Paradise Driver: FAMINE

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

FAMINE

OR FEAST

It was a typical slow, very slow, Tuesday night. By bar close I had 6 runs. Picked up 2 more during the wee hours. I knew I had a run from Wailea to Lahaina Harbor at 4:00 am and was looking forward to it. About 3:00 am I picked up the reservations sheet from The Grand for today. Turns out that there was also a 4:00 am from there to OGG. Now, I have a problem. My normal relief is Flor (#27) but Wednesday is his day off. The other early morning driver is Mary (#21) but she is on vacation this week. I call the third possibility, Prim (#22), but he has a special already booked for 4:00 am. Finally I called "Mau'i" Jim (#17) at 3:25 am, advised him of the squeeze I was in and offered him the Lahaina run. He accepted and everything was covered. Prim arrived at his special and there was more baggage and people than he could load into his 7-passenger Chevy Astrovan. He needed a second cab to assist him. His pickup was just down the street from Art's (former owner, now manager) house. He woke Art up and got the backup he needed.

The reason I gave Jim the Lahaina trip is because he was kind enough to wake up in the middle of the night. He will also get the return later today. So he has a great toe-hold on Wednesday.

For me, well I made some money but the day actually started with my ying and yang out of whack. As I mentioned earlier, we are having "weather". Whenever a low pressure system passes, my body moans and groans badly. Every old injury sends me a reminder of my past life. The best way to get started is to languish in a hot shower. Letting the needles of water massage the aches and pains. No such luck. Our water heater is solar powered and between the heavy cloud cover and everybody connected to that heater doing laundry, showers, washing dishes etc., the best I got was a tepid soaking. In and out real fast. Get to work and whoever drove ONE-NINE last left me with 1/4 tank of gas. That just isn't kosher. Rain showers, occasionally heavy, fell all night long. The roads were slick, the idiots were out in force and it was basically just a miserable shift from start to finish. My share of the meter plus my tips was 80% of the total meter, so the shift was decent by 2007 standards.

***

My good blog buddy, Dog Bait, solved the problem of why I can't upload pics the regular way. I have exceeded the maximum of 300mb in images. That is why the "original recipe" of PARADISE DRIVER quit accepting uploads around Christmas. I was doing okay with the doppelganger version of PARADISE DRIVER until I was forced to do the conversion. When they asked for my e-mail addy, in the changeover, I inadvertently gave the same one as "doppelganger's" instead of the one I had used when I originally signed up. This merger of both blogs under one e-mail triggered that both accounts total image useage was waaaay over the limit. Doing some rough math, I think the private blog that I now use to upload images should last to at least the end of the year.

***

Van, Maui Action Photos, sent me these two whale pics he took on Monday.

Mahalo, Van.

***

A brief foray into politics.

Turns out that there is a little known provision in THE PATRIOT ACT that allows the President to directly appoint U.S. Attorney's without having to submit their nomination to the legislature for approval. Makes this entire firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys more understandable. There has also been quite a few news articles about how the US will handle a pandemic. Don't be surprised if marshal law is declared to prevent the spread of whatever disease d'jour occurs just before our General Election in 2008. In a pandemic, all transportation systems will be closed. Public assembly will be banned and a hold will be placed on the election. And Dubya will retain power until the emergency has passed, if ever. Plans are also in place to shut down the internet in the US to control the flow of news so people won't panic if things get out of control.

It is also interesting to note that the Haliburton Corporation, you know - Dick Cheney's little profit point, is moving their HQ from the US to Dubai, UAE. Thus removing trillions of dollars of assets from US criminal and civil court access. Once "dead-eye" Dick is out of office, we all know that there will be a multitude of litigation cases over their waste of US funds that they controlled under their "no-bid" contract to handle the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Think about it.

Okay, you can have your soapbox back.

***

Mahalo for coming by.

See you tomorrow, I hope.

THE PICTURE GALLERY

MOLOKA'I

KALAUPAPA

St. Francis Church