Chapter 21: Gary

I really was excited to be spending a week on Maui. I love Furthurmore, but cruising is slow and somewhat tedious. There's a lot of nothing in particular about the middle of the ocean, and as much as I love it, I can see why a lot of rich guys like Paul Allen have their friends take their yachts somewhere, then fly down and join them.

Maui isn't that big. It's something like 50 miles long and 25 miles wide at its widest. But you can still put 300-400 miles on your rental car in a week easily, if you try to go everywhere. Which is impossible, but I wanted to try it anyway. Having to get to the clinic every other day was a bit of a drag, but we scheduled the appointments for late-afternoons, leaving long mornings free.

On our first day, we saw as much of West Maui as we could in a day. For the third day, I'd made arrangements for us to go into the Waikamoi Preserve near Hosmer Grove on the slopes of Mt. Haleakala, the big volcano that makes up East Maui. The Preserve is owned by The Nature Conservancy, and they've done a lot of work to try to keep the area as pristine as possible, a difficult task because of all of the non-native plants and animals. The Conservancy has scheduled trips there, but being one of their largest contributors, I had no problem arranging a private tour. Being able to give millions can open doors otherwise closed to people, even with an organization like TNC.