula. You good, girl. You shake a da, hips and we get to go first for dinner.”

Damn it, Tom Bombadil. This is not cool. I thought we were friends.

I don’t want to dance in front of a bunch of burned tourists. I don’t want to let everyone in on what I already know: there is just no excuse for how poorly I dance, how rhythmically uncoordinated I am for a non-injured, healthy human being. This is not one of those scenarios, where I’m like, oh I don’t want to do this, but secretly I do (that scenario is karaoke). This is not that.

But there’s no getting out of this. I blush deeply red (and yes, my Sam Adams tour guide brethren, you know exactly what I’m talking about). Even my ears are flaming red. So I let myself be taken and dressed in Hawaiian accoutrements. The gal in charge reminds me and the nine other suckers how to do the hula. I look around. There’s a child of ten, so I’m not the youngest this time. Good times. We’re a motley crew of people, some people are wearing fanny packs, others visors, most of the group is over forty and are bound to have arthritis or ailments of some sort which will make me look better. I’ll just smile a lot. I will get through this. I will never see any of these people again.

We get called up on stage one by one and the lady of the house, the woman in charge, introduces each of us along with our bus number. Then we have to dance for the Royal Family.

Tough Crowd:

I don’t want to talk about it. I just swivel my hips a lot and blush. A lot. Of the ten tables, we are called third. I’m beaten by the 10 year old and a woman who was a spring chicken back when the civil war was fought. Oh good.

But, my happy Ohana seems pleased at getting to go third as opposed to last, which is where I expected to be. And here’s where I redeem myself (but I guess this hinges on your concept of redemption). Remember the Canadians who adopted me? Well, these two couple are celebrating their 40^th anniversaries and life long friendships here in Hawaii. They are so, so, so, so, so nice (essentially, they are Marmots. Snark snark, inside joke). Well the, uh, portliest one of them all (he’s got at least a hundred and fifty pounds on me) and an absolutely amazing handle bar mustache, leans over to me and says, “well, at least they’ll be making money off you on the buffet, because they won’t be making it off me, that’s for sure.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Look, I’ve been on the butt end of all jokes today, and I’ve been a good sport, but now my pride has been seriously nicked. There is one thing I do better than anyone in this whole Ohana and no, it’s not the hula. Let’s revisit the source of pride and constant theme in my blogs: girl can eat.

And girl does eat. Girl goes up four times to the buffet, including the dessert table twice. Luaus are pretty exciting because of the Kalua Pig (so keep in mind, this is what danced for. Pig being cooked in an underground oven).

So here I am with my first plate of food. Three plates later, I’ve got the respect of the burly man from BC. I’m not sure, this is a good thing or not, being such a glutton, but the food was really good and it had been an awfully long day of fun activities.

As you know, you cannot really appreciate the sweets of life without the sour. There was a couple from New York on our bus and they were, well, New Yorkers (I’m sorry, Pete. You’re my best friend and you know I love you, but you’ve got to admit, on the whole, the only people more obnoxious than Bostonians are New Yorkers). I avoided them most of the day, particularly at the Canoe Pageant where the lady New Yorker narrated the entire pageant in nasally tones to someone on her cell phone. So here comes the unexpected snark delight of the evening for me (this was even cooler than the guy falling in the water). And I also want to point out that we were briefed on the bus about the lack of alcohol at a Mormon establishment, so this shouldn’t have come as a shocker to anyone who had been listening.

Male New Yorker signalling to our luau server: “Yeah, I’ll have a Mai Tai.”

Luau server: “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t serve those here at the Polynesian Cultural Center.” She’s trying to be subtle. I admire this, but there’s no being subtle with New Yorkers. This approach is doomed to fail.

Male Yorker: (rolls eyes and sighs loudly). “I’ll just take a beer then.”

Luau server: (smile faltering) “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t serve alcohol at the Polynesian Cultural Center.”

Lady New Yorker: “Honey, they’re Mormons (she says this as if they all have leprosy), no alcohol. They don’t, uh, partake of that.” She smiles condescendingly at all of us as if the Mormons are primitive bush folk with quaint, non-Western traditions.

Male New Yorker: “Are you kidding me? You mean to tell me I can’t get a drink? What kind of luau is this where you can’t get a goddamn drink?”

Luau server: (not without some irony). “A traditional one, sir.” (She smiles, oh so sweetly). “But I’d be happy to get you a non-alcoholic smoothie.”

I exchange small, furtive smiles with the Canadians. You just can’t take New Yorkers anywhere. Every Ohana has one.

Now, don’t worry, it wasn’t all cold-hearted snark. In fact, Snarky got a little misty when the Lady of the House invited all the couples celebrating their anniversaries to come up and dance on stage. Here are my Canadians. I’m not gonna lie, Snarky definitely got a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Then it was time to waddle over to the show, where I ordered Pineapple Delight. This made the BC’s guys eyes bug out. But in my defense, Pineapple Delight is pineapple-flavored sorbet (okay, like 5 scoops worth of sorbet) and there’s mango, peach, and pineapple cut up in the bottom. I’m not being a total glutton, this is a totally strategic move on my part. I learned last year that fresh pineapple is a digestive aid and helps with stomach aches. You know, just in case you ate four plates of food at the luau buffet or whatever. And after eating it, I do feel better.

Snarky, post luau. Note blog shirt. That's right.

The show, the crowning jewel of the PCC, is Ha: the breath of life. It’s outside in a stadium with fireworks and waterfalls and again, it highlights not only Hawaiian culture (there’s a really touching story of boy, boy grows to manhood, boy meets girl, boy becomes a man, man defends village from invaders, man loses father but has child of his own. Very Lion King Circle of Life, but it’s not a bad message), but also the Hawaiian disregard for general liability laws and safety. By this I mean, the fire dancing called the fire knife dancing portion of this show is nothing short of the coolest thing I have ever seen. It goes on and on and there are men in skirts and they catch the skirts on fire, and set their feet on fire, put fire in their mouth, and twirl the fire sticks around, and then they throw the fire spears back and forth to each other.

Look, it’s probably a whole lot less dangerous than it looks, but there is no disputing how freaking cool it is. Also, at some point, there is a gaf because a guy misses catching the spear and someone, who isn’t in costume, runs out and stomps the flaming stick out. So yes, accidents do happen.

But all snark aside, there’s something so incredibly cool about this. This is something, I will never do. And yes, there are lots of things I will never do, like go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, vote Democratic, sing the National Anthem at a sporting event, but there is something so inherently dangerous and primal about fire. It's mesmerizing.

After the show, we all head out to our bus. Manny makes everyone clap for Baked Alaska (our brave kilt-wearing, drum guy from the drum demonstration) and me, the hula queen. “Hey Boston, how come you no try to sneak a fire dancer home with you? You got one of those on the bus with you?”

Ha ha, Tom Bombadil. Ha ha.

Chicken Skin

2010-02-13T19:05:00.003-08:00

Chicken skin. It’s what Hawaiians use to describe the prickling of the hairs on your arm and the goose pimpling of flesh when something otherworldly is near.

I love a good scare and I’ve always had a fondness for ghost tours. The ones I did in Boston, Seattle and Savannah were all good, but a tad tame. This is due in part that in places like Boston and Seattle, we worry about things like liability and law suits. Hawaiians? Not so much. Sure, there was a waiver to sign and a prohibitive ban on children under 18 (excellent policy that most places should enforce), but then the tourguides took us on van to the Northern side of the island where all creepiness seems to occur and marched us into the woods on a rainy and moonless evening over slippery roots, jagged rocks, cliff edges and other naturally occurring lawsuits waiting to happen.

Now keep in mind all of these tours have a similar hoax element and it’s this: The orbs. The tourguides, in the interest of earning tips and adding a heightened sense of creepiness and danger, will all tell you that for whatever reason, ghosts can be captured on your convenient handheld camera. I am here to tell you that a relatively intelligent person (someone with an IQ greater than that of a turnip) can give you a reason for why you might see orbs in your pictures. Here’s mine: it’s dark out and it’s got something to do with the reflection of your flash. But then, I couldn’t leave it there, so I went to wikipedia, the last word on all things important. Here’s what wikipedia had to say on Orbs:

Orbs – round spheres of light in ghost pictures that can be caused by flash reflection off of reflective surfaces, dust,glass, insects, pollen, moisture, snow, rain, hair, and lens flare.

So I was partly right about the flash. So clean your lens before going on a ghost tour. Score 1 for Snarky. But deduct points because I’m on a tour with a bunch of people who actually believe they have captured ghosts on film. This is because a tour like this attracts not just tourists, but the kinds of tourists who believe in throwing split salt over your shoulder, not walking under ladders, and voting democratic. Silly silly people.

So here’s my best “ghost orb.” I’m calling this orb, “the ghost of health care reform.” May it rest in the spirit world. Snark snark.

So I arrive for my tour and immediately chat up Cousin Joe, our black-clad tourguide, while waiting for the rest of crew. In Hawaii, everyone local is a cousin. We get talking and Joe seems glad to talk to someone under the age of 40 (which seems to be the demographic of this tour) and I tell him about being a tour guide at Sam Adams. We trade stories on some of the snarkier things we’ve said to tour guests (none of my mine will be written about here, I love Sam Adams and all of you tourguides), and of course Joe’s are a billion times better than mine because his specialty is the paranormal and you can really, really mess with people. But I ask him in all seriousness, if he believes in any of this.

Here was his response (paraphrased): “Most of what we do is for the tourists, yah. (Islanders always add a hearty ‘yah’ at the end of sentences. I dig it). But you let me know if you don’t feel a little chicken skin while we out at Morgan’s Corner. Those woods, they don’t feel right, yah.” He shrugs. Good enough for me.

Dear readers, I don’t know where I stand on ghosts. Let’s face it, as humans we’re kinda morons. We haven’t conclusively proven or disproven the existence of ghosts. Hell, I mean we’ve claimed to have “proven” things before which were obvious screw ups (the world is flat, the whole universe revolves around us, it’s okay to be around high levels of radiation, and yes, I’m looking you at, Marie Curie). I’m just saying. We’re not the most well informed species. So who knows.

But here’s where I stand on mythology, legends, and ghost stories. Nerd alert: Love me some mythology. I’m been a mythology junkie since the age of ten. I started with the bloody blood Norse legends of Odin and Valhalla, moved on to the Greeks and Romans in my early teen years and then dabbled in Asian, Egyptian, Native American and Indian for awhile. I love mythology because it’s just amazing the way in which earlier civilizations explained creation, naturally occurring events like storms and fires, and the seasons. And I’m nerdy, but you knew this already.

Hawaiian mythology is heavily based in honoring one’s ancestors, which is no surprise because Hawaiian culture is so wonderfully steeped in family traditions. And also no surprise, there’s quite a bit of legends surrounding their natural phenomenon: volcanoes, fire, the ocean, sharks, etc. In a word: love it.

So back to the actual ghost/legend tour. There are five spots we’ll be visiting. Let me just give you a run down of the tour: About twenty-five people, mostly obese middle-aged Midwesterners (you look at the pic below and tell me I’m not accurate), a handful of Japanese tourists (okay, here’s my one and only rant on them. If the Japanese are so much smarter than we Americans are, please tell me why they are wearing 4 inch heels and mini-skirts/weird overall thingy that ends in a skirt but has suspenders? We’re going into the woods at night and its raining and when you booked the tour, they only told you two things. To wear closed toed shoes and a windbreaker and where to show up). But we can’t leave yet because two people are missing. Do you want to guess or shall I just tell you? I’ll just tell you. It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, obviously, it’s going to be newly weds.

While we wait for the newly weds, I get to talking to the Southern couple in the seat in front of me. I’m going to call them Todd and Cheryl. Todd is a nice guy in the insurance business. His wife, Cheryl has reddish orange frizzy hair and a dramatic kind of demeanor about her (if you look in the pic, they’re the couple all the way over on the right). She’s the kind of person who would corner you, a total stranger, in a restroom at a wedding and tell you that she’d overheard that the bride had a “bun in the oven.” Because I’m alone and remind her of the girl her son is dating (“you look just like her, honey and she’s in nursing school,”) she adopts me as her confidant. She leans over to me and says, “you know, some people think I’m psychic. I can sense things, you know? And I’ve seen ghosts, real ghosts.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, interested. She’s going to make my blog, I can already tell.

“I can read palms and I went to this workshop on auras. And honey, let me tell you something. You have a beautiful aura.”

Moral dilemma: I find it hard to be outright snarky to nice people. My little snark teeth only really come out at bars when guys are being annoying or, if someone else started the snark fight. You see, I too have some background knowledge in auras. Thank you, Stierman, Book Club and Michael Crichton. I read a good twenty pages on auras. And I desperately, want to ask this woman if she wants to “fluff” my aura. I really, really do.

But, I can’t. So instead I ask politely, “what color is it?”

“Honey, yours is blue. Very calm and beautiful blue.”

Now, I know she’s full of it. Snarky auras aren’t calming. Mine has got to be burgundy or taupe, maybe mustard colored. Definitely not blue. I give my snark aura an indignant shake, it’s like a hair toss, which is almost as good as fluffing it, I suppose.

I smile and Cheryl begins to tell me about the time she knew that her daughter was in a car accident (a minor bang up, nothing serious) and her mother’s instinct woke her up in the middle of the night. “I have a gift,” she says. “I just know things.”

Here’s what I know: the newly weds have just arrived. They are 20 minutes late and they are sporting a suspect looking glow and everyone on the bus hates them. At least they’re not Wedding Monthly Cover Couple newly weds. You know, the kind of couple you look at it and think, I’m an ugly cave troll and will never get married or look like that. (To see the newly weds, look at the group pic over on the left, she’s in the white outfit, he's in green). They settle in the only available seats behind me and immediately start making out and cooing to each other. Now, even if the tour is a total bust, I don’t care. I’m sandwiched between Cheryl the psychic housewife and the oblivious newly weds. It’s a little snark sandwich.

Nu’uanu Pali Look Out:

We wind up the windward side of the island towards the Look Out. And my god, is it windy. ‘Nu’uanu’ means ‘windy’ and ‘Pali’ means ‘cliffs.’ I’ve been here in the day; it’s got a view of the island not to be missed. You can see clear across to Chinamen’s Hat, a strange-shaped island rising out of the water. I came here with Travis and with his mother and both told me it was a pretty different place at night. They weren’t joking. At night, the wind pummels the palm fronds and causes them to clatter and there is no end to it. There are few lights and the shadows of the Koolau Mountains loom large and jagged in the starless sky.

The legend, one of my favorites, goes like this: Back in the time of battle to unite the islands, King Kamehameha the Great stormed the shores of Waikiki with 10,000 men. They forced the last hold outs, about 1500 men, to jump off the Koolau Mountains.

Here is my favorite painting of this, I saw it in one of the museums and then bought a bunch of these postcards and sent them to my friends, because I’m creepy. It was called the ‘Battle of the Falling Fish.’

Now ask yourself, what would cause you to throw yourself, a hardened warrior, off cliffs this sheer and perilous? I’ll tell you and no it wasn’t just death before dishonor. If you were captured, even though King Kamehameha didn’t like to sacrifice people, he would offer up captured warriors to the god of war. There were two preferred methods both involving copious amounts of agony. The first method would involve the breaking of your shoulders, your eyes would be scooped out and then you’d be left for three days on an altar to think about how much your life sucked. The other was similar with a slightly different twist: they’d break all the bones in your body, leave you screaming on the altar overnight, and then behead you in the morning.

You wanna guess the year of the battle? You’d assume it was back in the day, right? Maybe 1120 or 1349? Not a chance. 1795. That’s just 19 years after a bunch of tea-throwing, we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna stand for taxation without representation so take your stupid white wigs and go home, founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. 19 years after that and King Kamehameha was uniting the islands all Braveheart-style. Makes me kinda proud.

I stood apart from the group, while Joe explained the legend I already knew, and I walked all the way over to the Look Out edge and put my hand on the railing. The wind was whipping my hair, camera, and jeans into a frenzy. I wondered, could I do it? Could I jump if I knew what awaited was abject agony and eventual death? How would you come out on this? Could you do it?

This was one of two places where I felt my skin crawl. Chicken skin. Excellent.

Kawa'ewa'e Heiau

Pronounced “Hay-OW,” the Heiau was a war temple built sometime in the 12^th century. It measured about 40 x 20 yards and essentially is made of rocks and bones.

Here in Cousin Joe in front of the Heiau,, the speckled shape behind him is the mound of rocks and bones:

Hawaiians believed that taking the bones of a loved one (after they were deceased, obviously) and grinding them up and leaving them here or sticking them in the bottom of your canoe or cooking utensils was a great way to honor the dead.

This particular Heiau had a peaceful past, most Heiaus are dedicated to Lono, the god of peace. This one though has a slight smudge on its past. It was once the site of human sacrifices by Kamehameha.

Last word on human sacrifices, I promise. So forget about tossing virgins in the volcano. The god of war required warriors and warriors were men. Offering a woman to the god of war was an insult. Second, the whole point of the sacrifice wasn’t so much the death as it was the suffering, which is why it wasn’t just a quick chop and lop of the head. Agony and pain was what the god of war required. Yet another good reason to toss yourself off a cliff in a losing battle.

Now at this point, Joe recounts the story of Kamapua'a, half man and half hog, who can change his shape at will.

Cheryl interrupts him by waving a manicured hand in the hand (I checked them out on the van for you, fake magenta nails that you could gouge an eye out with). “Excuse me, but what is the difference?”

Joe is confused. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he says slowly.

Cheryl smiles wide. “Well you said half man, half hog. Aren’t those one in the same?”

Every woman in the group sniggers. Told you that I loved Cheryl.

Morgan’s Corner:

Morgan’s Corner is hands down the most celebrated and haunted area of Hawaii. I’m dying with anticipation as we’re driving to the Old Pali Road where the famous hairpin awaits. Behind me, and I’m not exaggerating this, the newly weds are going at it something fierce. The good news is, it’s raining, large lazy plops of warm tropical rain, not a downpour, but enough to drum the roof of the van as we drive. So this helps drown out some of the noise behind me. Bad news: I said some, not all. Now either, these two are the worst kissers on the planet (I’m talking like fifteen years old and it’s your first kiss and there’s all sorts of awkward maneuvering and noises bad) or, they’re sucking each others fingers. I don’t know and I’m certainly not turning around to find out.

Then I hear the unmistakable noise of a zipper being unzipped.

Yup, this is actually happening in the seat behind me. Obviously, I can’t turn around as this breaks all treaties of decency and manners, so I go passive aggressive. I clear my throat very loudly and then slam my back against my seat, just to let them know that I know what everyone else knows: normally, you have to pay double for that kind of action, Cotton. But I’m not into it.

We pull over, get out at Morgan’s Corner, and we are standing before an enormous, gnarled, ancient tree. It reminds me of the tree of death in the movies, “Sleepy Hollow” and “300.” It is the kind of tree you would hang someone on. I’m just saying.

Now, there are actually 3 stories worth telling about Morgan’s Corner. The first one you know because this story is told the world over in many locations. It was invented by a concerned parent who didn’t want his teenage daughter to go to a Lover’s Lane type destination with some rogue.

And for those of you who don’t know it, here’s the Hawaiian version: young Hawaiian girl goes out with some upstanding youth stationed at Kaneohe military base. They go dancing (probably the Charleston or something, it was the 1920ish era, I imagine) and then they go park somewhere to make out. (Side bar: who the heck makes out in a car anymore? This legend needs to be updated to a dorm room or something. But I digress). The girl protests going any further, guy good naturedly agrees to take her home, and when he goes to start the car, it won’t start. His manhood on the line, the guy has to go out in the rain for some gas. He leaves girl in the car. She starts to hear noises. Weird scratching/dragging on the roof of the car. She’s scared and helpless. Some cop comes along and rescues her from the car, but tells her not to look anywhere except at him. Of course she glances above the car and her beau is hanging there, gutted. It’s his foot that’s been banging the top of the car. Moral of the story: Abstinence. Or, as I like to think of it. Always send the guy for gas.

So yes, this is the Hawaiian version of the man with the hook story and why not set it here under this uber creepy tree.

Story #2:

We’re in the woods now because obviously we can’t stand in the roadway. The greenery is so dense here that it blocks out much of the rain and the night sky. I find it hard to breath here, it’s so humid with the plants.

Joe drops his voice and explains why it’s called Morgan’s Corner. Morgan was the closest doctor to this place in the road and when people would inevitably flip their cars, he would be the first on the scene. Now why would people flip their cars, here? Well for one thing, people are morons. They drink, they drive like Massholes, they go too fast around curves and lose control.

OR…they pick up a hitchhiker. It’s always an older Hawaiian woman in a traditional mu’mu. Of course, it’s no ordinary woman. It’s Madame Pele. Hands down, she is the Goddess Supreme, goddess of fire and the volcanoes. Often she is a young beautiful jealous hot hot mess with a bunch of supernatural lovers and her exploits always seem to result in a volcano erupting. In this legend, she’s an old woman come to judge our driving skills. If she likes you, she just hitchhikes and vanishes. If she doesn’t, if she feels that maybe you didn’t put your turn signal on fast enough or you’re drinking, she’ll flip your car. Regardless of the form she’s in, she’s not to be trifled with. Moral of the story: don’t pick up hitchhikers. Nothing good ever comes of this.

Story #3:

And here’s why I have chicken skin again. Someone was actually murdered right by Morgan’s Corner and it sparked the end of the death penalty in Hawaii. Creepers.

Two prison escapees, James Majors and John Palakiko, came upon the house of Theresa Wilder, an elderly woman who worked for Dr. James Moran and who lived not far from Morgan’s Corner. They robbed her and then took their time killing her. They were sentenced to hang, but the execution was stayed at the last minute because the governor and Hawaiian citizens didn’t want to have the death penalty anymore. There was a huge public battle waged over it for a couple of years and their sentences were eventually commuted to life in prison and Hawaii doesn’t have a death penalty anymore. Joe adds that these two men died of mysterious circumstances, but that feels more wishful thinking than truth.

Manoa Cemetery:

Snarky was not scared by the Manoa Cemetery. Nor impressed. The one noteworthy thing is that when you drive in, you offer candy at the gate to appease the scores of Chinese immigrant children who died of influenza. These immigrants came over here to work in the pineapple and sugar cane fields. The cemetery is beautiful, sits on a hill and overlooks Honolulu. I’m only including this in the blog, so you don’t feel like I skipped something good. Really, I think the tour takes you to Manoa after Morgan’s Corner so you can shake off the creepiness.

And I took a sweet pic of this dragon, which was half covered in rain and half not. And then I found five dollars.

Manoa Falls:

The last stop. The newly weds are at it again behind me. Cheryl tells me about the time she was at a summer cottage and this door slammed behind her and she knew it was a ghost. Good times.

Now, two things about Manoa Falls. First, I hike these Falls last year and wrote it about in my blog and described the creepy lizard spirits, the Li, that live in the falls. Here’s the deal in case you missed it, you’re supposed to float a Ti leaf on the water’s surface. If it floats, you can swim. If it sinks, you’re gonna drown and be eaten by some lizard-faced deity.

Joe adds something I didn’t know about Ti leaves. “Ti leafs can be carried around to ward off spirits. Their bushes are often planted at cemetery gates to keep the spirits in. And,” he adds helpfully, “in times of famine, you can chew their roots for sustenance.”

I look at Joe and find no trace of irony in his face. Times of famine? Seriously? Look around you, Joe. 1 in 4 Americans are considered obese. 1 in 3 in this tour group is morbidly obese and the other two are sporting muffin tops. Hardly, a time of famine. But thanks for the tip.

Back to creepy lizard-faced deities. They are much like the sirens of Greek mythology, they can lure you into the water. And here is a critical difference between men and women:

To lure a man to his death, the lizard will transform into a smoking hot wahine and the man, overcome with lust and desire, will follow her willingly to his watery grave.

Okay, so I looked all over for a pic of the lizard deities and this is as close as I could come. It's the Hulk in front of Manoa Falls. I mean, I dunno, I've never seen a lizard deity, maybe it really does look like Hulk.

To lure a woman to her death, the lizard does not transform into some six-pack sporting dreamboat of a man with a sensitive, yet daring side, who appreciates you for your complicated and fickle nature. Nope, because women are too smart to fall for this. The lizard will transform into a drowning child and the woman, overcome with maternal instinct, will try to rescue the child.

Moral(s) of the story: First. Women are better than men. We’re givers. Second, you see a child drowning in a suspicious tropical body of water; you let the little sucker drown.

Final sidebar: Manoa Falls is where they film “Lost” and for those of you who are fanatics, here’s what we saw on our climb down: big lights that lit up the valley, security men crawling all over in yellow rain slickers, the crew, the cast (the tour guide rattled off some of their names, but they weren’t the main ones and I don’t watch the show, so asking me that is like asking me the atomic weight of Selenium, I have no idea), cast trailers, big pieces of important looking equipment covered with plastic tarp, smoking hot sports cars in the private parking lot and a polar bear.

I’m joking about the polar bear.

And that concluded the ghost tour, I was pretty pleased with the presence of my chicken skin and wealth of new Hawaiian lore I learned. I shot the newly weds a perfectly deserved, parting shot of a dirty look, bid good night to Cheryl, and told Joe if he ever found himself in Boston, to head to the Sam Adams Brewery. I know a couple of good tourgides over there.

Of Pineapples and Rip Tides

2010-02-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

In honor of all you East Coasters buried in snow (and by buried, I mean, no snow whatsoever in Boston), who continuously remind me how much you despise me for being in Hawaii, I decided to spend your big snow day eating pineapple and chilling at one of Hawaii’s most famous beaches. Snark, snark.

It was not my first time at the Dole Pineapple Plantation. For those of you who’ve read my blog posts from last year, you all know my feelings on mazes. There’s something deeply creepy, a little Victorian gothic, about winding your way through one and at nearly 2.5 miles, the Dole Pineapple Plantation lays claim to the largest outdoor maze. And while it is constructed from local flora like hibiscus plants and such, it is not constructed from pineapples, because pineapples are freaking sharp.

Did I say local flora? Oh, I did. Well this time I visited the Plantation, I decided to do some of the educational stuff. So against my better judgment, I bought a ticket for the Pineapple Express (insert stoner jokes here). The gaily colored little train takes tourists on a half hour tour through the actual plantation and provides a historical narrative. And also, some of the worst local music ever created by a group called Aloha DNA or something grossly cute and family friendly like that. The narration of the history of the Plantation would play for about 10 minutes, which is still 8 minutes longer than the average American’s attention span and 9.5 minutes longer than the average Japanese tourist’s, and after this time, Aloha DNA would play. Now I understood why the conductor and other train employees looked so pained. If I had to hear this twice an hour for 8 hours a day, I might end it all by falling on the sharp end of the pineapple.

Which brings me to the noble pineapple. Did you know that the pineapple isn’t even indigenous to Hawaii? The Hawaiian name for pineapple is “Hala Kahiki” (yeah, I had to look up the spelling, so what?) and it essentially means, foreign fruit. Pineapples come from Paraguay. And Hawaiians aren’t exactly certain how the pineapple came to Hawaii. The most popular theory is that they ended up here on a shipwreck of sorts. I like that theory best because there’s something random and a little romantic about that. And it’s better than giving the Spanish explorers credit, because we all know what they liked to bring to a new country was small pox. Zing.

(pineapple roadkill)

(Stierman, I decided to skip cankersores caused by eating too close to the core & went girly pineapple souvenir cup)

And then I found five dollars…

After that I headed further north to Waimea Beach. Waimea Beach is a small sandy bowl of a beach park tucked in between sheer, jagged cliffs. It is one of my favorite beaches for the simple reason that the waves here are high and dangerous, and as a result, tourists go out of their way to endanger themselves. In the winter months, the swells can reach over thirty feet high. So not only can you lie around and tan for hours, you can watch people put themselves in unnecessary peril while ticking off the lifeguards to no end.

The last time I was at Waimea the lower beach was roped off and there were signs that prohibited swimming because of the swells and riptide. Ask yourself, did this deter people from trying to swim? Of course not. So the poor dogged lifeguard team had to keep getting on the microphone and continuously remind people not to go swimming. It’s an uneasy line to walk because the lifeguards want to make the beach fun enough so people will visit, but they must also protect people. From themselves.

This time, there’s a new breed of lifeguards at the tower. They’re deliciously snarky. They ridicule the surf perpetrators from atop their cream-colored tower.

“Hey man, maybe you could get your girlie surfboard out of that surf before I send my sister down there to haul you out.” Ouch.

“Hey dude over by the rocks, yeah you! You better get back to your girlfriend on the beach or I’m gonna go over and show her what a real man looks like.” Ouch to the second power and extra points for good delivery.

Now occasionally, not even snark prevails and one of the lifeguards (probably the one who lost the rosham contest) has to crawl down the ladder, get in the beach buggy and head down the beach to extricate some jack monkey from the surf. Then the lifeguard left at the tower narrates:

“Well it’s a close one guys, neck and neck. Oh wait, hey idiot, you’re swimming against the tide now. Here comes JC from the beach, he wastes no time, folks. He plunges into that surf with reckless abandon [I swear to you that the lifeguard said reckless abandon, I laughed so hard that I snorted sand. Honestly.], and he’s making his way out. He’s got the guy by the neck and he’s bodyslamming him! No, JC! Don’t do it!” In reality, JC has just browbeaten the guy into coming in from the ocean and then he puts him in the buggy for a ride of shame back to the tower. But it sounds cooler the way the lifeguard tells it.

Now where am I in all this? Clearly, not in the surf. But interestingly, I’m closer to the roped off area than is prudent because I wanted to take some pics of the surf for you, dear readers. No matter, the sun is shining, people are being reckless, and I’m neatly laid out on my beach towel, lathered in Maui Babe, and engrossed in a really funny audio book by Neil Gaiman. I’m pretty much oblivious to all errant noises except the lifeguard’s bullhorn, which easily pierces through the i-pod narration.

Let me say this again, I’m oblivious to everything around me.

The next time I hear the lifeguard on the bullhorn, he bellows the following:

“Hey, hot chick! You’re too close to the rope. You’re gonna get wet, chica.”

I ignore this, it’s not worth sitting up for.

“Hey girl in the rainbow bikini, did you hear me? You’re gonna get wet, girl! The tide’s coming in!”

The beach isn’t overly crowded, but surely he doesn’t mean me. And then it hits me, literally, water splashes over my feet, towel, beach bag, i-pod. I snap up to a sitting position. The surf having swelled up the beach is now sinking back down again. I look around me in shock, people are laughing at my surprised reaction and I notice that most of them have noticed the incoming tide and have moved up the beach. FML. My stuff is all wet.

But wait…he called me a hot chick. SCORE!

I don’t care how vain that is, how ridiculous I looked now all wet, it was like this guy had yelled, “Hey, attorney of the year! Hey, Pulitzer prize winner!” It doesn’t matter if the lifeguard is 300 pounds with no teeth (he’s not, he’s on the short side, completely jacked with an unfortunate faux hawk). It also doesn’t matter that we’re all modern women now and this kind of remark is supposed to have no effect on us. I don’t care how militant of a feminist you are. We all want to be called hot chicks in our bikinis. I’m counting this one as a win. And I'm not even remotely embarrassed to admit it. So there.

But seriously, there’s a moral to the story here: Spend February in Hawaii.

No, no, I mean, if you’re gonna lie around on the beach all day and snark on people being idiots, don’t be one yourself. Mahalo.

PS. And then I booked it home to catch the sunset at the beach park outside my condo. This one was a particularly good one (made even better because I grabbed take-out fajitas from Senor Pepe's):

Birthday in Hawaii, Part Deux

2010-02-09T01:04:00.001-08:00

My birthday started out a whole lot like last year, woke up in tropical paradise and applauded myself for not being somewhere snowy.

And then I went off in search of Hula Pie.

Hula Pie is an island tradition. It’s a massive hunk (think 1/4^th of an actual pie) of macadamia nut ice cream with a cookie crust, mounds of whip cream, hot fudge and some sort of hard, chocolately malted top. In a word: heaven. And the best place to get one on Oahu is at Duke’s Waikiki. So I head over there, order one for breakfast, wolf it down and then wonder why it is that my heart is racing at 9 in the morning. Go figure.

Then I head off to buy myself the same present I bought myself last year on my birthday: string bikini. It’s becoming something of a tradition and yes, I still feel like a total rebel buying one. And keeping in tradition, I’m posting the pic (and please keep your comments to yourself, I just went house on enormous ice cream pie dessert. Mahalo.)

As if it’s not awesome enough I’m spending my birthday somewhere tropical, the Super Bowl falls on my birthday this year. Now this is 90% a good thing. It’s only bad if the Saints don’t win. But unless you live under a rock, you already know the Saints wiped the smug expression right off Manning’s face.

And I did my part too, to wipe some smug expressions off Colts fans faces.

I headed to Tiki’s, a rooftop bar with excellent TVs, drinks, and Superbowl food specials. The problem was, the only really good seat available at the outside bar was right in the middle of a bunch of guys (and a few ladies) decked from head to sandal in Colts gear, most of them wearing Manning jerseys. Now, do I sit down and watch the game in the vipers’ nest or do I take a seat far away from a TV? I think we know how this goes. I am no shrinking violet, so I made friends with Colts fan and pretended to be vaguely indifferent about the game. In reality, I'm a bitter Patriots fan and I hate the Colts on principal alone.

For the first two quarters, things were okay. That was until this guy, I’m going to call him Drew. Drew is one of those Guys Who Doesn’t Get It and I’m pretty sure he’s modeled himself and his wardrobe after “The Situation” from the Jersey Shore. At some point early on, he tells me the Colts are heavily favored and that the spread is 10 points, that’s a touch down and field goal, he adds helpfully.

Drew is full of crap. The spread is 5.

Here is a pic of Drew in a rare, quiet moment. It's a Manning jersey.

Then Drew begins explaining the rules of football to me, starting with what a first down was, because I wasn’t cheering every time the Colts touched the ball. I ignore him and order another beer, but he’s very persistent that I understand the rules of football and also that I know he played football in high school. He also critiques every play, every coach’s call, every referee’s call, in addition to all of the commercials. I make a game-changing decision: I’m going to have another Bud Light and then throw myself off the balcony at Tiki’s. Into a firepit.

During half time, I sneak over to the restaurant side of Tiki’s where I find a pair of old people, Tom and Wanda, who clearly want to adopt me. They have great seats and they let me sit with them and their adult son, Kevin. They are from Minnesota (which is a whole bag of football worms in itself), but they’re rooting for the Saints. They have fun accents and tell me I remind them of one of their granddaughters. So I’m good for a quarter with them. Aren't they cute?

I head back to the bar side of Tiki’s during the 4^th quarter and thoroughly enjoy myself as the Colts fans get more and more despondent. This translates into alcohol-fueled belligerence and the introduction of silly string. Question: who brings silly string to Hawaii and then to a super bowl party? Apparently, Colts fans. And for the record, these kids aren’t from Indianapolis. They’re actually from Jersey, which makes it even worse they’re rooting for the Colts. That and I hate silly string. It’s unnatural.

Unfortunately, I don’t get to see the ultimate soul crushing moment because I have to leave the game two minutes early to make it on time to my big birthday present to myself: sunset cruise on the Na Hoku, but a certain someone is nice enough to text me the score (thanks again), so I know as I’m stepping on to the large Catamaran that the Colts have lost.

Sorry, Drew. Maybe next year.

Also, because this is a booze cruise, Captain Mike, First Mate Miles, and Master of Ceremonies, Randy have checked my ID and now know it’s my birthday. Randy gives me a huge hug. Here is a pic of Captain Mike and Randy.

We get on the boat and Miles gets the booze going immediately. In ten minutes we’re all friends. This is how it worked at Sam Adams. Give people booze and they bond. It’s just nature. Don’t fight it.

Of the 25 people or so on the cruise, 15 of them are from Seattle, so I make friends fast. Soon we’re all on a first name basis. Everyone is friends on a booze cruise and people think its adorable I’m all by myself on a booze cruise and it’s my birthday. And they start spilling drinks on me, that’s a sign of friendship for sure. Or the fact that the boat is rocking something fierce. Good thing I wore black. They also let me on the secret that half of them are not wearing underwear (which is a little weird, these peeps are all in their mid to late thirties). So I spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure out who has gone commando. The wind helps with this process as it lifts a few skirts. This is a pic of the Seattle crew taken from A-Deck. I tried to get their attention, but again, how do you get the attention of people who don't wear underwear?

Then there are the boys from Australia, who are adorable with their accents and pronounce my name “Jezz-ee-ka.” They’re both surfers and they have shark stories to share (Snarky = smitten by shark tales of any kind). They ask me if I know any good island hikes and I’m come off looking like solid gold because I’m able to describe three (and that’s all I got). Thank goodness they didn’t ask for anymore suggestions. I’ve just used up all my coolness.

Let’s not forget the two pilots either, guys in their fifties, sucking down Coors Light and making the standard “be glad I’m not your pilot,” joke as they get drunk. When one of them empties half a can on my sandals, I am sincerely glad they’re not my pilots.

Finally can’t leave out the quartet of cougars who shanghai the Aussies into a corner for awhile. And one of them takes a body shot off Randy. I’m just saying. That’s an unforgettable sight, seared into memory.

So once we’re out a little bit, Randy calls for everyone’s attention. “There’s a birthday girl on board,” he explains. “Let’s all sing happy birthday to her.”

Oooh! That’s me! (Okay, so at this point in the cruise, I didn't look this demure, but whatever. I'm cute here as the birthday girl. Deal with it).

For the record, Happy Birthday sounds really good when you’re in the middle of the ocean holding a Mai Tai.

But Randy isn’t finished. Afterwards he says, “that was just awful. But don’t you worry, Captain Mike and I have composed something a little special for you.”

And then he busts out an ukele. S**t just got real.

Randy and Mike serenade me with an absolutely hilarious rendition of “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. Everyone joins in on the chorus. Okay, all snark aside for a moment: I feel incredibly special, like a little drunken Mai Tai Princess. Alcohol-fueled or not, everyone is being so nice to me on board and I’m 3000 miles from home and celebrating my birthday alone, and now, well now I don’t feel alone. First I got adopted by cute old people in the bar and now I’m being serenaded on the high seas. It's enough to make you a little misty-eyed.

Snark back on.

Captain Mike calls for me to dance in the middle of the song. I’m standing on A-Deck at this point (that’s the top of the boat where I come from, I’m sure it’s called something else) and since I’m an obliging kind of girl, I break into my best hippie dance imitation. Arms twirling, spinning the black dress around (and yes, I’m wearing underwear. Do I look like the kinda girl that channels Britney?). It’s awful. I move like a drunken walrus that’s been gored by a harpoon. I cannot dance, and I know it. But nobody notices or seems to care, everyone is singing along at the top of their lungs to “I’m Yours,” and this night now reigns in the top 3 of best birthdays ever. And no, there are no pics of me dancing. You all know what a drunken walrus that's been gored by a harpoon looks like.

But wait, there’s more. As we sail out further we see giant mint colored sea turtles and in the distance, a whale breaching and not the mild mannered blow hole spouting stuff. No, this whale is out of the water, shaking his tail for all he’s worth. The sunset is brilliant and clear, the bright orange orb sinking so fast over the horizon that I can just get one click of the camera off before it’s gone. And no, that has nothing to do with the Mai Tais I’ve been drinking. (You can see the whale just in front of the sailboat)

After the cruise, the Seattle peeps decide to adopt me, even if I am wearing underwear, so we head off with the two Aussies in search of general debauch and drinks with umbrellas in them…

Another birthday for the books.

One of the worst pick up lines ever laid down...

2010-02-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

It’s Saturday night and I decide to be less nerdy than the previous evening. First I head out to my old stomping grounds, the hotel I lived in at the Ohana West Waikiki. They have a surprisingly decent roof top bar there with an odd mix of locals and tourists (since it is a bar within a hotel). I show up and the bartender, Mike, recognizes me. He even remembers my name. I feel like I just walked into Cheers and I’m grinning like an idiot. He even remembers my drink. This is the best bartender ever. We get to talking and he says, “I know why you’re here. He goes on at 8.”

He is Josh. Josh plays classic rock covers every Saturday evening at the Ohana and he was hands down, the best part of every Saturday night back when I lived here last year. I would listen to him play from 8-10 every Saturday night, wine in hand on my balcony (lanai) before going out and meeting Travis at some sketchpad night club.

Josh comes on and he opens with a Dead tune and I’m musically smitten all over again, the night air is warm and smells of fried food and hibiscus (well it does, and that smell is just fine by me). Even though I don’t live in this hotel anymore, I feel like I’m home again. I even walk over to the balcony and check to make sure the ladies of the night are still in front of Denny's. They are there in full sequined regalia. Excellent.

At the break, Josh comes over to the bar and I say shyly, “I bet you don’t remember me.”

He looks me up and down and says, “I cant’t remember your name, but I remember your favorite song.”

I can’t help myself. “Prove it,” I say. “And don’t play Jason Mraz or I’ll vomit.”

And the first song he plays after the break is “Ophelia” by the Band. Okay, he’s proved it. I hang around the Ohana bar until 11, about an hour after Josh has finished and then I’m starting to get a little tired. I’m trying to wait up so I can meet my buddy Travis’s new girlfriend at some bar, but I’m kinda tanked and still seriously jetlagged. I bid Mike, Josh, and the locals good night at the Ohana, promise to come back next Saturday, and then I head out, not really sure where I’m going, but I’ve got some time to kill. Enough reminiscing. It’s time for a swanky drink.

I end up at Rumfire. Why Rumfire? Because if you thought Waikiki was on fire, Rumfire makes Smokey the Bear cry. This bar has huge fire pits like kiddie swimming pool size fire pits and some of them are at foot level. And it’s a bar which means there’s always the element of danger that someone drunk will fall in one of these pits and be burnt to a crisp. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s right on Waikiki Beach, it’s open air so you can see and hear the ocean, and the drinks have snooty names, but are decent.

The bar isn’t particularly crowded tonight and though I’m underdressed (jeans, black Bob Dylan T and sandals, fine for the Ohana, not so much here), I cozy up to the bar in the back corner and order a cucumber Mojito. I know that’s touristy, but they’re very, very good at Rumfire.

And then here comes Rodney.

I get it, I get that I’m a lady alone in a bar. I get that it’s really hard for a guy to come up and talk to a girl he doesn’t know. But I would like to point out that first of all, I’m not dressed for guy attention, it’s not like I’m lounging around in a do me halter dress or wearing hooker heels. I’m dressed a little scrubby to be honest and I’ve chosen a seat at the bar away from everyone else, pretty much sitting where the servers have to come and get their drinks. I really just want to be left alone, drink my mojito, watch the ocean, kill time.

Rodney apparently misses all of these signals and sidles up next to me and immediately starts to touch me, first on the shoulder, then on the hand. I’m not a fan of this whatsoever. Then when he turns full body to me, I notice his button down shirt has an enormous golden tiger painted on it. It’s undeniably Ed Hardy. Now I’m just trying to stop from smirking ear to ear.

(Oh hey, Seth, while I'm on the subject of Ed Hardy, this one’s for you, pal. Saw this at the Ala Moana mall. This will have to do since I couldn’t get a picture of Rodney’s golden tiger. PS. Ed Hardy is every where out here. Apparently, love kills slowly all over the place here in Hawaii).

In my personal space and wearing a garish golden Ed Hardy tiger? That’s two strikes. So, I try to be polite and plan my escape plan to a different bar. Rodney and I trade mundane details and pleasantries. He asks what I’m drinking, I tell him and ask what he’s drinking. He swills around his drink in a snifter, it’s light and caramel-colored, looks like cognac to me. I happen to be right. Score one for the former bartender. He tells me it’s cognac mixed with something something. Then he raises an eyebrow, “surprised you haven’t heard of this, it’s named after you.”

I think I know where this is going. “It’s called a Jessica?” I ask hopefully and brace myself.

“No, it’s called a Beautiful.” He arches that one perfectly manscaped eyebrow. "Just like you." He raises the snifter to me and drinks deeply.

I make a noise that's somewhere between a snort and a sigh. Whatever it is, it's not lady-like nor polite.

Look, you can’t use that line in a bar and think that might actually get you a woman. The only guy in the whole wide world that might get away with a crap line like that is Daniel Craig, and only when he’s playing James Bond, is sporting a tux and has just totally housed two South African drug lords with his bare hands and then maybe, just maybe would you get away with a line like that.

I finish my drink quickly, decline the Golden Tiger’s offers to buy me another and skedaddle from the bar with a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve heard some bad pick up lines in my day but this one is hands down one of the worst for both content and execution.

But on the positive side, as I’m trotting down Kuhio Avenue, I see this:

Now, I know we have rules about when and where you can put people on teams. But I feel like since I’m out of state, I get a pass this month. So Stierman, this one’s for you: Yes, she’s actually wearing a tail. I watched it swinging as she walked and all I could think about was Sonic the Hedgehog and his little buddy, Tails. I had to follow her three blocks out of my way just to make sure and get a pic. In my defense, I was not the only person who did this.

So Stierman, your team.

The Triple Crown of Nerdom

2010-02-06T19:25:00.003-08:00

Waikiki is very much the way I left it. It is still on fire.

You will be happy to know there are still big fiery torches every three feet, and a tiki bar ever two feet, you do the math. Keep in mind that sarongs, beach mats, and grass skirts are all flammable, mahalo.

So if you thought I’d do something really cool and exotic on my first full night back in my old stomping grounds, let’s be serious. Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? Of course, I had every intention of putting on an appropriately slinky black dress and reacquainting myself with my old bars. I had every intention of doing that until I saw the following sign on the way back to my condo:

Speed Eating Contest, tonight at 8 PM.

For those of you who know me, the question isn’t whether I go, it’s whether I can sit in the front row. You see, I’m a member of the IFOCE. IFOCE. The International Federation of Competitive Eating. Yeah, you know those people who watch the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest every year on the 4^th of July? I’m like that only I get the IFOCE newsletters, own an IFOCE member t-shirt and stream all the events of their website. It’s not just hotdogs either. Chili, chicken wings, meatballs, tacos, jalapeno peppers etc. If it can be eaten, it has been. Sidebar: It’s a secret dream of mine to enter the solid chocolate heart eating contest held right before Valentine’s Day. In case you were wondering the current record is 1 lb, 15.5 oz Chicago Chocolate Hearts, consumed in 7 minutes on Feb. 13, 2006 by Mohawk sporting bad boy Patrick Bertoletti. Yup. I got it bad for the IFOCE.

First I considered entering, however after checking out the qualifying event, I take a pass and decide to watch instead. It’s not that I can’t eat either. Not to rest on my laurels or anything, but I once put down 69.5 McDonalds chicken nuggets against Big Samarel’s 72 (and Phil, Amanda, and my ex-roomie can all attest to this). I’m just saying, girl can eat. The problem is to qualify you have to eat a Loco Moco. The Loco Moco is a traditional island delicacy that consists of a hamburger patty (or sometimes a spam patty) over a bed of white rice and topped with a fried egg and brown gravy. I hate eggs, I cannot gag down a fried egg, even in the name of competitive eating. So alas, to the seats I head.

The competition opens on a dozen competitors, the first two to finish a giant sized Loco Moco move onto the main event. The only table worth watching is the center table where an octogenarian named Minnie is giving local boy, Tavida, a run for his money. See pic in case you were wondering what an 80 year old looks like going house on a hamburger patty. It’s a beautiful thing. Sadly, Minnie loses by seconds to Tavida. He’s going to be joined in the Main Event by a John Deere hat wearing hick named John from Spokane, Washington. I suspect that he owns guns and a pick up truck. I like him immediately. Now the host asks us each to take a colored piece of paper, green for the Tavida and gold for John. If we pick right we win a coupon off a breakfast buffet. Now most times you take the island boy hands down, but there’s something about John that just screams, I go the distance. I go the distance because I ride a tractor and shoot stuff. I choose gold.

Now keep in mind this is held in a large food court so none of the food is really traditional Hawaiian except for Pearl’s (excellent BBQ), this is shamelessly sponsored by the eateries so what they must eat is: a roast beef sandwich from Arby’s, a Supreme Taco from Taco Bell, an entire personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut and a full BBQ box from Pearl’s BBQ of Hawaii, which consists of half a BBQ’ed chicken and 3 scoops of rice.

The competition is neck and neck and well, it’s just good gross fun, because Tavida decides his strategy with the Taco is to end up wearing most of it by smearing it on his beard and shirt. Johnny Hick decides to go mouth diving in the BBQ plate. I take a look at his girlfriend. Lucky girl. Hick pulls ahead on the pizza, Tavida rallys on the roast beef sandwich.

It’s looking like it’s going to be a photo finish until Tavida starts gagging and has a reversal of fortune. A reversal of fortune, for those of you non IFOCE members, is when a contestant doesn’t keep his or her food down. Now, I snapped a pic about 2 seconds before he lost it. Island boy is disqualified and Hick takes down the main prize: 100 dollars, a disgusted look from his girlfriend, and indigestion for the rest of the evening. It’s very amateur as compared with IFOCE standards, but it was worth watching an 80 year old pound down a Loco Moco. And because I backed the right pony, I get a coupon for an all you can eat breakfast buffet. This is a dangerous thing.

Now, it’s still too early to don the little black dress and go out for the evening yet (remember no one in Hawaii really gets going until midnight), so I stroll along Waikiki Beach and find myself at the chess huts. Yup, 3000 miles away from home and this is all I want to do. I wait awhile, normally it’s notoriously hard to get a game, even at night, but I’m a blond in a jean skirt showing some leg so if I stand around and look interested, some guy will eventually offer me a game. Which is exactly how it happens. I like the look of this guy because he is very tan and smokes cigars as he plays. I ask him if I can take his picture for my blog. He says if I can take a game off him (3 games is standard), I can take his picture. Fair deal.

A couple of the bystanders come over to watch and one says to my opponent, “you can’t lose to a girl, man. Even a pretty one like this.” This makes me smile, I will take compliments wherever I can get them, even from a 300 pound Samoan chess player. I lose the first game. I make a stupid play with a bishop and wind up losing a rook and then I get all flustered and tank the game. Waikiki is the ultimate ego stroke. And then after I lose the first game, the same behemoth says, “She sucks.” Waikiki guys: giveth and taketh.

The second game I’m playing white and I open strong and then somewhere in the middle game I set up a trap, only I don’t realize how good the trap actually is. I thought I was getting a rook out of it, but he really blew it and I wound up with his queen. He’s not happy because now he’s being teased by the other guys in a big way. Clearly, he’s a better chess player than I am (he’s the New York Yankees and I’m the freaking Nationals). Leagues above me, but he still made a sloppy play and I got lucky. I win this game so I get to snap his picture. See how happy he looks?

He destroys me in the third game. Absolutely obliterates me. But as I’m leaving, the 300 pound Samoan says “hey blondie, you ever want a game, you come back and find me.” I reason this isn’t a bad offer so it would be easy to find this guy in a crowd again.

Now, it was getting close to an acceptable hour to go out (it was somewhere between 10 & 11), so I donned the slinky black dress and had every intention of going out to an old bar I liked called the Shack. However, I stop en route in front of a dive bar with a small sign on which the words “karaoke” is scrawled in chalk.

Now ask yourself the following: have you ever seen me do karaoke? The answer depends on whether you’ve ever shared a bed, class or a job with me. If you can answer yes to any of these, then the answer is no. This should be everyone except for strangers. You see Snarky is gonna let you in on a dirty secret and here it is: I’m a total closet Karaoke singer and my god, am I atrocious at karaoke.

I slip into the bar and for those of you who have ever been in a bar doing karaoke, you know it’s full of Japanese business guys. I’m not being racist, this is just the way it is. These Japanese business guys aren’t in their traditional suits, no no, they are in brash Hawaiian print shirts and not the soft muted ones that actual Hawaiian business men wear. No I’m talking about the ones with vivid green palm trees and rollicking blue waves. The sight of so many colors is quite visually arresting, imagine a Crayola factory exploding and the colors went all over your shirt. When I walk in a slim gentleman is butchering Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You Been Gone.” In a word…amazing.

Now, does Snarky sing or not? If Snarky were to sing, it would go something like this: she would make friends at the bar, pretending to be shy and demurring away from singing, claiming she wasn’t much of a karaoke singer (this is a half truth at best. I sure as heck can’t sing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do karaoke). Then Snarky would probably have chosen something like “All the Things She Said” by T.A.T.U., or something equally fun, if Snarky had sang. Hypothetically speaking.

So for those of you keeping score, that’s pretty much a perfect nerd trifecta for the first evening: watching a speed eating contest, playing chess, and visiting a karaoke bar. Hopefully, I'll do you all proud on Saturday night (but whether I blog about it remains to be seen).

Return of the Snark

2010-01-28T20:48:00.000-08:00

Aloha. It means hello and good bye.

There was a time when I heard that fun fact so often that I was ready to sucker punch the next person who said it. Of course those were the days back when I was on my last co-op in Hawaii and I was considerably more tan. In other words, back when I was spoiled rotten and I got to spend a whole three months in Hawaii during one of the snowiest New England winters on record.

Fast forward to mid 2009. I was no longer tan. I had forgotten what palm trees looked like. Then things really got bad: the economy plummeted and big firms pushed their first year associate start dates back. Still, I was one of the lucky ones. My firm deferred the litigation kids to January and the corporate (and obviously cooler) kids to March and they were nice enough to give us stipends. Post-bar exam, this gave me a full six months of freedom, so I did pro-bono legal work with a professor and I picked up a job as a tour guide at Sam Adams, giving beer tours to the slightly inebriated masses. This was not a bad way to spend the days. But then my personal life hits the skids in a big way and I found myself with an interesting choice: Kick around for the month of February in Cambridge, trudging through snow and wallowing in personal strife, or regain former glory on warm, sunny beach in bikini while snarking on the unsuspecting. I opted for the bikini and the snark.

So for the month of February, I’ll be returning to the island of Oahu, specifically back to Waikiki Beach where I’ll be tanning, blogging and finishing my novel set in Hawaii and based on my oh so snarky blogs. Or in Jersey Shore slang lingo I suppose my status for the next month will be BTW: Blog. Tan. Write.

A word on the book, it’s a work in progress. It’s nearly done but missing some key chapters. Oh yes, and a title. I’m going to be posting a chapter every few days or so and linking it here for you to read all serial style. Try and contain your excitement. Of course, please don’t feel pressured to read it. Feel free to skip it, read the blog, or just look at the pictures.

The next time I post a picture here, I won’t be wearing mittens. The mittens are coming off.

Aloha.

Getting Lei'd

2009-03-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

You know it’s going to be the best last day of co-op ever when upon arriving at the office you get lei’d.

Yup, I went there, I cracked that joke. Have been waiting nearly three months to do it. Thought I might be mature and resist the urge to make a snarky pun? Guess again!

My lei was gorgeous, intricately woven white ginger and fragrant, while Travis’s was made of red berries and was about as manly as a lei can get.

I basically spent the entire morning wandering around and showing everyone I’d gotten lei’d. You should try it sometime; it’s a real mood booster.

At the lunch hour, the younger attorneys took us out to Chinatown for Pho. Which is pronounced “Fahhhh” and not “Foooooeeeee” like everyone on the East Coast says it. Have been waiting years to point that one out. Snark snark snark.

I knew this was going to be an awesome lunch because directly behind us was a tank of Arrowanas (enormous silver barracuda-looking fish, which always look like they’re frowning) and upon announcing their name as such, one attorney pointed out “Oh, I thought you said marijuana). Turned out, that our lunch time conversation was possibly the crappiest I’ve ever had. It involved the two married attorneys with microhuman infant daughters. Like all guys I know, they’re all about pride and glory, I mean, what guy isn’t, right? However, the subject at hand was potty training, i.e. the making of stool, going # 2, grunting out a lumpy, dropping a deuce, or as they say in Hawaii, “making shishi.” I’m bringing this back to the East Coast with me. Instead of excusing myself to the restroom, I’m going to announce, “Man, I gotta make shishi like it’s my job.”

I found this topic of conversation hilarious, because as an unmarried grubby law student dating an equally grubby, though somewhat more legendary law student, children are a foreign concept to me, as remote and unfathomable as contingent vested remainders (for those of you who don’t speak the law, I think this has something to do with title insurance, but I could be wrong. I once saw an attorney do a happy dance over it).

Anyway, back to crap. Travis and I and the one other unmarried barren attorney sat rapt as these two guys described in hilarious detail the trials and tribulation of potty training a microhuman. One had had a major setback involving potty trauma, where one parent got peed on and now the child felt so bad she refused to go (so sad), but the other had finally achieved success and as his wife had taped the event (not the actual making of shishi, but the afterparty) and there now exists a video of a very intelligent attorney on camera, whooping it up and singing “ Baby, made poopie in the potty! Woohoo!” I would very much like to have seen this video, but didn’t know how to ask.

My own brilliant Dad figured out very early on, that with regard to potty training me, food would have to be involved. I don’t know the specifics since my mom can’t talk about it without convulsing in fits of laughter, but apparently, my Dad, who is a chemist and holds degrees from various institutions of higher learning, made some sort of M&M trail designed to lead me to the potty. Somehow eating candy off the floor was supposed to trigger the urge to use the potty. Well here’s what happened: being a glutton, I happily followed the candy trail all the way to the potty and upon getting there; guess what I did with the potty? I lost interest. Once the candies were gone, what was I really going to do with the potty, anyway? It’s not like the potty was made of candy.

(If anyone else is thinking of the Family Guy episodes where Peter and Brian trap James Wood TWICE with this method of candy trails, all I have to say to you is: “OOOHH, a piece of candy!”)

I don’t know actually how it was then that I came to use the potty, since my Mom can’t get past the candy trail part without aforementioned laughter. But I imagine, I summoned up all my mental capacity that lay dormant in me and decided that making shishi in your own pants is gross.

But yes, these two young attorneys were absolutely mesmerizing in their tales of potty training, and the father who had had the potty success with his microhuman daughter described the method in which he was potty trained, which involved his mom and sitting in a bathroom for two days straight. This seemed pretty hard core to me, but then again, I was a flunky of the candy trail school of thought.

There was not irony lacking in this conversation, these two attorneys are both freaking brilliant at their jobs and would probably blow all of us way at trivia pursuit and other tests of the intellect, so in recounting the highs and lows of potty training, there was some self-awareness that they were literally celebrating the making of poo.

Of all my co-op lunches, even the one where I choked on a fishbone with the WilmerHale investment management guys and nearly died trying to clear it the basement bathroom of Kingfish Hall (good times), this lunch had to be my favorite. Crap is one of my very favorite subjects. And for those of you readers who aren’t lawyers, this just goes to show that lawyers are people too. They celebrate the making of shishi in the potty just like every other parent.

When I returned to the office, since I had no work to do, I spent the afternoon roaming the halls with Travis, both of us showing off our leis once more. I left half an hour early, and that was the end. The last day of co-op ever.

The night would not end there, there was a hilarious Valentine’s Day event thrown by the biggest divorce firm in town (their motto: divorce humanely. I think this is like saying: smoke healthy. Or: kill sparingly) and later one of the very awesome and chill attorneys who could not be present at the crappiest lunch ever, met up with Travis and I and the other barren unmarried attorney and showed us the coolest outside roof top bar in Honolulu. Unmarried barren attorneys do not talk of crap. We talk in practicalities. Example: how long after someone reaches legal age may he or she spend the night with no fear of them booting in your bed? The consensus was at least a full year before the individual may spend the night without the fear of you waking up and having your bed smell like sophomore year of college.

Leis, shishi, roof top mojitos, not a bad way to end THE BEST DARN CO-OP EVER and now onto the opening of the floodgates as Aaron, Anna and Melissa, and the Martin family parental units descend upon the islands…and hilarity ensues.

Behind Blue Eyes

2009-02-16T21:33:00.000-08:00

On the last day of birthday weekend, I arose once more at the butt crack of dawn (4:15 am), reluctantly readied myself, piled into the P.O.S. rental and headed out down a road, that kinda looked like a highway, but no signs, driving toward where it felt cold. I was stoked though because I was going to explore the sea caves. And dive with sea turtles and dolphins and be one with marine life and end my birthday weekend on a high note.

Not so much.

Upon arriving, I learned it was too rough to go out. So there I was at (wait for it) 5:12 am with the entire day ahead of me and a free voucher to come back to the Na Pali Coast when it was less rough. I considered using that voucher as TP the next time I ran out, I was so furious. WORST END TO BIRTHDAY WEEKEND EVER (ALL CAPS, SO THERE).

I got back in the car, still dark, prepared to drive along the road, that kinda looked like a highway, but no signs, driving toward where it no longer felt cold. I was fuming. I didn’t even care about the axe murder in the back seat. Go ahead, let him try and hook me, see how far it got him.

This funk lasted all of ten minutes.

Because as I drove along, I saw it rising out of the darkness. The golden arches, expander of thighs and clogger of arteries. It wasn’t just any McDonalds, mind you, it was THE McDonalds that Evan and Devon had told me about, the destination of late night munchies attack. It was Camelot.

At a minute before 5:30, the place was full of locals all giving me the eye. Who was this slightly disheveled pale face? What was she doing with such a ravenous expression? Where had she come from? I walked past all of these melatonin-enhanced men and ordered 4 apple pies. Yeah that’s right. The girl looked around and to the left of me to see if I was with anyone. “You want 4?”” She stammered. “As in 4?” Mind you, 4 pies at McDonalds, even the mecca of midnight munchies is still just about $4.20 (snark snark), but clearly, I had alarmed her with the look in my eyes.

They were the best damn apple pies I have ever eaten from a fast food eatery and I’m sorry that I didn’t buy every last one of them like Evan had. I could have easily eaten 16. Apple pies in Hawaii make apple pies in Boston look bad. Apple pies in Hawaii are DEEP FRIED in delicious goldenness. None of this nonsensical softly baked, slightly soggy, doused in cinnamon crap. I ate two before I even left the parking lot.

From there, I decided to drive up to Spouting Horn, for which I had seen a small checkbook sized sign for, and watch sunrise there. It was surprisingly not difficult to find and once there, I was alone, watching a huge crack in the rock shoot water up. It made a magnificent sound and such, like a panting dragon exhaling exhaust out its nose, but the jutting out of the land made it a lousy place to watch the sunrise. So I moved on in search of a beach closer to Kapa’a, where I was staying, hoping to make it in time for sunrise.

I got lost.

I wound up on an access road with cows.

I took a sharp turn and one of my apple pies fell from its bag and landed on the floor of the car. Not a good sign.

Then it began to pour. Hard. Monsoon style. So I pulled over into some pasture and started cursing the guides at the sea caves, who in reality, had really just been looking out for my safety by not taking me out, but at this point, I was calling them names that would make a sailor blanch. Ho-hum ho-hum.

I reached for the apple pie that had been knocked to the floor. During the impact one of its perfect fried corners had been damaged. More swear words erupted, obscured only by the beating rain.

(10 minutes pass. I consider my bad luck. I also consider tipping over one of the cows I was sharing the side of the road with when the rain stopped. Just to see if it felt good. I was that irritated).

When the rain passed, a beautiful rainbow appeared in its place. I started to thank the higher power for my own personal rainbow and the deliciousness of apple pies. An idea struck me, a rarity. I got out, wiped down the rental car roof with the towel I was going to use in the sea caves, and sat there on the roof, watching the rainbow and eating the remaining apple pies (pics 3 & 4 were taken from the roof of the P.O.S. rental car. So there, rental car agency). This was my own personal birthday rainbow.

When my own personal rainbow finally faded I drove along the access road until I found a road, that kinda looked like a highway, but no signs, driving toward where it no longer felt cold, in the direction of home. I found a small beach park and saw two things. The first was the light house off in the distance, the light house and it occurred to me that since I would be on Kauai until 6:00 pm, I should squeeze it in. The second thing I saw was a naked dude doing some sort of yoga. All I will say is, seeing a naked dude doing the saluting of the sun by a crouching dog or whatever it is called, no matter how attractive the dude is (and believe me, this man could not be called such), is never something you want to see before the sun is entirely up.

So I made my way back to the hotel, changed out of bathing suit and other sea cave clothes, and impulsively decided to drive up to the lighthouse and maybe from there, who knows, maybe Hanalei. Where Puff the Magic Dragon was from.

Nothing eventful or snarky happened to me at the Lighthouse. It was a gorgeous old lighthouse that doubled as a bird sanctuary and by bird sanctuary, I don’t mean, where birds are occasionally glimpsed in the trees, I mean, there were black foot boobies, albatrosses, nenes (sacred Hawaiian geese) and great frigate (friggit) birds everywhere swooping and diving. To atone for my earlier murderous bad funk thoughts, I made nice with the old people from a tour bus and helped them spot humpback whales.

So I thought I had atoned for bad morning bad mood, right? WRONG! From the lighthouse, I drove up to Hanalei, which in Hawaiian means, most gorgeous place on the planet. No, it doesn’t, it means, beautiful lush valley where pot-smoking dragon lives. No, it doesn’t mean that either. But it should.

Hanalei is beautiful wild coastal beaches and green luscious mountains as far as the eye can see. I drove through the beautiful little town of Hanalei, past the church, and the elementary school. On the road out toward the bay where Puff lived, I saw wild horses on the side of the road (see pic). This was better than the sea caves, I thought. I reasoned I had already: 1. consumed the best apple pies known to man; 2. enjoyed my own personal rainbow; 3. seen a naked dude doing yoga in the park; 4. explored the light house and seen more birds than I knew what to do with; 5. Walked over to within 10 yards of wild horses. What could go wrong, right?

Famous. Last. Words.

While at the aforementioned Hanalei Bay where Puff lived, I was shocked and awed by the beautiful trees, the wild surf, the clear blue sky. So I ventured down a steep little path, no more than 10 feet long, to get a better picture. And then I bit it hard. My feet gave out from under me and I fell down the path, down an embankment full of rocks, bramble, and roots and landed in a rag doll snark-o heap on the beach.

I am happy to report the camera was fine. I am happy to report no one was around to see this either. But alas, as I laid there shocked, my pain receptors too overloaded to release any adrenaline or even let me cry at this point, I was a little worried no one was around to help me up. I laid there for what felt like an eternity. Everything hurt, from the fire in my neck, to the scratches on my back, to soft spot of my jaw I’d hit a rock on, everything else just throbbed and the colors I saw from behind my eyes were quite stunning, but I was so dazed I couldn’t even gather up enough brain cells to drop a really well deserved epithet. But man, I wanted to.

At some point, I realized laying all tangled in the sand was a bad idea, I would probably be assailed by black rock crabs if I laid there any longer, so I reluctantly pulled myself up, inspected the worst of my oozing cuts and already forming bruises and to hark back to my dear dear Evan and Devon, I let out one really heartfelt “F-ing Motherf-ing Pigf---ing Pigf---er.” It felt amazing. Most of the pain skittered away at the utterance of those four magic words.

Luckily dear readers, I always carry a first aid kit when I travel (NERD ALERT) and I cracked open that bad boy and had my way with the Neosporin. And all of the stupidly shaped bandages. Honestly, who needs bandaids in the shape of butterflies, who possibly gets injured in such a manner that would require such a shape?

I ended my exploring in Hanalei on that note. Somehow the urge to get out and climb around had left me so I drove back to Kapa’a and located the place to eat that a friend at the firm had recommended. Scotty’s BBQ by the sea is not much to look at from the front, but as for ocean views (see last pic), it can’t be beat. My waiter was made from the same mold as Evan and Devon, and by this I mean he was a stoner, but the similarities ended there. Evan and Devon were endearing, adorable hippies. “Pepper,” that’s what I’m calling him, was one of those forty-fiftyish type of guys who never learned when to hang it all up. He used the word “dude” far too frequently. It took him three tries to take my order. I ordered Kalua pig sandwich and a diet coke. The sandwich was the standard signature menu item. It’s not as if I asked for anything special. On the third time I said it for him, I broke the words up into syllables. Kahhhh-luuuuuu-ahhhhhhhh pig sandwich.

When Pepper came back to the table, he stared at me for a long while making like he wanted to hand me my diet coke, but didn’t. This made me nervous. Finally, he spoke:

Pepper: “Dude, you have real pretty eyes. Anyone ever told you that?”

Me: (what the heck do you say to that anyway? Yes? No, that’s arrogant. But if you say no, then it sounds like you’re fishing. So I opted for silence, polite smile, eyes on the tablecloth).

Pepper: “Your shirt really brings the blue in your eyes out. They’re like ocean blue.”

Me: “Thanks.” Secret smirk rapidly spreading across my face.

And then he left, without leaving me the diet coke he’d brought over. Funny thing was, I was wearing a navy blue Northeastern pull-over (it was windy by the water), and my eyes are hazel, a jumble of greens and browns, but definitely, not ever, have they been mistaken for blue. Not by anyone in the short, happy history of this snarkster.

When Pepper brought over my Kahhhh-luuuuuu-ahhhhhhhh pig sandwich, he sat down beside me and began to talk. This was slightly jarring because, well, I wanted to stuff my face with said pulled pork but instead I had to nod politely and smile at stoner terms I didn’t understand mixed with surfing references I equally did not comprehend. Before he went off again, he told me again just how pretty my blue eyes were. Apparently, they made my whole face. How nice.

I just laughed as I ate Kalua pig and watched the ocean.

And that was the end of birthday weekend, one very strange, but lovely day. A day of triumph and a day of loss. A day of apple pie and nude yoga. A day of rain and of rainbows. Of great big birds and wild horses. And of course, one very baked waiter.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, I give you the Amazing Menini!

2009-02-12T01:31:00.000-08:00

Ladies, back me up here. Ponies. As a child, who didn't want one? Once I figured out unicorns could not be purchased at any retail location, I set my sights on a horse. I read all of the Saddle Club adventures, collected the Breyer horses, watched all the Black Stallion movies and designed elaborate plans for the construction of a stable and paddock in our suburban backyard. My parents weren't sold on my brilliant architectural plans nor the feasibility of a horse in the backyard, heck, I couldn't even sell them on a dog, the closest I ever got was two rabbits, neither of which was allowed to live in the house (even though, oddly enough, my slob of a brother was allowed to sleep in the house). So I did the next best thing to owning a horse. I pretended I was one. I would gallop around the yard, then slow to a canter, and then a trot. I would toss my hair and whinny. I can't really tell you how long I did this for, although my parents have a videotape of me in a pumpkin patch pretending to be a horse. I've got to be at least 10. (Back me up here, Mom).

So for part II of my birthday, I splurged and bought myself a private horseback ride across the mountains. I picked this ranch because it seemed a little commercial tourist trappy than some of the others. I arrived at the ranch and my tour guide, we'll call her Sara, who I liked instantly, led me to a paddock and told me I could go on in and pick any horse that I wanted. Seriously. A kid in the candy store had nothing on me. There were at least 15-20 horses of all kinds and colors, quarter horses and mustangs, palominos and pintos. These horses were a cut above the standard rent-a-horse. Some moved away from me as I approached, others tossed their heads, some just kept eating grass. There were a few good contenders, but then I saw him in the back corner, a chestnut with a white blaze down his nose and three white stockings (white markings on his legs). The horse cocked his head like a dog and seemed to smile at me. I approached, cautiously, and the horse seemed to smile even more broadly. I turned and called to Sara, "I want that one."

Sara looked disapproving. "That's Menini," she said, as if that would explain it. She shook her head, "we don't let kids ride him, we don't really like women to ride him either. It's not that he's not a good horse…it's just that…well he's a bolter." I pouted. On a practical people skills point, you shouldn't tell someone they can pick out any horse and then the first one she picks out, you tell her she can't have him. She sized me up thoughtfully. "You ever ride before?" A loaded question. Of course I'd been on pony rides as a child and had occasionally gone for horse back rides on vacations I think, bringing my time on actual horses to, oh let's just say I can count on one hand. "Yes," I replied, just as vague. She asked if I had ever ridden before, not if I competed on the Olympic equestrian team. "Alright, you can have Menini," she said. Excellent, I thought. I was probably going to break my neck.

Menini seemed to be as pleased as I was. We saddled up (well, Sara tacked up both horses, but at least I mounted by myself), and went over basic techniques, rein holding, stopping the horse, backing up the horse, making the horse go faster (I kinda got the impression this wasn't going to be an issue as I could feel Menini literally chomping at the bit). I had practically memorized how to ride a horse as a child without ever actually doing it, so in some weird way, some of this felt like second nature.

Sara and I headed across the valley. She was a petite, trim woman with beautiful blond hair wound tightly in a braid down her back. I liked her instantly; she was easy and interesting to chat with (which was good because for the next four hours it was just going to be the two of us). She'd been at the ranch for twelve years and had passed the time studying horse behavior.

Horses, she said, were pack animals with a natural pecking order. Those at the top did not mingle with those in the middle and the positions could change. For example, Menini was the #7 horse in a pack of 22, but if he got injured or sick, he could drop down to the teens. Menini hung out with the #8 and 9 horses, but didn't care much for #6 or #10 (in fact, Menini, when irritated, would kick the #10 horse). He was a true son of Kauai, having been born on the island, and could trace some of his ancestry to mustangs. The vast majority of the other horses were American Quarterhorses from Canada, ironically enough. The ranch had a contact out in Canada they liked doing business with.

We ascended a high plateau of wide open space. "Now remember," Sara started to say, but her words were lost as Menini took off. We'd gone over the finer points of staying on the horse while said horse was running, but in actual practice, it's quite counter-intuitive. Instead of hunkering down into the saddle, you're supposed to go loose, and let the horse bounce you up and down. In the air. Imagine banging a bag of ice against a hard surface to break up the ice so you can put it in your drink more readily. Now imagine your pelvis is the bag of ice and the saddle and horse beneath are the hard surface.

Sara was pulling on the reins of her horse to slow him up, so I did the same. Menini was reluctant to slow to say the least. Sara congratulated me on my posture and keeping my seat. I was pretty sure my jeans were the only things keeping fragments of my pelvis from spilling out. I gave Menini a pat on the neck. Good boy, I thought, you just wrecked my mom's best shot at grandkids. John, it's all up to you now, pal.

I coaxed some more horse insight out of Sara. She touched upon the relationship between horses and humans. Forget National Velvet and My Horse, Flicka. Horses were prey animals, and humans were predator animals. And both species understood that. In essence, the horse is by nature, suspicious and nervous around us. If you couldn't make the horse feel safe, then the horse wouldn't trust you. The way to make a horse feel safe was to take control, make smart choices, not leave too much give in the reins. If the horse didn't trust you, he would find ways to make your life as unpleasant as he felt, going off in another direction, ignoring commands, etc. Or, Sara shrugged, sometimes they're just mischievous, she said with an eye toward Menini. Menini turned his head to look at me as if to say, who me?

Sure enough, as we moved along through rusted gates and rocky terrain, Menini would let me know if he was displeased. Once when I turned him too wide going through a gate, he banged my left side up against the fence with an indignant snort. Fair enough. Another time as I took him down too steep an incline, rather than opting for a more gentle path, he pulled me over to the trees so I would get hit with the branches. Sara laughed. Her horse, Bruno, which was her own that she kept stabled on the ranch, was an equine angel, a model of good behavior. This horse was making us look bad.

About half-way through the ride, we tied up the horses and hiked into a gorgeous, pristine waterfall for lunch. I self-consciously removed my jeans, hoping that fragments of my shattered pelvis would not be spilling out. We chatted about life and ate turkey sandwiches and oranges. A pale family on a private ride with their tour guide joined us, to my dismay. These people were complaining about the horses, the food, the waterfall, the price of macadamia nuts, the quality of the oxygen in the air. After a few minutes of this, Sara and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing, either we'd have to leave or set them on fire. Since neither one of us had any matches, we pulled on our clothes and got out some climbing equipment (this I hadn't known about it ahead of time) and scaled up the walls of the waterfall. I may have slipped and wound up knee deep in water. Ho-hum ho-hum. I may have done that twice.

Bruno whinnied to Sara upon our return from the hike out of the waterfall. Menini eyed me. I couldn't be certain, but I felt like he was judging my wet pants. But, he let me scratch him behind the ears so all was forgiven.

A few minutes later when we hit open ground again, Sara said offhandedly, "Menini wants to go again, but you're in control. You get to decide the pace." Uh huh. So Menini and I compromised. When Sara wasn't looking, Menini took off and I made it look I'd given him the go by clucking to him encouraging. My pelvis shattered, I feared now for the structural integrity of my femurs.

"Great job!" Sara said when I had finally slowed Menini to a respectable pace. "That was excellent, you've really got a hold of him. I'm very impressed." I squeezed Menini ever so slightly with my knees. Our little secret, pal.

Then I heard the rustling in the tall grass and saw dark movement. "Sara," I started.

"Pull down on the reins, hard," she said harshly. "Back him up," she commanded. "Back him up!"

Brun was doing that head toss and eye rolling thing, horses do in movies when they're about to go into battle. His front feet came up off the ground.

"Wild pigs," was all she said.

As if on command, a porker family of four emerged. The largest, I assumed to be the male, was black and lean with spiky hair and he was a good size, he nearly came up to Menini's knees. The other, I presumed to be Mama Porker, was lighter, the color of Octoberfest (I'm sorry, Carota, but she was that color and nothing described her any better). Then came the two snuffling baby bacons, one as light as wheat and the other darker like the male. The female squealed like a pitch pipe, and there was some group chortling. From the pigs. Not us.

Bruno was just not having any of this and he was really fighting Sara. Who looks bad now, Bruno? Although I'd pulled up Menini on the reins, he stood there calmly, turning only one to the side as if to say, "pigs. So what?" I agreed. I ate pigs for breakfast. Literally. Now, had I been on the ground and stumbled upon them, I may have felt differently. I may have shrieked like a little girl and run screaming, swearing off all pork products. But sitting atop Menini, I felt quite confident in my position and relationship with this horse. I was pretty certain that Menini would drop kick any porker that came close enough. We both shared the common interest of wanting to see pigs fly. Snark snark. I'll be here all night, folks.

When the danger had passed, and the four-legged nuclear ham family had made a beeline for the trees (no I couldn't get a picture. Although Menini had demonstrated much valor, I wasn't about to give on the reins and go for the camera). Sara told me she hadn't seen wild pigs in five or six years. They had a tendency to spook the horses. There'd been an incident on a group tour awhile back and they'd had to refund the entire tour. And shoot the horses. Just kidding, seeing if you were still reading. Sara gave me lots of compliments for being so level headed, but really, it was all Menini. He'd been the one to hold his ground. I smirked over at Bruno. Way to drop the ball, big guy.

The sun was drooping in the sky over the mountains of the Hanalei region. It was time to turn back. Somehow Sara turned my four hour tour into a fiver. Menini pranced forward, head high, big brave baller that he was. (Make way, here comes the high stepper). When we got to the paddock, I seriously considered asking to put him in the back of the Aveo and drive off with him. I could carry him on the plane, right? Usually in my world, an incident involving wild pigs and horses would have resulted in disastrous injury to my person. So of course, I wanted to make him my house horse. He'd have looked just dandy in my small 1BR rental.

Sara did let me give Menini his feed bucket and he nuzzled me appreciatively. This obviously had nothing to do with me feeding him. It was love, I tell you. I know this because my boyfriend responds the same way when I bring him food. Love, I tell you.

Second part of birthday: ride across the mountain valleys? Check. Managed to stay upright upon the horse without injury to self or the animal? Check. Wild pigs sighting? Check.

Stay tuned, sports fans, for the final part III in which Jess drives all the way back around the island to explore sea caves only to find out it's too rough to boat.

The Fabulous Bake(d) Boys

2009-02-12T01:16:00.000-08:00

I knew there was going to be trouble when I called the night before for directions to the shop location for my sunrise bike ride down Waimea Canyon. The guy on the phone, who turned out later to be Evan, told me, "yeah, we don't have interstates out here, so whatcha need to do is get on a road that looks big enough to be a highway, roll down the window, and stick your hand out. When it gets cold, that means you're getting toward the ocean and you're close."

I wanted to say: "so you would like me to drive over an hour across your unfamiliar island wilderness at 4:30 am with no sun nor streetlights to guide me, along a road that might look like a highway and will feel 'cold' when I stick my hand out of the window. Are you high?"

Instead I asked politely. "Is there some kind of landmark, so I'll know to stop?"

"Oh sure, sure. There's a yellow submarine." And then he snickered at his own clever little pop culture reference.

Against all better judgment, I rose at 4:15 the next morning, stumbled into the rental car, an absolute magnificent P.O.S. and took my best guess as how to proceed. To be fair, I knew the place was in Poipu so I headed that way as indicated by a small green sign that was roughly the size of a checkbook and obscured by reeds. I did not roll down the window immediately because it was pitch dark out and the road looked like the opening scene of a horror movie where a forgettably pretty girl is cruising down some country road, singing some girly chick empowerment song (totally off-key because somehow that's endearing) and a stranger steps into the road, she swerves, crashes in the embankment. Dazed from the crash she gets out of the car and runs off into the dark woods, only to be cut down in gruesome fashion by a maniac with a hook for hand. No, on second thought, I was not going to drive with the windows down, the door unlocked. Nor would I sing off-key or talk to myself in narrative fashion. And just to be safe, I had checked the backseat for homicidal maniacs prior to climbing into the car.

When I had driven for an hour or so, having seen no signs or turns or any signs of life, I called the shop and Evan said "dude you're like 10 minutes away, can't you feel how cold it is?" He sounded suspiciously amiable for this early in the morning.

Sure enough, in the gloom a little yellow sub appeared and then an adventure shop for kayaking and biking. These shops are always run by hippies and have a certain, gritty appeal. Evan and Devon,* our tour guides, were both adorned in ratty cargos and even rattier t-shirts. Evan's read: "club sandwiches, not seals" (no joke) and Devon had opted for the quintessential Bob Marley. They both wore knit caps bearing the Rasta red, yellow, and green.

The only other people on the bike tour that morning were a pair of newlyweds. They were shiny and gushy and beaming brighter than my headlights. The new wife, a trim CPA from Dallas, inquired brightly, "oh, did you bring someone?" Just the homicidal killer in the backseat I rode down with. But don't ask him how he got a hook for his hand, he's real sensitive, I thought about telling her. But even I could find no reason to be outwardly snarky to newlyweds, they were just that cute and adorable, so instead, I told her my story about how it was my birthday and I'd never been to Kauai and to make sure that I didn't sound like a total loser spinster, added my boyfriend would be coming out to visit for Valentine's Day. She gave me a slight nod of approval. I wasn't totally beyond help and clearly wasn't poaching her man. New hubby was from DC, an attorney at a prominent DC firm, and had lots to say to me when he saw I was sporting my NUSL sweatshirt. Normally, I don't broadcast the school pride, particularly when the student body is waging war over a stupid t-shirt design (hey it's my blog and I'll snark if I want to), but the morning had been chilly and the sweatshirt was hooded.

Evan and Devon piled us into a van with a trailer and then dispensing with the polite formalities ("oh hey, where ya from?" "How long you staying?") launched into a robust discussion of the medicinal and spiritual benefits of pot. Of course, they didn't call it pot, they called it "herb" and new wife, trying to be polite, started making inquiries about the herbs of the island. It took me about 90 seconds to figure out she thought Evan and Devon were talking kitchen herbs. She wanted to know where she could buy some. This misunderstanding was not lost on Evan and Devon. The two embarked on a game to see who could make the newlyweds realize first they weren't talking about oregano and thyme.

Evan: "Yeah, yeah, you know our nickname on the island is the Roach Brothers."
New wife: "that's a lovely nickname. But you two aren't brothers?"
Devon: "No ma'am."
New wife: silence. Crickets chirping.

Devon: "When you guys get done here, you should head up to Hanalei. It's a really pretty area and Puff the Magic Dragon lives up there."
New husband: "that sounds wonderful. We'll get directions from you when we return."

Then finally, exasperated:

Evan: "My favorite movie is half-baked."
Devon: "My favorite song lyric of all time is 'I get high with a little help from my friends.' And I do."
Evan: "I smoke weed like it's my job."
Devon: "Smoking weed is my job."

(Okay, so they didn't say this last part, but they were laying it on pretty thick and I was shaking in the backseat and nearly lost it completely when I caught sight of Evan grinning at me in the mirror. Although I'm a Republican and my idea of a good time is depriving women of their reproductive rights, sealing up our borders with armed guards, drinking the blood of newborns and hanging out at gun ranges with my card-carrying NRA cronies, I am not wholly immune to the irresponsible charm and childlike wonder of hippies. And I did like these two. They were sweet natured. I liked them ever better when we stopped at a bakery and they came out with an entire box of 32 fresh-baked muffins for the 5 of us. Of course, they ate half in a munchies feeding frenzy but that was fine with me.

We drove into the Waimea Canyon and up to the lookout just in time for sunrise. The brilliant orange sun rose over the Canyon, illuminating the lush greens of the trees and the deep red dirt. On the Canyon wall to the left, the sun revealed a hidden waterfall and a bird swooped down into the rays of light and disappeared.

Evan took us on a tour of our bikes and how to properly operate them while Devon went off into the woods for a bit. Wonder what he was doing? Ho-hum, Ho-hum.

Evan's directions were quite simple. Do not crash the bikes. That was the only direction.

Evan led the way and I brought up the rear with the two love birds in between. Ever so often I would look over my shoulder to see Devon driving the dirty white van behind me and praying that all the rumors about pot and how they slowed your reaction time were false. I imagined him losing control of the van and mangling me beneath the wheels. My death would be ruled death by second-hand marijuana use. Pot kills.

We coasted down the Canyon, the morning wind whipping against my cheeks. I was silently thanking my boyfriend who had coaxed me back into riding after retiring from the biking circuit (age 12 or so: skidded to a stop on some grit on the road, went over the handlebars. Decided life was too short for pavement burns). I was thinking about my Dad, who had hiked across the country, hitting the national parks, wondering if how I felt now was how he felt then. This was what it was to be alive, the wind all around you, the red dirt and green trees and yellow sun rushing by and smearing into one color. Finally, I thought of my mother. It was just a little after 7:30. I'd been born at 7:13am in the morning many years ago on a cold February day. Here I was now enjoying this ride because of all her laborious efforts, and for this, I was thankful.

Every half hour or so, Evan would pull us over a turn off and impart some wisdom about the island of Kauai and Devon would get out of the van and go smoke up in the woods.

First stop: outside a little brown hut with a hand painted sign that read "lost dogs":
Evan: "So we got these wild pigs, yeah man. And a few months out of the year, you can hunt them with guns, but the rest of the year, you gotta do with a knife and a dog."
New wife: "that sounds gruesome!"
Evan: "sure sure. Real bloody mess. I got a Leatherman. Want to have a go at it? Nah, I'm just messing with ya!" And then he pealed into laughter, tears coming to his red-rimmed eyes. It just wasn't funny enough to warrant a laugh, so instead I started humming my favorite Talking Heads lyric in my head: "we're on a road to noooowwwhhhhheeeeerrrreeee."

Second stop: Evan teaches us how to huff Eucalyptus.
Evan: "Eucalyptus was introduced to Kauai to help with erosion, but the purists," he says dismissively, "think it crowds out the native plants." He inhales deeply.
New wife: "I hear eucalyptus is just great for chest colds."
New hubby: "This is remarkable. It's really opening up my passages."
Jess: I guess you can huff just about anything, right Evan? (No, I didn't say this aloud. But believe me, I wanted to).

Third stop: Evan points to an island off in the distance.
Evan: "That's Ni'ihau (Nee-e-how). The forbidden island. No can visit and only people who are born there or marry into the culture may live there. If you move away then you can't come back. I hear they do some wild crazy shite out there." He says that last part almost wistfully.
Jess: So let me get this straight, here on this island for fun, the men run around in the red dirt chasing wild pigs with knives and in their quieter moments, huff eucalyptus. Just exactly what kind of wild crazy shite are you missing out on Ni'ihau, Evan? Snark snark.

Fourth stop: Evan teaches us to huff another plant. I can't remember the name but it is squashy yellow with a shiny gleam. I actually feel a little dizzy, but this could be the bike ride. Devon climbs out of the van and makes another visit to the woods.
New husband: "You guys smell that? Smells like something's burning."
Evan: "No man, that's just the woods. It smells that way in the morning."
Jess: (to herself)(Smoky the Bear says: only you can prevent forest fires).

Fifth stop: We are by a small stream and Evan rips into the game warden who's just been caught "reef bleaching." We all stare at him blankly, the silence gets uncomfortable.
Me: (sighing. Okay, I'll bite) "Evan, what's reef bleaching?"
Evan: (looking surprised) "It's when you take your boat over a reef, dump some bleach, cast your net, and catch all the fish that float up dead to the top. It's illegal."
Me: "What do they do with the fish?"
Evan: (looking at me like I ride the short bus). "They uh…eat them. Obviously."
Me: (giving him by best "look pal, if I'm on the short bus, you're my seatmate" look) "So you're telling me, they eat the fish they've just doused with bleach?"
Evan stares back at me blankly. "Yeah?"
New wife: "So your game warden just got caught bleaching the reef?"
Evan: "Yeah man. F-ing Motherf-ing Pigf---ing Pigf---er. And Kauai's letting him keep his job."
New wife mouth opens wide and drops to canyon floor.
Evan: "I know, right! How can we leave someone like that in charge?"
Somehow I suspected the news that the warden gotto keep his job was not why new wife's mouth is hanging open like that.

The bike ride ended too quickly.

The Roach brothers took us up the ocean route back to the shop and the iconic yellow submarine. "That," Devon said proudly, "is the western-most McDonalds in the U.S." He erupted into giggles. "I've had some good times there, man."
"Yeah dude," Evan chimed in "there was this one time, it was like, 3am or something, I went in there and was like, 'this is a life or death emergency, you gotta sell me every apple pie in the place,' and they did, and it was crazy man, I ate, like 16 apple pies. Dude, I was like, I'm loving it!"
Devon, his eyes wide. "Dude! I'm loving it too."

Dude, I was also loving it, loving all of it, but for markedly different reasons. You see, this was just my birthday morning, it wasn't even 9:00 am yet, and really, what better way to start my birthday, than a sunrise bike ride down the Waimea Canyon with the Roach brothers, a wealth of cultural and homeopathic information. If I ever got in the trouble in the woods, by golly, I could just huff Eucalyptus til I didn't care about being lost anymore.

But like I said, it was just morning. Stay tuned for Part II of my birthday in which I venture across the mountains on horseback and encounter actual wild pigs.

* named have been changed and satirized to protect the stoned.

Enter the Dragon

2009-02-05T08:01:00.000-08:00

My cell vibrates and it's Travis texting me to let me know the plans for the evening. He describes the dress code for the evening as "skankalicious." This prompts me to go to the closest and identify something black with bling, but without shoulder straps. Surely, this will do.

As I'm readying to go out, I g-chat with Ira, not really paying attention to what I'm doing, and somehow cut myself on a Pizza Hut box. Oh, I am not joking. I don't know quite how, but somehow I sliced my finger, paper-cut painful, and start bleeding on my leg. Since I am not a fan of bleeding on one's evening attire, even if it is black and skankalicious, I throw on flip flops and dash to The Pharmacy (that is its clever name) to buy band aids. I figure that while I'm out, I should probably hit the ATM.

As the Pro-Bowl draws near, the Vegas street walker talent has been arriving in droves and the streets are clotted with them (Travis is right. They are quite prettier and more high-end than the normal crew.) On my way out from the ATM, I am mistaken for one by a tubby frat guy in a ridiculous aloha print (yeah that's right, pal. You looked ridiculous), who looks me up head to toe, asks me with a leer if I'm having a good night. Now, go ahead men, I know this is the part where you think "well, Snarky was asking for it in that outfit." That's fine. In my world, if you're a tubby frat guy in a stupid shirt, you're asking for it. Besides, I'm a little relieved. Clearly, I've chosen the right outfit for the night. But for good measure, I fix him with my narrowed eyes coolly (I perfected this look as a teenager, it's very hostile. Ask my parents). I don't where Tubby is from (I mean, besides from under a rock), but I don't think he's used to having a female stare him down. This means he's probably from Texas. He wavers a little and then mumbles something. I'm about to stalk off triumphantly, until Tubby's short little companion hisses "I told you she wasn't a hooker look at her shoes." I look down at my flippies. What's wrong with my flippies, damnit! Excuse me for not wanting to wear silver stiletto platforms out to get bandages. Sheesh! Tough crowd.

I meet up with Travis, one of Travis's cousins, her friend, a whole mess of tan dudes, all friends of Travis and Shawn, who work at Duke's and we all head to L4, whose chromosomal moniker reminds me of biology class. (L4, scientists have discovered, is where the recessive skank gene is located). After some sort of verbal wheeling and dealing, we are led to the front of the line to the plush velvet rope. It's drawn back and we're admitted into the dark, pulsing club. But we don't stop there, we head to an upstairs VIP room where, I kid you not, there are chicks in gold spandex swinging from the ceiling all cirque du soleil style and they are really, uh, throwing their backs into it, because I can feel air whooshing above my head and the scent of perfume. (I think it's "Eau de Trying to Put Myself Through College"). In stark comparison, there are two solitary dancers, dressed like punks, on stage doing some sort of painful looking gyration while looking put-off. On the tables surrounding the VIP sections, are go-go dancers, hot, attractive, non-Yeti go-go dancers, in orange zip up suits that remind me of the costumes from Austin Powers (see pic). Travis leads us over the roped off VIP section and I pause for a moment, wondering if there is a Mob element in Hawaii and whether Travis is the head of it.

The group does the whole bottle service thing, 900 bucks for an attractive waitress to come over and mix the vodka into pineapple, orange, or cranberry juice for you all night. This ritual is about as extravagant as Obama's economic stimulus package (oh yeah, I went there. That's right). But I still feel like a baller VIP. I look up, behind us there are movie-style stadium seating. This strikes me as slightly…voyeuristic, in a surround sound sort of way.

I size up the room and am happy to report, Mother that I am not the most skantastically dressed femme there or even in my party for that matter. My dress covers all crucial parts of anatomy and the hem of the dress was just shy of the knee. Some girls are wearing dresses that have as much fabric as those bandanas you tie around dog's necks.

On my second drink (which I fixed myself after tiny Thumbelina-sized waitress, seen pictured with Shawn, nearly overdosed me with pineapple), I notice that the golden swingers from the ceiling are gone and so are the stage dancers and the go-gos. About 90 seconds later, drum music starts up and then:

ENTER THE DRAGON
(You have no idea how long I've been dying to work that phrase into a blog)

Two Chinese Dragons appear on the stage which has column-type steps ranging from 2ish -10ish feet high, and four dudes, two beneath in each dragon, start free-styling on the planks. The music changes and the Dragons settle into routines and gender roles, one Chinese Dragon, apparently the female one, starts shaking her moneymaker at the designated male one.

I look down at my drink. It is only my second, yet I feel like Dumbo. Dear Children of the 80's: remember when Dumbo gets tipsy some spiked bathwater and he starts seeing neon elephants in bubbles? I'm having one of those episodes. I'm not drunk and I can't fly like Dumbo or suck up a peanut up my nose, but I am having one of those bizarre-interludes watching two Chinese Dragons gyrate and jump to the sounds of tinny cymbals. It's like I am not even in a bar. This is not what I signed up for or expected this evening. It would be like waltzing into a Denny's and finding the Boston Symphony Orchestra warming up.

Then the Lady Dragon shudders, and the guy falls down, out of the suit, off the high post and face plants on the stage. He is surrounded by spotters instantly and to my amazement, even though this guy has taken a heck of a spill, he gets back up into the sad, saggy dragon (missing its front half) and reanimates it. Look, I'm all for getting back in the saddle, in the dragon whatever, but good god, that was quite a dinger, shouldn't somebody get this guy some medical attention or at least a drink?

The Lady Dragon starts dancing more frenetically than before, as if to prove a point, and then WHAM! Same guy on the floor again. He looks very frustrated. The Dragon looks all droopy again. The bouncers look annoyed this time. (You can pretty much read their minds: Damnit little tiny dancing man, stay in the Dragon!) And, of course LTD man gets back in the dragon. At this point, you almost have to.

The dance winds up into a fever pitch with acrobatics I can't really describe (and no more falling LTD men) and then the dragons are done and forgotten as the skankarrifc party goers go back to what I can only assume are meaningful conversations about Kant while dancing to the lyrics of "Just Dance" which feature such conundrums as "wish I could shut my playboy mouth." What does that even mean?

To my relief, there are no more people in mythical animal costumes, but the go-go dancers come back, and people start to make their way up in the movie-style theater type seating and either plop down alone or on top of someone else.

At some point, I make the mistake of going into the crowded ladies' room, arguably busier than the club, where the attendant tries to hand me a lollipop BEFORE I get in line to wait for a stall. Not that I would necessarily take candy from a bathroom attendant AFTER I was finished, but the idea of unwrapping one and eating it while you're doing your thing on the toilet is beyond gross, but lots of other people don't seem to think so. It's particularly nasty when one girl takes it out of her mouth while talking to her friend and waves it around in the air, making some sort of point. I guess we can add this to the list of how diseases are transmitted. Bathroom lollipops.

While waiting, I watch a girl over at the sink fishing around in her orange-colored drink with nearly all of her fingers (all except the thumb). The expedition results in the extraction of a soggy-looking piece of gum, which to my amazement, the girl pops back into her mouth. Silly me, I thought she was diving in there to get rid of it. That's a little gross, so I shift my eyes to a girl dressed in a feathery sequined zebra onesie (I desperately wanted to ask her where she got it, so I could get one for Anna and Melissa for when they come visit) but she was on the phone. In fact, from what I could hear, she was telling some (maybe her boyfriend) that no, she wasn't out clubbing, she was on the bus and that's why it was noisy. If that sucker believed that, I had a bridge to sell him. As she talks to MGB (most gullible boyfriend ever, apparently), she plumps up her cleavage with the hand not holding the cell phone. Yeah, that's always what I do right before I get on a bus and go home, readjust myself to assure symmetry.

I make a mental note that on the off chance I ever return to L4 and I need to use the restroom, I will just walk the 3 blocks home, and come back. I return to our spot, have another drink and hang out. Toward the end of the evening, I notice off in the movie seats above us, a guy is uh, licking his lady's tattoo.

Now, it would be just awful of me to tell you where on this lady's body the tattoo was, so instead, as my parting remark, let me just say: inner thigh tattoos are the new tramp stamp.

When you don't wake up alone...

2009-02-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

What to do when you don't wake up alone after a night of hearty social frivolity:

First: whatever you do, don't panic. Remain calm. Panicking will only exacerbate the situation.

Second: assess the situation, how bad is it? Where did you wake up? (My place, this is an excellent start). What are you wearing? (Last night's outfit. That's points off for wearing yesterday's clothes, but points added on for being clothed, so it's a wash). Now, what exactly did you wake up next to? I look over. This is really not good. My mother would be ashamed of me. I've been brought up better than this.

Third: review the previous night's event thoroughly. This can be a trying process:

During the day, I hiked Manoa Falls. Good clean muddy fun. Upon returning, I sat out on the lanai, sipped a glass of wine, and listened to my favorite live guitarist play classic rock covers. Self-important and a little bohemian, but still super fun. And then it was time to meet up with Travis, soI headed over to Duke's Waikiki on the Beach and am greeted by the first of the "cousins." Actually, it is just one cousin at this point, her friend, and a random dude pretending to be Travis's cousin. Like I said, Travis is kinda a big deal; of course, you'd want to pretend to be his cousin too.

We exchange pleasantries and decide to go over to the mall, which apparently, against all intuition, is a spot where the locals drink. This is news to me, but I happily climb in the cab and make the trip. Note: the cab shall be important later.

Travis has our names on the list of some club, which, forgive me Travis, is super-trendy in a "Blade" bloodbath techno rave kind of way, and the strobe lights and the smell of dry ice make me a little woozy. It's not that I'm not super-impressed; it's just that I'm not super-hip, I mean, surely you've ascertained this from the way I dress, so I am a little relieved when we make our way over to Mai Tais to meet up with the other cousins.

Imagine a mall like many other malls, although this one is more open-air on top because it's Hawaii, and on the top floor, crammed into a square teeming with tanned arms and legs and tattoos is an impressive looking bar called Mai Tais resplendant with scantily dressed lady bartenders. Good start. Now imagine if you can, it is always happy hour (except from 7-8pm), so the drinks flow freely and the drink specials really are special, and – kiss of death – their specialty, other than being one of the few bars to serve pitchers of beer, is their froofy island drinks. They're so good even the locals are drinking the signature mai tais, mojitos, lava flows, martinis etc. Herein lies the problem with girly froofy drinks. They are vipers in disguise because they lull you in a fall sense of security by hiding away the alcoholic taste, so when you decide to sample one of each kind of drink (island special, margarita, martini, champagne-based concoction, and shot), you do so without the warning bells going off in your head that you are heading for one heck of a bender.

No matter. Travis orders me a passion fruit mojito, which is just as fruity as it sounds. I start talking to the cousin and then Travis is introducing everyone around us as cousins. Everyone. He is related to everyone and helpfully explains how he is related to each, although, it's impossible to hear because apparently the hottest local group, Koauka is on stage. (Think ska, punk, reggae on rolled into one delicious fun sound). Each local cousin is ridiculously nice and gregarious and more hilarious than the last.

Suddenly, I am taking a ladies' shot with the cousins. Suddenly, I am ordering another Island Kiss (champagne with blue Curacao and something else, coconut or pineapple something), suddenly I'm insisting that Travis drink a Lychee martini (I don't even know what lychee is, I thought it was a monkey or a moss that grows on the northern face of trees), suddenly I am singing along to Koauka making up the words, and then, I realize with a start, that I am thinking that late night karaoke would be a totally awesome idea right now.

Now it's time to panic.

I stop and excuse myself to the ladies' room. I know my limits. When I start to think that late night karaoke would be a totally awesome idea, I know that it is time to go home. This isn't my first rodeo. I cut my teeth in Boston's famed Hong Kong. I know what late-night karaoke looks and sounds like. You are either crazy or not entirely sober if you think it's a good idea. I ain't crazy, so I must not be entirely sober. This is confirmed as I sit there in the stall listening to two other Mai Tai bargoers discussing Brittney Spear's comeback and I find myself in agreement with them. I too feel loads of sympathy for the little Pop Tart and admire her tenacity for clawing her way--good god. I've got to get out of here. Run screaming if necessary, pull a fire alarm, but I am approaching the point of no return. Any minute, I could be up on the Mai Tai bar, dancing like a wounded walrus and making myself into a youtube legend.

I bid a hasty good night to Travis, who insists I take a cab (course I am, I'm a good half hour from home and there are at least 3 karaoke bars en route, I can't be trusted on foot, obviously), I thank him for his even-present chivalric concern, ask him to say good night to the cousins and then bolt for the nearest taxi cab stand.

This is where it all goes down, even though I left Mai Tai's alone, I will not wake up alone because of events that transpired in this yellow speeding death trap.

It starts off innocently enough. The cabbie asks if I've had a good night, I respond politely in the affirmative and ask him how his night has been. We talk about the weather in Waikiki. President Obama (local grown native boy, what else?), plans for the upcoming superbowl and pro-bowl, and then WHAM, we're talking about his plans when he gets off work and guess what, his plans include bbq ribs. This is more than any less than sober glutton can bear. So I scramble, start talking about what I'm going to eat, but knowing in my heart of hearts that all I have in the room is fruit, flippin' fruit, and suddenly I'm pleading with all my soul for him to pull over at the Burger King. Keep the meter running, whatever, this is a matter of life and death!

And this dear friends, is how I woke up the following afternoon next to a half-eaten, plain classic chicken sandwich. It wasn't even entirely unwrapped, still peeking out from within its lovely waxy tissue shroud. Yes, there it was, half-devoured on the pillow next to me on a bed of crumbs and sesame seeds. I am so embarrassed that I left half a sandwich. Seriously, who can't finish one lousy chicken sandwich from BK? I hardly deserve to call myself "glutton." "Lightweight" would be more fitting.

And then I see an empty fry-pod on the floor, a triangular apple pie box, and an empty soft drink cup. Ooooohhhh, a value meal. Saucy minx!

So remember, when you wake up after a night of hearty social frivolity and you find yourself not quite alone. Do not panic. Remember: assess the situation. Review the night's events. And for godsakes, get rid of the evidence.