“Ford..what is fish doing in my ear?”
“It’s translating for you; look in the Book under Babel Fish”
My first 36 hours on my trip and indeed it IS a trip.
I arrived after a sleepless night of finalized packing, last beers with my Dad Larry and my roommates Justine and Anna. Despite the Bon Voyage vibe, we all kept it jovial and upbeat. My dad who is a Super Trooper endured me steam cleaning the carpets at 10pm while he packed my car with my final items. My cat Loki likes to leave a trail in the house…which is why the steam cleaning is needed. As it turns out, I think he’s been spraying out of general unhappiness of not being able to be a cat (he’s indoor). Once at his surrogate home; within 5 days he’s bringing home 2lb rats!
But I digress. We got to sleep at 1:30am – up at 6am. We drove my loaded down car to Oakland airport; it was like going to Burningman – We couldn’t move in the car, see out the back window or in any way enjoy the ride. At Oakland my Dad met me in the prescreening area. I know it was hard for him, to see his son go 0ff to God Knows Where. Not so much worried about how well ill do but the anxiety of not seeing your child for an extended period. I did my best to reassure him. Luckily this day and age we have Facebook, Skype, email and Viber.
In retrospect, I found myself in this weird blank emotional status. Id been rushing for two months, finalizing details, remembering this, paying off that, packing this, groomsman in a wedding, saying goodbye to my 24 year old cat for awhile, cleaning my apartment – I realized I haven’t had time to have an emotional reaction to this change at all. I felt rather like Data from Star Trek TNG after having sex with Tasha Yarr.. I knew I was supposed to be feeling something but all there was, was ..null. “Am I a bad person?” – have I become a Sisters of Mercy song? Because…at the moment “I don’t feel”.
As my buddy Chris Olerich pointed out, there is a difference between being lazy and being overwhelmed. I’ve been obviously overwhelmed.
Luckily I arrive in Oahu in one happy piece. I get my rental car and my friend Aileen who lives on Oahu texts me as I arrived and we have lunch in Honolulu. She suggests I park my car at her place so we can gather things and go to the beach to see the sunset at Magical Beach. The sunset is incredible and we retire after a stint at Walmart to fill my cars trunk with random edible crap and beer. Apparently no one here drinks Shock Top because several locals engaged me asking what it was I was buying like it was sushi in the Midwest!
We retired after a bottle of wine and a random new wave mix I found on Soundcloud -https://soundcloud.com/djrumor/80s-mix-new-wave-post-punk
In the morning, which after going to bed at 3:30am my body time, waking up at 1pm (10am local time) is very warranted; I make her breakfast and we head to the Lighthouse hike Oahu’s South Shore. About a 2 hour hike complete with abandoned WWII era bunkers much like Marin Headlands. We head to Kailua to have killer tacos and eat on the beach. Finally we get to Lanikai Beach for some relaxing and sun. Unfortunately, like an afternoon in the Sunset district, San Francisco – the sun eluded us so we decided to molest as many passing dogs as possible. A drive back and after a specific request from Aileen to put on psytrance, I put on my own psy mix called Bon Voyage https://soundcloud.com/djsparkle-1/bon-voyage-1-track-mp3
It was an early night, after Aileens lumpia and a few glasses of wine we were both done for by 10pm.
Morning came swiftly and I packed and headed to North Shore. I got a room at the Backpackers Hostel at Sharks Cove and snorkeled the remaining hours of the day, on my own for the first time on this leg of the trip. I made friends with my neighbors, a couple from London but originally from Venezuela. In accordance with the newly elected congress I declared war on them and took all their oil, decrying them terrorists and submitting an emotionally agonizing story to CNN about how hard it was to “do whats right”.
Because… America – Fuck Ya.
