Phil's Excellent Adventure, Parts 1 and 2

Phil’s Excellent Adventure


Part 1: “Do You Smoke Herb?”

As many of you know, I am on my sabbatical year, and have taken the opportunity to get out of Utah (bless it’s heart) and go “somewhere” to “write.” The “plan” was to bop around the Hawaiian Islands for a while and then check out some other areas in the Pacific Rim until I found the perfect spot to hole up and hammer out paragraphs, while also spending time practicing tai chi and learning to stand-up paddle board.

I have had a long fascination with Hawaii and surfing, going back to my childhood when I used to watch old surf movies on broadcast television (the “Gidget” movies, the Elvis movie where he went to Hawaii, other 1960s Hollywood larks), and then, more recently, obsessively watching the documentary film “Riding Giants” about the cultural history of big-wave surfers, particularly Laird Hamilton (married to former volleyball champion and super-model Gabrielle Reece—more on her later) and then seeing the episode of the Sundance Channel series “Iconoclasts,” featuring Hamilton hanging out with his pal Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam.

Laird takes Eddie stand-up paddle boarding near his home in Hawaii, which I only recently realized is probably not more than 3 or 4 miles from where I ended up. (See “Iconoclasts,” Season 2, Episode 1, available for download for $1.99 on iTunes.) Stand-up paddle-boarding is basically standing up on a long surfboard with a long paddle and… paddling. Wherever you want to go—around a bay, up the coast, into a wave. Moving through an environment under your own power reminded me of mountain biking and hiking. When I watched that episode of Iconoclasts, I thought, “I can do that. I WILL do that.”

My plan was also not to have much of a plan, other than the intention to seek out good opportunities as the dharma path revealed them. Quickly, dharma took over. After weeks of logistical challenges too boring to recount, I eventually beat back the clamoring horde of demands in Utah, and opened a window in time appropriate for making my departure. I went on line looking for the cheapest, one-way ticket to anywhere in Hawaii I could find, figuring I would check out any island I could get to cheapest first, find good deals on inter-island travel after I arrived, and take it from there.

Of course, last-minute Phil didn’t find the cheapest flight to Hawaii in history. Indeed, most of the flights were over $1,000.00. But suddenly, after searching flight after flight on travel site after travel site, a bargain flight popped up--a one-way ticket to Maui for less than $500.00, with one seat left. Wham-bam, thanks Pan-Am, and I had a ticket booked for November 3, ensuring that on November 4, 2008, no matter what, Phil and America would be in a whole new reality.

It proved a propitious day for all of us. Once I got to Maui, everything became easy. It was like floating into a heaven full of big-breasted seraphs and fruit-laden cherubs—all soft, warm, and welcoming everywhere I went. I would realize a need or desire for something, whatever it was, a funky place to stay, a cheap car, an expert paddle-board teacher, whatever, turn around, and it would manifest right there in front of me--again and again.

Before I left, I arranged to rent a tipi on an idyllic yoga retreat center—a compound of cabins, the tipi, a communal kitchen, and a living, jungle-version of a Stonehenge-type space, defined by a large empty circle of tall, straight trees, perfect for group rituals, shaman circles, and dancing naked around a bonfire at night. The compound is off the grid and away from it all, accessible by a rutted “pineapple road” on Maui’s north coast. It has a series of deep, natural spring fed pools, with water running down rock steps from one pool to the other, a freshwater oasis in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by foliage so thick it is like a giant green-walled room with the sky for a ceiling.

The largest pool, the “King’s Pool,” is the source of the water and perhaps infinitely deep. A long knotted rope dangles from a branch overhanging the pool from a large tree at the edge, perfect for a dramatic swing and leap into the center--a big build-up of tension followed by a silent, double parabola of a body on a rope first swinging down with gravity, then up with momentum, and then, letting go at the top, the ropeless body finishes the second curve on its own, the hushed “whoosh” of the whole ride punctuated by a spectacular cannonball splash at the end. Kawabunga.

The owner of the retreat, Danya, was traveling in India when I arrived, but Stephen-rhymes-with-Kevin, who lives on the site and works for her, was available to pick me up from the airport in the beater Ford Explorer I rented my first few days on the island. I arrived exhausted but happy with the afternoon sun still high in the sky. Getting out of town, including packing up all my belongings, putting things in storage, gathering my research materials for the coming months, and packing for the trip, were really difficult, challenging things. I could not have made it without the major assistance of Jennifer, Shelvie, Ashley, Timmy, Cathy, Jeff, Bob, Christa, and Cathie Webb. So, great gobs of gratitude to all of you, and I owe you all t-shirts. (Organic hemp, of course).

Utah was wet and cold the morning I left. I watched summer end, and felt winter on its way. The days were growing short, with daylight savings kicking in, bringing sunset repressively early. I was glad to get away from the thin mountain air and the long cold nights of northern Utah’s winter, anxious to leave before the arrival of the polluted inversion layer that settles over the valleys every winter.

As soon as I got off the plane on Maui, the warm, thick, salty-wet island breeze caressed my skin and filled my lungs, and instantly I felt better. Every day the clean, oxygen-rich air, the verdant fecundity of the island flora, and the ionized atmosphere at the beach, sink deeper into my bones.

My mystical friend Hans is convinced that the islands, sprouting up dead-center in the middle of the world’s largest ocean, the tops of the past and present tallest volcanoes in the world (and the tallest mountains in the world, measured from their bases at the bottom of the sea), each island essentially a giant fountain of geo-energy, function together like diffusion points for all the “qi” circulating in the whole Pacific Ocean. It comes in from all directions and spirals up into the sky, following the trajectory of the mountains themselves. It feels like the most nurturing, health-generating environment imaginable.

Everywhere I turn, my eyes are met with a wild profusion of life and color. Everyone’s yard is an explosion of exotic-looking plants, crazy-shaped flowers, and palm fronds bigger than a man, bending languidly this way and that, splayed out and effortless. At night and in the morning, a cacophony of birdsong fills the air.

In that weird, hazy, just popped out of the turbulence of moving and traveling and everything suddenly stopped climactic anti-climax that comes at the end of a tough journey, I sat blinking and bewildered at the arrivals pick-up area of the Kahului airport, an airport seemingly without doors or walls, just a huge roof and lots of support-posts. Up pulled the old Explorer. “Steven?” I asked the grizzled blonde surfer-looking driver. “Stephen,” he said. “Rhymes with Kevin.” And we were off.

I sat in the passenger seat of the old SUV with my arm out the window while it snaked its way along the coastal highway, and it all unfolded in front of me: rock cliffs, sand beaches, surf, and the dazzling infinite blue carpet of the Pacific. Sunlight danced and sparkled across its surface clear to the horizon. Stephen is one of those guys who will maintain a steady stream-of-consciousness oration if no one else is filling the void with words. I was silently bedazzled. I know I got an autobiography that I don’t remember at all, and a lot of impressions of Maui. The parts that stuck with me are that Maui is “all soft” compared to the hard, sharp rocks of the big island and that the “aloha” spirit is very strong here.

I think “aloha” has a lot to do with the relative isolation of the islands, the fact that no matter where you are in Hawaii, people, even in a crowded town, are in fact quite rare relative to the reality of the vast expanse of ocean around you. When you meet people, there is a subtext of “wow, fancy bumping into you in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I am really glad to meet some one else. I really hope I like you.” But we all know, if only subconsciously, that if and when the grid goes down, things could go all “Lord of the Flies” pretty damn fast. Along with the welcoming spirit, there is also its darker flipside, a sense that “I really hope I don’t DISLIKE like you,” accompanied by an unacknowledged intention to find out which it is right away. First impressions are everything around here.

On the way to the tipi, I guzzled in the new views unveiled after each bend in the road like I was quenching a life-threatening thirst. We passed through the funkiest little hippie/surfer/former plantation town called “Paia,” and I had a premonition similar to the one I felt in 1998, when I drove through Utah County with my cousin Mike, before fate moved me there the following year. I just instantly loved the little town, and the faces and energy of its afternoon main street. That got me thinking about social things, including scoring a little of the local green. I turned to Stephen, thought about asking him, and decided against it. He finished his latest observation and asked, “Do you smoke herb?”

By the time I got to the tipi, I was loaded with fresh local papayas, avocados, micro-brew, and sticky bud. My second night on Maui, November 4, was the night of the best election ever. With no television, radio, or internet connection, I sat enjoying Maui’s finest with Stephen at the open-air communal kitchen and we heard a woman yelling somewhere in the jungle, “It’s over! We won! It’s over!” and we both knew that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States of America.

I was drawn to Paia like a horny bee to a fragrant flower, first to the grocery store, “Mana,” the greatest grocery store in the world! Its narrow aisles are packed with inventory and a slow-moving river of happy, good-looking shoppers periodically erupting in excited discussions about the produce, and knowledgeable hippie stockers eagerly slicing open delicious fruits for amazed tourists to sample. It’s not that people are “Hollywood beautiful” here, it’s that everyone looks like the absolute healthiest possible version of themselves that they can be. Half appear to have just come off the beach or a board of some kind, and are dressed, or not dressed, for whatever it is they were last doing. And the bank isn’t much different. No shirt, no shoes, no problem at the Bank of Hawaii. If you’re a local, you don’t even need your i.d. Everyone knows who you are.





Part 2: Gabrielle and Me


I saw Gabrielle Reece at the Mana.

She smiled at me in front of the deli case.

I tried to play it cool.

I think I smiled back, blushed, and looked down.

But I’m not sure.

I might have swayed back and forth and scratched myself like a little monkey-man.

Or perhaps I jumped up and down and shouted,

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”

She’s like a statue of a Greek goddess come to life, except taller and more imposing.

Seven or eight feet, at least.

All I know is, I was face-to-face with her ass.

At least, that’s what my eyes claimed.

Her ass was draped in loose-fitting shorts.

But she couldn’t hide its power.

It was round and firm and high, ready to burst out of those shorts like the Incredible Hulk if danger called.

It looked like it could kick my ass!

And not just my ass—I mean my ass!

So, if you’ve ever wondered if you could take Gabrielle Reece’s ass in a fight--her ass mind you, not the woman herself--the answer is “no.”

Just her ass alone could wipe the floor with all of you.

She stood next to me again at the check out line.

She smiled again.

I looked at her sheepishly, and thought, “please don’t eat me.”

Then I thought, “maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.”





© Philip Sherman Gordon
December 5, 2008