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penfieldFor our honeymoon, J. and I went to Hawaii[1], a destination that combined my bride's love of tropical beaches with my affinity for American representative democracy. Our itinerary: Fly (via Phoenix) to Maui, stay four days at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa, fly to Kauai, Stay four days at the St. Regis Princeville Resort, fake our deaths, fashion makeshift hut from guava skins and cocktail umbrellas, retire at 33. Possibly learn to surf.
We would soon discover that all itineraries are purely tentative.
Day One
Using the ol' "honeymoon" password,[2] I was able to weasel us into first class seating for the six-hour Phoenix-to-Maui leg of our flight. Inexplicably, we were seated next to a young family whose youngest member just happened to be experiencing either an ill-timed bout of colic or a routine demonic possession.
"What kind of people are they letting into first class these days? Wait, don't answer that."
Maui's Mt. Haleakala, rising above the clouds, as seen from my window seat. Though officially
classified as a dormant volcanic crater, it could still erupt at any moment, like Mel Gibson.
Under the conventions of popular culture, all visitors to Hawaii are greeted at the airport by hula girls in grass skirts, bearing festive leis and ripe coconuts. Yeah, right.
This is what I looked like after 13 hours of air travel.
Deplaning at Kahului airport at approximately 2 p.m. Maui time, J. and I were greeted not by flower-bearing hoochies but by a terse, vaguely feminine SpeediShuttle representative, who informed us that a brush fire had broken out in the Ma'alaea region of the western Maui mountains, closing the road to our hotel.[3]
ME: "Well, when will the road be re-opened?"
SPEEDISHUTTLE REP: "Five to ten hours, maybe.[4] Nobody really knows."
ME: [Pees himself]
We were told to hang out for a while, either at the airport (A waxwood sauna roughly the size of our kitchen, only with far fewer cold beverages) or the nearby shopping mall (which appeared to cater exclusively to prospective purchasers of sarongs and sunglasses). We chose the mall, on the flimsy rationale that it would offer marginally nicer bathroom facilities.
After taking a local bus to the Queen Ka'ahumanu Shopping Center, we absentmindedly tried browsing here-and-there, striking up conversation with various affable Hawaiians in search of sympathy and/or possible secret shortcuts. In these encounters, we were given the distinct impression that the fire could go on for a while, perhaps weeks, until a virgin could be located, transported and sacrificed to Pele, the native goddess of fire and airport shuttles.
Where there's smoke, there's heartburn.
The whole situation made us edgy and uneasy and just altogether dyspeptic, so we basically turned right around and got on the next bus back to the airport, where – after a very brief update ("We heard the fire has jumped to the other side of the road; could be a while") – we explored the option of taking an interisland flight to the small Kapalua airport on the west side of the island.[5]
But each interisland airline representative sent us to a different interisland airline, whose representatives informed us, with varying degrees of pathos, that they were useless. With little more than hope, and seeking little more than validation, we called our travel agency[6] as well as our intended hotelier to let them know just how horribly screwed we were.
With their coordinated assistance, and in light of the widespread tourist dislocation and the aforementioned "honeymoon" buzzword, we were actually able to obtain a generously discounted rate at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, the glitzier, more caviar-intensive beach community located on the island's southwest coast.[7] As quickly as we could, we boarded a shuttle in that direction.
You know how, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy starts out in a bleak, black-and-white Kansas dust bowl town, but a freak natural disaster transports her to a colorful, magical, five-star luxury hotel with an oceanfront view and a complimentary chilled bottle of champagne? This was a lot like that, except our slippers were made of fluffy terrycloth instead of red sequins.
Our room at the Four Seasons, seen here bathed in the warm glow of our love.
(Partially for each other, but mostly for the room.)
By this hour, most of the afternoon had evaporated, and we only had enough time to take a quick stroll around the grounds and savor the remaining embers of the day.
I'm telling you right now, you should probably get used to pictures of sunsets and ocean horizons.
Starving and punch-drunk, we decided to get full and real-drunk at DUO, one of the resort's fine dining establishments. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed the Seafood Tower, loaded with grilled prawns and sashimi-grade ahi tuna. J. enjoyed the restaurant's playful complimentary dessert of homemade cotton candy. Upon returning to our room, we were swiftly sobered up by the inexplicable presence of a complimentary hotel-provided crib.
A memorable vacation is born.
We found that the presence of the crib clashed with the champagne and the general spirit of the occasion, so we had it removed. We nevertheless slept like babies that night, nurturing dreams that the fire would keep burning and leave us stranded there for a while.
Day Two
Arising the following morning from a regal slumber, J. and I opted to linger a while in the plush grandeur of our accommodations. We popped open the champagne and ordered a sinfully indulgent[8] breakfast from the in-room dining menu. With her french toast, J. ordered the lilikoi syrup, a sweet concoction of passionfruit[9] and -- judging by her reaction to it -- pure heroin.
"The Three B's" essential to starting the day off right: Breakfast, Bathrobe and Balcony.
We soon learned that the wildfire had been tamed, at least temporarily -- meaning that the road was now open, the special room rate would soon expire, and our Fairy Godmother had left for Kauai already. We checked out at noon, with only enough time to grab a poolside drink (J. a zesty blueberry mojito, me a frosty ice water) on the breezy pool deck before we were to be chauffeured to our inescapable destiny.
Having spent our prepaid transfer voucher on the detour to Wailea, we had the hotel arrange for a one-hour cab ride to Ka'anapali Beach in Lahaina, on the northwest side of the island. At $120, it was the most expensive car ride of my life -- especially considering you can rent a car on Hawaii and crash it for less than $100 -- but the ride was worth it for the extended conversation with our driver, Nick, on whose recommendations we based much of our stay in Maui, and who turned out to be quite a bit more helpful than Ray, the actual concierge we later contracted to help us book these activities.
We rolled into the Hyatt at about 3 p.m. The structure itself fortifies the beachhead like a castle, with the rooms forming an open-air courtyard of tropical plants, birds and baby strollers.
Hyatt Regency Maui, interior. Not pictured: the chirping, the ungodly chirping.
The rear patio, lush with palm fronds and hibiscus, spills out below to an enormous pool deck complete with rows and rows of pneumatic reclining chairs, shade umbrellas, several lagoon-style pools, kiddie pools, waterslides, water playgrounds, faux-waterfalls, hot tubs, lukewarm tubs, a cafeteria, a coffee hut, a casual walk-up restaurant and a swim-up bar with flat screen televisions. Beyond a 20-foot berm, carpeted with a manicured spread of soft, spongy grass and decorated with private cabanas, massage cabanas and dining cabanas, there lies the beach and the Pacific Ocean, salty and warm like a mother's womb. Eyes rising above the Pacific horizon, there is nothing but crystalline blue sky, dainty puffs of cumulus clouds and the occasional parasailor hollering across the sky.
My precious flower takes a whiff of her precious flower,
the hibiscus or ma'o hau hele, the state flower of Hawaii.
The Hyatt, in contrast to our prior landlord, had clearly been designed and marketed as a vastly more inclusive and accessible property, welcoming to any human being who can strap on a pair of flip-flops, or who can at least make a "flip-flop" sound as they waddle across the lobby in bare feet.[10] Which is fine. It's still a lovely location and it's not like it was a bamboo yurt or anything.
Still, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed when we got to our very normal, totally adequate, perfectly acceptable hotel room, which despite having a pretty decent oceanside view and complimentary ice and exotically fragrant soap still seemed like a truck stop bathroom when directly compared to our boudoir at the Four Seasons.
J., for her part, was also disappointed, but not because she was dissatisfied with the room. By and large, J. seldom concerns herself with the quality of hotel rooms, which she views merely as places to sleep in between high-seas adventures.[11] No, she was disappointed upon coming to the realization that the Great Maui Inferno of 2010 had indirectly pre-empted her long-awaited snorkel excursion to the Molokini Crater.
This photo from our flight in to Maui was as close as we would get to the famous Molokini Crater,
home to hundreds of distinct, endemic tropical fish species and at least two broken dreams.
We stopped by the hotel's Expedia concierge desk, where we discussed options for other activities. Our liaison, the aforementioned Ray, possessed a confident enthusiasm bordered only by his incompetence. To be fair to both Ray and J., I certainly did not make the process any easier, what with my persistent attention to possible motion sickness threats and general whininess about any activity that required more exertion than lifting a blended tropical drink.[12]
Eventually, through a collaborative and mostly nonviolent decision-making process, we selected a non-Molokini-but-still-promising snorkel-and-sailing trip for the following day; reserved two seats for the Hyatt's own nightly luau extravaganza; and booked a rental car for some independent island exploration later in the week. We also had him arrange for a romantic dinner sail in Kauai, the next leg of our trip. We tipped him $10.[13]
Our bounteous breakfast now almost entirely digested and swiftly fading from memory, we decided to stop by the poolside restaurant for drinks and a quick serving of gastrointestinally demanding Hawaiian pork nachos. Our plan had been to proceed thenceforth, via trolley, to the nearby Whaler's Village shopping center ("Serving all your sarong and sunglass needs") where we could then take a bus to Lahaina's boardwalky Front Street area, replete with seaside restaurants, art galleries and a few dozen sarong-and-sunglass shops.[14]
But those nachos were still weighing me down and making me feel too bloated to squeeze through the doors of another restaurant. So we just ended up walking forth-and-back up the street until we stumbled upon another fine sunset.
This photo has not been retouched or color-enhanced. We really are that good-looking.
The day couldn't get any better than that. We were both weary from all the riding around and my stomach had gone from the Hula to a full-blown fire dance, so we retreated back to the comfort of our room and retired to dreams of the following day, and the possibility of adventures that didn't involve packing our suitcases again.
Day Three
I awoke the following morning to an empty bed and a ringing cell phone, with J. on the other end impatiently summoning me to the hotel's complimentary breakfast buffet. This was strangely disorienting -- not just because there is an expectation, born in history and validated through tradition, that honeymooners are supposed to be carried from peaceful slumber to blissful reality in the warm cradle of their lover's arms, but also because J. never wakes up before I do except in the most dire and dangerous caffeine-related emergencies. But apparently she had been awakened in the middle of the night by a cell phone call from some intrusive Verizon Wireless salesperson, who – even after it was explained that they were calling at 4:00 in the morning, Hawaii time – persisted in an astonishingly oblivious and ill-conceived line of inquiry about J.'s satisfaction with her service. Thus perturbed, and further compelled by a combination of jet lag and beach-lust, she had stepped out for a morning stroll along the beach.
"Once I had a dream that I was walking along a beach, as scenes from my life flashed across the sky. I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. I asked my wife, 'Why, when I needed you most, were you not there to walk with me?' and she replied, "My love, never have I abandoned you. Those were the times when we were enjoying a one-legged hopping race.' 'Oh yeah,' I remembered. 'Oh yeah.'"
So I grabbed my free copy of the Maui News[15] and hustled down to the pool deck restaurant for a delicious start to the day, including the best pineapple I've ever tasted.[16] I almost certainly would have employed my typical "scorched earth" all-you-can-eat buffet strategy, but I decided to play it conservatively and leave the tank half-empty. We were soon to depart for our snorkeling trip, and, given my stomach's long and checkered history with boats, I did not want it to turn into a Deepwater Horizon-level biohazard situation.
Our Premier Snorkel Adventure and BBQ was provided by the friendly folks at Teralani Charters, aboard the 65-foot catamaran Teralani 2. The manifest included another 40 or so people, most of whom were conspicuously tawny and tattooed, even the newborns.[17]
J. stands ready to board our sturdy seafaring vessel, the Teralani 2, which was a pretty entertaining boat in its own right but failed to capture the freshness and excitement of the original Teralani, even with the larger budget and the addition of Samuel L. Jackson to the crew.
The whole idea of snorkeling is that the equipment (diving mask, snorkel breathing apparatus, flippers) allows you to breathe freely (though, it should be said, not normally) while gliding face-down on the surface of the water, so that you can view lots of Natural Aquatic Majesty like coral, fish, rocks, and -- under perfect conditions -- Jessica Alba.
We were escorted to two anonymous snorkel sites on Maui's northwest coast where we did in fact see some coral, cauliflower-sized ruffles of light pink. And we did in fact see some fish, mostly bite-sized yellow ones and snack-sized silver ones. And we totally saw lots of rock, ranging from brown-and-jagged to dark-brown-and-treacherous. And it was nice, in the way that a cafeteria lunch is nice. But it didn't shift my paradigms or anything. The second site was supposedly ideal for seeing and swimming with great green sea turtles[18],[19], but we didn't see one damned turtle, not a single one. Later, on the boat, we heard a couple of folks boasting that they saw a turtle, but I think they were just bragging to justify their planned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tattoos.
So it was not a particularly successful voyage from a Natural Aquatic Majesty point of view. Comparing our trip to her previous snorkel experience in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, J. struggled to suppress her gag reflex. But it was still made for a very pretty tour around the coast, and the barbeque lunch was divine.
Whoa! She's caught herself a big one.
Reaching land again, we walked along Ka'anapali Beach back to our hotel, where we tried to relax a little by the pool. It was awfully distracting, though, what with all the young children splashing about[20] and the crowd that had gathered to watch Game Four of the NBA Championship Finals at the swim-up bar. We didn't linger very long, since we had to get cleaned up and in line for our luau.
A luau is a customary Polynesian-Hawaiian feast that often includes entertainment in the form of song, dance and storytelling. Historically, these feasts were associated with community milestones like bountiful harvests or military victories. In modern times, however, the commercial-tourism complex has transformed the luau into a Disney-fied version of itself, so that the contemporary luau is to the traditional luau as Guys and Dolls is to organized crime.
J. and I snazzed up in our finest cabanawear and proceeded to the Hyatt's own Drums of the Pacific Luau box office, where we were to exchange our vouchers for two general admission tickets. The box office attendant, upon looking at my vouchers, shook her head dismissively.
ATTENDANT: You can't use these here.
ME: Huh?
ATTENDANT: You can't use these here. Where did you get these?
ME: Upstairs. At the concierge desk. Ray Something.
ATTENDANT: They sold you these upstairs?
ME: Yes. Well, we paid for something.
ATTENDANT: Goddammit.
At that point she got on the phone and spoke what appeared to be very candidly with the concierge desk supervisor, clearly referring to Ray as "some idiot new guy" and spicing up the conversation with what I assume were festive-sounding Hawaiian curse words. Eventually she gave me our tickets and, with a smile, told me to wait in line.
And this was the Bataan Death March of luau lines. As recommended by Ray, we arrived at the box office at a quarter to 5 p.m. to get the best available seats, ideally close to the small stage and band shell, within singeing distance of the fire-dancers. They were supposed to start letting people in at 5:15, but for some reason (never explained; perhaps they were actively growing the grass skirts) they kept us in line, letting us bake under the early evening sun in our casual elegant evening wear, until 6:30 p.m.
By the time we actually made it on to the patio, we were happy just to be in the shade. We each ordered something from the bar (Me: Diet Coke. J.: "Something blue") and mingled with the other young couples at our table, two of which were also on their honeymoon after a June 5 ceremony. We all exchanged stories about head counts and wedding day heat[21] and bonded via snarky comments about the swimwear fashion show (i.e., "I don't think those coconuts are real.")
We were stupid and left the camera in our hotel room. The actual show was not as sexy or scary as this brochure would suggest. But it was right next to the Pacific Ocean and there were, in fact, drums.
The buffet dinner, loaded with island delicacies like roast pork, ahi poke, mahi-mahi, soba noodles and Poi, was magnificent. In contrast to my highly disciplined approach to the breakfast buffet, I scorched the hell out of that earth. By the time desert rolled around, I was just ambulatory enough to go onstage as a volunteer Hukilau demonstrator.
The last fire dancer was extinguished at about 10 p.m., so we said our fond goodbyes to our fellow honeymooners and then went back to our hotel room to discuss which couple was going to get divorced first. Our confused bodies were slowly acclimating to the time change, but by the time our heads hit our pillows, we were out cold. Which was pretty much the only time we were in any way cold during the whole trip.
Day Four
We woke up on Friday morning and suddenly noticed two things:
We frantically collected our things together and hustled down to the hotel lobby, where they had to summon the rental shuttle driver back to collect us.
On the schedule for the day was an ambitious drive on the Road to Hana, a famous and popular highway drive along Maui's northern coast to the island's easternmost tip. Brochures and travel guides promise numerous instances of reach-out-and-touch-it Natural Majesty, such as waterfalls, hiking trails, sacred pools and arboreta, as well as an exhilarating drive along the road itself, a path so breathtaking and petrifying that the rental cars should come with plastic seat covers.
The Road to Hana, as you can see from the close-up map, top left, looks like it was designed by a clinically insane, half-blind, left-handed three-year old. The drive includes tons of those "squiggly road" signs and what seemed like hundreds of one-lane bridges that pop up out of nowhere. The truly frightening part is the drive back, when you're on the outside of the road.
We started with breakfast at CJ's Deli & Diner -- which must be the best "cheap eats" bargain on the island, as it only cost me a single kidney -- and came up with a game plan. It would take 10 hours, or all day (our last full day in Maui) to actually drive all the way to Hana and back, so we decided to go halfway and then consider turning around. My one and only goal for the day was to find a real-life waterfall somewhere along our travels and take a dip, even if it meant traipsing through vicious flora and fauna to get there.
In order to get to the Hana Highway, we had to drive south through Lahaina, under the mountain and up toward Kahului airport. This took us past Maui's old sugar fields, once Hawaii's primary export, during the Sweet and Low Famine of the 1950s.
Sugar. Oh, honey-honey.
Passing the airport on up to the north shore, we rolled through Paia, a quaint surfing village consisting mostly of handcraft galleries, hemp boutiques and homeopathic clinics, if you get my drift. Paia was actually the last section of straight road for the next fifty or so miles, but the town itself seemed a little kinky.
Before too long we found our way to Twin Falls, home to two modestly sized waterfalls on 50-or-so acres of private property. The owners of the land have opened the area up to visitors, asking only for donations at a small tropical fruit stand near the entrance. If they were smart, they'd ditch the offering plate and instead charge each visitor a quarter for the use of the port-a-potty.
It was a 20 minute hike uphill to the main attraction, a 40-foot waterfall at the base of the Ho'olawanui stream. J. and I -- and about two dozen other tourists -- climbed carefully across the slippery rocks in our bare feet to get to the swimming hole, where I eagerly stripped down to my bathing suit and stumbled into the water. J. stayed dry, so she could document my cavorting.
That's me in the hat, bathed in ethereal light and four feet of muddy water.
But, for whatever reason, J. was fascinated by this nearby billy goat. As I was desperately treading water in the "deep end" near the base of the falls and splashing around for her attention, she was busy taking something like a dozen pictures of this goat, who wasn't even a native goat -- some emotionally stunted individual had brought him along as a pet:
This was not even the hairiest tourist we saw on our trip.
Of course, endemic animal life is an important element of the islands' Natural Majesty. We saw a variety of interesting creatures on our travels along and outside the Road to Hana:
TOP LEFT: wild roosters are a common sight along Hawaii's roadsides and green spaces.
TOP RIGHT: The Hyatt features a penguin terarium, popular among children and environmentalist zealots. LOWER LEFT: We spotted a pack of feral cats at the Keanae Point Lookout. Cute, but mean. LOWER RIGHT: The Blonde Speckled Lovebird displays aggressive behavior. Also cute, but when cornered, makes the feral cats look like fluffy bunny slippers.
After Twin Falls, we rambled up the road through lush forests, over bustling streams, past 400 foot waterfalls, along luscious coves, from grand vista to grand vista, stupefying visions unrelenting. For hours, it was swerve, stop, stare, repeat.
This was our trusty rented Jeep Wrangler, parked outside one of the 7.2 million rest-and-lookout stops along the Hana Highway. From vantage points like this, the Pacific Ocean seems to stretch out like an epic novel, one with a happy ending.
By the time we got to the Wailua Valley, we were hungry and exhausted, and my knuckles were sore from gripping the dashboard. We decided to skip Hana and double back for food, since the only grub available for the next 100 or so miles was whatever we could catch by the side of the road. (Maybe that's why that guy had brought his goat to Twin Falls.)
On our return trip, we stopped by the Garden of Eden botanical garden and arboretum, an ungoverned explosion of tropical foliage. I don't want to say that it was getting old or anything, I mean, it was still wow-inspiringly beautiful, but a man can only look at so many plants before he starts craving a salad.
J. examines just one of the inordinate Natural Majesty spots in Maui's Garden of Eden.
Off in the distance, in that little notch in the horizon, you can see the famous
Keopuka Rock, which was featured in the blockbuster film Jurassic Park
after providing a more emotive audition than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
So we drove back to Paia and the highly regarded, professionally recommended Mama's Fish House Restaurant and Inn, where the entrees are so extremely local that the menu tells you the name of the fisherman who caught it just offshore earlier that day. We were fortunate enough to walk in -- dressed like lifeguards and unshowered going on 36 hours -- and get a windowside table for two. The dishes were superlative, in both quality and price. I enjoyed the house special, a filet of mahi-mahi stuffed with lobster, crab and onion and baked in a macadamia nut crust, while J. had the fresh ono served upcountry style with avocado and jasmine rice. The meal was so good that we asked for the recipe, just so we could start a new religion devoted to it.[23]
Mama's Fish House sits on a manicured beachfront, mere feet from the Pacific Ocean.
In a maritime crisis, overstuffed patrons can be used as emergency flotation devices.
Our server Kimo took this picture after our delectable meal. We tried desperately to conserve some
of those fruity tropical drinks for photographic ambiance, but we just couldn't control ourselves.
By the time we wrangled our way back to the Ka'anapali beach area, the sky was already turning that brassy shade of purple, so we pulled off the highway to soak it in.
This one was just for us.
Once the dark set in, we dropped the car back at the rental place and hitched a cab back to the hotel, where we rinsed the remnants of Natural Majesty off of our skin and hair and applied new balm to our broiled skin.
To put an exclamation point on the evening and our four days in Maui, we decided to try out the Hyatt's headliner bistro, Son'z Maui at Swan Court, for a little dessert. After a little bit of static from the anthropomorphic hostess-bot [See Footnote No. 10], we claimed two seats in the abandoned cathedral of a dining room and placed our orders -- J., some kind of sauteed chocolate doughnuts, and me, a bastardized version of bananas foster. It was a fitting end to our time on Maui: very rich, very busy, and very sweet.
Our Maui footprint.
Click here for Part II.
We would soon discover that all itineraries are purely tentative.
Day One
Using the ol' "honeymoon" password,[2] I was able to weasel us into first class seating for the six-hour Phoenix-to-Maui leg of our flight. Inexplicably, we were seated next to a young family whose youngest member just happened to be experiencing either an ill-timed bout of colic or a routine demonic possession.
"What kind of people are they letting into first class these days? Wait, don't answer that."
Maui's Mt. Haleakala, rising above the clouds, as seen from my window seat. Though officially
classified as a dormant volcanic crater, it could still erupt at any moment, like Mel Gibson.
Under the conventions of popular culture, all visitors to Hawaii are greeted at the airport by hula girls in grass skirts, bearing festive leis and ripe coconuts. Yeah, right.
This is what I looked like after 13 hours of air travel.
Deplaning at Kahului airport at approximately 2 p.m. Maui time, J. and I were greeted not by flower-bearing hoochies but by a terse, vaguely feminine SpeediShuttle representative, who informed us that a brush fire had broken out in the Ma'alaea region of the western Maui mountains, closing the road to our hotel.[3]
ME: "Well, when will the road be re-opened?"
SPEEDISHUTTLE REP: "Five to ten hours, maybe.[4] Nobody really knows."
ME: [Pees himself]
We were told to hang out for a while, either at the airport (A waxwood sauna roughly the size of our kitchen, only with far fewer cold beverages) or the nearby shopping mall (which appeared to cater exclusively to prospective purchasers of sarongs and sunglasses). We chose the mall, on the flimsy rationale that it would offer marginally nicer bathroom facilities.
After taking a local bus to the Queen Ka'ahumanu Shopping Center, we absentmindedly tried browsing here-and-there, striking up conversation with various affable Hawaiians in search of sympathy and/or possible secret shortcuts. In these encounters, we were given the distinct impression that the fire could go on for a while, perhaps weeks, until a virgin could be located, transported and sacrificed to Pele, the native goddess of fire and airport shuttles.
Where there's smoke, there's heartburn.
The whole situation made us edgy and uneasy and just altogether dyspeptic, so we basically turned right around and got on the next bus back to the airport, where – after a very brief update ("We heard the fire has jumped to the other side of the road; could be a while") – we explored the option of taking an interisland flight to the small Kapalua airport on the west side of the island.[5]
But each interisland airline representative sent us to a different interisland airline, whose representatives informed us, with varying degrees of pathos, that they were useless. With little more than hope, and seeking little more than validation, we called our travel agency[6] as well as our intended hotelier to let them know just how horribly screwed we were.
With their coordinated assistance, and in light of the widespread tourist dislocation and the aforementioned "honeymoon" buzzword, we were actually able to obtain a generously discounted rate at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, the glitzier, more caviar-intensive beach community located on the island's southwest coast.[7] As quickly as we could, we boarded a shuttle in that direction.
You know how, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy starts out in a bleak, black-and-white Kansas dust bowl town, but a freak natural disaster transports her to a colorful, magical, five-star luxury hotel with an oceanfront view and a complimentary chilled bottle of champagne? This was a lot like that, except our slippers were made of fluffy terrycloth instead of red sequins.
Our room at the Four Seasons, seen here bathed in the warm glow of our love.
(Partially for each other, but mostly for the room.)
By this hour, most of the afternoon had evaporated, and we only had enough time to take a quick stroll around the grounds and savor the remaining embers of the day.
I'm telling you right now, you should probably get used to pictures of sunsets and ocean horizons.
Starving and punch-drunk, we decided to get full and real-drunk at DUO, one of the resort's fine dining establishments. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed the Seafood Tower, loaded with grilled prawns and sashimi-grade ahi tuna. J. enjoyed the restaurant's playful complimentary dessert of homemade cotton candy. Upon returning to our room, we were swiftly sobered up by the inexplicable presence of a complimentary hotel-provided crib.
A memorable vacation is born.
We found that the presence of the crib clashed with the champagne and the general spirit of the occasion, so we had it removed. We nevertheless slept like babies that night, nurturing dreams that the fire would keep burning and leave us stranded there for a while.
Day Two
Arising the following morning from a regal slumber, J. and I opted to linger a while in the plush grandeur of our accommodations. We popped open the champagne and ordered a sinfully indulgent[8] breakfast from the in-room dining menu. With her french toast, J. ordered the lilikoi syrup, a sweet concoction of passionfruit[9] and -- judging by her reaction to it -- pure heroin.
"The Three B's" essential to starting the day off right: Breakfast, Bathrobe and Balcony.
We soon learned that the wildfire had been tamed, at least temporarily -- meaning that the road was now open, the special room rate would soon expire, and our Fairy Godmother had left for Kauai already. We checked out at noon, with only enough time to grab a poolside drink (J. a zesty blueberry mojito, me a frosty ice water) on the breezy pool deck before we were to be chauffeured to our inescapable destiny.
Having spent our prepaid transfer voucher on the detour to Wailea, we had the hotel arrange for a one-hour cab ride to Ka'anapali Beach in Lahaina, on the northwest side of the island. At $120, it was the most expensive car ride of my life -- especially considering you can rent a car on Hawaii and crash it for less than $100 -- but the ride was worth it for the extended conversation with our driver, Nick, on whose recommendations we based much of our stay in Maui, and who turned out to be quite a bit more helpful than Ray, the actual concierge we later contracted to help us book these activities.
We rolled into the Hyatt at about 3 p.m. The structure itself fortifies the beachhead like a castle, with the rooms forming an open-air courtyard of tropical plants, birds and baby strollers.
Hyatt Regency Maui, interior. Not pictured: the chirping, the ungodly chirping.
The rear patio, lush with palm fronds and hibiscus, spills out below to an enormous pool deck complete with rows and rows of pneumatic reclining chairs, shade umbrellas, several lagoon-style pools, kiddie pools, waterslides, water playgrounds, faux-waterfalls, hot tubs, lukewarm tubs, a cafeteria, a coffee hut, a casual walk-up restaurant and a swim-up bar with flat screen televisions. Beyond a 20-foot berm, carpeted with a manicured spread of soft, spongy grass and decorated with private cabanas, massage cabanas and dining cabanas, there lies the beach and the Pacific Ocean, salty and warm like a mother's womb. Eyes rising above the Pacific horizon, there is nothing but crystalline blue sky, dainty puffs of cumulus clouds and the occasional parasailor hollering across the sky.
My precious flower takes a whiff of her precious flower,
the hibiscus or ma'o hau hele, the state flower of Hawaii.
The Hyatt, in contrast to our prior landlord, had clearly been designed and marketed as a vastly more inclusive and accessible property, welcoming to any human being who can strap on a pair of flip-flops, or who can at least make a "flip-flop" sound as they waddle across the lobby in bare feet.[10] Which is fine. It's still a lovely location and it's not like it was a bamboo yurt or anything.
Still, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed when we got to our very normal, totally adequate, perfectly acceptable hotel room, which despite having a pretty decent oceanside view and complimentary ice and exotically fragrant soap still seemed like a truck stop bathroom when directly compared to our boudoir at the Four Seasons.
J., for her part, was also disappointed, but not because she was dissatisfied with the room. By and large, J. seldom concerns herself with the quality of hotel rooms, which she views merely as places to sleep in between high-seas adventures.[11] No, she was disappointed upon coming to the realization that the Great Maui Inferno of 2010 had indirectly pre-empted her long-awaited snorkel excursion to the Molokini Crater.
This photo from our flight in to Maui was as close as we would get to the famous Molokini Crater,
home to hundreds of distinct, endemic tropical fish species and at least two broken dreams.
We stopped by the hotel's Expedia concierge desk, where we discussed options for other activities. Our liaison, the aforementioned Ray, possessed a confident enthusiasm bordered only by his incompetence. To be fair to both Ray and J., I certainly did not make the process any easier, what with my persistent attention to possible motion sickness threats and general whininess about any activity that required more exertion than lifting a blended tropical drink.[12]
Eventually, through a collaborative and mostly nonviolent decision-making process, we selected a non-Molokini-but-still-promising snorkel-and-sailing trip for the following day; reserved two seats for the Hyatt's own nightly luau extravaganza; and booked a rental car for some independent island exploration later in the week. We also had him arrange for a romantic dinner sail in Kauai, the next leg of our trip. We tipped him $10.[13]
Our bounteous breakfast now almost entirely digested and swiftly fading from memory, we decided to stop by the poolside restaurant for drinks and a quick serving of gastrointestinally demanding Hawaiian pork nachos. Our plan had been to proceed thenceforth, via trolley, to the nearby Whaler's Village shopping center ("Serving all your sarong and sunglass needs") where we could then take a bus to Lahaina's boardwalky Front Street area, replete with seaside restaurants, art galleries and a few dozen sarong-and-sunglass shops.[14]
But those nachos were still weighing me down and making me feel too bloated to squeeze through the doors of another restaurant. So we just ended up walking forth-and-back up the street until we stumbled upon another fine sunset.
This photo has not been retouched or color-enhanced. We really are that good-looking.
The day couldn't get any better than that. We were both weary from all the riding around and my stomach had gone from the Hula to a full-blown fire dance, so we retreated back to the comfort of our room and retired to dreams of the following day, and the possibility of adventures that didn't involve packing our suitcases again.
Day Three
I awoke the following morning to an empty bed and a ringing cell phone, with J. on the other end impatiently summoning me to the hotel's complimentary breakfast buffet. This was strangely disorienting -- not just because there is an expectation, born in history and validated through tradition, that honeymooners are supposed to be carried from peaceful slumber to blissful reality in the warm cradle of their lover's arms, but also because J. never wakes up before I do except in the most dire and dangerous caffeine-related emergencies. But apparently she had been awakened in the middle of the night by a cell phone call from some intrusive Verizon Wireless salesperson, who – even after it was explained that they were calling at 4:00 in the morning, Hawaii time – persisted in an astonishingly oblivious and ill-conceived line of inquiry about J.'s satisfaction with her service. Thus perturbed, and further compelled by a combination of jet lag and beach-lust, she had stepped out for a morning stroll along the beach.
"Once I had a dream that I was walking along a beach, as scenes from my life flashed across the sky. I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. I asked my wife, 'Why, when I needed you most, were you not there to walk with me?' and she replied, "My love, never have I abandoned you. Those were the times when we were enjoying a one-legged hopping race.' 'Oh yeah,' I remembered. 'Oh yeah.'"
So I grabbed my free copy of the Maui News[15] and hustled down to the pool deck restaurant for a delicious start to the day, including the best pineapple I've ever tasted.[16] I almost certainly would have employed my typical "scorched earth" all-you-can-eat buffet strategy, but I decided to play it conservatively and leave the tank half-empty. We were soon to depart for our snorkeling trip, and, given my stomach's long and checkered history with boats, I did not want it to turn into a Deepwater Horizon-level biohazard situation.
Our Premier Snorkel Adventure and BBQ was provided by the friendly folks at Teralani Charters, aboard the 65-foot catamaran Teralani 2. The manifest included another 40 or so people, most of whom were conspicuously tawny and tattooed, even the newborns.[17]
J. stands ready to board our sturdy seafaring vessel, the Teralani 2, which was a pretty entertaining boat in its own right but failed to capture the freshness and excitement of the original Teralani, even with the larger budget and the addition of Samuel L. Jackson to the crew.
The whole idea of snorkeling is that the equipment (diving mask, snorkel breathing apparatus, flippers) allows you to breathe freely (though, it should be said, not normally) while gliding face-down on the surface of the water, so that you can view lots of Natural Aquatic Majesty like coral, fish, rocks, and -- under perfect conditions -- Jessica Alba.
We were escorted to two anonymous snorkel sites on Maui's northwest coast where we did in fact see some coral, cauliflower-sized ruffles of light pink. And we did in fact see some fish, mostly bite-sized yellow ones and snack-sized silver ones. And we totally saw lots of rock, ranging from brown-and-jagged to dark-brown-and-treacherous. And it was nice, in the way that a cafeteria lunch is nice. But it didn't shift my paradigms or anything. The second site was supposedly ideal for seeing and swimming with great green sea turtles[18],[19], but we didn't see one damned turtle, not a single one. Later, on the boat, we heard a couple of folks boasting that they saw a turtle, but I think they were just bragging to justify their planned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tattoos.
So it was not a particularly successful voyage from a Natural Aquatic Majesty point of view. Comparing our trip to her previous snorkel experience in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, J. struggled to suppress her gag reflex. But it was still made for a very pretty tour around the coast, and the barbeque lunch was divine.
Whoa! She's caught herself a big one.
Reaching land again, we walked along Ka'anapali Beach back to our hotel, where we tried to relax a little by the pool. It was awfully distracting, though, what with all the young children splashing about[20] and the crowd that had gathered to watch Game Four of the NBA Championship Finals at the swim-up bar. We didn't linger very long, since we had to get cleaned up and in line for our luau.
A luau is a customary Polynesian-Hawaiian feast that often includes entertainment in the form of song, dance and storytelling. Historically, these feasts were associated with community milestones like bountiful harvests or military victories. In modern times, however, the commercial-tourism complex has transformed the luau into a Disney-fied version of itself, so that the contemporary luau is to the traditional luau as Guys and Dolls is to organized crime.
J. and I snazzed up in our finest cabanawear and proceeded to the Hyatt's own Drums of the Pacific Luau box office, where we were to exchange our vouchers for two general admission tickets. The box office attendant, upon looking at my vouchers, shook her head dismissively.
ATTENDANT: You can't use these here.
ME: Huh?
ATTENDANT: You can't use these here. Where did you get these?
ME: Upstairs. At the concierge desk. Ray Something.
ATTENDANT: They sold you these upstairs?
ME: Yes. Well, we paid for something.
ATTENDANT: Goddammit.
At that point she got on the phone and spoke what appeared to be very candidly with the concierge desk supervisor, clearly referring to Ray as "some idiot new guy" and spicing up the conversation with what I assume were festive-sounding Hawaiian curse words. Eventually she gave me our tickets and, with a smile, told me to wait in line.
And this was the Bataan Death March of luau lines. As recommended by Ray, we arrived at the box office at a quarter to 5 p.m. to get the best available seats, ideally close to the small stage and band shell, within singeing distance of the fire-dancers. They were supposed to start letting people in at 5:15, but for some reason (never explained; perhaps they were actively growing the grass skirts) they kept us in line, letting us bake under the early evening sun in our casual elegant evening wear, until 6:30 p.m.
By the time we actually made it on to the patio, we were happy just to be in the shade. We each ordered something from the bar (Me: Diet Coke. J.: "Something blue") and mingled with the other young couples at our table, two of which were also on their honeymoon after a June 5 ceremony. We all exchanged stories about head counts and wedding day heat[21] and bonded via snarky comments about the swimwear fashion show (i.e., "I don't think those coconuts are real.")
We were stupid and left the camera in our hotel room. The actual show was not as sexy or scary as this brochure would suggest. But it was right next to the Pacific Ocean and there were, in fact, drums.
The buffet dinner, loaded with island delicacies like roast pork, ahi poke, mahi-mahi, soba noodles and Poi, was magnificent. In contrast to my highly disciplined approach to the breakfast buffet, I scorched the hell out of that earth. By the time desert rolled around, I was just ambulatory enough to go onstage as a volunteer Hukilau demonstrator.
The last fire dancer was extinguished at about 10 p.m., so we said our fond goodbyes to our fellow honeymooners and then went back to our hotel room to discuss which couple was going to get divorced first. Our confused bodies were slowly acclimating to the time change, but by the time our heads hit our pillows, we were out cold. Which was pretty much the only time we were in any way cold during the whole trip.
Day Four
We woke up on Friday morning and suddenly noticed two things:
- Our alarm clock had not gone off, and we had just fifteen minutes to get cleaned, dressed and packed to catch our shuttle to the rental car agency, where we were going to pick up our Jeep for a day-long self-directed tour of the island.
- Over the course of the previous day, the island sun had severely sunburned certain personal areas that we had assumed were protected by sunblock, clothing and/or shelter.[22] So it's probably a good thing that neither of us had time for a hot shower.
We frantically collected our things together and hustled down to the hotel lobby, where they had to summon the rental shuttle driver back to collect us.
On the schedule for the day was an ambitious drive on the Road to Hana, a famous and popular highway drive along Maui's northern coast to the island's easternmost tip. Brochures and travel guides promise numerous instances of reach-out-and-touch-it Natural Majesty, such as waterfalls, hiking trails, sacred pools and arboreta, as well as an exhilarating drive along the road itself, a path so breathtaking and petrifying that the rental cars should come with plastic seat covers.
The Road to Hana, as you can see from the close-up map, top left, looks like it was designed by a clinically insane, half-blind, left-handed three-year old. The drive includes tons of those "squiggly road" signs and what seemed like hundreds of one-lane bridges that pop up out of nowhere. The truly frightening part is the drive back, when you're on the outside of the road.
We started with breakfast at CJ's Deli & Diner -- which must be the best "cheap eats" bargain on the island, as it only cost me a single kidney -- and came up with a game plan. It would take 10 hours, or all day (our last full day in Maui) to actually drive all the way to Hana and back, so we decided to go halfway and then consider turning around. My one and only goal for the day was to find a real-life waterfall somewhere along our travels and take a dip, even if it meant traipsing through vicious flora and fauna to get there.
In order to get to the Hana Highway, we had to drive south through Lahaina, under the mountain and up toward Kahului airport. This took us past Maui's old sugar fields, once Hawaii's primary export, during the Sweet and Low Famine of the 1950s.
Sugar. Oh, honey-honey.
Passing the airport on up to the north shore, we rolled through Paia, a quaint surfing village consisting mostly of handcraft galleries, hemp boutiques and homeopathic clinics, if you get my drift. Paia was actually the last section of straight road for the next fifty or so miles, but the town itself seemed a little kinky.
Before too long we found our way to Twin Falls, home to two modestly sized waterfalls on 50-or-so acres of private property. The owners of the land have opened the area up to visitors, asking only for donations at a small tropical fruit stand near the entrance. If they were smart, they'd ditch the offering plate and instead charge each visitor a quarter for the use of the port-a-potty.
It was a 20 minute hike uphill to the main attraction, a 40-foot waterfall at the base of the Ho'olawanui stream. J. and I -- and about two dozen other tourists -- climbed carefully across the slippery rocks in our bare feet to get to the swimming hole, where I eagerly stripped down to my bathing suit and stumbled into the water. J. stayed dry, so she could document my cavorting.
That's me in the hat, bathed in ethereal light and four feet of muddy water.
But, for whatever reason, J. was fascinated by this nearby billy goat. As I was desperately treading water in the "deep end" near the base of the falls and splashing around for her attention, she was busy taking something like a dozen pictures of this goat, who wasn't even a native goat -- some emotionally stunted individual had brought him along as a pet:
This was not even the hairiest tourist we saw on our trip.
Of course, endemic animal life is an important element of the islands' Natural Majesty. We saw a variety of interesting creatures on our travels along and outside the Road to Hana:
TOP LEFT: wild roosters are a common sight along Hawaii's roadsides and green spaces.
TOP RIGHT: The Hyatt features a penguin terarium, popular among children and environmentalist zealots. LOWER LEFT: We spotted a pack of feral cats at the Keanae Point Lookout. Cute, but mean. LOWER RIGHT: The Blonde Speckled Lovebird displays aggressive behavior. Also cute, but when cornered, makes the feral cats look like fluffy bunny slippers.
After Twin Falls, we rambled up the road through lush forests, over bustling streams, past 400 foot waterfalls, along luscious coves, from grand vista to grand vista, stupefying visions unrelenting. For hours, it was swerve, stop, stare, repeat.
This was our trusty rented Jeep Wrangler, parked outside one of the 7.2 million rest-and-lookout stops along the Hana Highway. From vantage points like this, the Pacific Ocean seems to stretch out like an epic novel, one with a happy ending.
By the time we got to the Wailua Valley, we were hungry and exhausted, and my knuckles were sore from gripping the dashboard. We decided to skip Hana and double back for food, since the only grub available for the next 100 or so miles was whatever we could catch by the side of the road. (Maybe that's why that guy had brought his goat to Twin Falls.)
On our return trip, we stopped by the Garden of Eden botanical garden and arboretum, an ungoverned explosion of tropical foliage. I don't want to say that it was getting old or anything, I mean, it was still wow-inspiringly beautiful, but a man can only look at so many plants before he starts craving a salad.
J. examines just one of the inordinate Natural Majesty spots in Maui's Garden of Eden.
Off in the distance, in that little notch in the horizon, you can see the famous
Keopuka Rock, which was featured in the blockbuster film Jurassic Park
after providing a more emotive audition than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
So we drove back to Paia and the highly regarded, professionally recommended Mama's Fish House Restaurant and Inn, where the entrees are so extremely local that the menu tells you the name of the fisherman who caught it just offshore earlier that day. We were fortunate enough to walk in -- dressed like lifeguards and unshowered going on 36 hours -- and get a windowside table for two. The dishes were superlative, in both quality and price. I enjoyed the house special, a filet of mahi-mahi stuffed with lobster, crab and onion and baked in a macadamia nut crust, while J. had the fresh ono served upcountry style with avocado and jasmine rice. The meal was so good that we asked for the recipe, just so we could start a new religion devoted to it.[23]
Mama's Fish House sits on a manicured beachfront, mere feet from the Pacific Ocean.
In a maritime crisis, overstuffed patrons can be used as emergency flotation devices.
Our server Kimo took this picture after our delectable meal. We tried desperately to conserve some
of those fruity tropical drinks for photographic ambiance, but we just couldn't control ourselves.
By the time we wrangled our way back to the Ka'anapali beach area, the sky was already turning that brassy shade of purple, so we pulled off the highway to soak it in.
This one was just for us.
Once the dark set in, we dropped the car back at the rental place and hitched a cab back to the hotel, where we rinsed the remnants of Natural Majesty off of our skin and hair and applied new balm to our broiled skin.
To put an exclamation point on the evening and our four days in Maui, we decided to try out the Hyatt's headliner bistro, Son'z Maui at Swan Court, for a little dessert. After a little bit of static from the anthropomorphic hostess-bot [See Footnote No. 10], we claimed two seats in the abandoned cathedral of a dining room and placed our orders -- J., some kind of sauteed chocolate doughnuts, and me, a bastardized version of bananas foster. It was a fitting end to our time on Maui: very rich, very busy, and very sweet.
Our Maui footprint.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
[1]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:06 am (UTC)For instance, Hawaiians continue to hew to a native Polynesian language that includes five vowels (A, E, I, O, U), only seven consonants (K, H, L, M, N, P, W) and an abundance of glottal stops. For example, the state’s primary islands are Ni'ihau, Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Lāna'i, Kaho'olawe, Maui, and Hawai'i. The official motto is “Ua mau ke ea o ka 'āina i ka pono,” which, roughly translated, means “I have a cocktail umbrella stuck in my throat.”
The Hawaiian accent is awfully subtle, but seems to be characterized by rounded vowel sounds and an avoidance of contractions, perhaps because they are conserving their apostrophes, just in case they need to tell someone their address.
[2]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:07 am (UTC)My last name happens to be difficult to pronounce correctly and sort of a pain in the neck to spell out. When people would ask for my last name, I would gesture for J. to provide it. When the person inevitably acknowledged the strange and unusual name ("Golly, that's an interesting one!"), I would nonchalantly say, "We just got married, so she's still getting used to it." And then their eyes would light up, and they'd say "Oh, you're honeymooners? Let's see what I can do for you." That little trick right there seems like a pretty good reason to live somewhere tropical on a permanent basis.
[3]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:08 am (UTC)At one point, we asked a local – as any rational, civilized person would – if there was an alternate route to our hotel, to which one person tenderly responded, “Oh, sure. But it’s like one lane, and most traffic comes from the other direction. People die all the time.”
[4]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:09 am (UTC)[5]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:10 am (UTC)J., for her part, stayed relatively cool, although as the minutes dragged on she began to sway back-and-forth, like certain primates do just before they finally lose it and start throwing feces.
[6]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:10 am (UTC)[7]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:14 am (UTC)http://abc.go.com/watch/modern-family/SH559066/VD5561143/hawaii?cid=fullepisodeaccess
[8]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:14 am (UTC)I soon discovered, however, that island prices bear no tether to the real-life world. Because all non-homegrown goods must apparently be imported to the island via teams of professionally-trained and highly-compensated dolphins, everything is marked up by a percentage equivalent to that day's high temperature (in Fahrenheit degrees).
Hawaii's economy is a real mess. Everything is so expensive that most natives and island residents – except for celebrities and ascetic surfers – work at least two jobs. Given the economic striation and paucity of inhabitable land, the tax base is extremely weak. As you might expect with a disconnected island chain and a strong tradition of provincialism, federal, state and local infrastructure is wildly scattered, with educational, hospital and law enforcement systems stretched thin like taffy.
Of course, the national and global economy, along with the associated trade deficits, has only exacerbated the problem, particularly the damp chill it has cast on tourism – the state’s primary export. Numerous Hawaiians mentioned to us, unsolicited and in retrospect perhaps greasing the skids for a generous gratuity, that local tourism has been deep decline for two years or so, and economic recovery on the mainland can not come fast enough for the islands. This explains why we were able to get a pretty decent price on our honeymoon package, and why people in general were so unbelievably welcoming.
The prices of everything else – food, supplies, clothing and other souvenirs – took some getting used to. Or more accurately, it took extraordinary discipline to just ignore it entirely. A sage coworker of mine suggested, for all wedding and honeymoon matters – that I just reflexively hand over the credit card and swallow the whole thing in one big gulp later. This made for good advice while we were actually on the honeymoon, but she neglected to remind me that swallowing is just the first, easiest part of the digestive process.
[9]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:16 am (UTC)[10]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:17 am (UTC)[11]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:19 am (UTC)[12]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:20 am (UTC)[13]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:45 am (UTC)http://enchanted-pants.livejournal.com/139201.html
[14]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:47 am (UTC)[15]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:47 am (UTC)The Hawaiians have their fair share of bad news: crime, the frail economy, paralyzing mountain fires, etc. But still, reading the Maui News letters to the editor, I can’t help but think that their concerns are a world apart from ours:
(courtesy of the Maui News "Letters to the Editor" page)
[16]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:48 am (UTC)But this Hawaiian pineapple was amazing. It cured my lumbago. It gave me x-ray vision. I strongly suggest that public health officials consider using Hawaiian pineapple as an anti-addictive substitute for recovering chronic opium users.
[17]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:49 am (UTC)The Dude Factor is an expression of recreational and spiritual intensity, as measured by the likelihood that one will hear dude-based or dude-oriented non-sequiturs (i.e., "Dude. That's some toasty rockin', dude.")
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac346/enchantedpants/Honeymoon/dude.jpg
[18]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:49 am (UTC)[19]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:51 am (UTC)But I think I've decided on "American Black Bear," since they are flightless, warm-blooded omnivores that exist primarily in shady, temperate zones though they are widely considered a generalist animal, being able to exploit numerous different habitats. They love honey and naps. Plus, in physical comparison to me, it is not too much of a stretch from a chest-hair standpoint.
[20]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:51 am (UTC)[21]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:52 am (UTC)[22]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:52 am (UTC)After this initial burn I was conscientious – to the point of distraction – for the remainder of the trip, anxiously applying sunscreen at every opportunity (even before going to sleep, even though I kept slipping out of bed).
[23]
Date: 2010-07-19 03:54 am (UTC)Form cheaply products no remedy
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