The Most Dangerous Place On Earth…

…or…Carson’s No Good, Terrible, Awful, AWESOME DAY!

Since we started letting people know we were going to take this adventure we’ve gotten a list of dangerous places we should never consider going. Mexico – they kill kids down there. Columbia – they kidnap kids down there…You get the point.

We started our adventure with a few weeks in Kaanapali beach, Maui. Mostly to visit my Mom and to spend some time with my Bro and his family who were was also visiting, and because…well…it’s a pretty cool place.

We awoke one mid week day to some rain. It rains often on Maui in the winter but rarely for an entire day. So I reckoned it’d be a good time for a walk to Lahaina. We could take our time walking there in the rain. Have some lunch, and when it cleared in the afternoon we’d have a nice walk back.

The little town of Lahaina lies about five miles from Kaanapali beach and is the at the center of many colorful historical tales of scallywaggery. Most of which I’ve sadly come to find over the years were either not true or greatly exaggerated. Oh well, it’s still a neat looking town that has some good hamburgers.

About a mile from the town itself across from the cannery center, home to Safeway and several purveyors of random unnecessary stuff, is a restaurant called “Aloha Mixed Plate”. They serve stir fry dishes, burgers, fish sandwiches, and other more traditional Hawaiian meals at pretty good prices.

The rain was starting to pick up so we thought we’d duck in there to eat while the rain let up. It’s an outside eatery and they had clumped umbrellas around tables trying to create a mostly dry eating experience. As we waited for our table the rain picked up. As we got seated it got worse. I checked the weather radar on my phone… LARGE and HEAVY bands of showers were headed our way.

We ordered and ate – really good meals but not exactly a dry dining experience – and we abandoned our idea of walking back. So Malia took Wyatt and Kaila across the street to the cannery mall to look into getting a taxi and Carson stayed with me while we finished and I paid the bill. Wyatt took our backpacks with him.

When the bill came I reached into my pocket for my card and realized that it was in the backpack that Wyatt had just taken across the street. “I’ll go get it Dad”, Carson said as he hustled (like he always does) to retrieve my pack.

Front street is a very narrow and difficult to navigate on nice sunny days. This day it was a nightmare. Parked cars choked the already narrow corridor. People waiting for cars to leave were causing localized traffic. Frustrated locals were rapidly weaving in and out of the blockages and tourists in unfamiliar cars on an unfamiliar street rounded out the cast.

I saw Carson stop as he got to front street. He looked both ways and then disappeared behind a parked car as he went across. I was talking to our server, casually looking in the direction of the street when I saw a body that resembled Carson’s fly up into the air. Now it’s one thing when you see something as unexpected as a body flying through the air. It’s entirely another thing when that body might be someone you know…like YOUR CHILD.

I started moving to my left so I could see around the parked cars that blocked my view and once I cleared them I saw Carson getting up from the middle of the road and running – I mean sprinting to the other side of the street.

I’m running now. Cars stopped. People came running from all directions. Honking, running, yelling, one woman is absolutely sobbing, and then there’s Carson. The rain is coming down. He’s sitting on a planter just off the sidewalk, in front of the mall with Malia. He’s got this completely stunned look on his face. I get there and we check his head, legs, arms…the guy doesn’t have a frickin’ scratch on him. A vacationing nurse comes running up and helps us immobilize his head as we get him out of the rain. Front street is totally backed up and people are freaking. The ambulance is rolling.

“You’ve gotta be Superman”, exclaims the paramedic after his evaluation. Outside of a lump on the side of his forehead which he got when his HEAD BOUNCED OFF THE WINDSHIELD! Carson doesn’t have a scratch. And the paramedic outta know because, to hear him tell it, he’s been hit by a car six times. One time he was even dragged over one hundred feet and then sued by the driver…but that’s a different story. We decide to send Carson to the hospital for an evaluation. Malia hops in the ambulance with him and they give him the full treatment, siren and all.

Maui Memorial Hospital is on the complete other side of the island. I figure 45 min for the drive at least in this weather and another 2-3 hrs for the evaluation. So I’m not expecting to get the pick up call for at least 2 1/2 hrs. A scant hour later Malia calls. It’s so quick I answer thinking that something must be wrong. “We’re done,” she says. “They checked him out and there’s absolutely no sign of any injury.”

Superman indeed.