By the time I left Uila Records in Waimea on Wednesday night, I knew I was on the verge of getting sick with a cold. Thankfully, it was a fairly easy hour-long drive back to Kailua-Kona.
I had started my road trip at around 3:30 pm heading north up the Kohala Coast Road and then down the Kohala Mountain Road, before stopping in at the record store for a couple of hours to hear some live music, and then heading back to where I started.
A 120-mile roundtrip altogether.
Back at the guest house, I poured myself a giant KōHana Hawaiian Agricole Kokoleka Rum and called my husband, Ed, and told him I was sick. And I complained.
It’s a thing, you see. I get sick more often than not when I travel. Sure, it was only a head cold, but I felt sorry for myself. I had plans. I was in Hawai‘i on the trip of a lifetime (for me). A trip I had planned for over a year and had booked six months in advance. And I was fucking sick.
I put myself to bed and I set my alarm for an early start, hoping the cold would miraculously disappear overnight, but it didn’t. My throat was on fire and scratchy, and the pain had kept me awake for much of the night despite paracetamol and later a malasada followed by ibuprofen. At 6:30 am, I slipped on a face mask and drove to the local Safeway where I stocked up on throat lozenges, soft tissues, more ibuprofen, and cold and flu tablets.
Did you know that in Hawai‘i, they ask for your date of birth when you buy cold and flu tablets? And not even the ones with pseudoephedrine in them, just the ones with phenylephrine. I didn’t understand the check-out assistant at first, so I said, “Pardon?” and they repeated themselves, so then I touched my hand to my chest and asked, “You want my date of birth?” and they replied, “Yes, for the cold and flu tablets.” As I walked out, I realised I’d given them my date of birth in day, month, year order, which they would have entered as month, day, year. Oh well.
Back at the guest house, I dosed up on daytime tablets and put myself back to bed, waiting for them to cure me. But they didn’t. So I made myself a coffee and some breakfast and wrote off the rest of the day. I watched television mindlessly. I remember watching Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and then a couple of episodes of Get Gotti on Netflix because previous guests hadn’t logged out of their account. I mean, I could have logged in using my account, but I felt mischievous fucking up someone else’s algorithm. On the scale of being bad, I figured that was on the low side, but enough to satisfy my rebellious tendencies in the face of getting sick in the middle of my possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Not very ‘spirit of aloha’ of me, I know, but my business name isn’t “Clever Helpful Bitter” without reason.
So, yeah, I spent nearly all of Thursday resting in bed. I had food in the fridge and pantry, so I ate when I was hungry and drank lots of water. Honestly, I probably needed a rest day. I’m 45 years old, after all, and had spent the previous five days exploring the Big Island like the 30-something-year-old I am not. I wasn’t setting a blistering pace or anything because I didn’t want to rush my experience of Hawai‘i (that wouldn’t have been very ‘spirit of aloha’), but in hindsight, I was due for a break.
I could have done without getting sick, though.
Mahalo for reading.
All my aloha,
Rebecca x