Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It might seem silly to be writing about hair, but bear with me, it gets interesting I promise. I have always been restless with my hair, but in the past few months I have taken it to a whole new level. Early in the session I did my usual hair chop and cut it to just above my shoulders. Ok, nothing crazy.

Fast-forward a bit. I went to Bali and spent the entire second night (and I do mean ENTIRE) of the trip getting Dreadlocks. Although this probably seems random, I have secretly wanted them for quite some time. I met two guys within about a week of each other who both had really good-looking dreads. So I got the courage to ask the second one I saw (I only found out much later that the two guys were brothers) how he got them done and he said he had someone in Bali do it. Seeing as how I was leaving for Bali the very next day, I took that as a good sign and decided to go for it.

So we spent the whole first day in Bali walking around, shopping in the markets and looking for someone to dread my hair. It was harder than I expected to find someone who did real dreads without using wax. (Apparently, when it’s done with wax it smells really gross). We finally stumbled into Bali Family Tattoo parlor around 5 pm that had a guy that dreaded hair with a needle (which is the best way to do it, rats the hair with no product). The catch was that this guy worked at their other studio, which we didn’t know how to get to. The guy at the first studio said it was not a problem and that he would send someone to pick us up. This made me nervous, but we were on a mission. Little did we know that our ride would be 3 guys on mopeds. It was either take a chance or not get dreads…so we took a chance (don’t be mad, Mom!). Most likely not the smartest choice, but we thought since all three of use would be together (our other two friends went back to the hotel) that it would be all right. This part of the plan fell through almost immediately, my moped friend pulled over to pull out the foot peg for me and when I looked up the other two had disappeared in front of us. I started getting REALLY nervous then. All kinds of thoughts were racing through my head, “oh, shit.” and “ well, this guy is pretty scrawny, I could take him if I had to”. We were winding down side streets and it seemed to take forever. I kept checking to make sure there were always around other people and I was ready the bail at the first sign of trouble. Eventually we pulled up to Tattoo parlor #2 and Sonya and Emilia were waiting out front for me. Turns out they were just as nervous as I was when they looked back and saw I was gone. Also turns out that we were overreacting and these guys were very nice and polite and caused us no trouble. Not something I will be doing again anytime in the near future though, all I could think about was how my dad warned me just before I left to not take any rides from strangers (it’s always the first rule, just ask Liam Neeson). Sorry, Dad!

Last photo of normal hair 

            So with adrenaline pumping, we went in to the parlor and met Lenny. Lenny was a pretty cool dude who had long dreads himself (somewhat more reassuring than a woman on the street who sells dresses and pulls out a stool when she hears you want dreads). After brief introductions, Lenny gestured to a cushion on the floor and told me to sit.

Step 1: sectioning and ratting

Nine hours later, my dreads were done and I was beyond tired and cranky. To be honest, I don’t know how anyone could sit on the floor and have their hair pulled for nine hours and NOT be tired and cranky. Since we had started so late, we didn’t make it back to the hotel until around 4 in the morning. The process itself was interesting (minus the painful hair pulling) and the other girls took lots of pictures. He first separated it all into small sections and ratted each one just by twisting and pulling it. Then he went back with his needle and tightened each and made them look like actual dreads. This was the part that took so long. Every time we asked how much longer it would be, Lenny told us, “ooh, it will be very long. Many, many more dreads to do. Be here several hours”. Of course, we didn’t really believe him. He never gave us any specific numbers so we thought he was just pulling our leg. He wasn’t. It took FOREVER.

Step 2: Needle work. 

I didn’t know if it was just the crankiness, but I wasn’t super thrilled with them at first. I figured they would just take some getting used to. Turns out, it wasn’t just the crankiness, and I really didn’t like them. They ended up being way more work than I realized. Lenny told me that I was not allowed to get them wet for at least a couple of weeks, which in itself was a huge problem. Here I was staying on a beautiful beach and I wasn’t allowed to get my hair wet?? That’s no fun. And Bali is not a cold place…we were sweating quite a lot every day, and I wasn’t allowed to wash my hair?? Again, no fun.

Much needed stretch break 

The Dreads lasted a grand total of two weeks and 1 day. In the middle of finals I went to the hair salon at Uni and had them chopped off. This was a significantly shorter process that was much more satisfying and provided a lot of laughs. They were able to salvage quite a bit of hair by cutting them mostly off and then combing out a bit that had loosened near the roots. I initially resembled a newborn chicken when this was all combed out. After a conditioning treatment and a bit of a trim, I had a normal haircut! Just one that was substantially shorter than when I started.

Troopers 

 Any logical person would say that I should have researched dreads better before I got them done and should have known what I was getting into. While I agree with this, I am glad that I acted somewhat impulsively. I wouldn’t have really known if I liked them without ever trying. I keep telling people, “It could have been really cool…it just wasn’t”. I find the whole situation pretty funny and I do not regret it a bit. My hair is growing surprisingly fast and I think I will be back to my side pony in no time.  

 The full saga: