Originally uploaded by kayekilla.

Two Scoops Rice, One Scoop Macaroni

I’m back. From Maui. The day after getting back from a trip that is better than your real life is kind of like sitting suicide watch for yourself. I also suspect that I may have started a deadly diuretic habit and I might be experiencing withdrawals. Whatever the case, it is raining in LA and I am only thinking about the would haves, should haves, and could haves of my trip.

First of all I should not have left Maui. I should have stayed until my feet matched my brown flip flops and I came up with my own pineapple bread recipe. I’m kidding, really island life will turn you into a dreaded (as in hairstyle) freak. I saw the mature crowd outside of an art opening in a resort town right across the street from “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and thought that I was in Sausalito.

What I really really regret is not bringing the sturdy one-size-too-big Timberland aquasocks that I purchased in Moab, Utah this summer. If there is one item that you seriously need in Hawaii, it is aquasocks. I don’t know how many times I would turn to my travel partners and say, “Now THIS is what aqua socks are for.” And they would just say, “I KNOW, I know.”

We also should have told more people that we were from LA right away. That way we would avoid any unnecessary pandering by the tourism professionals. From one Pacific side city to another – we can get strange fruit anywhere. There was a particularly tense moment when a crazed hippy at a roadside fruit stand tried to get Natalie to crack open a macadamia nut with a giant rock.

I should have bought a Ludacris CD with me to play in the rental car. There isn’t good radio reception on the Hana highway.

I should have discussed the travelogy program with all of my fellow travelers. Some people may not be hip to the program. For instance, each trip has to have a theme. We eventually decided on “Never Enough” – this worked very well once we got going.

I also should have and could have helped out these two Australian RadDads that got cut off on the plane back to LA. I should have let them know that they can't hold their liquor very well and that they were prohibiting my enjoyment of the in-flight movie, “The Queen.” They started off trying to get their kids to play Ro-Sham-Bo for the window seat, their little girl lost and started crying. What a sore loser. The RadDads, dressed in True Religion jeans, screen print tees, and leather bowler – camper – like shoes ordered a vodka cranberry each as soon as the drink cart came around. I only know this because they were seated two seats behind me and I always perk up when men order vodka cranberries. They must have had a few more because in the middle of the movie I could hear them, through my noise-cancelling headphones mind you, heckling the screen – screaming stuff about the queen and Tony Blair. It was awful. One of the RadDads got up to get another round from a flight attendant and she told him he had enough and then said something about how his kids were with him. He went back to his seat to tell RD#2 and they caused such a commotion that three flight attendants had to come over. I thought for sure we would have to land the plane on a secret island and the TSA would escort them off and they would have to Ro-Sham-Bo for the top bunk in a federal prison. But nothing really happened other than a renewal of my faith in the public behavior of grown people.