9/17/17, “Epilogue”
Aboard HA 50, En route HNL-JFK
“How was it?” “Did you have fun?” “You look like you got some color!” “You have pictures? “You’re making me jealous!” Those are the questions and exclamations that
will await me when I get back to New York tomorrow and over the next few
days. However, the questions I will pose
in this Epilogue will be of a much stronger variety. All trips must end with a reflective entry
and a recording of The Return Journey, which this Epilogue will provide, along
with providing a brief overview of the past few days, which will be intended to
set up the next stages of my travel writing.
To me, though, of far more importance is what I call the final
reckoning. To that end, I must pose two
simple questions. Was this the best
birthday ever? Was this the best trip
ever? To both questions, without so much
as a moment of hesitation or need for any debate, the answer is,
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” What could even
come close?
I think perhaps the previous
best birthday was when I went to Victoria Falls. That trip was amazing. My first trip to Africa, and I loved every
minute of that trip. The part of Africa
I went to was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. I saw one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the
World and then spent the day seeing wildlife at Hwange National Park. I walked across the border to Zambia to have
my birthday dinner there, which was, by far, the cheapest birthday dinner I had
had in recent memory, but it was good, so good.
I wrote in that entry how I was alone, but happily alone, as opposed to
the year before when I was miserable in a relationship. I wrote in that how much better it was to
have two female friends whom I loved as sisters than it was to have a
girlfriend who was causing me an untold amount of stress. The name of that trip was “Wildest Dreams,” due
to the fact that the recent Taylor Swift music video was apparently filmed
there. Not even in my wildest dreams did
I imagine that one of those two friends would accompany two years later on what
would become the greatest birthday trip of all time.
That trip was a perfect trip. I was at complete peace. I was in a very good place in my life, and
nothing was bothering me. I wish I could
say that about the past year, but I cannot.
However, I can say that for the past five days I have pretty much been at complete peace, that I gladly traded my pipe and entry-writing each
night for watching reality TV, that I gave up a few extra NPS units in exchange
for a worry-free five days, that I didn’t care what was on the itinerary, or
even if there was an itinerary, so long as I was having fun. And fun I had. A lot of fun.
More fun than I had ever had in my life.
Or perhaps not. There have been
other trips that have been fun, maybe even more fun, but it was a different
kind of fun. It was antics and hijinks
and building the kind of inside jokes that remain funny for a lifetime. I do not wish to compare the fun of prank
calls and “walking slowly” to the fun of drinking and smoking on a beach until
nothing else matters in the world or achieving pure nirvana by doing the same
in a hot tub. They are different kinds
of fun.
I suppose this leads me to my
next question, now. Was this the best
trip ever? The previous title-holder was
Rio 2016. The highlights of that trip
were the Opening Ceremony, seeing the Natural Wonder of the World in the Harbor
of Rio de Janeiro, seeing the New7 Wonder of the World in Christ the Redeemer, and, of course, the Games themselves, days at the Gymnastics venue and
nights at the Aquatics venue.
I will
never forget those nights that I saw Michael PHELPS and Katie LEDECKY in the
pool, and least of all will I forget that last night when I stayed until they
broke the down the entire swimming pool area.
I will not forget cheering on the Final Five as they dominated the
gymnastics venue. I will not forget Aly
RAISMAN and Simone BILES proving that they were absolute maniacs on the
floor. None of that I will forget.
That said, nor will I forget any moment of
this trip. After the highly fulfilling
11 Days that led to me being able to say, “Mission Accomplished,” it was
followed by the most enjoyable five days of my life. I knew that successful execution of the first
11 Days on its own would be sufficient for this trip to be considered the
Greatest of All Time. Further, the
past five days celebrating my birthday on their own would have been sufficient,
but they were not on their own. They
were combined into one trip that is, without a doubt, the GOAT.
I have recorded the first 11 Days in great
detail, and I will give a brief description of the rest of the trip later, but
in terms of the final reckoning, of the past five days, which, as a whole, were
the best five days of my life, of the 11,000 days I have been alive, the top
three days of my life were all on this trip, two of the travel days being more
stressful and time-draining than anticipated.
The past five days of celebrations were filled with beach days, a sunset
cruise, even a proper Hawaiian luau, and, of course, great feasts and plenty of
drinking and smoking. It would have made
any Hobbit proud. Even Bilbo himself
could not have done better. Those are
not things that are normally associated with my travels, other than the smoking, of course.
Sure I have had great meals in my travels,
but, unless it’s an iconic restaurant or a first Official meal, usually I eat
on my trips for sustenance, to provide nourishment for the next activity. The meals on this trip were to try new places,
to eat whatever we wanted, when we wanted.
The drinking was to have fun, to make all of the activities that much
more enjoyable, in contrast to my usual travels where I will just have a drink
with dinner or one at the end of the day with my cigar or pipe to relax.
There were no new Stadiums or Stamps or
Plaques once I said, “Mission Accomplished,” and my reader will note the
difference between what I am recording in this Epilogue and what I have been
recording in the entries I have previously written in this Travelogue. The first 11 Days of this trip, was the
epitome of my typical travels, and they were a remarkable success. The past 5 Days were the most enjoyable of my
life.
As much as I love the Olympics,
how could Rio 2016 possibly compare with American Oceania? The simple answer is, it can’t. American Oceania wins against Rio 2016, it
wins against National Parks of the American West, it wins against Eurotrip, it
wins against Alaska, and it wins against anything else that might try to claim
that title. It was, without a doubt, the
GOAT, in every way, shape, and form.
Now, some reflections are in order, both about this trip and the mission
as a whole. In this trip, I discovered a
new way of travel, one that I would not have done on my own. Hawaii had a few NPS units that I left on the
table, and, had I been on my own, I would have used these past few days to
visit each and every one of those units.
I would not have gone to the beach.
I would not have taken a sunset cruise.
I would not have gone to a luau.
I would have missed out on all of those things in exchange for bumping
up my NPS unit count. I would not have
had so much as a quarter of the amount of alcohol I had, though I probably
would have had four times as many cigars.
I, quite simply, would not have had fun.
I had fun. I was in paradise with
my best friend. We did whatever she
wanted, and for that I was glad. I did
not have to worry about setting an itinerary, or holding to one. I did not have to worry about getting my
stamps at VCs before they closed. In
fact, during the non-travel days, I did not have to worry about anything. This was a trip of pure celebration, and it
was very expensive trip, for which I am incredibly thankful to have been gifted
as a joint graduation/birthday present, but when I spend my own money on
travel, I do it in service of the mission, to get my Stamps and Plaques, to
steadily increase my counts of countries or WHS or NPS units or whatever else
I’m counting.
I choose not to spend my
own money on relaxing. I can relax in my
apartment for the price of a cigar. I
can relax almost anywhere the stresses of my life cannot follow me. I do not need to spend large sums of money on
flights and hotels to relax. When I go
to Morocco, I will not spend four days in Casablanca. I will spend the trip trying to visit every
WHS in the country. When I go to
Curacao, I will not spend the day on the beach, I will spend it visiting the
WHS there. When I go to Thailand and
Cambodia, I will not spend it on resorts.
I will celebrate New Year’s in Bangkok and then spend the rest of the
time visiting my WHS.
That said, there
will be trips in the future that are similar to this, and I have learned that,
with the right person, I am willing to spend money on a vacation that is not
designed to increase my count. Next
summer I will take the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok with
another friend, a week on a train with only the potential for one new WHS the
entire ride. That will be a trip for us
to relax, and it will be a good use of my money.
My friend and I have discussed
making this an annual trip, a different island in the Pacific every year. She lives in LA, and there are no shortage of
islands with direct flights from LAX that would make for a nice meeting place
for us. While I will be able to claim a
new country on each trip and visit whatever WHS the country has, if it has one,
those trips would be designed like these past few days, to celebrate and relax,
not to maximize the number of new countries and WHS I can visit.
I would see those trips as a good use of
money, the same as I see the Trans-Siberian Railroad and African Safari trips I
am planning with my other friend. Those
would all be trips designed to relax, and I will include more trips like that
in my future travel planning, now that my mission has been accomplished. That said, I will set new goals, manageable
goals that won’t drain all of my time, energy, and money, and most of my travels,
as far as I can foresee, will be in service of those new goals.
I have enjoyed this mission very much. I have enjoyed maintaining my spreadsheet. I have enjoyed planning these trips, almost
making an art out of it. It is a unique
skill, and a finely honed one at that. I
will continue to use that skill as I finish visiting all of the NPS units in
the country, but my trips will be fewer and further between now, as I want to
save money for my future, and I want to start working on building that future. Traveling the world for the past five years
has been fun, but it has been draining, and it is no way to work on building a
future. I do not know what my future
holds, but a burden has been lifted after this trip, in more ways than one,
and, whatever my future holds, I am ready to meet it head on.
Now, I suppose my readers would like a bit of
detail on the end of the trip and the birthday celebrations, so I shall oblige,
but in so doing, I will preview what my travel writing will look like in my 30s. This picks up after I closed at HVNP. Getting caught in the rain, I raced to put
away my laptop and walked around a bit to take more pictures. More rain as I was publishing, but publishing the
entry was more important than the laptop’s survival.
I then went back to my hotel, the Volcano
House, which offered breathtaking views of the crater, got some souvenirs, and
had lunch. My lack of appetite from the
beginning of the trip continued throughout my time in Hawaii. A few bites of fried fish, a little rice,
poke, and a tiny coconut dessert, along with coffee, at the hotel restaurant
served as lunch. Then I had time to
kill, and lots of it.
I lit up another
cigar and went for a hike to see the steam vents, glad to be getting in a
proper hike. I still had time to kill
before I had to drive to the airport to pick up my friend. I was actually bored. I waited as long as I could then got ready
and drove to the airport, intending to stop at Target to pick up a new pair of
shorts so that I could ditch the cargo shorts that had served me so well for
the past year and on this trip but were now too big. As I was driving, I got sideswiped by an SUV
who was trying to pass me. He kept
driving. I thought about calling the
police, but I was afraid they would tell me to wait for them, which would have
meant being late for the pick-up. I
chased after him and got his license plate.
I kept honking at him and flashing him and signaling him to pull
over. He did not and kept going.
I found a pair of shorts at Target and was
soon at the airport. I patiently waited
for my friend, excited to see her again after not having seen her since we
planned this trip on the first of the year.
Then, there she was. We greeted
like the old friends that we were and waited for her luggage. It was going to be a week to remember. When we got in the car, she blared music from
“Lilo & Stitch” and “Moana,” because what else would we play. We had dinner at the hotel, ordering a crab
cake appetizer and a bowl of edamame, the two small dishes to share serving as
our entire dinner. This would be a
common theme throughout the trip.
I was in Hawaii with my best friend, I had just completed my five-year mission, I was about to turn 30, and we had five days together to celebrate. Nothing could go wrong, and nothing did. We went for a nature walk to see the lava
venting up, and it was a completely serene experience, despite the fact I
slipped and cut up my leg and foot pretty bad on the rocks. When I say that nothing went wrong, I do not
mean that absolutely nothing went wrong.
Plenty went wrong, of course it did, but it was the little things that
went wrong, not the big things. It was
the little stresses, not the big ones.
Nothing went wrong that in any way spoiled the trip.
When I think about Rio 2016, I do not think
about losing my ticket the first day.
When I think about National Parks of the American West, I do not think
about missing our connection to Vegas or the fight about going to Denny’s. I think about waking up and seeing the Grand
Canyon. I think about the crazy drive on
an almost-empty tank to Canyonlands.
When I think about this trip, I will always think only of the good things,
not of the little stresses, not of sunburn and scraped knees.
The next day was my birthday, and we woke up
for a nice buffet breakfast at the hotel, followed by a drive to see the
coastal side of the park. This was when
the fun began. The top went down and the
cigar was lit. Music blaring, we drove
to the coast. I was now showing my
favorite person in the world my favorite thing to do: visit a new World
Heritage Site. We found great
viewpoints, and we ignored whatever warning signs we saw, and we made an
adventure out of it. Then came the rain,
and the up went the top and out went the cigar.
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