The Tub-O'-Soup Greeting

The cheese soup refugee

December 21, 2016, WAIKALOA, HAWAI'I—In celebration of completing two years of high-pressure work in the Atomic City, we fled to the islands for some rest and relaxation. The temperatures at home had plunged into the low teens, so the thought of being lulled into a state of supreme relaxation by warm winds, humidity, and softly waving hibiscus and bougainvillea flowers was particularly appealing. Instead, our island greeting was an immense tub of broccoli cheese soup.

This culinary orphan had been marooned and abandoned by the previous tenants of the condo we have rented. And while there's a certain generosity in me that gives the previous owners some credit for not wanting the plastic Tub-O'-Soup to go to waste—instead of pegging them as lazy and harried people who hadn't planned well enough to dispose of the item before they fled just minutes before checkout time—I cannot, for the life of me, understand why in Hell anyone would want to eat broccoli cheese soup procured at Costco while staying on the islands in the first place?

Baptism in the sea: Be healed, sinner! Be healed!

It is a magical time in Hawai'i right now. And this island paradise is alive with the holiday spirit. The summit of Mauna Kea is covered in deep snow, and yesterday, while at the beach, we stared up in wonder at the handiwork of the Hawaiian snow goddess, Poli'ahu, who, according to local lore, controls the northern end of the Big Island and keeps Goddess Pele in check there. As people who come from a land of fire and ice, we will not choose sides while on this island, but instead we will marvel at the beauty that has resulted from the interplay of these two deities. Already we have feasted on local lime and papaya, apple bananas, pineapple, of course, sweet Hawaiian breads accented with the purple starch of taro root. Such delicacies would not be possible without the cascade of snowmelt across the harsh lava landscape, and the kiss of the sun. 

Rest and relaxation are in order

Or maybe that's just the rum talking. The drinks on this island are as beautiful as the landscape, and tropical fruits mix well with fermented sugar. The man in the car rental place admonished us from going to Starbucks—sound advice that we would have taken on our own—and instead to support the local economy. It is in this spirit that we laid in a fine bottle of Hawaiian-made Maui gold rum, a mountain of fresh local fruit, deliciously strong Kona coffee grown just down the coast from us, bags of macadamias, and Meadow Gold yogurt—old-school stuff flavored with tropical produce and produced right here on the islands.

We won't be finding the time to eat the broccoli-cheese castaway that welcomed us here, because that's something we can do if we choose back home. Our homage to mainland life will be rounds of golf on the resort course. I am pleased to say that it has only been a short while since I last checked in at work, but already the bags and dark circles under our eyes are starting to fade, we are growing some melanin content in our skin again, and the Vitamin D deficiencies that had resulted from spending our days under artificial lighting are starting to reverse their course. This is no time for store-bought soup.

Aloha, and we will see you down the road!

Lessons learned from the Spouting Horn

Poipu, Kauai, Hawai'i, Nov. 18, 2015—There is a natural ebb and flow to life here in Hawai'i. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, I have downloaded an App onto my phone that tells me when the tides are coming in and going out. I don't understand how all of this fits together, yet, but we have learned enough to stay out of the water at the edges of tidal extremes. During such periods, the waves are fierce and the water is murky. The sharp lava rocks that ring the coastline can punish the flesh of the unwary. For a man such as me who has the grace of a manatee, this is not so bad if I am in the water, but at the horizon of sea and air, I am essentially useless when the big waves are up, and I am tossed like bag of potatoes onto the rocks and raked back out to sea again afterward. The human body can only take so much of this, and I am not eager to test the breaking point.

The Nēnē is Hawai'i's state bird

They have put out a sign at our condominium complex stating that this part of the island has been inundated by parakeets. The birds are larger than the parakeets we are accustomed to in pet shops on the mainland, and they more closely resemble cockatiels. They are a brilliant green with bright orange beaks. When they roost, they unleash a cacophony of bird chatter, and they poop vigorously on the cars in the parking lot, and this apparently is a problem.

According to the notice, the county health department has deemed the poop a health hazard and has instructed the "victims" of parakeet infestations to unceremoniously kill as many of the noisy little bastards as possible. The condominium complex has opted for a different approach—air horns to drive away the flocks at sunset. Personally, I am pleased with this strategy, but not all of the residents agree. Last night, as the birds were congregating, our neighbor lamented their arrival.

"The poop!" he said with disgust.

We have no idea what kind of tree this
is, but they are beautiful and remind us
of home.

The complex's dumpster corral lies just at the edge of the parking area, which has been denuded of branches during the past couple of days to prevent the fugitive birds from roosting. The amount of bird poop seems trivial when compared to the small mountains of garbage produced each night by humans roosting in our condominium complex, but I held my tongue.

"I like the birds," I said.

The man regarded me as if I were bird poop and changed the subject, which reminds me....

Earlier in the day on one of the nearby resort beaches, we came across a large woman sprawled out on her lawn chair enjoying the sun. She had pulled her knees up towards her ears, as if she were about to give birth. Her porcine private parts had overwhelmed the small strip of tropical colored fabric comprising her bikini bottom, and her flesh was oozing out like a sea cucumber emerging from a void in the reef. It was impossible not to stare in awe.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" she chirped.

"Ummm..." was the best I could answer. Suddenly I wished I had an air horn.

Ahoy mates!

The visibility for snorkeling was poor on this day,
but we still had a lot of fun!

We awoke at the crack of dawn to meet Cap'n Andy for a boat ride to the Na'pali coast, which is regarded by many as one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. Anyone who has seen Jurassic Park or the remake of King Kong has seen the area. It does not disappoint. The surf was incredibly high, so we would be unable to snorkel on the coast, which is located on the northwest tip of Kauai. Cap'n Andy stopped off the southern coast to provide us with an opportunity to get off the boat, but the water was cloudy and visibility was low, so there wasn't much to see. One woman dropped her mask and snorkel in the choppy water, so I dove about 20 feet down to retrieve it. The pressure at that depth was hard on the ears, but I was able to equalize the pressure just enough to avoid crippling pain and a busted ear drum. Another man inhaled a bunch of sea water and Cap'n Andy's crew had to drag him back onto the boat while he coughed and sputtered helplessly. The unfortunate man joined the gaggle of lesbians who had opted to enjoy wine instead of taking the plunge.

Yes, it's a baby dolphin with its mother. It
seems like any kind of baby animal is cute,
well, except for baby parakeets, according
to some people's opinions.

Later during the cruise, Cap'n Andy expertly guided the catamaran over the roiling waters and we enjoyed a good jump or two over some deep troughs between waves at the front of the boat. Two pods of spinner dolphins guided us during part of our journey, and Cap'n Andy's crew prepared a stellar lunch, which was served just in time to stave off the sea sickness. During the ride back in, most people jockeyed to "get their money's worth" of liquor, but we remained satisfied with sobriety. Being from the desert, any ride on a boat is a good one. Cap'n Andy had given us a great day.

The Spouting Horn

Just up the coast is a natural spectacle known as the Spouting Horn. The relentless waves have carved out a hole under a lava shelf that magnifies the action of the waves. At regular intervals, the unsettled ocean spouts through the hole and creates a magnificent fountain that is accompanied by a high-pitched raspy moan reminiscent of a dying man's last breath.

The spouting horn seemed to be a popular destination for the blue-haired visitors to Kauai, which seemed a little creepy to me after listening to its song. Many of these visitors aggressively positioned themselves along the chain link fence overlooking the natural wonder so they could earnestly hold their iPads over the top of the fence to capture the perfect shot. It's strange to watch people taking photos with iPads. I can't help but wonder why these people don't buy cameras? There are plenty of good ones out there, and they aren't even very expensive. They take better photos than an iPad, too, and aren't as cumbersome. But I digress.

I shooed an old man away after he had taken 20 or so shots with his iPad. While Caroline tried her best to capture the perfect sea water eruption, I tried my best to mimic the sound of the Spouting Horn during each geyser event. My seemingly disembodied voice, with its low hollow death rattle, and my open mouth, with its gritted teeth and tongue curled over my lower lip toward the ground—like a tiki statue warning trespassers away from kapu territory—was repulsive to the other visitors, and soon we had the place to ourselves.

There are those who find the Spouting Horn on Kauai
a little bit unsettling.

The Spouting Horn used to have a companion that produced an even more magnificent show. However, about 100 years ago, when sugar cane plantations were introduced to the island, the horn vexed the Sugar Baron because it was depositing salt-water spray on his crops, reducing their productivity. The industrious Sugar Baron used steam-powered muscle to widen the natural hole into a huge square scar that remains to this day as a testament to the greed of Men and the might of Industry. We keep the things we like if they are profitable, but we eradicate the things we don't without batting an eye. To Papa Sugar, the original Spouting Horn was just another parakeet.

Playing Chicken

The Nēnē is the Hawaiian state bird, and Caroline was fortunate enough to see one while I was out getting a massage. As it turns out, the masseuse happened to have come from Santa Fe and had trained our former next-door-neighbor back home in the healing arts as well. It's a small world.

I am not ashamed to say that Kauai is also home to some of the most beautiful cocks I have ever seen. Chickens run wild all over the island. Strangely enough, the locals seems to tolerate them more than they tolerate parakeets. The island is also lousy with feral cats. At nightfall, immense herds of wild felines come slinking out of the jungle and clamber into every dumpster corral. We have seen cars swerving to run over the cats, but we have yet to see a dead one. Dead chickens are everywhere on the highways and shoulders, but no one seems to eat them. And the grocery stores all sell eggs. With so many wild chickens here, I'd figure out a way to locate their nests for a constant supply of fresh eggs if I had more time here. I guess there are several people who are already doing just that. Kauai is one of the most expensive islands in the archipelago.

Before our arrival here, everyone cautioned us about the rain.

If you're looking for cock, there's no better place
than Hawai'i.

"Kauai is a beautiful place to visit as long as it doesn't rain," they told us. So far we haven't had a drop.

There is an ebb and a flow to this place. On one hand there are shoot-to-kill orders for parakeets, but wild chickens seem to enjoy immunity, even though they poop just as much as their wild green cousins. Thankfully, everyone seems to agree that turtles are sacrosanct. And while the Na'Pali coast gets eroded at a staggering rate each year due to the incessant pounding of the surf, the turtles and the Nēnē remain as a constant reminder of the fragility of our world, and how fortunate we are to live in it.

See you on down the road.

Stretch Break

POIPU, HAWAII, Nov. 16, 2015—About four hours into our seven-hour flight into Kauai, we noticed that our flight attendant had disappeared. She had provided impeccable customer

The Hawaiian islands from space

service throughout the flight up until this point, so her absence was unexpected. Figuring it was a good time for a "comfort break," I made my way to the lavatory—an incredibly dilapidated and cramped space that afforded barely enough room for me to slump forward uncomfortably over the sad stainless steel commode. Had I been any fatter, I probably wouldn't have fit into the small space. I wondered whether flight attendants are ever called upon to administer lubricants to the love handles of obese passengers in order to facilitate their entry and exit into the toilet. Figuring that such a thing was, indeed, not out of the realm of possibility, I made a concerted effort to avoid contacting the walls of the water closet, which reeked of the blue chemical enzyme used during the flushing process.

Sunrise from the lanai provides a moment to reflect

A sudden spate of turbulence caused me to bump noisily against the bulkhead. I recoiled involuntarily and checked my sleeves for the telltale stains of the "special lubricant" that would be unceremoniously sprayed upon the corpulent. Luckily, there was no oily residue, and I was able to maintain my aim into the bullseye flap of metal at the center of the bowl below. I re-holstered my junk, inspected myself for any "spoon spots" on the front of my trousers and took an extra moment to thoroughly wash my hands. As I exited, I smiled at the flight attendant, who had resumed her position at the front of the craft.

"Did you need anything?" she asked as I walked by.

"No thank you," I said.

Beauty of this variety can't be found in the Atomic City

Once seated, we noticed the flight attendant was doing subtle leg lifts, doing reps of 10 on one leg and then 10 more on the other. It was a routine she had probably kiped from the pages of Self magazine, under a heading of how to keep your thighs and buttocks firm and toned while working, in just 10 minutes a day!

Good for her, I thought. Everyone needs a stretch break. It just so happened that ours involved a seven hour flight to a place 2,984 miles away.

That last mileage figure is pretty close. We know that because our iPhones told us the distance early on in our flight. We had neglected to switch our devices to Airplane Mode, but thankfully our negligence did not cause our craft to plummet from the skies. Shortly after taking off out of Phoenix, we had asked Siri to provide us with directions to a Kauai restaurant. When Siri protested that she could not fulfill our request, we hurled insults at her disembodied electronic voice. This caught the attention of our friendly flight attendant, who asked us politely to switch our phones to Airplane mode.

Admittedly, we are no experts on these things but
some of the currents we encountered while snorkeling
here in the Pacific were unusually warm—much warmer
than the surrounding water. This was a particularly
interesting way to experience the phenomenon of the
so-called "El Niño" oscillation that forecasters are
saying is a harbinger of a cold, wet winter in North
America. Ironically, at the same time we experienced
these currents, it was snowing back home. Go figure.

In the wake of the hysteria after the attacks on Paris, we were quick to comply, and apparently a good thing, too. Two days later we would learn that a rude, drunken Polish traveler had been taken into federal custody in Boston for unruly behavior aboard an airplane, and that another traveler had finked on passengers they didn't like for apparent "suspicious behavior" during a flight into Washington, DC.

We are living in weird times right now, and The Fear drives the simpleminded toward vengeance and unconscionable behaviors. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has fomented this sentiment and used it to his advantage. He has tapped into a nerve of uncertainty and has duped the fearful into embracing the politics of xenophobia. Our nation is on the verge of madness, and  I firmly believe that everyone could probably take a tip from our flight attendant and take a stretch break before things escalate any further. That's easy for us to say, I suppose. We are in the middle of a stretch break in a tropical paradise.

Our Hawaiian wake-up call, so to speak.

The day after our plane ride, the sunrise outside of our temporary quarters make it hard to believe that there is any strife out there in the world. Yet the freakishly hot currents we encountered intermittently while snorkeling did betray that things are heating up, and perhaps there is something desperately wrong with things in the world right now.

And that creates a peculiarly difficult scenario, doesn't it?

How do you provide the Earth with a "stretch break" that will reinvigorate and rejuvenate our beautiful home planet without disrupting the slap-dash house of cards we have assembled in the name of commerce, supply chains, quality-of-life, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Donald Trump seems to believe we can accomplish this by erecting walls, our President believes it can be done by snooping on our own citizens, Congress believes we can accomplish this task with decreased spending, corporations are banking on increased consumerism, environmentalists think the answer lies in electric vehicles and plastic-bag bans; everyone, it seems, has some sort of solution in mind—as long as it doesn't involve regulating the population or depriving anyone of the luxuries to which they have become accustomed. 

I don't know what the answer is myself, but we will be sure to ponder these things here on this island during our own personal stretch break. If we come up with anything profound, we will surely share it. Otherwise, we likely will take the example of our charming flight attendant and simply disappear into the moment of bliss that we have carved out for ourselves during the course of our otherwise busy lives.

See you on down the road.

Long overdue

SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN, Nov. 15, 2015—This year has been tedious and stress filled. In addition to the sudden shock of being drafted into new duties at work, tragedy swarmed around us this year like a cloud of fruit flies dancing above a freshly cut pineapple. We suffered death and despair at every turn, it seemed, and while my fortunes at work had seemed to soar, my personal life was fraught with setbacks and disappointment on numerous levels. Most of all, I was left reeling by the death of my mother, despite the full expectation of her passing.

The view from the airplane window

Consequently, my adrenal gland spent most of the year pumping my body full of cortisol—the powerful and dangerous hormone released into the system during periods of extreme duress. Since most humans these days suffer no real dangers that would cause a person to fight or flee, modern men in the throes of a cortisol orgy simply balloon up like bratwurst over a hot flame, and I was no exception. I had grown fat and sluggish, my eyes had lost their shine and had become surrounded by dark bags, and I noticed that my hair had become dull and flat. And while Nutrisystem®, Maybelline, and Vidal Sassoon all promise cures for such things, it was not lost on me that each of these things was a sign—and a troubling sign to be sure.

Always travel with whimsy

Many people who become saturated with stress hormone fall prey to sickness, injury, or worse. It is the mind's way of taking the "victim" out of the game so to speak. Being a resilient person, I did not succumb. But in late August,  while looking at an impossible calendar of duties that would keep me more than heavily occupied for the foreseeable future, I had an epiphany: Either take some time off or drop dead. Even though I have a decent life insurance policy, and Caroline would fare okay in the wake of my demise, the thought of checking out before my reservation here on Earth had ended seemed like a cruel waste. I realized after my Mother's death that we only get one shot at this life, so we'd better make it a good one.

We started making plans for a restful vacation that would commence at the end of the stressful string of deliverables that loomed large on the calendar.

The preferred cure for negative thought

Today, sailing above the Pacific in a rickety metal flying machine, we were able to see the fruits of our labor and planning shaping up. At 30,000 feet, a person can really appreciate the wonder of the world. At this altitude, the curvature of the Earth is almost perceptible with the naked eye. The bright blue sky above and the deep-blue sea below is a testament to the wonderful anomaly that Planet Earth is in the cosmos. How we humans can continue to despoil and poison our host terrarium remains a marvel and a mystery to me. It brings me no joy to reiterate that there are far too many of us here, and that the vast majority of us are far too selfish to be good stewards of this world. Even though the sound of the surf below provides us with a metronome that honestly and unapologetically marks the passage of time, most of us feel as if we will be here forever, and that all of our actions during the past 100 years in particular can and will be forgiven without consequence or discomfort.

I, like many others, I'm sure, am beginning to suspect that such an assumption is probably untrue. Meanwhile, the mass media and a drumbeat of wishful thinking has done its best to convince us that electric powered vehicles, good intentions, and Carbon Offsets will certainly overpower the unsustainable system of rampant consumerism we have created for ourselves. And outside of a few sink holes, some weird weather, and the occasional manageable plague now and again, Mother Nature has done little to betray this canard. 

We arrived at a wonderful destination

Lest you think that I must be a real drag to vacation with, please remember that it takes much longer to write down such thoughts than it takes to actually think them. Thankfully for Caroline, most of this negativity was unspoken, drowned out by the drone of the aircraft, and even the unquiet moments were banished in roughly the same amount of time as it took to prepare a nice cocktail in the airplane as we streaked through the sky toward our tropical destination. They say no man is an island, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't visit one. And after spending hours in the air and leaving a giant hypocritical carbon footprint on this fragile ecosystem of ours, I was instantly astounded by the beauty and the heat of Kauai, Hawaii's "Island of Discovery." It seems like a fitting place to heal and ponder the events of the past year, and I intend to take full advantage—hopefully as "sustainably" as we can.

See you on down the road!