In 1974 we moved to Hilo, Hawaii. I was about 26 years old then with a new baby. He is now 49 and lives in Portland with his family. We arrived in Hilo, which is in a rainforest on that side of the big island of Hawaii and I was scared at first that I wouldn't be able to deal with the humidity and heat of August on the Big Island. To give you some idea of how much hotter Hawaii can be than the mainland, I went with 2 friends to the Kona side of the big island in January of 2015 snorkeling and the water was at least 85 degrees in January! So, you can imagine just how humid and hot it was in Hilo in August of 1974!
But, I was only 26 then and newly married with a new baby son so I adapted as best as I could to the heat then. My wife then had lived in Hilo Before after she graduated Berkeley High School in the SF Bay area then and had lived there with her previous boyfriend to me.
Then in 1989 also a new baby in my life (my 2nd biological child a daughter) was about 7 months old when we moved to Maui from UC Santa Cruz where we had been attending the University there and living in Family Student Housing there in Santa Cruz, California.
We moved there to Maui to Hana which is another place in a Rainforest only this time on Maui. IF you have ever traveled to Hawaii and rented a car and driven "The Road to Hana" from Kahului where you can rent a car you know that it is a wild ride to Hana. And if it is raining hard when you do this there is also a chance you won't survive this drive.
I found this out the hard way in 1989 when I first moved there. We had a Ford Window Van then and it was much cheaper to shop for food and other things in Wailuku or Kahului than in Hana. So, most people in Hana made the arduous trek by vehicle to Kahului and Wailuku to shop at more reasonable prices.
But, neighbors said to us in Hana: "You shouldn't go to town today it's going to rain!"
We had no idea what they were talking about but found out on our way back from Wailuku where we all almost perished in the rain on the Road to Hana.
First of all, the raindrops in a rain forest can be as big as strawberries so a few seconds if you are out in it you are drenched to the bone. Rain in the rainforests of the Hawaiian Islands at this level can easily be fatal from various causes like streams of water shooting down hills and taking everything not nailed down into the ocean and off of cliffs.
So, as we drove almost to Hana we found ourselves with water on the road as deep as our floorboards with water running across our floorboards of our Ford Window Van. This alone was pretty scary. But, on top of this bolders the size of a laptop computer were crashing into our wheels off of 4 foot cliffs to the right side of us and the water and the rocks were pushing us quickly towards the edge of a cliff and into 25 foot waves on the ocean below. For us, from the mainland this was completely terrifying because we had no idea it could do this ever!
So, I had the whole family (wife and three children) jump in back where the rear wheels were because the rear wheels were floating and because this was a 2 wheel rear wheel drive only, when the rear wheels left the ground from the water I had no traction to save us from being washed off the cliffs into the 25 feet waves on the ocean. Luckily their jumping up and down on the rear wheels brought me just enough traction to save us in this situation. However, we NEVER drove in a big rainstorm to Wailuku ever again because we preferred to be alive.
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