Forty thousand dollars is a lot of money, and there are a lot of things you can do with a cool forty grand.  A sensible person might save some and invest some, ultimately seeing that money grow, however, my mother has never been the kind of person who saves and/or invests money, so it was not a surprise that she told me she would be spending the last of  her forty thousand dollar inheritance on a family vacation to French  Polynesia, Bora Bora to be specific.

    Never had she sounded so enthused as she told me of  the marvelous  white sand beaches and the rainbow of fish swimming in water that made the Caribbean look like the stuff that collected in puddles on the floor of your high school's bathroom.  It looks like pee, it smells like  wee, but man, it ain't urine.

     Aren't you excited?   my mother wants to know.

    And I am.

    In fact I become so excited that I decided to do a little research on the islands.  These are the facts:

1)    Papeete, the capital of  French Polynesia, is famous for gang violence and rabid dogs.

2)    About four years before we went to the island, an unusually long and violent rainy season killed more than 95% of all the coral and fish in the lagoon surrounding the island.

3)    Bora Bora  is a very young island; as a result there are no natural beaches to be found.

I am ecstatic.

    I am sitting in what is probably the least comfortable chair I have ever sat in in my entire life
having Pizza Hut for breakfast at four in the morning. Two hours ago I was snug in my bed, now I can feel the acne forming on my face as I finish my last grease-encrusted slice.  It is far from my ideal way to face a new dawn, but it is the only restaurant open in the entire airport.  I decide to take a nap while we wait to board.

    It is now approximately five thirty AM.  A song that the Pizza Hut employee is listening to on the radio drives me from sleep; it is a song about how girls just want to have fun.  I wander out of the store and find that the few shops that  have opened since I fell asleep are mostly souvenir shops.  I don't stop in any of them.  I sit down with my family--who are asleep in the terminal--and close my eyes.  I cannot sleep.

    At nine in the morning our plane lands and refuels for 45 minutes.  As we board the plane I feel that I am already ready to go home.

    After the plane takes off, my opinion about flying changes completely.  This is my first time flying international and I make a point of never flying on an American airline again.  We fly New Zealand Air to Tahiti and I don't have to read my book for even a second to entertain myself.  The seats are well cushioned and have built-in headrests that keep your head from rocking back and forth.  The headphones are free and the radio in my seat works on every channel.  Two movies are shown during the flight,  Shrek 2  and  The Day After Tomorrow.   On my domestic flight to Michigan they gave me a free bag of heavily salted peanuts and charged me two dollars and fifty cents for a drink that was at least 60% ice, gave me a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch that had a lot of salt in it and showed a great blockbuster movie for the entire five and a half hour flight:  Plane inches from San Francisco to Detroit, the weather outside is 23 degrees Celsius, we are moving at 937 kilometers per hour.

    I decide to listen to a stand up comedy bit by a comic from New Zealand on the radio device.
   
     So I was up in Australia the other day.   The comedian begins as laughter and applause die down,  and I wanted to order a fel-ee-full.   The audience guffaws with anticipation of the punch line.   So I walk into this bar and I say to the bartender, 'G'day, you serve fel-ee-fulls?  once again the crowd chuckles.   And the guy says to me, he says, 'fel-ee-fulls?   The chuckling becomes suppressed laughter.   And I say, 'you know, fel-ee-fulls,' and he says, 'Oh, you mean a fal-oo-fol.   The crowd is now roaring with laughter.  I, on the other hand, find it to be about as unfunny as The House of Mirth is boring.

     It's  pronounced falafel,  I think to myself.  They say humor does not cross borders.  They are right.

    The early morning air in Papeete is much warmer than what I am used to, and it catches me off guard.  It is about 75 degrees outside at one in the morning.  It takes us about 10 minutes to go through customs and to gather our luggage.  It  will be seven hours before we check in at our hotel, we  will have spent nearly 32 hours in the airport or on a plane by the time we get there, and there is another plane, an airport  terminal and a boat ride until we get to Bora Bora.  I try to
sleep  but I can't, the air is too sticky to be comfortable.

    By the time we get to the hotel it is raining.  The rain is very warm and if one were to simply lie naked on the beach it would be as though they were taking a warm shower.  A friendly half Samoan and half Italian man greets us at the gates of the hotel and summons some people to take care of our bags.  He first gives us breakfast then takes us on a tour of the hotel grounds.  Tennis courts, wind surfing, volley ball, snorkeling, an artificial beach, all you can eat buffet, good stuff.  The rooms are nothing special, the rain soaks through one part of the roof and there is no bible in the room I share with my brother.  I spend the remainder of the day sleeping.

    The next day it is still raining and I fear some kind of hurricane or tsunami may hit us, but it clears up before breakfast is over.  I wander out onto the beach and decide to try my hand at wind surfing.  If you have never been windsurfing then it is difficult to understand how difficult it is.  It is easy enough to  go  but if you want to turn then the matter is entirely different.  You have to drop your sail diagonally and use it to catch the wind.  You then use the wind to pull the front of the board and turn.  It looks easy on paper, but once your heading out to sea over a square mile of coral that is waiting for you to fall on it and cut you, it is not so easy.  I am lucky.  A current picks up and slowly carries me back towards shore. 

    That afternoon I decide to go snorkeling.  My sources are correct; there is nothing but rocks to look at, which reminds me to watch out for stonefish.  They look like rocks, but are actually among the most poisonous things in the sea.  As I am combing the bottom for stonefish I find some kind of rainbow colored free water fish, which I decide to follow.  As the fish becomes aware that it is being pursued, it starts a defensive maneuver, bobbing up and down.  It leads me out deeper and deeper.  I almost shit on myself when I see a log that looks like a shark, so you can imagine what I feel like when a sand monster pops up from under the sand, grabs the fish in its mouth and settles back into the sand.  As I swim for my life back to shore I drop my improperly attached snorkel, which lands nearby the monster.  It is probably still there.

    My mother and I discover that the hotel has  bikes we can use to cycle around the island.  She tells me it will be fun.  She tells me I can use the exercise. She says ride begins flat, and stays flat for about 98% of the circumference of the island, it’s even paved   I agree to go and am moved to laughter as I zoom past a group of local children trying to crack open a coconut.  I am having a good time.  It begins to boil.  It is easily over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit and I am sweating like I never have before an hour after setting out.  I tell myself to keep going, stay motivated, look at your mom; she is fine, why are you sweating so much?  Besides, the island curves back around up ahead in about half a mile, then it’s  all shade the rest of the way back, you're practically on the home stretch.  I am wrong, the island does not turn onto the home stretch; it is more like turning the corner takes us to the end of the hotel's driveway.  I have provided a diagram to show where we were on the island.
 

[diagram]



Eventually, it isn't even a question of whether or not I will make it back to the hotel.  It is a question of what will kill me first, exhaustion or hyperthermia?

    My mother has already turned back the other way to the hotel, but I am determined to make it all the way around.  I start to hum a song to keep my pedaling in time.  Don't think about how much farther it is, just pedal to the song, just pedal to the song, just pedal to the song.  I look up.  I am not pleased, there is a very steep and tall hill in my path, I will have to walk my bike up.  When I get to the top of the hill I  realize that I am not alone.  On either side of me there is a gang of 5-10 rabid dogs who begin to snarl and bark and I know that I am not welcome here.  I look at both of the gangs before I leap on my bike and fly down the hill.  The dogs do not even try to pursue, but stay on the top of the hill and bark their lungs out as though it were going to make me come back, lie down, and give up.  I look back and give them the bird and feel a renewed vigor, I know that I will make it back.

    And I do.