Bon Voyage

My day starts off with my iPhone ringing me awake at a bright-and-early 2:45am. How much sleep did I actually get? Well, considering my head didn't hit the pillow until around 12:30, I'd say, not nearly enough. But, no worries, today is a travel day, I bought a travel neck pillow, I can sleep on the plane, or so I thought.

Shave, shower, eat, jump in the cab at 3:45, off to the airport.

I suppose now is a good time to talk about this thing called "couch surfing", I mentioned this briefly in my last post. Yep, I'm going to crash on a complete stranger's couch in Aiea, Hawaii. How so? Well, there's this rather fascinating website, www.couchsurfing.com. In a nutshell, the website orchestrates the hosting and surfing of couches from around the world. The intent of the couch hosting/surfing community is to bring together people who enjoy travel and to facilitate cross-cultural learning. In my case, I'm surfing, and I managed to find a host with a couch, that would be Renee. The idea is while I look for a rental, I have a place to stay and I get to make a friend from the get-go.

So, here I am, at the airport, hoping the "Made in Oregon" store that's located inside the airport is open. Why? I wish to buy a gift for my couch "host", something from Oregon, a token of my appreciation. Unfortunately, it's too early in the morning, it's closed. So with heavy heart I go through security and head for my departure gate. Suddenly, things brighten up, there's a little shop near my gate selling, you got it, things made in Oregon. I buy some dried salmon and some marrionberry jelly. Life is good.

My flight to San Francisco is uneventful, aside from the sleeping, farting passenger sitting next to me. It's funny, the guy is all respectable, has a nice pressed suit, he'd have been horrified if he knew what he was doing... Oh well...

Around 9am I board my flight to Honolulu for a 5 1/2 hour journey. As a side note, thank you again Nora for letting me fly companion and save some $$$. Nora is a close friend who has worked for United as a purser (in charge of all the flight attendants) for a long time running, when I checked in my bags and entered her employee number, one of the United employees took notice of the number and said "wow, that's a very low number!".



The flight was long, and no, I didn't sleep, the stupid neck pillow didn't help. The only highlight was sitting next to Jorio (nicknamed Oreo because he's 1/2 white, 1/2 black) who was a young marine, on his way home from boot camp for 1 week. Soon he'll be deployed to Afghanistan. I had 4 free drink coupons, willing to share, I wasn't sure if he was old enough to drink, I ask, he says no. After a little time goes by, I learn he's really on probation and can't drink, got into a bar fight with some Army guys. He was being true to his orders, good for him!

Finally, I land in Hawaii, chase down my luggage, make all the obligatory calls to family to reassure them I'm not floating out in the middle of the Pacific ocean with a circle of sharks sizing up their next meal, jump on the rental car shuttle bus, then fetch my rental car.



Renee, my couch host, is still at work, so I busy myself at a Starbucks near her place and start in on my first day in my Hawaiian virtual office place. I work 2 hours, then head over to Renee's domicile. I arrive in quick order, ring her up, she admits me, ride an elevator up to the 20th floor (there's got to be a good view with this), and I'm face-to-face with Renee and her black cat, Pussy.



She gives me the quick, nickel tour, we chat for a while but she has to go to teach a night class so off she goes. Then off I go to get dinner, then back to my "couch" and work a bit more, Renee returns, we chat a bit more, then we hit both call it a night. She offers me her bed, she'll take the couch she says, I refuse, she insists, I refuse, she insists, I refuse, she gets mad, kicks me out. Ha, just kidding, I reluctantly accept. It's been a long day, I'm exhausted, the sandman quickly arrives and takes me far, far away.

It's good to be in Hawaii...