Shadows and Tall Trees

One of my more frequent sayings is that you can't unsee things. I usually use it in the context of the dark side of the internet, and how there are a lot of things I just don't watch because I don't want to deal with how they might change me. But you can be changed by experiences, too. And I think I might have been changed a little the minute my feet touched the water on Oct. 11. Not at all in a bad way. It feels a little like a weight has been lifted, maybe? It feels a little like the island has embraced me and told me things are going to be okay. Like I'm leaving a little piece of myself here in its care for me to pick up at a later date. Or who knows: I may find out I don't actually need it and not even want it back by that point. I really wanted to get a run in today, seeing as it's our last day here. I ran out toward Diamond Head, thinking I'd just end up doing an out and back. But I decided instead to just bite the bullet and do the full 9k loop. It wa...

As I've already explained, and contrary to how we regularly travel, we didn't plan anything for Hawai'i. Today was our last full day on the island. We'd talked previously about how it would be good to get out of Waikiki for a bit and see another part of O'ahu, possibly by renting scooters and going around Diamond Head or something. But after breakfast at Oahu Mexican Grill (OMG) -- which was great, by the way -- it was clear that wasn't going to happen. So instead we decided to spend our time walking along the beach. Which we mostly did all day. And it was pretty great. We walked south just past the zoo to the War Memorial Natatorium , a cool building with a rich history and, sadly, in great disrepair. And then we talked about the way city councils kick the can down the road about demolishing or fixing these things, and how the Natatorium in Moose Jaw will probably see the same fate in a few years, and how these are the kinds of high-impact cultural projects we...

TLDR : it sucks We had only two things to do in Hawai'i: get a COVID test, and board the ship. We planned to get here a couple of days early in case of flight problems -- there are lots of Australians posting about delays and lost luggage -- but things for us turned out just fine. So we found ourselves in Honolulu for two days with no real plans. With nothing scheduled in a city we've never visited, we decided to just spend the day walking around Waikiki. Starting with breakfast at Aloha Breakfast, a Mr. Breakfast -esque greasy spoon next door to our AirBnB, It was okay. The next stop was the beach, a mere two blocks away, where we took turns standing in the ocean. Standing there in the water, being buffeted about by waves, watching it roll in over the sand, was like something out of a movie. It was even this mystical turquoise colour that regular water just isn't. And even though I was on a beach surrounded by dozens of people, there was a stillness I wasn't quite expe...

 Now I remember why I stopped blogging. I'm not really good at this "do it live, one take, let it all hang out" style of writing. Most times it takes me a little while to get my thoughts together. My usual process is to put things down, let them coalesce, see if I can find the themes, and do a lot of editing  before I post something. But that's not conducive to this style of blogging, which is: get the details of my trip out ASAP because the people crave content! Well, we shall see. Tamara points out this was not our longest travel day. We went to Montreal in July, and that trip took about 19 hours, from getting to the airport to arriving at our AirBnB. This trip only took 15 hours, and we covered almost 5600km. That's 373km/hour -- and most of that was from us hustling through customs in Vancouver trying to make our connecting flight. (Montreal was a mere 124km/h. That is a particularly slow day on the Number 1.) The flights were mostly uneventful. We had Brian (...