Walkin' Boots

OK so it's been a long time blah blah. But I had real, real good excuses like blah blah blah. I'll be a good boy and update more often blah blah.

In the interest of actually gettin' an entry up here--and in the interest of not boring the pants offa you--(not that you're not sooper sexy--I didn't mean to say that) I'll spare you alla that crap and just get right back to my epic Hawaiian adventure.

Without further ado then: you may remember that in the strange land of Hilo, I was about to go aquesting for some boots. With these, I would challenge the mighty lava fields. And so I made final preparations for my boot-seekin' expedition--and points beyond. Boyoboy, here we go...

So breakfast outta the way, I went in search of a shower. I needed it after stewing in my own juices for like the past 36+ hours. What's more, my muscles were sore & only mostly responsive. Akiko had asked if I'd want to take a shower the night before I'd told her yeah, in the morning. So when she saw me leaving the breakfast table, she asked me to wait a moment outside, and then she'd show me how to turn on the water heater.

I was impressed w/ this bit of conscientiousness. Still, while I'm all for environmental sensitivity. I am unfortunately a crass pig who likes a shower—usually, but not always, daily. (Forgive me! Mother Gaia. Cross not thy legs before mine loving ramrod!) And in terms of showering, this water heater biz had a real downside. To wit, if you turn a cold water heater on, it's prob. gonna take a while before the water's even warm. You end up w/ 2 choices—let the water run for quite a while so that it actually gets a little warm, or just don't bother w/ the fucking heater at all. I generally went w/ the second option. I just didn't have the time to wait around and did respect the ol’ environment enough not to waste alla that water for such a stupid reason. Anyway, I can’t say my showers weren’t brisk n’ refreshing!

It felt good to be clean. Breakfast had been good, but not heavy, and the coffee was starting to kick in. I felt alert—even exhilarated at the thought of what might lie ahead. I also felt tense. I really had been looking forward to a little peace—some room for my thoughts and me. But now, aside from the job I’d already taken, I was being contracted as a chauffer for a 16 year old German boy, and I had signed on for a hike to see the lava. It was a lot to take in.

I didn't have a lot of time, but went & grabbed a sketchpad, some oil crayons and Infinite Jest, which I was still reading at the time. Then I went and sat in one of the lawn chairs in front of the loft building. It was shady there. I didn't know whether I'd read or sketch, but I needed to figure my situation out, and the most expedient way for me to do that is often to think about something completely unrelated to the matter at hand. Ida know. Maybe it's got something to do w/ distracting my conscious mind so my unconscious mind can go to work, making the necessary leaps to get me where I need to go w/o all the attendant horseshit.

I ended up thinking of the mountains, black and looming, just the way I'd seen them in the rain last night. I saw the charcoal colored clouds around them. I started drawing this shit to the best of my ability (which is minimal, by the way). I was really just working in very simple shapes and colors—blacks and grays, hard angles. Pretty abstract, but depicting something obvious—kinda sorta primitive in an unselfconscious way.

I was pretty far into it when Stefan appeared at my shoulder. I hadn't noticed his approach. Smiling, he gave a girly little hop, touched my shoulder and said, "Ah, very nice. It is the mountains right?"

Holmesian powers of deduction. Add that to his dossier. It was clear he'd come to settle things. He broke out the map the rangers had given him, and we studied it, seeking a meeting place. It began to feel like we were young boys plotting some sorta imaginary covert military operation.

I'd mentioned that I was interested in checking out a lava tube earlier, so Stefan suggested that we meet at the entrance to Thurston Lava Tube—a name that conjured Jim Backus drinking outta a coconut shell in my mind. The opening was near the head of one of the many trails that ran through the park. Truth be told, one of my books, Hawaii—The Big Island Revealed, had made this tube sound pretty lame—overly domesticized and cosmeticized & some such other Johnny Cochran type shit. It mentioned some other tubes that were more off the beaten track—the best and rawest of which wasn't technically open to the public.

It would take many tries before I'd actually find the fucking thing, but I did end up hiking through it later. And it was badass. In the meantime though, Thurston Lava Tube seemed like as good a place to meet as any—even if I didn’t end up checking it out. So I said that would be fine.

We set a time. He suggested I head up at least an hour early so I’d have time to check out Crater Rim Drive. I asked him for a more specific suggestion.

"Well, I'm not sure how to answer. If you're like me, you could spend all day just driving around the crater and never finishing. I've been there several times & still haven't seen it all. I just kept pulling off and looking, and it kept changing. It's incredible."

It sounded like a good idea. He said Niko hadn't seemed too big on it before, but, "Maybe if he's not w/ his father. You know how young boys are." It was pretty clear that he was not only encouraging me to check out Crater Rim Drive, but also encouraging me to encourage Niko to check it out. Add unsubtly subtle wussy coercion to his dossier as well. Swell.

I said OK.

"Good, good!" He cut short his sprightly hopping this time to call Niko over, and w/ a German loan word here & there, we settled on a mid-afternoon departure for Niko and me.

Then I was left to myself again, but there was no time left for drawing. I didn't have much in the way of hiking supplies. Stefan told me that the sneakers I'd been planning on wearing weren't the best choice for footwear for this outing. We didn't know how far we'd have to go to find the lava, but it would be a couple of miles at least. What's more, lava fields are rough terrain. The ground breaks off in jagged pieces, and there are sudden and irregular slopes, meaning you might lose your step here and there.

Stefan was also concerned about the heat of the flowing lava. It would be right there—not far beneath you. Only dried layers of the same shit would be separating you from it. The insulation these would provide wouldn't be great, so the ground could get pretty fuckin' hot. I felt that Stefan was probably being a bit overcautious here, but figured what the fuck? I'd hiked some as a kid, but that had been nearly 20 years ago. And even then, I'd never hiked under such peculiar circumstances.

I’d made vague resolutions to try several things while I was there—most notably, I wanted to try n’ fuck one of those really dangerous jellyfish, ‘cuz they’re all mooshy and it’d be sorta like fuckin’ a person of either sex maybe except for the venom and butt that would just make things exciting—y’know?—it’d give things an edge. Another activity I’d considered was hiking, so I had done what any sensible person does when she/he is thinkin’ about doin’ something rad like hiking over lava: I’d skimmed a coupla books I was too cheap to buy at the bookstore. And like they all concurred that you should wear “sturdy boots” when you hiked. That’s always how they put it: “sturdy boots.” And said phrase was now echoing in my mind in a way that was reminiscent of a scene in a really bad old movie in which some character remembers some important thing somebody else said some time or something. Sturdy boots.

Considering all of this, I figured I'd follow Stefan's advice. I knew, also, that I would need some water and probably some less perishable food to keep me going. The books suggested surplus amounts of both, in case you became lost. It was not an idea I liked to consider, but there it was. Darkness would allow better visibility, as far as lava went, so we'd decided to finish our hike after dusk. Given the treacherousness of the ground we'd be covering, a flashlight seemed like a necessity.

It was after 10 a.m. Getting to & from Hilo would take a little time. Assembling all the shit I'd need would take some more. I was reasonably full, but I'd still need some lunch before we left. That wouldn't leave me w/ a lotta time for poking around after this Wendell. I wasn't sure when we'd be done w/ the hike or how beat I'd be afterwards. But given how depleted I was already feeling, it seemed possible that I wouldn't be up to working later.

Like I said before, I was planning on squeezing in some personal time while I was there, but I was here, after all, on a job. Steve Forceman, P.I. gotta eat, besides which, I wasn't looking to piss off a buncha thugs, and common sense, as well as some digging I had done before leaving suggested that Tony Castrato might move in areas that lay a little south of the law. That was one reason why I hadn't been thrilled about taking the job in the first place. I’d should’ve told the fucker I was all booked up and left it at that, but concern for my own neck had led me to bend my sense of professional ethics in that way already. Well that, and a perverse sense of curiosity as well. What really went on w/ these guys?

Still, aside from my desire to stay alive, I didn't want to further compromise my ethics by blowing off a job. I wasn't sure I wanted to or could afford to write off a whole day, but I'd already signed on for this Prussian Expedition in search of the Earth’s Molten Heart. (Germans are always getting carried away w/ these operatic ideas.) And truth be told, I wanted to see the lava. It was unlikely that a better opportunity would present itself. So reluctantly, I decided that aside from looking around while I was buying shit in Hilo, I was gonna let Wendell go for the moment. I resolved to do nothing but hunt tomorrow, but today, I was lava bound.