3 days is all you need
On getting lost, and the awesomeness of needing to be nowhere.
Ten minutes out from landing at the Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport, the pilot gets on the PA. "Soo unfortunately due to some strong winds in Honolulu, the Kona airport's real backed up and we've lost our landing slot. We're diverting to Hilo so we can refuel before we get back in the air."
Sucks, but we don't really mind. Well, I don't. Let us off the plane, anywhere. It's Hawaii for G-d's sake. Does it really matter?
It had been a long morning. Desperate for some kind of vacation, Hawaii or otherwise, Talia and I made plans. A 3 day long weekend, to Hawaii, why not? Southwest gave us a promotional companion pass. Two roundtrip flights for under three hundred bucks, empty hotels in off-season, not bad.
3 days is an ambitious Hawaii trip no matter the cost. First, we arrived at SFO, only to realize our flight actually took off from Oakland. Racing across the San Mateo bridge, we cleared security and made it as the last two on the plane. Wow.
The flight is smooth. People are just different on flights to Hawaii. Like, way nicer than anywhere else. Everybody is happy, even the plane crew.
By the point of the diversion we don't really care where we were headed. The crew wants people in their seats, but I say, if anyone’s getting off, we’re getting off.
"Trust me, this plane isn't going to be in the air anytime soon," I say to T.
Trust me? She looks at me with eyes of anything but.
"How are we going to get to the hotel all the way across the island, and with our luggage too?"
"I'm sure there's a bus, or something. We're here for 3 days, you want to waste it sitting on this plane? We'll figure it out," I say confidently. She knows I'm talking out of my ass, but she goes with it. Cause, we like each other. So it's fine.
So we deplane. Us and three others. I look back at the kids and families and old people, waiting for some indication of from the pilot. Suckers.
The thing about Hawaii is that it doesn't really matter where you are. You get off the plane and you are there. The warm and sweet flowery breeze, the slowness of everybody whether you're at ABC Grocery or Starbucks or the check in to some Disney resort. The big smiles. The anticipation that at any moment, even with an unobstructed, burning sun, the rain is just one big gust away. Relax. But don't get too comfortable.
One of the three others to get off is a sweet woman named Megan, says she grew up in Hilo and was coming to see her mom. "The first non-stop from the mainland to home I ever took," she tells us, and we laugh. Not a bad diversion if you ask her.
We split an Uber to Hilo town five minutes from the airport, and she takes us to her local lunch spot, Pineapples Grill. Carry on bags in tow. A few hours to kill, a Kona lager reminding us of where we needed to get. Megan joins us, telling us about life growing up a haole in Hawaii (aka, a white person, a non-native). Mom's family from Pearl Harbor, father from the mainland. From here but not from here.
Tourists abound, but not the sightseeing type. The retired, second home, "I spend 6 months and 1 day here, just enough to save on taxes," kinda tourists.
I try to buy tickets. The lady behind the desk in the tiny bus terminal office tells me its free. "Free, free? All the way two hours over the mountain?"
"Yes, the buses here are free."
What's the catch, I wonder. And, why is there a ticket office if it's free.
We wait 20 minutes past the scheduled departure. A midsize airport car rental-style charter pulls up. Old Ford bus, no more than 7 or 8 rows. We get on, head straight to the back row.
It smells musty, like whatever accidents happened in the 30 years since this bus was bought were never fully taken care of.
There's a young, heavier set Hawaiian woman in a spaghetti strap dress, watching videos on her smartphone, completely horizontal taking up two seats. Looks up at us without moving her head, smiles.
A couple with suitcases so large they either just moved here or are in the process of deciding. Asian woman, white man. Scrawny, wearing nerdy biker sunglasses like the ones my dad gave me with my Puma shoes back in 2nd grade from the outlet mall. They look as lost and as cheap as us.
An older man gets on. Very old, with skin 12 shades darker than it's supposed to be. Wearing a suede peacoat that looks like it was nice one day but had been through a tornado, or maybe even two. A clean cut mustache, unfittingly so.
He's got a big, shackled backpack. All his life belongings, it appears. Takes his time getting on, hunched over. He uses an old white USB cable to tie his backpack to a pole at the front of the bus. Looks over at the couple with the big suitcases. "You might wanna lock those guys down. This road's a winding."
The driver gets off to use the bathroom. Now 25 minutes late and still in the parking lot.
T and I look at each other, both wondering the same thing. "You think our flight made it to Kona yet?"
Don't bother checking, I say.
We finally get moving. A mile up the hill, and the old man was right. The roads start winding and the suitcases start rolling down the center of the bus.
Scrawny white dude gets up to grab the suitcases before they reach the driver. Old man looks back at us, and Hawaiian girl smiles and laughs, looking up from her Youtube. "You said it," I shout to the old man over the blasting AC.
He starts talking to the girl. Local talk. First talking about some old bus route they used to have and got rid of, then if you know of so-and-so from some rehab center. I'm in and out of focus, then the old man is talking about his brother who was a senator in Juno. Alaska?
T starts telling me about the plane that crashed earlier that morning in DC, collided with a military helicopter. The old man perks up and looks back at us. "Oh, I knew the pilot of that helicopter," he says.
"What, really?" I ask in disbelief.
"Oh yeah, 1600 hours of military service, I knew them all. You betcha," he says. Like he was telling his grandkids one of his proudest achievements.
T looks at me and raises an eyebrow, doubtful. I shrug it off.
We turn off on to a main highway, hear some mechanical sounding noises from the front, and next think we're pulled over on the side of the road.
The driver puts us in park, gets out, and walks around to the front. Opens the hood, locks in the hood opener stick thing I never knew the name for.
"That's what you get when you jack up the AC like that," the old man says with a straight, calm face, to nobody in particular.
Youtube girl looks up front, smiling. Scans to the back until she's looking at us, laughs again, and is right back to watching her cat videos. Completely unphased, like this happens every time.
We get off the bus with our bags. Sit on the side of the road. Driver has nothing to say but "just wait."
Youtube girl finds a spot on a rock to laydown. Old man sits next to us like we're best friends.
He starts talking about his daughter and her academy award nomination. On and on, the details so clear it couldn't possibly be a lie.
Only then does it occur to me this man is living in a different world. But, he's so nice, just wants to hang. Not like the homeless in San Francisco.
I know T doesn't, but I kinda wanna talk to him and hear his story, his actual story, if he could find it.
I text Megan. She says she lives right up the road and will come drive us. T says no way. 3 hours roundtrip for a stranger we just met to drive us over this mountain? Absolutely not.
The sun is a few inches off the horizon. I think back 12 hours to leaving our apartment in the dark, dewey San Francisco morning. The beginning of our three day vacation.
What's another hour, on the side of the road in paradise. Nobody else here seems to care, so why should we?
I look up at the mountain. Mauna Kea. Megan told us earlier it's the tallest mountain in the world, when measured from base, below sea level, to peak. 33 thousand feet. Damn. Sure doesn’t look that tall.
I start thinking about mountains. What even is a mountain? You count the base underwater then isn't all land just one giant mountain? (Turns out I'm not the only one with this thought)
Some bright yellow finches chirp by, and I imagine what it must have been like to be Darwin, showing up in the Galapagos. Traveling by ship across the world to an unknown land with who knows what diseases floating around. All to write about some little bird beaks.
I breathe in the warm Hawaii air.
I feel not a wisp of desire to be anywhere but here.
On the side of a mountain highway, on the biggest of five, or maybe five hundred, tiny little islands thousands of miles off the coast, halfway to Japan.
With my new friend, the old man who's got more stories than is possible. And T. What's real, who cares. This is it, baby.
I love this post -took me away to dream state almost, waiting to hear another of the old man’s stories …