Man, oh man, were we the victim of Murphy's Law today. Today started off nice enough, Ashley with less back pain and Ben fully (un)rested due to a crappy nights sleep. Ashley went to work at the zoo and Ben stayed home,
tried to clean up and set up our new air mattress sleeping arangement. After Ashley got home from work we started getting ready and left for Kailua Beach Park to watch the fireworks that were supposed to go off tonight at 8:45. This is
where the day took a turn for the worst. We were 3 miles up the Pali Highway when our car suddenly died. There is no emergency lane on the Pali Highway and we were several miles from a town. We tried to start it and it just wouldn't so we
decided to go and get some gas at the town a ways back. We walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and finally got to a chevron. We got a gas can, a gallon of gas, some food/drinks and walked to a bus
stop where we waited patiently for several minutes so that we could catch a bus that would take us to about 3 miles from our car. We mentioned how bad of a day that it was to eachother and hoped that it would improve. Ashley opened her Dr. Pepper and under
the cap it said that we won a 2 liter bottle!!! Our day was brightening up! Ben called the bus company and they told us that a bus was going to be at our stop in a few minutes! More good news!!! Things were starting to turn around! The bus arrived a few moments after Ben hung up the phone. We stepped up to
it and the driver asks, "Is there gas in that? You can't get on the bus with that...it's the law."
And so we started walking back up to our car. Half way up we decided to call the police and tell them about the car as it was a hazard to other drivers. We called the honolulu police department and they told us to call 911...a service that we thought, up until now, was
reserved for emergencies. We called and they said they'd have an officer up to our car. We thought it would be a while so we hurried to get up to our car and beat the tow truck. We ran and ran and ran (which is not a pleasant experience just after eating a bunch of
junk food and filling your stomach with drink) through tall grass just off the highway, on a slippery overgrown 'trail' to mile marker 3...the location where our car was supposed to be. It had been towed.




At this point, we almost broke down. We had just wasted 2 hours walking down to get gas then back up only to find that our car was towed away. It felt like a cruel joke...like we were on a hidden camera show and Bob Saget or some other annoying TV personality from the 80's would pop out and say, "Surprise! You're on a hidden
camera show!" Unfortunately this was not the case and we didn't want to stand just off the highway anymore. We then decided to walk back down to the next building and get a cab to come home. By now, it was dark and the rain just barely
started to fall. It was just like a movie when the lead actor/actress has just had a horrible day and the rain starts pouring down. We got down to a building and called a cab. We wait several minutes...nothing. The cab company calls us and tells us they can't find us and
asks for directions again. We give them and the disbatcher tells us she's sending another driver. Again, we wait...nothing. She calls again and says they can't find us and they're finding another driver. We were sitting in the rain and we realized that somewhere in transit we lost the Dr. Pepper bottle and that Ashley's sweater
had acquired the strong smell of gas. A half hour later, a driver arrives.




5 hours, ~$30, a snickers bar, a bag of barbecue lays chips, a Dr. pepper, a Powerade, a BIG blister, a sweater, a headache, and a towed car later, here we are writing in our online web-journal.






We hope your day was better than ours and we're willing to bet almost anything that it was,


Ben & Ashley