Lee Geiger

Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call.

Jimmy Buffett, “A Pirate Looks at Forty” (1974)

January, 2026

4:40am – DAMN THOSE ROOSTERS! There are two of those feathered alarm clocks, and they’ve been crowing for over an hour. One shrieks from a park next to the hotel, while the other bellows from the garbage bins at the back end of the parking lot. Locals say roosters don’t deserve to be shot because they’ve been made homeless after the 2023 Lahaina fire. I beg to differ. Besides, it’s black as night outside.

The Pretty Blonde sleeps through the ear-splitting symphony of cock-a-doodle-dos thanks to a pair of ear plugs, but since I’m spending the week telecommuting for work, I drag my butt out of bed and slip into Hawaiian “business casual;” beer-stained t-shirt, shorts dusted with leftover coconut shrimp, a crusty ball cap and salty sandals. It’s 9:40am on the East Coast, which means the stock market has been open for ten minutes. It’s time to get to work.

5:00am – I’m first in line at the Lahaina Cannery Starbucks. Have been all week. The pair serving me are the cheeriest/happiest/friendliest baristas I’ve ever come in contact with. It’s like they’ve stepped out of a Barbie movie. It’s been over two years since the fire, and both still sleep on sofas. Unlike dealing with the aftermath of the wildfires in LA, alternative housing arrangements are few if you live on an island and the place you’ve spent years calling home is now a smoldering pile of ash. I buy a tea and croissant and drop a C-note in the tip jar. It’s all I had on me.

5:30am – My office this week is a spacious tropical veranda adjacent to the lobby of the tony Westin Kaanapali Ocean Resort and Villas. I’m surrounded by exqusite waterfalls and delicate koi ponds, the perfect backdrop if you don’t have access to a classical pianist. In the distance are waves crashing against the beach, and further out are mommy and daddy whales making baby whales. Not a bad spot for an aging financial services compliance officer and his laptop. And the Wi-Fi works great.

I send a text to my high school classmate Peter, who lives just up the hill from the hotel. He’s always awake at this ungodly hour. Pete says he’ll meet me here in an hour. The sun arrives later.

6:00am – I send a text to my college buddy Jeff, who is staying a mile or so away at the Westin Maui Resort. He says he’ll walk over and meet us at 7:00am. I love it when a plan comes together.

6:30am – Peter Rolfing, a charismatic football and baseball star at Carmel High School back when Jimmy Carter was president, looks like he just polished off a morning surf. He still flashes that unassuming boy band smile that melted the heart of every girl in our class. It was good to be Pete back then.

This is the third time this week we’ve gotten together. First on Monday, where Peter spent 90-minutes regaling my four Campolindo golfing buddies, who happened to be traveling with me this week, with tales of life on Maui. He also confirmed many of the outrageous, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding stories I’ve told from my days living with Pete, his mother and stepfather in Pebble Beach. Yes, Peter and I once got naked at midnight and streaked across Pebble Beach Golf Links. And yes, we did leave our respective calling cards on Pebble’s famed 18th green. And yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The second time was at Peter’s expansive and tastefully decorated home, where The Pretty Blonde and I were generously served wine and pūpūs by his lovely wife, Tammy. She, too, graduated from Carmel High, but Tammy was a smoking-hot junior when we were pimply-faced freshmen, and thus she was deemed untouchable. Breaking News, my CHS brethren: Tammy’s is as smoking-hot as ever. It’s still good to be Pete.

The fact I’m able to see Peter at all this week is only due to another Maui-related calamity; the cancellation of The Sentry, the PGA Tour’s season opening golf tournament held at the Plantation Course at Kapalua. For the past forty-some years, Peter has been responsible for building and sustaining the infrastructure and logistics associated with the event. In terms even I can understand, golfers golf, announcers announce, and Peter’s company spends 24-hours-a-day doing just about everything else. But because of a historic drought, and a fight-to-the-death lawsuit over water rights, the PGA Tour thought it would be prudent to cancel this year’s tournament. Too bad, because this week the condition of the course, along with the weather, is perfect.

While waiting for the sun to make its appearance, Peter and I ruminate on the concept of Next; namely, his life options if the golf tournament never returns to Maui, because the odds are not good that it will. Professionally, his company will be toast, and he most likely will hang up his tool belt and call it a career. But no man worthy of his ambition likes being dictated by circumstances to retire; we all want to exit the workplace on our own terms. Personally, Peter and Tammy debate leaving Maui, their home for nearly four decades and a place where incredible weather, dramatic scenery, and deep Hawaiian culture collide, for the U.S. mainland. Their daughter has a budding career as an actress and producer in LA, and Tammy’s family still resides on the Monterey Peninsula. One of Peter’s brothers lives in Montana, and the other, golf commentator Mark Rolfing, lives in Maui and is known as “Mr. Golf Hawaii.”

It’s a tough decision. Peter’s much too young and energetic to retire. His mind is sharp, and he looks like he could still rush for a hundred yards against Pacific Grove. He and Tammy have built a wonderful life for themselves on this magical island. But the fire flared out of nowhere, roared down the mountain, and came much too close to their home. Maui will never be the same.

7:00am – Jeff Arce joins us. He looks pretty much the same as he did when I first met him in the fall of 1978 on the fourth floor of Claremont Tower at what was then Claremont Men’s College. Jeff’s quiet demeanor and pleasant persona mask a mischievous take on the world and a wickedly dry sense of humor. He’s also as personable, generous, and polite a gentleman as you’ll ever meet. As a junior, Jeff took me and Havlin, my best pal in college, under his wing and showed us the ropes of how college freshmen should, and should not, behave. After college, Jeff joined a Big Eight accounting firm in Los Angeles, and he and I made plans to room together at a condo he had recently purchased. But his company offered him a life-changing opportunity to open an office in Honolulu, and he made the most of it. Jeff eventually married, raised three beautiful daughters, and never gave a thought to returning to the mainland. After seeing a recent photo of the sunrise taken from the lanai of his home near Diamond Head, I wouldn’t either.

Jeff went over and above the call of friendship by flying in yesterday from Oahu on a propeller-powered puddle-jumper, just to see me. We spent a portion of the afternoon wandering the deserted streets and scorched remains of Lahaina, still empty two-plus years after the August 8, 2023 tragedy that claimed 102 lives. Jeff is a member of a commission charged with dispensing a $200 million relief fund to aid in the town’s recovery, and it was his first visit to Lahaina since the fire. Jeff was visibly shaken and moved. And lost, as the usual landmarks defining parts of the town were gone. We walked down to the Lahaina pier, where a handful of scavenging seagulls substituted for what are normally hordes of excited tourists boarding sunset and whale watching cruises. I tried to visualize scores of people running for their lives and jumping off the pier to escape the inferno, only to spend a frightful night floating in the harbor watching their beloved historic waterfront burn to the ground. What a nightmare.

So, there we were, three guys in our sixties, dressed like beach bums, having a grand old time. It quickly became evident that my two dear friends from different chapters of my life knew many of the same people, especially in the world of Hawaiian golf. Jeff is a long-time member of the prestigious Waialae Country Club in Oahu, which has annually hosted a PGA Tour event since 1965 (first the Hawaiian Open, then the Sony Open). I wisely kept my mouth shut as Peter and Jeff dissected the state of professional golf in Hawaii. It’s not just about water rights at Kapalua; it involves a number of moving parts, including the shifting priorities of the PGA Tour, shaky corporate sponsorships, and declining television ratings due to the scheduling of NFL playoff games. Both Jeff and Peter agree that a future that includes PGA tour events in Hawaii looks questionable at best, and a sense of gloom has become pervasive. It’s a DEFCON-1 emergency.

But how’s this for serendipity? Jeff has not only met Pete’s brother Mark, but his wife Debbie as well. Seems Jeff’s real estate development company, which he joined after his stint in public accounting, once considered building a Top Golf facility in Maui, and that effort involved working with Mark. Go figure.

But wait, there’s more! It turns out Jeff’s very first exposure to golf was hacking balls on Pebble Beach Golf Links, courtesy of SPENDING THE NIGHT at Peter’s house next to the first green. Jeff and I shacked up there for a spell during a college break in 1980, and I introduced him to the wacky ways of playing the course when nobody is looking. Honestly, how weird is that?

Peter and Jeff exchange contact info, which makes me feel uber-good. I wanted so badly to get them together while I was here. They are two of the best people that I’ve had the pleasure to know, despite the fact I get to see them only once in a blue moon, I’m blessed to call them both good friends. Given their mutual interest in golf, as well as their shared desire to do what they can to help rebuild Lahaina, I have no doubt they will soon be in touch with one another.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my story about an unforgettable morning in Maui.