October 2010 – Noctambulator

My good story is that Megumi and Peter came to visit and they are both severely awesome. I took them on two of my favorite Oahu adventures: sea kayaking to Mokulua Nui Island off Kailua and snorkeling in Hanauma Bay. I rented a stand-up paddleboard in addition to the 2-person kayak. Unfortunately the way out was into the wind and waves, and my skill-set cannot handle these conditions. So the stand-up paddle turned into a kneeling paddle which turned into a sit-down paddle which turned into a 2-person sitdown paddle with Megumi manning the bow. We made it to the island, SLOWLY, with Peter meandering around in the kayak. We saw the baby birds and wild ocean. With the wind at our backs on the return trip, the stand-up paddling was as fun as I thought it could be, and Megumi and Peter became adept SU-paddlers with a few comical falls thrown in for fun. At Hanauma Bay I saw: two octopuses (my second favorite cephalopod behind the cuttlefish), four moray eels of three different colors (red & white, snowflake, blue: the blue moray was as tall as me and about wiffle-ball bat around. He scared me.), two sea turtles, and a freaking pack of spotted rays. That place is unbelievable. I also saw a fish with a bite taken out of it. Predators abound! We had a pumpkin-curry cooked by my wonderful wife, and a good time was had by all.

My horrible story is that while I was swimming in Hanauma Bay, I looked at my left hand and my wedding ring was gone. So I turned around and searched the reef where we swam several times to no avail. I talked to some dudes manning the Do Not Harrass The Sea Turtles Booth and they said it happens all the time, they just had a ring turned in today but it didn’t match my description. We walked back to the visitor center and the dude walking in front of me was excited to see the sign which read “Did you lose a ring? Come to the office” I followed him and they happily handed him back his shiny god-awful bejeweled monstrosity which a caring snorkeler had found and turned into lost and found. I filled out a piece of paper with the ring description, detailing the interior engraving of the ring owned for 130+ years by my wife’s family with a knife in my gut. I thought maybe I wouldn’t survive this particular incident.

I worried and worried, and had trouble falling asleep because something just didn’t make sense: I swam and snorkeled dozens of times with that ring on, and had tried pulling it off but it was stuck tight below my knuckle. I had been more worried about catching it on something and seriously injuring the finger, like my dear old dad did. How the hell had it just slipped off while gently swimming? Was the world trying to trick me with that kid who lost his ring and had it found by another swimmer who happened to be walking next to us? Was it like that plot with the scattered data points and there was no line, no evidence of anything?

I was half asleep at 3 in the morning, remembering parts of the day: Peter and I were in the kayak, Megumi on the SUP, when we spotted a purple portugese man-o-war jellyfish, known for their painful sting. I said to peter that maybe I had been stung by one of those because my hand hurt. Then later, I thought to myself, my hand feels better, it was probably just stinging from when I hit my hand on that rock when I jumped into that tidepool on the ocean-side of Mokulua Nui island. Then I woke up entirely and went into the bathroom to look at my hands. I was too bleary-eyed to see if there were scratches, and if so, on what hand. But I laid awake until Talia got up at 4:45am and asked her to get off work early, because we had to go back to the tidepool on Mokulua Nui with our snorkels and look for the ring.

That morning I found a small red mark on my left pinky. I injure myself on a small scale so regularly that I think I almost instantly forget about it when it happens. Nonetheless, I didn’t hold out much hope, but it was still worth a try. Talia didn’t express much hope. How the hell had I not noticed for the few hours in between the island trip and Hanauma Bay. I had no answer, except my human senses are highly fallible.

We left at 1pm, like an anti-Frodo and Sam (Frodo-bar). It would have been fun in an Indiana Jones sort of way if it also wasn’t so horrible. We rented a kayak, they asked if I’ve seen the safety video. I said I watched it yesterday. It was 2:25pm and we had to have the kayak back by five, so I rowed like my name was Judy O. or Caroline L. towards the picturesque M Nui. My lovely wife is not a born paddler but she tries hard and puts up with me so that’s very good. Dark clouds came over and it started to rain, but we pushed along Lanakai through fierce wind and chop, then out to the island and made it to the beach landing (K’s pic) in a record 31 minutes. With reef shoes and snorkels we trekked out to the pool.

Here’s a photo from K’s visit. The pool is maybe 25 feet long by 8 feet wide, oriented perpendicular to the shore. It gets fed by surf and some unlucky fish get thrown in. It’s 6-7 feet deep, and when I jumped in yesterday a jumped a little far to the left in that picture, and my left hand caught a rock underwater on the way down, a small annoyance which didn’t prevent me from jumping in again or hiking further around the island. So with my broken snorkel and mask I looked on the sandy/rocky bottom of the pool for the gold ring.

I saw something shiny and swam down to pick it up. Immediately the sand fluffed and churned, obscuring what was underneath. It was just a piece of shell, but I got worried that if we did that too much, we’d churn the soil and hide anything sitting on top. Maybe the waves had already done this in the 28 hours since the ring might have been dropped. So I continued to look from the surface. Some of the area was rocky but I looked so I had to swim to see closer. Nothing was visible. I searched and searched that end of the pool and the slow wave of disappointment started sweeping over me. It should be clearly visible on the sand and there was just nothing there.

Talia joined me searching further from where I had jumped. She had the other snorkel and when I looked up to clear my leaky mask, I saw her hand come out of the water first holding the gold ring. I grabbed it shoved it back on my finger, there were it’s two characteristic grooves. She said she was wondering if the trapped fish in the tidepool could help us out, when she saw half the ring sticking out of the sand. I kind of knew she’d find it if it was here at all.

So we happily recovered the ring from the wild pacific ocean, it seemed so hopeless when I fist realized it was lost in this huge expanse of water, somewhere on the east side of Oahu. But did Balboa give up when Ivan Drago was landing blow after blow in the second round in front of a hostile Moscow crowd? He did not. He did not.

We walked back our watercraft, admiring the fluffy baby shearwaters and the dead moray eel. A couple we passed asked us if we’d seen the cool tidepool on the other side that was deep enough to jump in. “Sounds sweet, we’ll check it out”.

Now the ring is in safe keeping, not on my finger, while I figure out if I should get it resized down or if I should just eat even more avocados. I’m worn out and sleepy.

Noctambulator

Noctambulator

Month: October 2010

mariners were close this year

it’s sunday

Fireballs are the best

Another terrible physiology study

Sea Monster Update October 2010

crazy story of the week

Good story + horrible story

caltech basketball sucks

Chicago Sammy Hammer

SUP