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1. Go on vacation. In Maui. For four days. Kill any interest you ever had in writing, talking and possibly breathing.

Fresh out of college in 1997, Trav took what we thought was a starter job with Western Wireless in Albuquerque. He’s been in the telecommunications industry almost ten years now. Almost as long as he’s been hoping to earn T-Mobile’s coveted “Peak Achievement” award.

Last May, he won it. This February, they flew us to Maui to get it. And I don’t think it would have been possible to spoil us more if they’d given us a pool boy I could name ‘Thomasito Jane‘ and a gang of roman slave girls to feed the macadamias directly into Trav’s mouth.

Everything we could think of was taken care of for us. Food, drink, hats, sunglasses, sightseeing, even sunblock. It was a little wierd at first, the feeling that ‘other people’ were paying for our vacation. But then we got off a bus in La Haina where a crowd of beautiful, half-naked people draped us with leis, handed us drinks and suddenly…we were pretty okay with it. Allllll of it.

To which, hello? Devil? This is Jules. I’m cheap. Could you be a peach and never come knocking on my door? Thanks.

Spending four days in the wandering the jungles of paradise, drinking foofy drinks, swimming with the fishies, doing almost nothing for myself beside eating and walking - I came to understand why one of my eBay pals once returned from there three days overdue with a fully-formed financial plan for retiring the day she turned 40 and a moving crew booked for Hawaii the day after.

Fittingly enough, it was this self-same vegetarian friend who came to mind the night I parked my camera-happy tuchas five feet, front-row center for the unearthing of the Luau pig. Having never been to a Luau (or a member of a pig pit removal crew), I ignored 600 other people crowding around me. And the fact that we were about to dig up one very dead pig. Instead, I focused my camera angle on two really big dudes walking into the pit.

As they brushed the giant mound of dirt away faster and faster, an ever-increasing feeling crept up on me that I was, in fact, in the wrong, wrong, WRONGEST place to be. Flinging the last layers of bananna leaves off poor Herman’s chicken wire cocoon, I looked straight into his red, dead, upside-down face. Which let loose a great puff of air. And then peeled right off his bones.

Speaking of scary things. Imagine you’re recovering from jet lag. Also, a hangover from steeply discounted BBQ booze the night before. Then imagine you’re at the 8am breakfast buffet, trying to bolster just enough awareness to know that when you hop on a 10am sightseeing bus so crammed full of people wearing pink (sorry - it’s FUSHIA) you won’t make the mistake of assuming it’s being driven by Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

You’re balancing mango juice in one hand, an omlette in the other when you reach for some pineapple. And you’re greeted by this guy:

Fun, no? That’s not the least of it.

You know how you always forget to pack that ONE thing on the way or coming back? Charger for your phone. Toothbrush. Underwear. I forgot my personal motivation. All of it. And I know exactly where I left it, too. It’s in the left hand bedside drawer of Kaanapali Sheraton’s room 321.

If anybody finds it, could you mail it to me? I haven’t got crap done for the last three months.

Related Links

Wikipedia listing for T-Mobile, U.S.A. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States

Maas Maui Photos on Jules’ Flickr Photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maaspublications/512386038/in/set-1002791/

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