fly

part 1 here

the basket wasn't exactly coming down through the clearing of trees like it was supposed to... "it's ok! this happens all the time wedothisallthetime!!!" the search and rescue guy yelled over the roar of the chopper blades. the basket was, in fact, stuck in the tree canopy.

there's a little rope that hangs down from the basket. the search and rescue guy {let's just say s&r from here on out... deal?} ran about 20 ft down the path to grab the rope and convince the basket to join us up in the clearer part of the path. it didn't want to. it was stuck in lots of branches. l o t s of branches. s&r kept yanking at it, like a kindergartner wiggles and wrestles the tooth that's still well-attached to it's gummy home.

"you're gonna have to get down here! c'mon! NOW!!"

mind you, i can't walk. that's why the chopper's here in the first place, right? so i scooted.

now, i'm sure most all of us wear loose, comfy apparel when hiking. i'm no exception. and my loose yoga pants weren't meant for scooting... by the time i got down to the basket the top few inches of my pantalones were definitely exposed. i kinda cared... tried to pull the pants back up, but s&r said, "get in! get in!"

and getting in was really just more scooting. the basket is made of rope, with a steel tube frame {maybe aluminum ? ?}... like this:

it was hovering about 1-2 ft. above the trail, under lots of dense foliage. i scooted to the back right corner, just like s&r told me to do {like the lady in the green pants in the pic up there}. by the time i was situated, my pants would've put any homeboy to shame. {read: they were sittin below the bum}. oh well, right?

s&r hopped in and off we went. oh but wait, we were stuck. yep, remember that dense foliage? so s&r uses his left hand to rip the branches away from the basket, "this happens allthetime! don't worry!"

o k .

i imagined the weight of the trees and the basket being too much for the chopper as it lost motor control and plummeted into the mountain in a plume of fire and smoke. the girls! casey! i don't wanna die fat!!

and that was about when we broke out of the canopy. the next 60 seconds were pure awesomeness!!! i saw our house. i saw molly and the kids hiking down the mountains with the firemen. i saw the church, the 7-11. {ha! we really don't have much to see from an aerial view here in hau`ula... haha!} then i saw the elementary school, and the field was all lit up, and ants were running around everywhere. ants on the baseball diamond, ants on the fence, ants standing in circles waving their arms... wait. ants don't have arms. then i started recognizing a lot of the ants' faces from church. and i tried to pull my pants up again... fail.

we landed and some more s&r guys helped me out of the basket. there was an ambulance bed, the kind on wheels, across the field a ways.

"can you walk?"

"i can hop." so i started hopping toward the bed. the bed on wheels.

"grab her arms! we'll carry her!"

so i'm getting carried towards the bed. on wheels.

"can't they wheel the bed over here?"

i know. i'm a genius

so they wheeled the bed over, i climbed up and rode over to the ambulance smiling at the beautiful starry night.

my pants were finally where they belonged.

to be continued...