Hawaii Part 5: The juju of getting off the island

Thursday was our last day on Maui and we had a 2:15PM flight to catch.  We had pre-arranged with our cab driver who had brought us over to come pick us up.  It was good to see him again.  He is one of the people I'm very grateful to have met on the trip.  We had just one stop to make on our way out of Hana, the banana bread stand.

We stopped in, traded hugs, and my friend bought all of her souvenirs she was bringing back to people.  I took a few pictures to capture the lovely Hana Farm Stand for you:

The sign refers to the award winning six kinds of banana bread they make... yummy...

When it was time to go the car wouldn't start.  Our cabbie started freaking out about getting us the two and a half hours across the island to our flight on time.  We didn't freak out for some reason.  I put in my two cents for getting a pair of jumper cables, and took a nap in the car while they worked it out.  I knew it would get worked out.  I wanted to go home, therefore it would be fixed.  (I know that sounds a bit like three year old logic.)

But I did think about all the things we'd heard about Maui.  Initially when the car wouldn't start, the friends at the banana bread stand said there was "bad juju" in the parking lot.  Cars would come (like rental cars and tour vans, etc.) and then they wouldn't start up again.  Then of course there was the well known maxim that if you take a piece of Maui off Maui, such a rock, a piece of coral, a piece of wood, you will have torturous bad luck that will lead to your very unhappy end unless you return it.

The way our guide told it, ever since the white man has tried to tame and commercialize Maui, Maui has always fought back.  It was also our guide's opinion that UFOs (he pronounced them "oo-foes") brought some of the plants and people to Maui that lived there now, landing inside the big volcano in Haleakala and now and then the UFOs still come back to check up on the stash they left behind.  He and some natives were talking about the UFOs while we were swimming in one of the pools, so I know he's not the only one who believes it.

So would I get off the island?

Cleaning the battery posts and jumping the car got us moving again.  I slept the whole way to the airport.  But we were late upon arrival.  At every security gate during our trip my pump always set off the sensors you walk through so I always got the (what I refer to as) "Second Base Pat-Down".  But in the Kahalui Airport they were too thorough and there was too much cupping and groping.  I was really upset about it (however, coming home I had a good experience in Portland and she gave me a card to use to complain to TSA).

I was doing everything but running to my gate and when I got there the plane was boarding.  I wasn't the last person on the plane, but among the last.  I felt yucky from the public grope, I had to go to the bathroom but knew I'd have to keep holding it until we were at the right altitude for peeing, and I was in pain, but the plane took off down the runway and it was a nonstop flight to Portland, and although I didn't know it at the time, there were two wonderful women waiting to look out for me and a freshly prepared bed where I'd slept like a log.

Up next: epilogue, otherwise entitled driving around town with dogs, petting their heads and forgetting where you live as you try to find your way home.