It looked like the closest thing to heaven on the other side of the planet. Goway.com ("We Know the South Pacific') offered travel packages to remote locations in the Cook Islands via Island Escapes. After seventeen years of marriage, Linda and I were ready to get away from the routine and celebrate marital bliss--in style. We bought a travel package, booked a flight, and headed out over the 2003/04 Christmas break for the time of our lives.
We were not disappointed. Fresh tropical breezes blew away every thought of a nasty Ohio winter from our minds. Linda's high school math classes and my little flock of sheep easily gave way to snorkeling, surfing, and sunbathing. After eight days of fun in the sun, I decided to join a charter for some deep sea fishing. Linda opted to stay at the hotel and write the kids.
Five of us, two other tourists, the Captain and first mate, left Aitutaki at the break of dawn and headed west toward Palmerston. The goal was to get about 30 miles out and begin trolling. As the sun rose over our backs, I got to know my fishing buddies--both Americans. David, a self-taught intellectual, writer, and philosopher was waxing eloquent about Americanism and Puritanism as soon as he learned we were from his native country (he was later to write a blogpost with over 8700 words on this very topic). Jason, a resident of the Palmetto State, was a techno-wonder geek who obviously loved every gadget under the sun. While he chatted about the new electronic shopping cart he helped design, he couldn't take his eyes off the images on the captain's Doppler fish finder. Both of them were at the islands alone--David to do some heavy thinking, Jason to catch his breath before his wife had their next baby--more on that later.
At some point our conversation was interrupted by a stream of colorful cursing from the cabin. It wasn't in English, but there was no mistaking the meaning behind the tone and staccato-like syllables as they rattled and reverberated on deck. When the sound of the words died off over the waves, the sound of the engine died too. The three of us looked at each other as the captain burst out of the cabin and threw open the hatch over the engine compartment. Black smoke billowed out and an acrid stench burned our noses. The captain swore again and called for the first mate. They conferred for several minutes while the boat gently bobbed up and down in the ocean, and then the captain came over to us.
"You will wait on the boat. We are taking the dinghy back to Aitutaki to get help," he commanded.
"You can't just leave us here," Jason cried out.
"It's safer on the boat," was the captain's cool reply. The discussion was obviously over. They would be back in five to six hours. We dropped a sea anchor to wait.
As the dinghy faded on the horizon we took stock of our situation. Our friends were back at home freezing their tails off on the long commute to work. We were on a boat in the middle of the South Pacific with nothing to do for the rest of the day but fish. So fish we did.
During the middle of the afternoon, David noticed the gentle waves beginning to break harder. When he called our attention to this change, we all became aware of a difference in the color of the ocean, the sound of the waves crashing, and now that we thought ot it, the pattern of the clouds in the sky. We looked desperately toward the east, hoping for signs of another boat, but in vain. Messages on the radio garnered no response. Within a half hour, the water was crashing over the sides, rain was pelting down, and we were huddled in the cabin. That's when we discovered we were all Christians. There was a lot of praying as the boat was driven before the wind.
Eight hours later, and half way through the longest night of our lives, Moses' Basket (for that is what we had begun to call her), came to a jolting dead stop right in the middle of a wave. We were all thrown violently forward against a bulkhead, but thankfully, suffered nothing more than cuts and bruises. Outside of the cabin we could suddenly make out the shadows of palm trees bent over in the driving wind. The following wave lifted the boat, carried it over an outer sand bar, and deposited us none-too-gently on the beach. We scrambled over the sides and made for the tree line.
The next morning we thought of our friends on their morning commute and longed for the sub-freezing temperatures and heavy traffic, but there was not a car in sight. In fact, there was nothing in sight. Our South Pacific island paradise was 200 yards long, 50 yards wide, and covered in palm trees.
Jason bent down to pick up a coconut and pulled a piece of chalk out of his pocket. He drew a round circle, put on two dots, and then an upside down curve beneath the two dots.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Oh, it's an emoticon. I'm sad today and just wanted you guys to know," he said, as he propped the coconut up on the sand.
David and I stared at each other in disbelief. I had imagined myself in this kind of a situation before. Who hadn't? But I never, ever, pictured myself drawing an emoticon right out of the castaway chute. Maybe Jason had been hurt in the wreck after all.
David broke the awkward silence, "I've seen those things on the web before. People use them a lot on their blogs. I want to start a blog, but I don't think I'll use emoticons"
"No way! You know about blogging?!" Jason and I both yelled almost simultaneously. "Me, too." We stared at one another in disbelief and all three of us broke out laughing.
Thoughts of our predicament fled from our minds as we shared about blogs. We told about how we got started blogging, what we blogged about, the other blogs we visited, and all of our hopes and dreams for success in the kingdom of blogdom. Jason had even been blogging about this vacation to his family, and knew his posts would be missed. At the mention of family, reality came crashing down like a ton of bricks and we stared out at an empty sea.
"I know why I'm here," David said.
"What!" I said in disbelief. "You know why you're here?"
"Yeah, I've been thinking about blogging it someday," David replied. "I was going to challenge my readers about moving their families halfway across the world to preach the Gospel. We're just too attached to our stuff to do it. Now God has done it for me."
"Well maybe for you," I replied, "But I don't think God intends for me to be part of your blogging narrative. My mission field is back in Ohio."
"I know why I'm here too," Jason said in a flat tone.
"What, you too?" I asked incredulously.
"This is punishment. My wife started a blog when she got pregnant earlier this year. She's made me read it everyday. I had to peruse sites about mothering and pregnancy and add them to her site. It was driving me crazy--medicmoms, mom in the mirror, mommy matters, moms in touch....I couldn't take it anymore. That's why I left on vacation." Jason's voice trailed off. He picked up a coconut and drew an emoticon on it. David and I both recognized it as the "really bummed" one. We had to get off this island fast. Auburn was due in just under a month.
"Let's figure out a way to get out of here," I tried to say with as much determination as I could muster.
For the rest of the day we assembled what we could salvage from the wrecked fishing boat. Though the radio was broken beyond even Jason's considerable technical skills, the doppler fish finder dutifully recorded our exact position on the globe via GPS. We collected as many coconuts as we could, built thatched huts out of palm tree parts, and caught fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The next morning I woke up to see Jason standing by the ocean. I walked down to join him and noticed he had a coconut in his hand. I watched him draw another emoticon. It had a big smiley face and wide eyes.
"What's that?' I asked.
"Oh, that's hopeful," he replied cheerfully. He chalked in our GPS coordinates under the emoticon, placed it in a plastic bag from the boat, and tossed it in the ocean. In silence, we walked back to where David was baking fish for breakfast.
For the next two weeks Jason tossed coconuts into the ocean. Sometimes they were happy, or cynical, or despairing, or crying, or grim, but he kept it up until the plastic bags ran out on day 16.
As we settled into island life, we all began to experience blogging withdrawal. We would wake up in the middle of the night hoping to get a response to an imagined post. David would walk across the beach and then turn around, look at his footprints, and tell us he was leaving trackbacks. Jason was ready to host his wife's delivery live on her blog. I was writing daily posts on palm leaves and linking them together across the floor of the hut. We all imagined that Glenn Reynolds asked us to replace him at the top of the TTLB ecosystem. That's when we knew we were losing it.
Right then, on Day 18, when we were teetering on the brink between virtual reality and total blog assimilation, we heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter in the distance. With rotors chopping the air, it's ungainly shape grew on the horizon heading straight for our island. Soon it was hovering right over our heads. The door opened, and something round came hurtling to the ground. It fell at our feet and looked up smiling at us. It was Jason's emoticon coconut...the hopeful one.
Postscript: Jason is using emoticons now more than ever. You can read his blog here. Auburn had a successful delivery--Thomas James (TJ) was born on January 28th, 2004, and yes, Jason made it back in time. You can read her pregnancy blog here. David got to write that post about the church's priorities on his blog here. Me? Well, I'm the King of the Blogs!
wow, jon, i didn't know you were so creative...
Posted by: melanie | January 19, 2005 at 03:19 PM
Creative? But it's true, Mels, really it is. I thought the photographic evidence would convince the maysayers.
Posted by: jon | January 19, 2005 at 05:58 PM
Jon, just had time to completely read the story all the way through..super funny job! Also CONGRATS on being KING.
Posted by: Deb | January 21, 2005 at 12:17 PM
Thanks, Deb! It was fun to write. I'm afraid a lot of readers won't "get it," but that ok. I'm glad you did!
Posted by: jon | January 21, 2005 at 01:51 PM