THE FATES

HAVE A WARPED SENSE OF HUMOR

After the great shift on the prior night, I was hoping that my luck was going to let me have a decent night again.

Dispatched to the front of The Grand at 7:15pm and picked up a lady doing a roundtrip to Safeway. Kewl! Depending on how long she is in the store, I should meter between $45 and $55.

Start up the hill, on Wailea Iki, headed for the high road. Just as I was approaching the top, a 6-point buck (deer) lunges out of the forest on my right. I slam on the brakes, I was doing maybe 30 mph, and jerk the wheel to the right. Alas, the timing wasn't quite perfect. Nailed the buck in his left rear flank with my left front headlight. Broke at least one of his rear legs, maybe both. He drug himself to the center divider. Tried to stand and flee but collasped in the #1 lane for traffic headed the opposite direction. Eventually drug himself out of the roadway to the forest on the northside of the road.

After making sure my passenger was okay, I called for another cab to pick her up. There went my nice run. Called 9-1-1 and the police arrived shortly afterwards. Since there were no human injuries and the damage to ONE-NINE was less than $3,000, there was no report taken.

The cops told me that DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) had been notified and would eventually respond to dispatch the buck. I drove away hearing his cries of fear and pain from somewhere in the darkness. It tore at my soul.

Never could get into the "groove" after that. Calls became infrequent and I finally went home at about 9:30pm. Came back out at 1:30am to cover the "graveyard shift". Just two runs during those hours. Mexican Mary called and I picked her up at 5:00am and gave ONE-NINE to her and was home by 5:30am.

As evidenced by the photos below, there really isn't that much damage to ONE-NINE, which indicates that the speed at impact was probably less than 10 mph.

I still feel miserable about that poor deer.

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THE PICTURE GALLERY

Koki Beach
Near Hana

Chinaman's Hat
A famous O'ahu Landmark

"Let's all be careful out there!"

THE LONG WAY HOME

Dropped two guys off at Lahaina Harbor just before 6:00am on Wednesday morning. Going there, from the Fairmont Kea Lani in Wailea, had been a pretty easy ride. Now it was after 6 and traffic both ways was building up.

Part one starts a couple of miles south of Lahaina and ends about a mile past Chez Paul, a really fantastic french restaurant, in Olowalu,


Part 2 commences just as I am entering the pali. Pali is the Hawai'ian word for cliff. This is about 5 minutes south of where part 1 ended. You can see how much brighter the day has become. We do not have long lingering twilights at either end of our days. The Sun sets, it gets dark real fast. In the morning, the rosy blush over the mountains accelerates into full sunlight almost immediately.




"Let's all be careful out there!"