Diane Olsen (Editor), �The Book that Changed My Life�
This is part two of a 25-part story about Hawaii. The story begins here.
---
The airport in Kaua�i resembles a bus station more than an airport. You get off the place, walk a short hallway, and then you�re outside. Anybody who happened to see the Dave Chappell and Jon Stewart masterpiece Half Baked, will know this joke: Because we we�re now outside � On Hawaii. Huge fucking palm trees line the parking lot. Green mountains poke the blue sky. The tropical breeze blows lightly.
It�s not exactly how you would picture arriving on the Hawaiian Islands � Ricardo Montalbon and a bunch of chicks in grass skirts and coconuts covering their brown-skinned firm and ample breasts aren�t waiting to greet you with flowers skewered on strings. But it�ll do.
It�ll do.
My father isn�t here though. I warn Arlette how he�s getting us a car from the local rent-a-wreck. We�ll be able to hear the car before we actually see it � unless it happens to be billowing smoke, which is certainly a possibility.
And then we hear it, a spluttering, rumbling car in the distance. Finally, slowly, I see as a huge monstrosity of a car lumbering toward us. My father pulls the car to the side and I get my first look at our car: a Buick Century. A huge, lumbering, four-door boat of a car with plush seats and automatic windows and probably gets three miles to the gallon � downhill.
It sounds decadent, but one, it�s a fucking Buick Century, and second, it�s a rent-a-wreck Buick Century. The motor, which is pathetic, is so out of whack that it sounds like a muscle car when you accelerate, at least until the car starts sputtering and shaking. We start to climb the one of the hills and the engine sounds like it�s going to drop out of the hood. Hell, I feel like I�m fall through the floor.
The Girlfriend suggests I let up on the gas and press down again so the engine will catch. It works � for about two minutes. I�m shimmying through the mountainside trying to maintain the 50 mph speed limit as I see people flying past us in rented convertibles.
My sister found some prices for reputable car rental places, where the price difference would probably be about fifty bucks extra. On top of that, my father has decided that he�ll pay for the rental. If I had pushed a little harder, I could�ve had one of these cars.
But while I can�t say I haven�t had one of those books that changed my life, I did have a sister. Whenever she comes to Hawaii, she rents a car, and it has to be a convertible. The look fits her, long blond hair blowing in the wind while she wears entirely too much pink.
We�ve always been opposites and I, in fact, was able to avoid some serious fashion faux pas growing up by watching what she shopped for and where her interests lie, and avoiding those things like the plague. Now, driving in this piece of shit boatmobile, I thought how I would look behind the wheel in one of these fancy sports cars.
This seems more appropriate.
