Green Flash

Last Thursday, I was parked in a beach front chair at the Moana Surfrider drinking a mai tai and waiting for the sunset. Their hotel patio ranks up there as one of my most favorite places to relax and drink in the moment and every time I'm in Honolulu I'll spend a good amount of my off time there. Hawaiian music plays lazily in the background, sunlight filters gently through massive overhanging Banyan Tree branches, turquoise waves wash gently ashore 20 feet away and the period specific architecture is beyond compare. Built in 1901, the Surfrider was the first hotel on Waikiki, and it's pillared entryways coupled with plantation shuttered windows have provided a serene environment for over a century since Robert Louis Stevenson wrote poetry in it's courtyard.

My redeye flight back to Seattle wasn't departing until 10pm, so I decided to spend my last few hours by the beach killing time until I could see one last sunset. "Would you like another mai tai sir?" Hell yes I would like another mai tai. Before long though, my back teeth started swimming and it proved to be at just the most impossible of times to pop a seal. The sun was maybe 10 degrees off the horizon, the courtyard was starting to load up, and there I am- having to abandon my perfect table that I had been sitting at for 2 hrs because I had to hit the head. Great. I always like how you go through this weird realization/denial/ignore/accept phase when you have to go at just the wrong time and here was no exception. It's almost like a unique multi-step process:

1- No, I don't have to go.. it's not a good time.
2- Maybe if I can somehow ignore it, it'll go away. I am going to do mind over matter and it'll be fine.
3- Ok, I think I really have to go but if I press in my stomach muscles, maybe I can delay it. Oh, that feels better. Wait, it's back now. Dammit.
4- My head is sweating and I'm spitting to dehydrate myself. Wait... how much do I have to spit to dehydrate myself again? And why is that woman staring at me with that weird look on her face?
5- I can't wait anymore. I wonder if anyone would find mountaineering pee bottle use to be offensive here? Ugh. Where's the nearest bathroom.

20 minutes to go before sunset on an afternoon where there wasn't a cloud between Honolulu and Tokyo.. and I'm about to jettison my pole position table. I think I hadn't even stood up completely before some beer bellied dude in Bermuda shorts had snagged my chair with a Cheshire Cat grin on his sweaty face. Yeah, whatever buddy. Have fun when you get back to Punxsutawney in a few days.

I made a mad dash to the head, did God's Work and then walked back out on the beach to find a patch of sand to call my own. As I sat down, all around me touristas were talking about the "green flash"- a phenomenon seen predominantly in the tropics where the last sliver of visible sun before cresting the horizon returns a microsecond fast flash of neon green. I have heard of this for years but never witnessed it firsthand. "It's a perfect day for this," one said. "There are no clouds to disrupt the green flash," said another. Literally everyone was talking about it, and it proved to be an infectious band wagon. Wow, the green flash. I'm finally going to see it. Who knows if I was just listening in on a bunch of people like me who were falling victim to some viral green flash campaign sponsored by Ron Paul, or there just so happened to be a 40-pound head astronomer convention at the Moana Surfrider that day. Either way, I was hooked.

I don't really know what it is about South Pacific sunsets, something about the latitude, curvature of the earth, etc. Maybe I should have asked one of those astronomers around me while I had the chance. They are completely out of control. Just about every hue of yellow, red and blue you can imagine streams into view and consciousness. In short order, we quickly cycled through all of these colors, migrating from a light yellow down to purply orange with the sun dropping lower and lower onto the horizon. In good time, there was only a smallest possible sliver of sun left. Everyone just stared with unblinking eyes. And then it happened. Just at the exact second that it dropped below the horizon, a large, large woman slowly walked RIGHT in front of me. I swear to you, the timing couldn't have been more perfect if it had been rehearsed over and over. I mean, you almost can't even pay for that sort of coordination. Then right at that exact moment, 30 people behind and to the sides of me started clapping, whistling and excitedly buzzing about- the green flash. "Did you see that?! Oh my gosh! Did you see that!?"

Great.


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