My best friend from high school recently had his first child, a son. One of the big questions I had was, “What are you going to name him?” The decision was not easy for Brian and Amy, and their deliberations continued even after the actual birth. Finally, a week later, the birth certificate was finalized, and John-Austin Little was finally had his name.

Laura and I can sympathize, in a small way, with Brian and Amy’s plight. We too have been searching for a name for our baby. (No, we’re not expecting a child—we mean our bike, of course!)

Now this may seem silly to some, naming a bicycle, yet it has caused me to ponder why we choose to name some things and not others. Certain things are always named, like people. In fact, there is apparently some deep-rooted repugnancy to assigning a mere number to a human being, as many ads for hospitals or universities have noticed (“Such-and-So Institute: Where You’re a Name and Not a Number”.) But our bike is not human, so this is obviously not the source of our compulsion to name it.

One reason that we choose to name objects is the need to specify: we want to differentiate one thing from another (like streets), so we give them all distinct names. We do not need to differentiate telephone poles, so we don’t usually name them. Likewise, we never have difficulty telling our bike from others (in fact, we’ve never seen another like it), so this seems to not be driving our desire to name it either.

Yet these examples are names usually given by others—we are interested in why we choose individually to name people or things in our lives. After some thought, I have decided that there is something within our minds that demands a name for people or things we encounter that are felt to be significant.

Now perhaps “significant” is the wrong word for this status. Nonetheless, when something crosses that line, a descriptive title is no longer sufficient—a proper name is now required. For instance, say my wife and I encounter a lively character in the subway in New York. For the remainder of the day, we refer to him as “that guy on the subway”—a descriptive moniker. Yet if he somehow becomes emblematic of some idea or moment in our shared experience, he mysteriously transforms to “Subway Man.” This transition occurs seemingly without our consciously discussing a change of title, yet it invariably happens.

Another example: before the road trip, your rusty pickup was simply “the blue truck”. Yet after it becomes an inseparable part of the memorable journey, the vehicle acquires near personhood and is dubbed “Old Blue”.

Not all vehicles, let alone all possessions, make the transition. For some, a car never gets a name; for others, every one is named. For Laura and I, it was obvious from the start that our quirky conveyance for this two-year pedal-powered journey would inevitably become an inextricable member of our journey and therefore require a name. We were certain that the shared miles and trials would bond us to our bike, and they indeed have.

But we were cautious about prematurely christening our trusty steed; a bike should be given time to express its personality before choosing a fitting name. Experience has taught me the dangers of rashly applying a new name: in college, my friend James and I were assigned a third roommate whose name also happened to be James. We decided that two Jameses in one room would be confusing, and we resolved to swiftly apply a nickname to the new roomie as soon as he arrived from Colorado. Without waiting for his actions or personality to give occasion, we dubbed him “Johnny D”, stemming from a vague association between John Denver and the state of Colorado. Somehow, our name stuck, but it did nothing to cement our relationship with him. Before the year was over, “Johnny D” moved out and got an apartment alone. Lesson learned.

So on this trip, Laura and I rode, and we waited. One thousand miles, then two, three, four and five. Two states became four, eight, and eventually twenty, with no name emerging. But finally, just a week ago, a clear winner arrived!

We were considering the name of the bicycle company (Hase, translated as “rabbit” or “hare”), and how amusingly inappropriate it was for our bike. Fleet, nimble, and furry do not readily apply to our tandem bicycle. Instead, it became obvious that our bike was more aptly aligned with the other half of the famed fable: ours was the tortoise, not the hare!

Immediately, the parallels became clear: our motto in bicycle touring is, by merit of our copious baggage and endurance mindset, “Slow and steady wins the race.” Like a turtle, our bike is also self-contained—it carries our home on its back! And the boom stretching way out front reminded us of a long-necked turtle we’d seen at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C. It was perfect!

The final tweak came with a little bit of research, and our bike’s new name was complete: “Ka Honu”, Hawaiian for “the turtle”. We even found a sticker, commonly seen on rear windows of cars in Kona, to represent our bike: that of a green sea turtle. We weren’t brave enough to break a bottle over the boom to christen our vessel, so instead we sprinkled some passionfruit juice on the tube, applied the sticker, and rode Ka Honu down to the beach for a day of snorkeling, our minds satisfied that this vital member of our journey had finally been properly named.

Aloha! Greetings from Holualoa! (For those of you who are unfamiliar, “aloha” is a Hawaiian word meaning “Nah, nah, I’m in paradise and you’re not”.) Those of you who’ve looked at our route will know that this winter Laura and I will be taking a break from bicycle travel. We’ll be getting a long and local taste of our twentieth state, Hawaii, by working on a coffee and macadamia nut farm for four months on the Kona coast of the big island. In this way we hope to save up some money for the remainder of our journey, as well as to drink deep from the many wonders of this noncontiguous state.

On the week of our arrival, the 37th annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival was just beginning. Clare (the owner of the farm and the gracious provider of jobs and housing for Laura and I) gave us entry buttons and loaned us her car to attend several of the events. The night of our first full day we went down to Kailua to watch the parade of local farms, cultural organizations, and schools on the shoreline road. We were most amazed to learn (via a smiling, singing progression of students) that Kona has a Hawaiian language immersion school where all classes up to 9th grade are conducted solely in Hawaiian.

The following day we went to a Coffee and Art Walk in Holualoa (where we live), a tiny village that has become a funky little artists’ colony. During the art walk, all of the galleries opened their doors for tours while nearly forty local coffee farms set up stalls along the road, giving out free samples of their coffees. This was a wonderful chance for Laura and I to get a good taste (literally!) of the local coffee culture; by the half-way point of the walk we were both thoroughly buzzed from the dozens of solo cups of Kona coffee! Although we are far from connoisseurs, we couldn’t help but recognize that this is really good coffee. (Actually, we dread that we may accidentally become minor coffee snobs during our time here and lose our ability to enjoy “mere” Folgers.)

So far we’ve been here a little over a week. In this time we’ve gotten settled into our new home (an early 1900’s Japanese coffee shack on the farm), and begun learning our work. A typical day goes something like this:

• Awake with the sunrise under our mosquito-netted bed in our open-air bedroom
• Eat a breakfast that includes fresh bananas from the farm while listening to the morning’s news on Hawaii Public Radio
• Don our gloves, straw hats, and picking baskets and head into the coffee bushes to pick ripe coffee cherries during the cool of the morning
• After a break, we sometimes transition to working with macadamia nuts in the barn. Laura has been busy at the drying tables sorting the nuts by size and discarding flawed ones. Meanwhile, I often work at the husking machine, feeding freshly collected nuts into the hopper, collecting the nuts as they emerge, and gathering the husks to be composted.
• At 1 pm or so, we head home for lunch, which often includes a salad with fresh avocados from the farm. (Also growing on the farm and available for us to eat are papaya, guava, starfruit, breadfruit, and passionfruit.) Our afternoons are often spent reading in the coffee shack or doing some additional work for Clare’s neighbor.

Coffee farms in Kona range in elevation from 800 feet to above 2,500 feet; ours (Huahua Farms) is at 1,000 feet, the lower end of that range. We are very thankful for this, since our only form of transportation here is our bicycle, and on days off we enjoy riding down into Kailua to go to the beach, snorkel, go grocery shopping, or go to church. The ride down is fast and effortless; the trudge home (typically with a full load of groceries) is more tedious.

Thus far, we are thoroughly enjoying our time here—with such a unique climate, geography, and way of life, it feels as though we’re in another country! (Well, except when we go to Kailua, where within one block are Wal-Mart, Borders, Lowes, Wendy’s, Burger King, Jamba Juice, Ross, and Safeway.)

Since our life here (both at work and at home) is intimately connected with the outdoors, we are enjoying meeting and adjusting to many of our smaller neighbors. Bright green geckos climb on every wall and ceiling of most homes in Hawaii. They are harmless to people and charming to watch and play with. We often put a drop of fruit juice on our table or finger to lure them to come lick it up.

As we go to sleep each night, the air is filled with the two-toned chirps of innumerable coqui frogs. These dime-sized frogs can emit an 80 dB chirp, which sounds like their name is pronounced: “Ko-Kee!” Two spiders are seen commonly around the farm: a large and ghastly one (a garden spider), which is harmless, and a tiny one that looks like a hunk of bark and carries a painful bite that some can have dangerous allergic reactions to. Thus far Laura and I are blissfully unaware of our reactions to the bite.

Overnight we often hear wild boars rooting around the coffee shack, crunching loudly on the fallen macadamia nuts. In the morning, a nearby farm fills the air with crowing roosters and lowing cows. Much to Laura’s delight, Hawaii is snake-free, and we are thus far unaware of any other sizable animals that would give us reason to fear.

Our two-legged neighbors have proved benevolent as well. David, our roommate and fellow coffee picker, has proved most accommodating to our sharing what has been his exclusive residence for six years. Our boss, Clare, and her husband Phil are incredibly hospitable and thoughtful people, and we are thoroughly enjoying learning about Hawaii from them. The next-door neighbors (for whom we do some side-work) have also been most kind, allowing us to pass though their property to access a road down to Kailua. (Otherwise, we would have to go 500+ vertical feet uphill in order to go downhill to town and the beach.)

And yet, despite all their charms, these paradisical islands have yet to dethrone the current fore-runner in our affections for potential future residences of the Beeses: Vermont. Yes, the Green Mountain State managed to knock off Maine, due largely to the universally friendly, outdoorsy, and progressive people we met there. Maine probably trumps geographically, but the populace of Vermont won our hearts. But who knows…perhaps with four months to woo us, Hawaii will prevail yet. Stay tuned…