Paid $270 to throw up like never before

Three and I are still on Oahu. Finally made it to my Auntie’s house on North Shore and we wanted an adventure. So we decided Shark Cage swimming experience sounded good. And it was super fun, at first. Here’s us, enjoying the beauty of the ocean after torrential downpours for two weeks that caused flooding for weeks and turned the ocean water brown close to shore. The weathers still not great and waves are... well let’s just say you don’t have to go to Sandy beach to see the extreme surfing anymore.

So we’re watching the weather, communicating closely with our tour guide about the wind and waves and if the tour may get canceled. He gives us the green light morning of, so we headed to Haleiwa at 7 am yesterday armed with nothing but towels, sunscreen, cell phone and some zofran (with Tylenol and Advil and some Advil PM mixed into the prescription bottle for space saving reasons- like usual). I knew there was weather warnings, so I’m saying some of what happened here was my fault. But we got to the harbor, met our very experienced 17yo and 20yo ship captains who looked like maybe they were taking their dad‘s boat out as their side hustle to finance their surfing habit or something. I showed the kids this weather alert on my phone - and asked if these areas in the warning included this part of Oahu

And I’m like hoping this doesn’t get canceled and the younger guide goes “ah, I don’t know anything about any advisory- the water is a little choppy but we did okay on the first group we took this morning” and he totally plays dumb, like the obvious play-dumb when you want something you know you shouldn’t want so you pretend to not know what you know. We load up and by 8:30 we are hearing the safety parts of the ship- like “here’s the panic button” that will send a big red helicopter out to us if you push it... ”here’s the instructions to the radio in case me and him aren’t on the ship for some reason”... “here’s the two fire extinguishers“... “exits are wherever you can hop over the rails“... and “it’s important that you stay inside the cage when you’re in the water”... and “maintain 3 points of contact with the boat at all times while you’re on it.” All good things to know and well worth the 43 seconds spent reviewing them with us ten very inexperienced passengers about to trust these youth with our lives.

The ship looked very seaworthy I may add, you could tell that this boat probably makes a lot of money for someone all 7 days a week. I just get the feeling that it’s not these two kids and that there was maybe a reason it was not in the charge of its usual captains this particular day.

So, off we go- Three and me, two guys from Chicago (one with a BKA, sporting a snazzy waterproof cover for his prosthesis, a cute little family of 6 with kids 6-12yrs old, and these two girls who tried underwater motor biking the day before and told us later that it was “much worse” and who were the ones who supplied mostly all the pictures that they happily shared with us all.

The first part of the trip was fun, kinda like being on the steel lasso at Frontier City in OKC only 15 min longer than that ride. 15 min straight out into the ocean doesn’t seem too far for tourists to go by tour boat, and the swells were at first only about three times as tall as the boat- which, what do I know, might be pretty normal? Maybe? Well way out there in the ocean where you can’t really see the shore or any other boats, there’s this cage- kinda just floating there and we pull up alongside it and tie the boat to the side of it. Islander Beevis and Butthead demonstrate how to safely get into the cage, tell us we’ll be split into two groups of six and that the non-family 6 of us are getting in first. It was super fun, even at this point. Saw the sharks, they were giant and they were plentiful. Looked up and saw the cute little family taking pictures of us and watching for more... and the guides throwing little fish into the water I guess to attract more and life was good. Oh, and right before I got in i premedicated myself so I’m thinking all is well. Something about bobbing up and down in this little cage with this tight rubber mask on that covers my nose -and the cage going up and down and banging into the boat with the up and down of the water that still seems to me to be unusually very high up then very low down -and the bigger lady bobbing up and kicking me in the face about every 30 seconds, I start to feel like all is not well. I decide to get back into the boat, I’m the first of my group to get out. Not because I’m scared but because I’m feeling a wee bit clostraphobic, think maybe it’s the mask and thought I’ll get out a minute, take it off and then see if I can get back inside the cage after some of the others get out. I got back on the boat and instantly this wave of nausea hit. I don’t know what it was, but all the sudden it seemed like I was on that ride at Frontier City that I hare (here’s a photo so you know what I mean)

I was barely able to walk to the boat bench that four of us rode out there on. And I laid down, covered my eyes with the back of my forearm and tried to block out the up down movement of the boat that was forcing me to hold pretty tight to the rail so I didn’t get knocked off. I hear the cage banging against the boat and the kids in the little family excited for their turn and pointing and yelling oh look there’s another shark! Then I hear Chicago two legs get in the boat after me. I’m laying there dying so I’m not paying much attention till I hear the captain say “oh yeah, just lean over the side and get it all out, some people feel better after they hurl. And I hear splashing back at the end of the boat, then water being dumped somewhere down by my feet that are dangling off the edge of the bench I’m hogging and I think to myself I should sit up to make room- our 20 minutes in the cage must be nearly up. But there’s no earthly way I can and still keep my breakfast inside. Sometime soon I notice my daughters back in the boat, and the other Chicago guy and the girls and I baguely remember the family getting in t shark cage but I have no recollection of what happened between that time and 20 min later when their time was up... if it’s possible to be knocked unconscious by sheer nausea, this is what happened. Now I’m not a puker, I like to say “I can’t throw up” not like it’s impossible for me to do it, but if I ever have to, it comes out my nose- like a lot. Maybe identical to the stream that’ll come out my mouth and that’s always with some pretty fast and furious purpose behind it. Like I never just open my mouth and let loose when I’m just an average amount of sick, I’ll hold off on puking until my body’s like: “open your mouth now or I’ll break your teeth with the force of what’s coming out“ so I finally do and it shoots out like a projectile. I must have the strongest diaphragm muscles of any person ever. So as I sit up because I realize that all 12 passengers are back on the boat and most are vomiting quietly, or sitting on the floor miserable, I’m like Kaci I’m gonna throw up. The mom of the kids goes just do it, you’ll feel better. And I say- no, I’m like the worst thrower upper ever. It isn’t pretty. And so I lean way over the opening where you walk onto the boat, kinda between the three chains that are securing us from falling out and I look down at my toast and spank and rice in the water and all these sharks come to check it out- I don’t know why that was interesting to me, but my face 8 inches off the water with three Galapagos sharks and a tiger shark coming to eat my spam while the boat is tossing so violently that our teenage leaders should have maybe seen a problem with the situation.... and I’m just sitting there staring at the sharks and unable to move. I hear from behind me as I’m wondering why nobody’s getting me my water bottle or a towel or something “Mom, I’m gonna throw up” and I realize Three needs the opening because she’s on the floor (since I took the place of 4 people, several people were on the floor) and shes trying to make it over to me to feed the sharks some of her breakfast too. Well she made it to like my shoulder and let loose. She puked all over me and her and the towel she was trying to bring me. And she’s covered and I’m covered and Beevis comes over with a bucket of sea water and dumps it on us- lots of times. I said man I’m so sorry you have to clean up our throw up and he goes “no problem, happens every trip“ and I said man you guys don’t get paid enough. The ride back to shore was not a good one, lots more vomiting but eventually no more from me. The two ladies were the only ones that I could tell who didn’t puke. They said the day before was a lot worse with their other expensive excursions when the weather was worse.

we get back to shore, don’t even bother to take the puked on towel we brought and I exchange phone numbers with the fellow nauseous travelers so we can send each other pics... and I realize it’s gonna be a minute before I can drive. The boat boys don’t even wait for tips, they just drive off to the boat wash or wherever they go to deodorize and freshen up for the next crew. Looking back, I wonder if maybe they knew this was coming and didn’t want anyone getting mad at them for taking us out on a Small Craft Advisory day with 15 foot swells. Unless you’ve got a cruise ship or Donald Trumps yacht, this probably wasn’t the day to be at sea. But, we did get some great memories and it was only about 2 hrs before I started feeling better. Here’s the shark photos- I’ll pass on posting vomit ones for your benefit.