Life wasn’t all bad.
After a while, you pick yourself up, pull up your big girl panties,
brush yourself off, and carry on.
Fortunately for me, I had a wonderful support group of church friends,
personal friends, and a family who loved me back into reality. I now had confidence in the fact that no
matter what, everything would turn out in accordance with God’s plan for my
life.
Sollie was still commuting to Milwaukee and about the only
good that came from that as far as I was concerned, was that he accumulated an
enormous amount of frequent flyer miles which allowed us to travel to places we
had only dreamed of. Our dear friends,
Frankie and Ray were our constant companions and “partners in crime.”
We planned our trip for months to Maui with them and finally
the big day came when we flew out of Atlanta, first class, mind you, on
Continental Airlines headed to our condo on the shores of the beautiful beach
in Kihei on the island of Maui. Not a
week before our flight, Aloha Airlines (which we were booked on from LA to
Honolulu and on to Maui) had a plane that lost a door in mid-flight and that
very plane greeted us, shrouded, and under investigation on the tarmac in Maui. I
tried not to look.
Since Frankie and Ray flew a different airline, they had
arrived earlier and had picked up the rental car and some maps and off we went
to our condo. We were not disappointed! We could look right out from our balcony to
see the locals harvesting some coconuts and beyond that, the most beautiful
blue water I have ever seen in my entire life.
Ray immediately proceeded to the coconut guys who were up the tree, and
begged a coconut for our Pina Colada's, which we had worked up a real appetite
for, by this time. Oh, what a sight! We were giddy with gratitude for our good
fortune with our accommodations and of course, the Pina Colada's added to
our excitement! Fresh coconut, fresh pineapple - it doesn't get any better than that. We spread out all our
literature and Ray, who was always designated as our “tour director” made the
plans for the next few days.
For seven days, we crammed in everything we could. We visited the local villages along the coast
with their beautiful old banyan trees where the oldest banyan in the world
grows in Lahaina. We lunched at the
piers which had yachts and boats belonging to the rich and famous. The family owned, Kula Botanical Garden with its
wooden stairs tucked into the hills, made our leg muscles and our “buns” burn,
but the display of 2,000 species of indigenous flora and fauna was
breathtaking.
One day, we got up early so we could make the trip to
Haleakala National Park to witness the sunrise at the enormous crater and
volcano. It was worth every minute of my
having to arise before sun up, which I don’t do very well. Frankie and Ray and Sollie kept me laughing
every mile of the way with hilarious antics and stories. And “stories” they were!
Of course, no trip to Maui is complete without a Luau, and
that nasty tasting poi which is a Polynesian staple made from underground plant
stems of the Taro plant. We picked the
event that the owner of our condo recommended and were greeted by girls in
grass skirts giving us leis which were made of shells. The waiters brought us Mai Tai’s and hors d’oeuvres
Then the Kalua Pua’a (roasted pig in a ground pit)
was placed on the huge buffet, along with just about anything you could imagine,
including the nasty poi which tasted like bland hominy poured from a blender. Then the hula girls took to the stage.
There is no way in the world for me to describe the
hilarious antics of Sollie and Ray, when the grass skirted girls invited them
to the stage to have a few lessons in the art of Hula dancing. These guys alone, were kind of bashful, but
if you put the two of them together, on stage in front of hundreds of people, they
showed no shyness at all. They were
movie stars! They were all eyes when
showed just how to swerve their hips and sway.
The harder they tried, the funnier it got, and they brought the house
down.
The road to Hana is truly one of indescribable beauty. The black, red and white beaches were
beautiful against a background of blue water like I’ve never seen before or
since. Occasionally we got out of the
car and walked through a rain forest, or to a waterfall, or to a look-out over
the ocean. There were mango trees that
lined some sections of the road and they fell like apples from a tree. The waterfalls were sometimes tucked back into
rocks with clear pools of water below and the rain forests are exactly
that. It rains inside them because of
the humidity. A bad hair day is a given
if you go there.
After our exciting week, we boarded our separate planes and
headed home. Sollie and I had an
interesting young lady sitting across from us who was dead drunk and had a little cassette player and with earphones plugged. Tears were streaming down her face, but she made no sounds. We sat there whispering to each other trying to imagine what was distressing her so. She'd had a death in the family? She's been jilted by her boyfriend? She was sad to be leaving Maui? Once in the air, she ordered more Mimosa's, which just added to the show for us. She
continued to cry and drink until she passed out cold and missed her destination in Honolulu! It was another hilarious event to add to our
memory book of the trip to paradise!
