Stories of a Vagabond: We don't need no stinking badgers!

I really don't know what hallucinogen I was smoking the day I got back into Maui and heard on the radio that ad for "Maui's first and only water park grand opening", because it doesn't exist. According to the radio ad I heard, the grand opening was supposed to be this last weekend--and the ad said "drive past Makena until you see the sign with the giant badger on it, and you're there". Well, there's only one road going that way, and I know the road ends not too far past Makena at La Peruse bay, so I figured it'd be easy enough to find. Well, no sign with a badger, and nothing even remotely resembling a water park. I drove all the way to La Peruse and nada.

I'm wondering if that was some sort of radio prank, or if I just dreamed it and thought it was real. According to my friends, other people heard the radio ad too, so I'm leaning toward radio prank. Before I even bothered driving all that way, I googled the hell out of it trying to see if there was any mention, and there wasn't. So I wasn't overly optimistic that it actually existed in the first place, but I thought it would be odd that there'd be an ad for it on the radio and it wouldn't exist. And this wouldn't be the first time that something that existed on Maui was nowhere to be found on the interweb. So I thought I'd give it a try. But alas, no luck.

But nonetheless, yesterday was quite an enjoyable day. I started the day with an early morning run along that Wailea pathway. Sadly during the run a couple days earlier I developed a silver-dollar-sized blister on the arch of my foot, so I knew in the beginning that at the very least the run would hurt. But I've had blisters all over my feet for much of my life, and I've gotten rather used to them. I can usually just ignore the pain. This time, however, the pain was a bit more than I expected so I cut out earlier than I had planned and only jogged maybe two miles of the three mile path.

I then followed my run with a quick dip in the ocean--I was going to lay out on the beach for a while, but the wind was pretty strong and was sandblasting me, so I didn't do end up getting to sunbathe. I just swam in the ocean, then headed down toward La Peruse hoping to find that water park. When that failed, I went to the nearest Starbucks and enjoyed an iced tea while surfing the net for a bit.

Yesterday evening some friends were planning a BBQ get together at their place in Haiku. On the way there I saw one of the brightest rainbows I've ever seen. It damn near blinded me.