…and… I can’t remember her name for the life of me.  More on that later.

A few years back I took my mom on this sailing trip when she came out for a visit.  I packed the stemless wine glasses, a bottle of pinot gris, a baguette, fruit & cheese, and we set out for an hour and a half sailing around Elliot Bay.  For the milage of momma-happiness I got out of that trip, it was literally the best $25 I’ve ever spent. I tried (in vain) to get back there this summer, but failing that I knew that I wanted to recreate the experience for her when we were in hawaii.

Now the tricky part is finding a boozy sailing cruise that’s not on a giant yacht with lackluster catered food and overpriced cocktails. Challenge accepted.

In particular, I was looking for a boat that was close to the water and had a little bit of an edge. Somewhere you wouldn’t be safe wearing high heels. (This trip had a recurring theme of “doing things michelle wouldn’t ordinarily do”)

One of my least favorite things growing up, that now fascinates me endlessly, is my mom’s ability to make friends anywhere. And everywhere. She will literally talk to anyone. (She recently called me while is was in Vegas, and the guy next to me picked up my phone and answered it. My mom had a really pleasant 20 minute conversation with my friend Travis, who was talking in a combination of accents and referring to himself as “sergio”. They talked about sports and that sailing trip and I can’t be positive, but I think travis might have referred to Brett Favre as “donkey balls”.) I digress.

She’s talking to the girl (and her husband) that I would later name my soulmate. I effin loved this canadian girl. She was neurotic in exactly the same ways I am.

Did you notice our sweet sunburn lines? Oh to be pasty white.

…and just a few more for the sake of using a few more pictures…

Let’s see. What’s next? How bout some mai tais. And skies that are the colors of mai tais.

I made this commitment for the week to drink as many mai tais as humanly possible. Luckily, I also carried around a little sack of advil and a water bottle with me most places, so we were in pretty good shape.

There was a place near our condo in Kihei that had a really neat little deck and mega mai tais in crazy tiki mugs. Crazy.

On the downside, it was so ghetto looking on the outside that I almost didn’t go in. Luckily, jon’s way less judgy than I am because their patio was great. In general, jon’s a better person than I am.

More sky.

Doesn’t this look like burning fiery pits of death? Nope! it’s more sky.

You might be wondering why I left the last post so… awkwardly. Or you know, if we’ve met before, you probably didn’t even notice that I was being more awkward than usual. First, read this sign, which was at the beginning of the trail to red beach.

In addition to being fairly awkward, I’m also not very sure-footed. Remember the mountain goats of months past? I’m pretty much not that. Anyways, I was certain that I was going to die on the way to the red beach. Jon was all spry and gung-ho, my mom chickened out and went back to the car, and I just got frustrated at my lack of dexterity and trudged on.

Doesn’t it look like you might die on this?

Totally worth it.

I’m a super big fan of ice cream, so on the way home we stopped at this little roadside coconut ice-cream shop

If Molly Moon moved to Hawaii and fell in love with a coconut, they’d make little baby mollies in these flavors:

The ice cream being delicious was not the point of this particular story. I had forgotten to tell you the point of this story. Earlier in the day, jon found some coconuts. But dude, coconuts are hard as fuck to open. And this tough coconut chick and her machete helped us!

… worth it.

This sunset didn’t happen on the road to hana, but it’s pretty so I wanted to show you. And it matches my coconuts. Heh.

Aloha!