EAT BOTH SQUARES PLEASE

If the title means nothing to you, go here immediately.

In Hawaii, we did a swimming-with-the-sharks experience.  It's actually a cage, made mostly of bars and plexiglass.  Because he's certifiably insane, G did this a few years ago, back when...let's just say things were more primitive.  You know, back in the day when they would first attract the sharks, then throw the cage out in the ocean (tethered to the boat by a string of dental floss), then tell the people to skip over the dorsal fins into it.  Seriously.  G jumped over open ocean, full of hungry sharks, into that cage.

Um, no thanks.

When we decided to go to Hawaii, the first thing G said was that he wanted to do the shark cage again.  His insanity has not diminished over the years.  At first, I ruled it out, but they've changed the way they do business, much to the sharks' chagrin, and I decided to tempt fate and try it.

This is how it works.  They take the boat three miles off shore to where the sharks are already waiting with bibs around their necks and forks in their fins.  The cage is now fastened to the side of the boat, and we are able to climb down into it like civilized human beings.  We put a snorkel on, and are free to swim around the entire cage and see them from many vantage points (or simply cleave to one corner for dear life and crane one's neck around in every direction, like I did).

We were scheduled to go out at 10:00 a.m. but due to very high winds, they asked if we could come at 7:00 a.m. instead.  The winds are more calm (supposedly) first thing in the morning and they were pretty much canceling the rest of the appointments for the day.  This meant that I was up at - I'm not kidding - 3:30 that morning, in heart-felt prayer and fasting.  I'm not too proud to tell you that I was perhaps the teensiest bit anxious and that the thought of an untimely demise had crossed my mind once, maybe twice.  I told G not to be surprised if Jesus showed up in the cage with us.  G said, Hmmm, I wonder if he'll show up in the pictures.  He didn't, but I know he was there.

It was a breath-taking experience.  One that I would do again, for sure.  There were about a dozen sharks, mostly Galapagos and Sand sharks, between about 8 and 12 feet long.  The Hawaiian word for shark is Mano, but mostly sharks are referred to as "the men in the grey suits" and "the landlords."  As in, the landlord's comin' fo da rent, bra. 

Here are some pics G took with the underwater camera (keep in mind there's no zoom or special features on it):

In honor of our experience, we shared one of the Snickers bars on a hike later in the week.  With wild boars.  But that's a story for another day.