On Wednesday the nineteenth I took out a corporate tour with some people from Peak Performance, one of the fastest growing companies in the world. They brought their top sales people to Hawaii to celebrate their piles of money and a few of them happened to come to Kohala Zipline. Unlike a normal corporate tour these people were fun. They were having a great time and thoroughly enjoying Rogue and I as their guides. At the end of the tour they are not allowed to tip as regular participants seeing as how their whole trip is paid in full. So I got something else instead. Tricia, one of the participants from San Francisco told me to come to the Fairmont Orchid on Friday night for a private concert. No one was supposed to know who was playing so there were only a few guesses to fill me in. Friday after my tours I realized that I had the following morning off and as it was raining in kKhala there wasn't much happening. So I found a dime on the floor flipped it and it told me to go try my luck at the party. I cruised my motorcycle down the coast to the Mauna Lani where the Fairmont is quietly located down a dark tunnel of trees. I changed clothes in the parking lot into my best casual million dollar businessman attire and strolled inside. After scoping out the scene I walked into the party as if I had a purpose, straight up to the line at the full service open bar and surveyed the action comfortably standing in the crowd. I was amazed at the production. A full fire troop for hours, several bars, sushi, desserts, five different ethnic buffets, fire balls leaping out of the top of iron statues, and six hundred people from around the world. I felt out of place for a moment but when I had a beer and a plate of sushi I blended right in. I started out by sitting down in front of the hippies doing the fire show, a troop from Puna I met at the petting zoo party only a month ago. I started talking to some of the people around me and before too long started seeing familiar faces. I hung out with the couple who invited me after the zipline tour for most of the night, and before the whole party was over had seen seven of the eight participants. Adam, Tricia, and I got good standing room near the stage and after a brief awards ceremony for the top grossing salesmen, we were all casually introduced to Eddie Vedder. Although Pearl Jam is not my favorite ninety's band Eddie's solo show was a nice mix from his ukulele album, Into the wild and some covers nobody would expect. It was a good show, and one of the biggest productions I have seen in a while.
After the concert there was a dance party with a DJ, dancers, a giant projector, people in costumes, more food and drinks. I hung out with the entertainment because I noticed a few of the fire spinners and the people in costume and we danced the night away. Somewhere around 2 I made my way to the beach and woke up in the sunshine to ride back to rainy kohala.
After a month of having a dehydrator and a blender I needed to send off my first package. It ended up being about ten pounds of dry food and that should last me a few weeks on the road. I have been eating dry bananas all day every day knowing that if I didn't get rid of them there would be no motivation to make more. So this weekend I'm going up to the farm for another rack to keep up the process. Here is what I could fit so far. From top to bottom. Dried apple bananas, various fruit leather rolls, dried silk bananas, dried cuban red bananas, herbal tea, golden reshi, mug wart, dried shredded turmeric, dried coconut, and I remember some raw turmeric was in there too. All packed into one flat rate box and sent to Mom. Dig in. Let me know who would like to be the next recipient.
