Tag: hawaii

Hitchhiking

All types of people hitchhike on the Big Island; public transportation is limited and the price of renting a car is steep. You see them just off the airplane in their mainland clothes overdressed, suitcase in one hand and their thumb in the air. Young mothers holding their baby in one arm and groceries in the other standing in the hot sun. We even have a lady who hitchhikes with her goat and often men hold a six-pack of beer as incentive to pull over.

One time while driving to Pahoa I noticed a woman with three kids and a dog waiting for a ride. “Please dear God, let them be gone before I come back this way”. I do my errands and make my way back home and yes there they are just waiting for me to stop, nothing like the smell of wet dog in a cramped car. I pull over and they climb in.

Mom is a classic Big Island wild woman called White Feather who needs to go to Kehena Beach to find some lady who makes natural futon bedding, they are on a mission. It isn’t where I am going but it is still raining so I drive them to the beach. My reward is an invite to a great Halloween party. Most of the time when I pick up someone hitchhiking it isn’t so rewarding. They will get in the car and the first thing I notice is how bad they smell. I know that we all sweat when it is hot but this is more than that, this is a lack of hygiene in a serious way. When I finally get them to their destination they depart but their odor stays in the car haunting me.

I guess I expect too much of hitchhikers. I think that once I’ve taken the time to stop and invite them into my car that as we drive to our destination it’s a good time to make conversation, maybe make a new friend. I’m lucky if I can get them to tell me where they want me to drop them off, before they stare out the window without saying another word. Hitchhikers don’t seem to do small talk. Sometimes I want to say to my traveling companions “ Maybe the reason you have such a hard time getting a ride is because you stink.”

I hadn’t picked up hitchhikers for a long time after a bad experience on Kauai. I had gone over there to scout for a location for my wedding. My boyfriend was working on a cruise ship and I decided to walk down to the harbor to meet him. I was in love; here to have an adventure on this beautiful island, the sun was shining.  A local man stopped and asked if I wanted a ride and I said sure and jumped in. The next thing I notice is he is no longer going down hill but back up towards a sugar cane field. Then it hit me like a brick wall, really I saw a brick wall in front of my face and I realized he wanted to do me harm. This is what went through my head;  “I’ve given it away a hundred times but you are going to have to kill me before I’ll have sex with you.” He stopped in the field and we started to struggle, he had a knife and I just kept screaming and fighting him like a little girl no instinct to poke his eyes or kick him in the balls. Finally he stopped humping me and I got the door open and started to run, here is the weird part he called after me that I had forgotten my flip flops that had fallen off as we struggled. I just kept running. It took me years before I felt comfortable trusting strangers because all I kept thinking is I can’t tell the good guys from the bad.

I hear the goddess Pele has been known to hitchhike. She takes the form of an old woman dressed in white with a small dog waiting on the side of the road. Pele has a temper so it’s a good idea to take her where she wants to go and if she doesn’t want to talk that’s okay with me.

My two best friends

grace&sweetieI have a dog. She is a rescue that came to me when I lived on the Big Island. I had wanted a small dog for about a year and one day she appeared. Of course there is more to the story than that.
I was housesitting which included watching over the cat, four dogs, one horse and 40 chickens. I was driving home from Pahoa town going down the narrow two lane road that led to the beach when I spotted a small dog running along side the road. Oh that’s not good, road kill I thought as this could be a busy road on the weekends. I turned the car around and went back to the spot where I had seen the dog, got out of the car and started calling here Sweetie come here and there she was looking up at me, so I scooped her up and put her in Big Red (my jeep) and back to farm. I knew I couldn’t let her out with the other dogs that often had a pack mentality so I wrapped her up and found a chicken cage to put her in. That night she slept with me in the loft while the other dogs scratched and whined at the door. She was so small, I felt like I was taking care of a baby. It was the weekend so I had to wait to Monday to call the animal shelter to find out whom she belonged to as she did have a tag on her collar. I find the owner and take the baby dog who is really maybe 4 years old back to the owner, who is this eccentric woman who tells me that the dog was kidnapped and that she hasn’t had the dog that long. The crazy woman raises exotic cats and had this large outdoor cage where she kept the cats and did say that when she went away she would leave the dog in there with the beasts. The whole time she is telling me this story the little dog is sitting on my lap, she has made no attempt to acknowledge her owner. We both noticed this. I leave feeling sorry for the little dog but thinking maybe I wasn’t ready to have a dog as this one seemed so needy.
About two months later the crazy woman calls me up to say that it is not working out with the dog, the cats want to scratch her eyes out. And since you saved the dog maybe you should take her. I was living in this koa wood cabin at the time that had not been occupied for a while so I was sharing it with some critters that turned out to be mongoose. It must have been mating season because they had started to show them self to me more often and I could tell they felt I was taking up to much room. I have a YouTube video about how I tried to capture and relocate them. Anyway a friend mentioned that the dog would probably help discourage the critters. So I took the dog. She had a Hawaiian name that meant something like sweetheart but I kept forgetting it so I just called her Sweetie. Well my friend was right she went into and under and over that cabin and made sure that we two were the only ones living inside.
Sweetie has been my best friend now for 8 years.
She is rat terrier/Chihuahua mix? Everyone has an opinion as to her breed. I am a bit of a dog snob and never thought I liked Chihuahua until I met Sweetie but of course she is not your average dog. She does not nip, or yap and has learned how to visualize her inner German shepherd so rarely shakes. She understands English; she likes people (women more than men), is polite to dogs and cats and will poop on command.
More about Sweetie later.