Surrendering Control

Posted on October 25, 2009 in Driving Vacation Fall 2009

Going on vacation — especially to Hawaii by way of LAX — can mean you place yourself in the hands of strange drivers. First there are the ones who drive you to and from the airport. On the morning of the fourteenth, we packed ourselves into a deep blue Supershuttle van. The chauffeur was kind, but traffic was not. Two thirds of the way it slowed to stop and go. If you live in one of the larger metropolitan areas, you knows what this means. Move forward just another to get your stomach sliding, then stop abruptly, letting it quiver and shake. Repeat ad nauseum. Literally ad nauseum.

We got to the airport only because the driver turned off and made the last leg by surface streets, an accomplishment that she thanked my queasiness for. I had no trouble on the plane because planes don’t do it for me just like ski lifts don’t trigger my acrophobia. We rented a car in Hilo, but there were two more situations when I surrendered control of the drive.

The first was aboard the boat to the lava flowing into the ocean near [[Kalapana,_Hawaii|Kalapana]]. Here was a curious experience. After meeting the chief guide at an Aloha gas station in the darkness near [[Pahoa]], we followed a long string of cars through jungles to [[Isaac Hale Beach Park]] where we unloaded in the darkness for bathroom breaks and a brief discussion of what to do in the case a [[lava bomb]] pierced a hole in the hull and we suddenly got a whiff of mortality. Then we got on the boat, a large catamaran which was sitting in the parking lot. This would be the worst part for me — I hated having to climb in using a cheap handyman’s ladder.

The cruise didn’t bother me because I had prepared myself with [[Dramamine]]. But near the [[lava tube|lava tubes]], the pilot went into stop-start-stop-start mode. I did okay with this until I took in a lungful of the sulfur steam from the [[fumarole]] and gagged.

Things cleared up as soon as the boat got moving again and I got a new lungful of fresh air. Had a great talk with one of the guys and a man from Kansas, trading fishing stories. They loved my story about how I caught a shark on light line ((He was barely 11 inches long, but he was a shark!)). Incredibly, the guide pointed out a spot in the open ocean where he had caught a record-breaking [[Wahoo|Ono]]. I tipped the crew well because — aside from my brief experience of nausea — I not only had a good time but felt entertained.

I make it a point to try to talk to the drivers as if they were human beings, but the one we had on the [[Mauna Kea]] trip existed in another place entirely. It’s not that he was nasty or inconsiderate. He just curled into his own head when I attempted to talk to him. When I mentioned hunting and fishing, he said “I hate fishing.” So I asked him a few questions about life on the island, a subject which he could describe best in grunts.

He was kind when my wife developed altitude sickness. When he dropped us off, he literally begged for his tip. I gave him $6.