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F E A T U R E S Bad Trips
Visit Friendly Uzbekistan!
Big Island Blacktop
D E P A R T M E N T S Romancing the Road
Passages:
Table Talk
Salon Taste
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E A R L I E R Tuesday April 22 A night from hell in Los Angeles
A full list of all |
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I N P R A I S E O F lipstick-red convertibles - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y C H R I S T I A N C L A Y T O N BY SHIRLEY STRESHINSKY | some people drive for the flat-out fun of it, others drive to get from here to there. I fall into the latter category; all I need is a reliable machine that will not break down on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, along with a radio with both AM and FM. The last car I can remember having a crush on was pink, had mini-fins and the Beach Boys sang a song about it ("Fun, Fun, Fun"). Some of us never forget that under all that sleek metal wrapping, beyond all the heavy-breathing advertisements, is a basic machine whose primary purpose is transportation.
I hold true to this fundamental thought except when I set foot on the Big Island of Hawaii, where the preternatural happens more or less regularly. There I undergo an astonishing transformation. Even before I collect my baggage at the Kailua-Kona airport, I march straight to the rental car hut to see if they have saved the lipstick-red Mustang convertible I have requested. This past spring I had to make do with a Neon, its fluorescent red almost making up for the fact that the top doesn't come down.
Those first moments are a ritual. If the convertible cover is up, I put it down, or I roll down all the windows. Then I slip into the seat, wriggle a few times to make sure it fits properly. Move the seat forward. Position the mirror. Touch, ever so lightly, the steering wheel, run my fingertips around the rim of it. Sigh. I turn off the radio, so it doesn't blast out at me and trash the mood. Then I snap on the seat belt, turn on the engine, take one more test wriggle of the seat to make sure it's snug, hitch my skirt over my knees and ease into gear. Together again after all these months, the red car and I slip slowly, as one, out of the parking lot and merge effortlessly into the rim road that will carry us out to the highway and north along the Kohala coast.
My virgin exploration of the Big Island was in 1986. Afterward I wrote that this largest in the Hawaiian chain is "big" in another, more oblique sense: "It is as if the island has surged up from the sea bottom like some gigantic whale, breaking through to the surface rather gently, with you clinging to its broad flank, alone and altogether small in the grand scale of things. I felt it most while driving the two-lane blacktop that cuts straight and true through the lava beds that crust the Kohala Coast, with nothing in the rearview mirror and nothing ahead, mountains on one side and ocean on the other, all windows down and the trade winds blowing: it is a fine, swelling emptiness. Exhilarating. Big."
I remember my hair blowing in the warm wind, my sandaled foot on the gas pedal, the music echoing out over the volcanic wastelands. It was like floating on the rim of the world. On that first trip I drove all around the island on a circular road -- called, in various phases of its stretches, the Queen Kaahumanu Highway, Hawaii Belt Road or Mamalahoa Highway. Someone told me that if I should happen to come across an old woman carrying a child, I should be sure to offer her a ride because it almost certainly would be Pele, the goddess of the Volcano and the most important and powerful deity in Hawaii. (Not so surprising, since she's the one who created all the volcanoes, and it was the volcanoes brewing up from the ocean bed that created the islands.) Several people repeated riveting stories about Pele that they had heard from a cousin of a friend, or someone's uncle's brother-in-law. The stories were variations of a theme: An old woman would appear on the roadside, someone would offer her a ride, the car or the truck would then break down, the old woman would say try again, and the engine would turn over right away and they would drive off.
I drove back roads, always with an eye out for Pele, debating what I really would do should I come upon an old woman walking alongside the empty road.
Happily ensconced in my bright red cars (even when they were gray or blue) I found another Hawaii -- open, empty, full of sky and unending ocean. With the windows down, I could hear the rustle of the trade winds whispering through the cane fields, or smell the freshest of air sweetened with pikaki or ginger. I fell into a rhythm with the car, moving with the lurching of changing gears as we climbed, knowing that soon I would have a view from 1,000 feet or so above the sea.
Every year I returned to the Big Island, and every time I tried out a new road. I remember certain stretches with perfect clarity. The Chain of Craters Road, south from the Kilauea Caldera, cuts through a moonscape that is both terrible and wondrous. The topographic map I always carry with me is marked with volcanic notations (it flowed from 1969 to '74, again in l986-93, etc.). For the past dozen years, Pele has played havoc in this area, cutting off the road. With an almost continuous display of fireworks, she has rearranged the landscape.
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