Riding in a Car with Ariel

Within the first two minutes of getting in a car with Ariel (after first having both of us try to remember how to find it in the parking lot even though I was flying in from Maui as she parked) we ran over a curb and crossed a grass strip to access the exit toll booth.  The woman collecting money stared in disbelief once Ariel finally managed to stop rather crosswise at the exit gate to pay.

Ariel’s driving went downhill from then on.  We left the Airport parking lot, wrong-turned onto a highway and then blissfully drifted in and out of our lane as we drove around the streets of Hilo seeking to find a certain Japanese restaurant.  Naturally, before arrival at the restaurant, we nearly drove head on into an oncoming car.  We dropped the passenger side tires off the roadway before finally parking sideways—taking up two spaces.

Over the next few days, as we drove all around the Big Island, Ariel sat through green lights, wrong-turned, drove up over curbs, stopped halfway through intersections, stopped abruptly after running up on intersections and cars (sending anything resting on the seats to the floor), bumped into the back of an SUV at the gas station, and blocked traffic in a variety of ways.  Hawaiians take this sort of inconvenience in stride.  We never once experienced so much as a honked horn.

And I’ll be damned if I didn’t have the time of my life riding in a car with Ariel.

--Mitchell Hegman