Day 107 – NU to ON to NY. Flying South + Finishing all of Canada + 49 States Down…

Friday November 16th, 2018 (full photo album here)

[Editor’s note – as described in the previous post, I had actually squeezed in a LOT to the morning before departure from Iqaluit. I will still catalog a few of things here, but to get the whole story you will need to read Day 106 as well]

Up and at ’em.

Rachel was gracious enough to pick me up and take me around to various sites, from the “Road to Nowhere” to the other and unlabeled road to nowhere, both of which disappeared into a white and snowy wasteland. I could live there for the rest of my life, in some ways. We zipped around and she even got in a stop at her final work site for her business trip.

Then, it was time to drive to the airport, take in the sub-Arctic rainbow over the runway…

… and head inside the terminal. With only 2 gates, there was not a lot of space for Inuit artwork, but they made judicious use of the larger flat surfaces with excellent works:

Only 2 gates = only a handful of television screens with flight information – it was officially chilly all across Nunavut that morning!

With the sea frozen, and especially with the idiocy of teenage arsonists having burned down the food warehouse, the only way to bring in supplies (the modified front portion of the passenger planes, turned into an easy-access cargo hold) was higher priority than getting us paying customers onto the plane. Still, it was pretty cool to watch the hatch open like the gull-wing door on a DeLorean:

Maybe the most important moment in Canada for me was next – I got to wear shorts in around -15 degree F wind-chill, as I walked to the plane on the tarmac. Rachel surreptitiously snapped evidence of my (stylish) boots-and-shorts combo, and I got the satisfaction of Inuit people and Canadians shoveling their jaws off the asphalt when they saw me in that bitter and cold wind. Perfect:

My seat turned out to be right behind the cargo bay, and that wall was surprisingly poorly insulated. My cojones in wearing shorts for the walk made for an unpleasant flight, but there were two consolation prizes. Neither of them took the sting out of the highway robbery pricing for tickets to fly, but the warmed and gooey chocolate chip cookie was good…

… and the hot chocolate was great:

Even better – my seat was by itself so I was able to lean over and get some FANTASTIC photographs of the barren wilderness in its splendor and glory:

Eventually, that flight heading straight south reached Ottawa International Airport and my chilly legs were afforded a chance to debark. I walked into the terminal from the tarmac (always a weird experience) and gathered up my belongings. I wished Rachel the very best, trying my best to convey my gratitude at her having driven me to the places I would not have reached otherwise (and for becoming my friend). With a hug, she was off towards her next flight to get home. I was off towards the parking lot.

Or, rather, I tried to go that way. “Young man! YOUNG MAN!!” I turned, discerning from the voice that at 30 years of age, I could still qualify for that moniker. I turned around and eyed the source of that call. An elderly Inuit woman, who I recognized as someone who had been on the flight down from Iqaluit, caught up with me. She looked me right in the eye, and in perhaps the most unexpected pagan blessing I will ever receive, she told me the following:

“Young man, you should thank whichever hunter caught the seal you ate,” she explained, looking down from my eyes at my still bare legs, then back up at my eyes. “That hunter was very good, as you ate the flesh of that seal and gained its strength and spirit. That is the only way you could handle the cold, in those short pants.”

I was taken aback, and for a split second I suspect that my confusion played across my face. It was abundantly clear to me that she was entirely sincere – her religious explanation for my incomprehensible choice in wearing shorts was her best guess at trying to understand. In one fell swoop, I got a pagan omen in favor of my ever growing sense that perhaps I should move to Alaska for a few years in the shorter term (to make use of my inner spirit of the seal, you see); and also was blindsided once again by the satisfaction which is possible from interacting with a total stranger in a positive way without any sort of saccharine reference to social media likes or following or other disingenuous “connection” which is not really there.

What is life, if not a series of brief encounters by chance? Invigorating, then, to just have a chance meeting and a smile at the joy of those positive times in life which can be neither planned for nor expected.

I recovered from my confusion, and thanked her for her kind words indeed. I wished her well in the comparative warmth of Ottawa.

Then I walked outside and ran into “neither planned for nor expected” many inches of snow had fallen and encrusted my truck. This time, unlike up in Labrador, I did not have a hotel concierge to loan me a broom to try and clear the truck…

… so one of many tools crammed into the truck came to my rescue. A tiny and flimsy cheap handheld broom (for use with dustpan), to Bob Ross my way out of snowy truck encrustation:

My work of art took a while, but I got it done. I always do.

The truck was warmed up enough to put a very satisfying address into the GPS. The home country. But after such a long day of Nunavut adventuring; a chilly flight; and an Inuit blessing in an international airport… I was going to drive back down into those United States.

First, though, I *completed* the Canadian map on my tailgate, adding both Ontario and Nunavut. What a rush:

The next “rush” was me, following the speed limit all the way down to the border with New York state. Google Maps (what I ended up switching to, after a construction traffic snarl) was nice enough to offer me a personal welcome as I blazed back across to the land of franchises, litigation, and decency-gridlocked-by-headache.

The US of A:

The exhaustion, on schedule, had set in. I was in no shape to look for a campground but I did at a fuel stop. Nothing free near me, it was past midnight and I was burned too many times in the south by “show up and hope to pay in the morning, to find a locked gate barring my entry” so that option was out. I did that unpleasant calculus of “too tired to keep going, but no hotel near me, but need to make distance” – by this point in the trip, I was an expert. The equation spit out “somehow make it to the La Quinta of Johnson City, NY” and so I did it.

The night clerk was friendly, looked about half as tired as I felt, and inquisitive as to what brought me to Johnson City at such a late hour. I think I mumbled something semi-intelligible, it may have even been in English. I couldn’t tell you what it was. That room in my memory is a blur, as I stumbled in, set up my CPAP on muscle memory alone (my vision was faulty by that point) and I passed out, 1500 miles from where I woke up.

Day 105 – ON to NU. Frozen Doors + Frozen North

Wednesday November 14, 2018 (full photo album here)

Prepped and packed the night before, I took a quick shower, had some granola for breakfast, and then ran out to the truck. The night had been very cold indeed and so the doors were a bit frozen shut.

Or, rather, 3 of them were. WHAT a morning to find out that the driver’s rear door, internally to the mechanism, had *seriously* frozen. More specifically, it had frozen open after I wrenched the door open. Or, as the problem was called on my old Volkswagen, I had a terribly bad case of “door bonk” and at the most terribly awful time.

I jerry-rigged the door mostly shut and crept over to the front desk. “I need to check out but also do you have a hair dryer at the desk which I can use with the extension cord in my truck???” They did me one better – OF COURSE they have a heavy duty, high-output heatgun at the front desk of their glitzy hotel:

NOT a great start to the day.

But the door internals thawed without the door melting, and the door got closed and didn’t bonk back open. I was a very zippy little gargantuan truck weaving through slower traffic to get to a parking lot at the Ottawa International Airport.

I rushed inside and went through security, checking a bag and eventually finding my way to the proper terminal and gate.

A deep breath, followed by a big old grin. My unpleasantly overpriced monopolistic flight was not to my liking, but their choice of symbol and slogan worked its marketing magic on me: “Canadian North… Seriously North.” The flight eventually got underway – after walking on the tarmac to steps, old-school.

I was seated next to a young lady, Rachel, who I ended up befriending in the course of our shared flight. Rachel is a civil engineer, and she was flying up to do work on one of the new hotels going into Iqualuit. We spent the 4 hours and change in discussion about all manner of things, and had a grand old time. She graciously offered to drive me to my Airbnb (and if timing allowed, elsewhere on Baffin Island’s largest city). This was a huge and unexpected boon – and so I was even more excited when we landed and got to walk off the plane, with the afternoon sub-Arctic sun setting already at 3pm:

 

Rachel’s friends and clients in town had left a company truck for her use, so we climbed into a GMC Yukon (a new vehicle to me, having visited and indeed crossed the Yukon River and Yukon Territory!) and let it warm up, adorable license plate and all:

As warm as it was going to get from idling, we were off. Only the most official signs in town were trilingual, and that included the overachieving stop sign out of the airport parking lot, sporting English, French, and Inuktitut [written Inuit, in this case both transliterated into English and in its natural form]:

That first glimpse of town was not a fluke, because by law the town’s buildings must incorporate bright colors on the exterior. This is part of a strategy to combat the intensity of seasonal affective disorder in a place where the sun was absent for such long hours in the winter:

We looped around up to the Airbnb and Rachel dropped me off – the house was an interesting design, sort of a sub-Arctic Italian flag-inspired building…

… with the required lifted foundation, to keep it off the permafrost and thus prevent heat from bleeding out and wrecking the environment…

I met one daughter of the host’s family, and she was very gracious and helpful. She even gave me a lift around and down the hill, leaving me at my request at the cemetery so I could walk by some of the houses and see a different street in town (it is ~8000 residents total, making “neighborhoods” miniaturized). I walked along the cemetery…

… hiked out onto the breakwater to regard frozen Frobisher Bay…

… and was a bit frozen myself when I reached the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum. The only proper museum in Nunavut, I saw and learned a lot, in a space split between showcasing traditional Inuit culture, history, and practice… and then an art gallery for local Inuit artists. A sampling of what I saw and learned:

• A list of communities in Nunavut with English, Inuktitut, and transliterated Inuktitut names:

• A very small but breathtakingly beautiful collection of various Inuit clothing and gear:

• Various details of Inuit mythology, including a beautiful creation story (which appeals to me as a yeti, as well as aesthetically):

• Learning about the Inukshuk, the ubiquitous rock figures erected by Inuit hunters to remember the best places to hunt:

• Enjoying the contours and flavor of the Inuit seasons and how they count time:

• The local art gallery itself, all highly overpriced but also the only real non-subsistence industry for many of the poorest inhabitants of the city (and, really, the province):

I highly recommend visiting if ever you find yourself in chilly Iqaluit, and you will not be disappointed by all you get to learn.

The afternoon sun was fast departing for parts far to the south, and so the nightlife in Iqaluit was more the “late afternoon life.” I walked a bit, weirded out by medium construction ongoing in pitch dark (before realizing it was merely 4:00pm). I stopped by another surrogate home for myself, the Arctic Survival Store…

… and then went across the street to the eponymous Snack for, well, a snack! It was painfully, ridiculously overpriced, but it was a good introduction to the company town sort of lifestyle where costs were inflated but constant. A lot of the realities in Iqaluit, I learned quickly the first day there, simply do not meet up with the norm anywhere else.

I hiked up the hill and back to my lodging for the night. The view of the town was worth the effort and frigid exertion, I can say with certainty:

^ the red light above is on the water tank for the house. No sewers or water pipes in town as it would disturb the permafrost and be prohibitively expensive. It is all trucked in and out from each house and business as needed, and the light system helps the trucks know where to stop.

I got inside the house and over into my own private room…

… the accommodations were fantastic but paled in comparison with the awesome family there. We sat down at their kitchen table and spent a solid 3 hours of discussion. No one looked at their phones, their 14 year old daughter was engaged and excited to be socializing. We looked each other in the eyes, we all embraced the topics as they came and shared a distaste for the lack of genuine engagement in the world around us. I was already feeling strongly in favor of a place like Iqaluit in my future (more on that in a subsequent post). But I went back into my room as the discussion came to a halt, and again soaked in the view of Iqaluit nestled alongside the icy Frobisher Bay:

A long day of travel and hiking and socializing and new friends. All worth the costs of fuel and time and intense effort to make it up to the last Canadian province, and allowing me to finish the country off for my trip’s purposes?

You bet your ass it was worth it.

Day 47 – OH to AZ + back on the road, towards the Grand Canyon

Monday September 17, 2018 (full photo album here)

I spent Monday morning failing to pack quickly enough, in my sleepyhead state. This marginal level of preparedness was the perfect recipe for a harried attempt at getting my things together, before my sister graciously zipped me over to Hopkins Airport. The security line was long; I got up to the TSA agent only to find that my electronic ticket was somehow incorrect or invalid (I never got a clear explanation from the agent about why) and so I had to RUN over to the Southwest counter to get paper tickets. I was rushed through to the front of the line as I was mighty close to my departure time… and then got stopped up at the X-ray machine because my CPAP machine set off some warning bell. Awesome! I made it through, RAN over to the gate, and very soon thereafter was on the plane and in the air. My last view of Ohio for almost 3 months was through that plane’s window:

A short time later, I was back in Chicago’s Midway Airport, which is named to honor the World War II battle and features a restored Dauntless dive bomber suspended from the ceiling in a corridor filled with museum-esque informational signs on the battle:

It made for an educational view as I enjoyed some overpriced, low quality Chicago-style pizza from one of the vendors.

Surrounded by multiple poor parents of crying children before a flight, I proceeded to install earbuds into my ears and enjoy some comparatively soothing death metal as I dove into the newly-released biography of Mister Rogers. Thanks to the riveting story in front of me, the duration of that second flight actually passed rather quickly.

We landed in Phoenix a bit earlier than scheduled (in spite of a late departure) and got to deplane quickly. Arizona decided to roll out a red carpet, because it was 106 degrees outside, and the jetway air conditioning was broken… so in that oven it must have been 115 on a red carpet which may as well have been magma. “Welcome back to the desert,” my sweat glands whispered, and I again reconfirm that I am a yeti. I rushed through the airport towards the cell phone lot, and along the way was horrified to watcha sister manage to dump her brother out of the wheelchair he was in, forcing his full weight onto an incredibly bruised and swollen ankle that wasn’t wrapped. Just like everyone else around them, I was horrified and moved over to try and help. The young man couldn’t actually speak at first, because the pain was so intense. The other people who ran over to help turned out to be a set of nurses traveling together, who confirmed what I had immediately said: “let us help you into that chair, and you need to get to a doctor immediately.” The brother and sister looked sheepish and admitted that this injury had occurred before getting on the plane in Cleveland (several hours earlier), and they were waiting to go to an Urgent Care back home in Phoenix. Yikes. I am certainly not a medical doctor, but when your ankle is 30% visibly swollen and purple, it is probably no good to try and put any weight on it. Never a dull moment at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

I was picked up at the airport by Casey, the same gentleman who had graciously helped me park my truck 11 days prior. Arriving back at my truck, even with the windows cracked and all of the reflective window shades installed… it was still an oven inside the truck at 7:30 pm. With the sun below the horizon and the temperature showing 102 degrees… Arizona is many things, but mostly it is the wrong climate for me. My fuel additive somehow spilled while I was gone, and the intense oven of my truck cab meant that it was actually turned in a carcinogenic caramel on my poor unsuspecting floor mat. Yay!

After loading up the truck, I had promised Casey I would buy him dinner the night I returned, to thank him. We went to Venezia Pizzeria, a restaurant started in the Phoenix area (and Casey’s favorite). He forewarned me about the gigantic slices of pizza on offer, but having only had breakfast followed by multiple hours of traveling and time zone changes behind me… I decided it would be wise to go for three slices (Margarita, Hawaiian, and chicken pesto). It was too much food but it was scrumptious and would help fuel me for a few hours of driving that night. During dinner, I got a call from Brad and Cindy (whose home I had parked at while away) and heard about how they just had ANOTHER trailer tire blow out on their way home. We had hoped to share a meal before I departed, but after some back-and-forth discussion decided that I would swing back around to visit them later on my trip (so they would have some time to settle back into home).

Suitably fortified with pizza and lemonade, and ready to begin the next driving leg of my grand adventure, I vowed to reach the Grand Canyon that night (or as close as I could go). The GPS estimate was 4 hours and 10 minutes of travel time, and I ended up making it about half way before realizing I was just too tired to safely go any further. As seems to be one of my specialties, I found a campsite confirmed by Google Maps and the AZ Parks website, and proceeded to drive there. The cute little Beaver Creek Campground, featuring 13 sites that are first come first serve, well, turned out to have a gate in front of it that said “oh by the way, we are only open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and you have to arrive by 3 p.m. and depart before dusk.” Awesome:

Back on the road I went, looking for the next nearest campground. Or, rather, I am looking for national parks, national forest, and particularly Bureau of Land Management owned property, because all of those allow for free dispersed camping (unlike proper “campgrounds”). Google Maps around me was all green to denote being in the Coconino National Forest, meaning I get off the road and drive until I found a suitable spot. Setting up, even with 11 days away from the rig, was now muscle memory – very quick and easy.

My body clock was telling me it was 3:30 in the morning (something like 12:30am local time). My ability to sleep was helped by the fact that I was most of the way to Flagstaff Arizona, nestled in the mountains. Therefore, my day started in Cleveland at 65 degrees, reached 106 degrees in Phoenix, and ended with me sleeping in 52 degrees.

I was back in the saddle, and more excited than ever to be on the trail.

A Wedding Interlude in OH

September 8-16, 2018 (full photo album here)

It seems worth telling at least a shortened version of the tale, of my time back home. Flying home on a Friday allowed me to he;p set up, and then attend the bachelor LAN party with some old friends indeed, held at the groom’s photography studio:

A grand old time, with much laughter. The thoughtful groomsman gift turned out to be a thematic match for the bachelor party, as Chris got each of us a 3D printed headset holder, with our various chosen gamer handles from back in the day… so of course mine says “MrBrefast” as in the shortened version MRBRFST on my vanity plates:

Weekend 1 at home, to be at the bachelor party, was done and a huge success. What followed was a set of days running around to visit various friends and family while home. This gave me a chance to catch them up on the trip (as the nature of being on the road without cell signal + an attempt at contemplative silence = not a lot of keeping in touch while gone).

During the week, I discovered that my rented tuxedo was hilariously too large for me, as I had lost 20+ lbs on the trip thus far. The rental company was great to work with and got me replacements in a timely fashion. I think I ended up looking halfway decent:

After a whirlwind week, Weekend 2: the Wedding.A beautiful setting in Geauga County; a lovely ceremony; and a lot of smiles and tears of joy. Truly an honor to have been up there with and for my friend (plus, no ringbearing youngster meant I had the heavy responsibility of holding the rings in my pockets and not dropping them when pulling them out!).

I was one of 2 people (the other was the maid of honor) who knew about the big secret. Namely, that the presentation of bridge and groom was going to be spiced up by, you know, inflatable tyrannosaurus rex costumes, which the maid of honor and I got to help them change into…

… and then running down the aisle of the reception with the classical masterpiece Turn Down For What blaring… and twerking in their suits, too:

The crowd went absolutely wild with laughter, mirth, excitement, and got swept out of their chairs onto their feet, dancing and clapping and cheering along with the newlyweds. A smashing success.

I helped extricate Chris and Nicole from their suits (the material did not breathe at all, given that they were inflatables and needed to be airtight, so they were a bit lightheaded after their exertion) in the back, and then we ended up at the table up front. A lovely maid of honor speech later, I had the chance to speak a bit myself. Wisdom gleaned from my travels informed what I had to say, and I spoke about how life is short and uncertain, and therefore it is all the more vital to grasp those important and worthwhile things and people in our lives. After all: Chris and Nicole had done that since day 1, and the timeless nature of their relationship was all the signal I needed to know it was the right fit. It made my heart sing, to be able to share my thoughts in front of the assembled people, about how much I care for and about my friends, newly married. It was a grand day and one which I cherished being a part of.

The second Sunday home, I took a chance to try and recuperate a little bit before heading back out to my truck and the resumption of INTENSE DRIVING PACE. I must admit, in retrospect, that I was not at all ready for the realities of being back home from the trek and giving myself 0 moments of pondering the meaning of the wandering behind or ahead of me. Albeit glad to have had time at home in the midst of my rushing about, I do believe that my lack of self-preparation did me a great disservice (by the time i was getting ready to leave home after the wedding, I was JUST starting to settle in and be comfortable around lots of people again… before departing for months alone again). I am fine, of course – just a bit of retrospective consideration about what did happen, for good and for ill.

In short, though: the 10 days at home in Northeast Ohio positively flew by, and before I knew it was I about to hit Day 47 of the trip, which started off at home in Ohio and ended up driving towards the Grand Canyon from Phoenix AZ.

Day 46 – Flying to OH to be the best man at a wedding

Friday September 7, 2018 (full photo album here)

A groggy wake up, it was punctuated by the room’s alarm clock being an hour late and causing me to freak out about sleeping in. The day prior, I had been given multiple pieces of advice saying 1) how slow the airport security is; 2) to leave 45 minutes for the Uber alone; and 3) not to stop running inside the airport until I reached my gate. I took this seriously, and then found that my Uber + security + walking calmly to my gate took 40 minutes total. So much for sleeping in, but at least the vendors at the airport had entertaining products on offer, I s’pose:

Boarding the plane, I got a glimpse of a potential future vehicle for me – think about how easily this would be parked in any parallel spot:

My first flight, to Chicago, came standard with the SALTIEST New Yorker flight attendant. He called MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU at a dour coworker, and quite a few people on the plane couldn’t help but laugh. I stopped laughing, of course, when I was reminded of JUST how tiny all aspects of a plane are for a Mike, especially the restrooms. Sigh.

On the flights home, I spent a great deal of time reading a book suggested by my friend Matt (my peer from Yale Divinity School, who I had visited earlier on the trip), entitled The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, by Bishop Robert Sarah. This was not the top book on my queue, but I am glad I powered through it during the trip and particularly on the plane, because I came across more than a few statements of great import, matching the themes of my trip, and will quote them here:

>>

Today, in a highly technological, busy world, how can we find silence? Noise wearies us, and we get the feeling that silence has become an unreachable oasis. How many people are obliged to work in a chaos that distresses and dehumanizes them? Cities have become noisy furnaces in which even nights are not spared the assault of noise. Without noise, postmodern man falls into a dull, insistent uneasiness. He is accustomed to permanent background noise, which sickens yet reassures him. Without noise, man is feverish, lost. Noise gives him security, like a drug on which he has become dependent. With its festive appearance, noise is a whirlwind that avoids facing itself. Agitation becomes a tranquilizer, a sedative, a morphine pump, a sort of reverie, an incoherent dream-world. But this noise is a dangerous, deceptive medicine, a diabolic lie that helps man avoid confronting himself in his interior emptiness. The awakening will necessarily be brutal.

We live in a fever of movement and activity. The evil is not simply in the organization of modern life, in the haste that it imposes on what we do, the rapidity and facility that it affords our changing of place. A more profound evil is in the feverish nervousness of temperaments. People no longer know how to wait and be silent. And yet, they appear to be seeking silence and solitude; they leave familiar circles for new horizons, another atmosphere. Most often, however, this is only so as to divert themselves with fresh impressions.

Sounds and emotions detach us from ourselves, whereas silence always forces man to reflect upon his own life.

Nowadays facile speech and the popularized image are the teachers of many lives. I have the sense that modern man does not know how to stop the uninterrupted flood of sententious, falsely moralizing speech and the bulimic need for corrupt icons. Silent lips seem impossible for people in the West. But the media also tempt African and Asian societies by driving them to lose themselves in a superabundant jungle of words, images, and noises. The glowing screens need a gargantuan diet in order to distract mankind and destroy consciences. Keeping quiet has the appearance of being a weakness, a sort of ignorance or lack of will. In the modern system, the silent person becomes someone who does not know how to defend himself. He is subhuman. Conversely, the so-called strong man is a man of words. He crushes and drowns the other in the floods of his speeches.

Today many people are drunk on speaking, always agitated, incapable of silence or respect for others. They have lost their calm and dignity.

Contemplative silence can frighten us. It is like a big wave that carries us, without being able to drown us, and causes us to end up on fearsome shores. For man then finds himself facing the terrifying immensity of the mystery.

<<

The book is a highly religious work, coming from an African bishop in the Catholic church, but has a slew of very telling insights along the lines of the above. I had a series of realizations myself, leading up to the conception of this trip as a goal and then planning the particulars of what I would do. I greatly reduced my time spent in urban areas (as I have never liked the bustle of the city) and found myself most rejuvenated when in the middle of nowhere. I was glad of the long spans of time spent in the quiet of my truck’s cab, enjoying silence or peaceful music of my choosing. Unfortunately, I also nevertheless felt the draw of what is mentioned above, and consumed many dozens of podcasts and opinion pieces… bringing some of the noise back in. I am not convinced it is good to fully shut out everything and everyone, but I felt [and still feel, after the trip ended] some concern at ingesting even curated noise. These are all bits of wisdom above, and not the easiest to work into one’s life… even when on a grand trek by yourself, often in the middle of nowhere.

Returning to my trip, the flight to Chicago quickly turned into the flight to Cleveland, and after a day filled with travel, I was picked up by my mom and went home. My truck and gear, thousands of miles away, would have to wait – I had flown home to be the best man at the wedding of my old friend Chris to his fiancee Nicole. I had come home from the great silence and introspection of the trek, and would be thrown into a tumultuous series of social engagements with friends and family. It was a certain kind of reverse culture shock, while also being very enjoyable all the way through. A bit more on that in the next post – I had come home and was determined to enjoy it!

Day 40 – Back to the lower 48 + Recuperating in San Francisco

Saturday September 1, 2018 (full photo album here)

The reddest of red eye flights saw me wake up at something like 6:45 am (Pacific), which was a little bit before 3 am according to my body. Not exactly well rested, I stumbled off of the plane, and my body was once again treated to climate shock. I went from 90 degrees and 90% humidity in Hawaii, to something like 55 degrees and 50% humidity in San Francisco. My trusty raincoat put on for a little bit of extra warm for, I got an Uber and went back to Adam and Megan’s house. After hearing that my intention was to take the flight back and then immediately board the train within an hour, they were insistent that I spend an extra day with them and recuperate a little. I am still thankful that they did so, because I didn’t realize just how wrecked I would be from that red eye flight. I let myself back into their place, knowing that Adam had to go out of town and Megan was still asleep, and laid on the couch and just enjoyed not being on a plane, train, or automobile. Eventually, Megan woke up and we figured out that for the day, we hoped to include a brunch of some sort, and then board games.

At the overpriced brunch venue (an alcove filled to the brim), I had what they called The Breakfast Burger, which was basically an overpriced and far more healthy version of a Sausage McMuffin from McDonald’s. Between the ketchup that they made from beets (in the yuppiest yuppie’ing ever, “beetsup”), their homemade mustard with all sorts of unnecessarily complicated ingredients, and a mixed green salad with probably the worst dressing I’ve ever had. It was certainly a very San Francisco breakfast experience! A lazy afternoon later, it was something like 4 in the afternoon, and so we began to talk about where we might like to go to play board games. Over breakfast I had done a good job of convincing Megan that my favorite game, Twilight Struggle, was worth looking for and trying if we could find it. We ventured out to stop by The Game Parlour. Their library boasted nearly 800 games and they offered a series of foods based around waffles (be it waffles with dessert items in/on them; or sandwiches were the bread was waffles). Examining the collection…

… we eventually got a table after a quick dinner. We got the game set up, I walked through the rules, and we dove into playing through the entirety of the Cold War over the next few hours which followed. We tried some of the popcorn on offer (delicious), and I eventually had a waffle sandwich with waffle fries (delicious). Towards the end of the game, my Soviet Union was able to sneak in a victory by taking control of Europe, and we were both delighted to have had such a fun time and discovered a great little business. The final board:

Sleep came quickly and easily, with the dogs Noni and Koffa vying for my attention. What a whirlwind of a trip, thus far.

Day 39 – Captain Cook et al., Rainbows, and Escaping Hawaii

Friday August 31, 2018 (full photo album here)

Finally, jetlag decided to show up and hassle me. I was okay with sleeping in, to try and delude myself into thinking that this Grand Trek would actually a vacation from time to time. I got my things packed up, had a quick freeze dried meal to start my day, and then took my last shower in that very humid Airbnb. Out the door I went, leaving the keys in the lockbox on the door knob, and trudged with all of my possessions up to my rental car.

If there would be anything on Oahu that I really would have liked to see, it would be 1) the Iolani Palace of Hawaii, which is the only monarchical structure in the United States of America; and 2) the Doris Day Shangri La Museum (filled with Islamic artifacts built in the time when cultural ownership was far less respected). Both of these places are notorious for filling up quickly, and I had not realized about them before being on the plane to Hawaii, so I wasn’t able to get into either one. Being close by, I settled for driving once around the Palace…

… once again being stuck in the miserable traffic that is Honolulu. Call me a democratic-republican, but I don’t care much for the monarchy, so seeing the legacy of it is not the most important to me.

I swung back in the other direction, and decided to go and visit the Bishop Museum. After turning down a reptilian offer of car insurance…

… I ducked into one of the primary halls to learn about the long-defunct Hawaiian religion, with a variety of iconic carvings and totems:

Next was my favorite part of the museum, thanks to a long-term loan from New Zealand, of the actual feather helmet and cloak given to Captain Cook when he first reached Hawaii:

There is a lot more to the story of Captain Cook (and it is worth reading about), but suffice to say I was happy to pay the $25 entrance fee just to see those two artifacts. I enjoyed the fact that they had a series of exhibits with very different tones and themes, from the basics of Hawaiian life prior to the 1700’s; to the tale of the Hawaiian monarchy and how it rose and fell; all the way to an exhibit featuring all the various ways that advertisements and popular culture around the world…

… had reduced Hawaii to an exotic commodity, rather than a culture of human beings. I also paid to do the planetarium experience, learning how to navigate the stars to and from Hawaii. It was put together about a decade ago when a crew of Polynesians constructed a replica double-hulled canoe and sailed to Tahiti with no navigation instruments beyond the stars.

I had my lunch time snack, a freeze dried granola and blueberries, and then decided that for the few hours remaining before the car was due at 7 pm, I would drive up to the end of highway 903. I had walked very close to this point, because Highway 903 ended on the northeastern side of the peninsula whereas I had hiked on the northwestern side. The beach itself was fairly natural, because it was mostly jagged coral and igneous rock without a lot of sand…

… making for a far more authentic experience of the Hawaiian post and I had had earlier at Waikiki the day before. The authenticity was only quadrupled by a lifted pickup truck flying a gigantic Hawaiian flag from the bed:

I made it up to the point, got out and captured some photos of the beautiful coast opposite me, with a wind turbine farm. This was optimistic evidence that, in spite of governmental inaction on many issues, Hawaii seems serious about pushing more sustainable energy…

In my mind, having driven almost 400 miles on an island which is 44 miles by 27 miles, I had officially done everything on Oahu that I was going to be able to do. I rushed over to CostCo of Oahu for the incredibly cheap fuel. Having recently driven through Alaska, remote Northern Canada, and walked through overpriced San Francisco… I was not phased by the fact that most gasoline on Oahu was close to $4 a gallon. At $3.19 per gallon of premium, versus many places charging $3. 85 per gallon of regular grade, there was no contest that CostCo had the best deal in the time zone.

A rushed dinner at Zippy’s, a Hawaiian fast food chainturned out to be delicious. I had garlic miso chicken over rice, and then decided to try a local beloved delicacy, if you want to call it that. It was a larger version of a sushi roll, with a piece of spam cooked and soaked in a sweeter sauce, wrapped around rice and inside of a seaweed blanket. This was all finished off with what they called an orange blast Shake, which was like dream drinking an orange creamsicle. Scrumptious:

Next stop was to turn in the rental hybrid, which claimed something like 39 miles per gallon for 4 days. My hand-calculated total was closer to 33 miles per gallon. A very optimistic trip computer, but the car served me well as I visited Oahu. At least I got (another) celebratory Hawaiian rainbow to send me on my way:

I called up and quickly got an Uber to the airport, conversing with the driver who is a native Hawaiian. After realizing I wasn’t the typical tourist, I openly heard about how he hated it there, but would rather buy a house and have the wealth of the growing Islands rather than moving to someplace unknown. Like many people who I’ve spoken to in the Uber or Lyft business, he had all of the signs and symptoms of being a motivated and hard-working entrepreneur, because he also had three jobs (!) besides doing Uber.

We were rushed through security – they stopped doing normal checks, we actually go to go through the metal detector only (I have no idea why). My flight was delayed by at least an hour, which ended up being just fine by me. This gave me more time to work on blog posts [like this one], but it also meant I would endure the absolute reddest of red eye flights possible. The 3-hour time zone change was now being combined with what turned out to be an 11:45 pm departure, and arrival (according to my biological clock) at something like 3:15 am. The airport tried to baptize me with touristy BS…

…but even that couldn’t detract from my flight back to San Francisco, which was actually rather nice. I asked for and got the front-most aisle seat on the plane, with a gigantic amount of legroom:

Not quite enough leg room, mind you, but this is the normal outcome when you’re freakishly tall like me. I was unable to fall asleep right away, but I did end up getting a few hours of sleep on that reddest of red-eye flights back to the lower 48 states.

Day 35 – Living “The Room” in CA + getting to HI via plane

Monday August 27, 2018 (full photo album here)

A lazy start to the day, then, as our hike the day before had tired us out and we were in no rush. Discussing everything from the experience of being in the Peace Corps in Ghana (which is how Adam and Megan met); to my time in the Middle East; to sharing our deep appreciation for Leslie Nielsen and his ilk…a fun morning. Vietnamese leftovers were our fast-breaking weapon of choice, and then we took the two dogs on a walk over by the local VA hospital. It was great to catch up with Adam at length – and as an added bonus, we ended up walking past a smorgasbord of “these are various options Mike researched and/or test-drove, and then discarded while planning this trip.” From a 4×4 swapped Ford Econoline van; to a tricked out 4×4 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van; to all sorts of West Coast-style “well I bought this 1980s Toyota Land Cruiser and then bolted on 3 times its weight in gear but it still runs just fine” lighter duty equivalents to my Titan. That was a treat, for me, to be 12,000+ miles into the trip and get to walk through a veritable showroom of things I had thought incorrect for my goal… and feel vindicated in my choice after the success and satisfaction of what I did end up doing!

The second part of the day is actually the sole San Francisco Thing I wanted to do, very badly. Being a connoisseur of bad movies (a connoisseur of crap, if you will), the Holy Grail in this realm is often identified as The Room, an inexplicable horrifying descent into madness/”comedy” by Tommy Wiseau. The film is a delight, and the details can be left for others to lay out… but it is set in San Francisco. My desire was to go and see the handful of locations used,and get photos along the way. In the most iconic scene of the film, Tommy (as main character/”protagonist…?” Johnny) is fed up and exclaims without warning: “WHY LISA WHY, WHY.” He famously holds his fists up and yanks them to the floor as he shouts, perhaps for emphasis. It makes sense, then, that visiting the front of the building which houses The [eponymous] Room… is where I would ask my own questions of Lisa:

We also visited the pizza shop, famous for the head-scratching scene between Tommy and costar Greg Sestero in which the pacing and diction are nearly incomprehensible as human discussion. Tommy owned (and still owns) the entire building which houses the pizza joint, and that is possibly why his face (which is the cover of The Room’s DVD… but this particular faded print is from his famous billboard he paid to keep up for a decade in LA) is plastered on the side of the building:

In-n-Out Burger, right down the street at Fisherman’s Wharf, was our next stop. Not exactly the most healthy of choices, and not exactly the most wise decision before a lengthy flight… but it is iconic and something in my beloved Big Lebowski, so it felt right to give it a try. It was in the realm of Five Guys – still fast food, but the ingredients didn’t taste like a plague over the entire nation of pharaonic Egypt. I am glad it got added to my repertoire, flimsy paper wrappers and all:

Driving past the Golden Gate Bridge again, I had to TOURIST.EXE from the car and snag a photo of the landmark:

It only made sense to return to Adam’s and make him screen a portion of The Room with me (to his horror/terror):

The day rolled towards evening, and it was finally time to get ready to go and catch my flight to hurricane-ridden Hawaii. Bidding Megan and their short term South Korean doctoral housemate Sooyeon goodbye and farewell, Adam and I got into a $35 Uber (yay for urban prices bringing ruination upon the house of Mike!) and made for the airport. Adam was a day away from beginning his semester in a graduate program in nearby Monterey CA and the shuttle bus down was near the airport… and Adam also promptly passed out. This left me to do my thing, which is to chatter with taxi/Uber/Lyft drivers about whatever is on their heart… and chat, we did. He was pleased with his used Toyota Prius, having clocked in an insane 11,000 Uber rides in 5 years. I did not think to ask his numbers with Lyft, but I suspect he remains planted in that driver’s seat for a great portion of his waking hours. Our conversation went from his asking advice on which vehicle to get next (after he ascertained that I spend too much time reading about things so I can speak to questions of automotive issues off the cuff)… to his excitement but also worrying about self-driving taxis… to his hawklike gaze on the Uber Eats market to see if they can streamline everything in the operation around him, like having an employee run it out to his car so he doesn’t waste time trying to park. A very engaging ride.

Offloaded at the airport, Adam wished me well (in the Airplane mode, of course, with a “good luck, we’re all counting on you”) and I ventured into the untamed wilds they call the TSA security line. Surprisingly soon thereafter, the line sped up and I was through without incident. The gate was in direct sunlight and the AC was broken (the Alaskan Air employees had the biggest smiles and also the biggest rivulets of sweat cascading down the face of their, well, faces) so it was a bit melty. A perfect opportunity to work on blog posts of this sort.

Boarding the plane, I ended up next to a lady named Brenda and her 4 year old daughter, Helena. We had a slightly delayed departure, and then began to chat – for nearly the whole flight. From why we were going to Hawaii (I was going to sweat; she and Helena were going to be with her husband, whose military posting had just changed to Honolulu); to favorite activities (camping and hiking were shared); to learning a bit about our recent journeys (mine through all of the wildfire smoke in North America; her family’s recent European experiences with her husband’s last posting, at Rammstein in Germany)… it was an engaging flight. Eventually, Brenda followed her daughter’s cue and took a nap – this was around Hour 4 of the 5.5 hour flight, and most of the semi-bad turbulence caused by the aftershocks of the Tropical  Storm formerly known as Prince Hurricane Lane bumped the plane around. Most everyone was asleep – I was MOST DEFINITELY That Guy, the sole reading light user aboard, and poring through the guidebook to Oahu loaned to me by my friends Ryan and Tracey. Tidbits of info assimilated, I turned off the light… about 20 minutes before landing. At the very least, Brenda was able to lean over her tiny daughter and get me a solid shot of Honolulu all lit up:

Then the airport itself welcomed me, in more ways than one:

Aloha indeed, but I had met the late Senator Inouye while in DC, and still remembered him as a very nice man. Glad to see him commemorated for all incoming visitors (this year, projected to hit 10 million for the first time ever).

A rain-blanketed Uber later, I was at the nearby location of my AirBnB for my stay. I was starting to operate the combination lockbox to get my keys and one of the hostesses let me in – I got unpacked and things got hung up to dry from their time in the rain, and laid down to try and sleep. The intensity of travel meant I was keyed up, and based on my short Uber ride and reading about the terrible road planning/layout in Hawaii meant I made the last-minute decision to rent a car. I didn’t care for the idea of touristy Oahu, but I couldn’t justify the several hundred additional dollars to fly to each other island while in the area, not on this trip. Maybe some other time I will come back to do the other islands – but for this trip, I realized, I wanted to just fully do Oahu and not miss anything. And to me that meant a lot of driving to see it all at my [fast] pace and experience life as a driver on a Pacific volcanic island. So Turo, my old savior from a trip to Colorado in 2016, came back onto my phone. I found a nearby perfect fit – a hybrid Sonata like my sister’s, with special Hawaiian “electric vehicle” license plates which meant free parking at all parking meters and municipal/state/federal parking lots on all of Oahu. Close to the AirBnb, it seemed a perfect fit and was the right price at $55 per day. Booked it and I went to sleep relatively shortly thereafter.