COUNTDOWN -- SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2002:

When Americans stopped flying after 9/11, they created some major bargains for those still willing to travel to foreign destinations. A research trip will also double as our 2002 family vacation to Moorea, Tahiti at a fraction the normal cost. We leave tomorrow night.

We’ll be staying in a lanai bungalow, in what I hope turns out to be a quaint little hotel on Cook’s Bay. After putting off our vacation several times because of work, I’m ready for a few days on a tropical island. I fantasize warm days and nights, exotic food, leisurely excursions, swimming in crystal-clear water, and observing sensuous native dancing girls. At the same time I’m reminding myself not to have expectations, which have a way of biting you in the butt.

Tara and I also want to study and write about the spirituality of the Polynesian people and investigate the possibility of offering an island seminar.

Friend Shauna Hoffman is a therapist who has booked a celebrity client into Promises -- a local crisis/dry out center. She had planned to see her client this afternoon and we were to meet afterward for a drink in Malibu. She’s loaning us her library of Tahitian books. But her plans have changed and instead we’ll meet at someplace half way between our homes. She picks ChaChaCha, a Caribbean restaurant in Encino.

Tara is invited to join us. She thinks she can come, but is off to coffee with friend Shane Stanley, then on to check out her horse Li’rica, who is suffering from a cut eye. She also plans to do some last-minute shopping for our trip.

My day is to play catch up. I write a flyer for a seminar Tara and I will conduct in Scottsdale, AZ in November. Our publicity agent has convinced the local Arizona newspaper to do an interview to generate publicity for the seminar, so I put together a press package.

Tara returns home by late afternoon. Li’rica’s eye is better, but she’s on four antibiotic shots a day. My wife tells me she commandeered Shane to accompany her shopping and he picked out a bathing suit for Hunter at Costco. Shane is a screenwriter/producer who has recently been working night and day on project deadlines.

“So what little free time he has, you make him do Costco?” I say.

“Good for his soul,” she says.

Tara and I are having a drink in the ChaChaCha bar when Shauna arrives. She’s a high-energy Leo over-achiever. In addition to her therapy practice, she runs a “Whodoneit” mystery troupe that performs on cruise ships. She claims she’s my personal “therapist, murder queen, actress, acting coach,” and now, because she and her husband Bert have recently been to French Polynesia, she’s added, “travel consultant, island-attire specialist, and Tahitian weather girl.”

The three of us have drinks and dinner and talk for four hours. Before ending the evening, she gives us money to buy Monoi Tiare soap -- coconut and vanilla. “Bert is addicted to it,” she explains.

That probably means I’ll also become addicted to it. I pick up addictions in my travels. We were in Florida a few months ago and now I must start my day with Boca Java’s “Palm Beach Passion.” After a recent week in Ft. Worth, Texas I’ve become addicted to the whole genre of Texas music. And I’m still stuck on single-malt Scotch from our Scotland days.

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