Motorcycle Gang

 

 

I'm in Hawaii and I'm staying with my friend Mark from high school and his adorable wife Annie. Better hosts you cannot find. Truly.

 

Today Annie let me use her moped to explore the island and after a pretty embarrassing gas mishap (I kept trying to fill it up with a faulty pump and in the end I realized the tank was full to begin with) I couldn't get it started. Mark was trying to get some schoolwork done and I tried asking all the idiots at the gas station (no offense or anything, I was one of the idiots after all) to no avail. I ended up having to call Mark. He came to my rescue, but in the meantime a German man came to my rescue first and he got it started. Apparently there's a "kill switch" which disables the starter and that switch was turned to ON. Whatever. There was no time to call mark with a JUST KIDDING and so he came to my rescue anyway and then got gas and then had me follow him to the beach. Just to be nice. Like I said, better hosts you will not find.

 

I decided we should start a motorcycle gang. At every stoplight I asked all the moped drivers if they wanted to join. They all said no. Whatever.

 

Anyway!

 

After just about the best day at Waikiki beach ever (lots and lots of butts to stare at - did I mention I love butts?), I got the old hog ready to ride home. I pulled up Mark and Annie's address on Google maps on my iPhone and set it in the little compartment that Mark told me not to put anything in, because if you hit a bump it could fall out. One-and-a-half blocks later, I noticed that my phone was missing. I panicked:

1. I had no idea how to get to Mark and Annie's.
2. I did not know their phone numbers.
3. My phone! I mean, who cares, you can replace them, but:
1. I have some very choice recordings on my phone that I didn't back up. Irreplaceable and so precious to me.

Here's what happened:

• Panicked, I pulled the moped up onto the sidewalk.
• I turned it off but did not chain it to anything (theft here is a big deal).
• I ran down the street, hoping to find my phone before it got run over by a car.
• I was hyperventilating about the recordings.
• A policeman asked me to "get out of the street ma'am."
• I retraced the entire block-and-a-half. No phone.
• A man named Al asked me what was wrong. I was sobbing. "I lost my phone! I don't know where I live here!" He offered to call it in case somebody picked it up. I was so distraught I just nodded, knowing nobody had picked it up. I gave him my number and he called it.
• Nobody answered.
• Dejected, I walked back to Annie's moped, sure that that same mean cop who told me to get out of the street had given me a ticket for parking it on the sidewalk.
• As I approached, I wondered 'maybe it just fell down more into that compartment.

 

Yep.

 

 

CALM. DOWN.

 

 

***P.s. Of course I called Al back and we talked for 20 minutes about how great it was that my phone wasn't lost after all. He told me that on his third day here he lost his wallet and so he related to the panic in my face and he wanted to help me so bad...Also a young couple happened to be standing by when I found the phone and I told them, "I have to tell you a story and you're not going to want to listen but I'm telling you anyway and you have to just listen because I'm like so stupid and relieved." They listened, like champs. They were also very happy for me! The end.