Baby I just want your body January 1994, Hawaii      Everyone knows that it is sunny and warm in Hawaii. Even in the "winter" Hawaii is supposed to have a warm climate since it is located in the tropics. However, on the island of Maui, on one of the first days of winter in 1994, I learned that Maui can be cold. Very cold. Zero degrees Celsius cold!      Of course, on that fateful visit to Hawaii, I was not doing the typical tourist thing. I was with a class that was studying Volcanism and volcanic island ecology. That pervious day, my class had just hiked through the caldaria of Haleakala, the highest volcano on Maui. We were spending the night in Haleakala state park with the idea that we would wake up before the crack of dawn to rise to rush up to an observation point near the top and watch the sun come up over the pacific. After all, Haleakala means sun rise in the Polynesian language. So there couldn't have been a better place to watch the sun rise.      In Polynesian/Hawaian mythology, Haleakala was the mountain that the demi god Maui climbed to capture the sun for the Hawaian islanders. The mountain gathered this mythological status by being the highest peek around. We were camping near the summit of it.      Generally the higher in elevation you go, the colder it gets for a number of meteorological reasons. When we checked the weather report for the night we were to sleep on the splendid summit of Haleakala, the repot said to expect a low of 25 degrees Fahrenheit. That's below freezing.      Some members of my class chose to sleep in the rental vans. Steven, our teachers son, even managed to get a van all to himself. When the temperature got too cold, he would turn on the motor and run the heater for a while. However, this was a camping trip. We were camping on Haleakala.. The camping gods had been smiling on our little turtle tent. It had rained when we were camping in Volcano national forest and we were the only tent not to get soaked through. Our tent was a very hardy, two man tent with a vestibule to store our gear. My friend Jeff and myself were determined to sleep outside in "our" tent.      We set up our tent before nightfall, making sure it was in a little gullet that would not be hit by the wind. We put the narrow end facing the wind flow so the wind would blow around the tent as it was designed to do. As we entered the tent for the night, we built up a wall of gear in the vestibule to prevent air from blowing through the zipper. We then climbed into our zero degree bags and got ready for a cold winter's nap. The only way we could have been warmer was to snuggle up to each other, something that neither of us wanted to do.      As we started to drift off the wind was howling around us. Though we were quite warm, someone else wasn't. It was the girl in the tent next to us. Her tent wasn't as air tight as ours so the wind was blowing in through the zipper. Her sleeping bag wasn't as good as ours so it wasn't keeping her has warm. As a result, she was quite cold and was very willing to share her displeasure with us. Then something dawned on Jeff and myself. We wanted her body then and there!      The girl's name is Jenny, though I am sure she now goes by Jennifer. She is quite an intelligent young lady. However, we didn't care about her brain at that moment. Jenny has a laid back and cheerful personality most of the time. We didn't care about her personality either. She had big blue eyes and a huge smile that always seem to attract every male with in five miles to her feet. We didn't care about those things as well. All we wanted her for at that moment was her body. We wanted Jenny for her mammalian female body. The reason is simple. The female body tends to give off a lot of heat. If said female body was placed in between two cold male bodies, said female body would act as a heater keeping said male bodies warm. I'm sure there would be some reciprocation. The large size of the two male bodies would act as an insulator for Jenny, thus helping her to trap in some of her heat, but we didn't care about that. We wanted Jenny. We wanted Jenny at that moment. We wanted her only for her body      Jeff and I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to convince Jenny to come into our tent to join us. The biggest stumbling block was that Jenny would have to get out of her sleeping bag, then out of her tent to come over to join us. Jenny claimed that this would cause her to become even colder (she is a smart lady after all) and the prospect of warmth wasn't worth momentarily becoming colder.      Jeff and myself finally fell asleep. Every once in a while we would hear a moan from the outside. Was it the wind or was it Jenny. Or was it some Hawaiian version of the Yetti. We didn't know or care. We were warm.      We awoke at 4:30 the next morning. Jenny complained about how cold it was and said that at one point she almost was going to come over and join us. That would have be quite a pleasant surprise, its not every night that an attractive blond crawls into bed with you. We drove up to the observation post of Haleakala and huddled together on the platform. It was still quite cold so Jeff, myself, and just about everyone else in the class huddled under our sleeping bags. I do not recall but I am guessing that Jenny finally decided it wasn't such a bad idea to crawl under our sleeping bags with us. Guide Books |  FAQs |  Photos for Sale |  Travel Essays |  Links Contact info: