where in the world?
i'm sitting in my brother's new apartment in nagoya, japan. i helped him move here from takaoaka yesterday. looking southeast out from his 4th storey balcony, the city is grey and soaked from this morning's rain. i'm feeling a bit under the weather (figuratively, as well as literally), and so i've decided to do some documenting while adrian goes out exploring.
note: if you've followed along with google buzz and our picasa photographs, you likely know most of what follows.
well, we have a lot of ground to cover here and i'm as likely to get bored of typing up a drawn out account as you are to tire of reading it; accordingly, a list, starting in san diego, :
- february 22: vicki found us a craigslist ride to los angeles.
- stayed at the downtown stay hostel/hotel again.
- put the bikes into storage near union station (LA).
- stayed at a couchsurfing host's house (nice folks).
- flew to hawaii.
- first night, stayed at hostel/hotel right beside the airport, matt researched camping.
- second day, bussed to waikiki, stopped in honolulu and reserved camping for entire month , excepting wednesdays and thursdays, when all campgrounds close.
- stayed at really scummy hostel on lemon road in waikiki (the westmost of the three there)
- went to first campsite on sand island, near the airport.
- woke up to tsunami siren...looked outside, noted locals still barbequeing and not in any panic, went back to sleep. woke up again to locals telling us we had to leave quickly...they had all packed up and were ready to go, but graciously waited for 15 min. while we frantically packed and then gave us a ride to the nearest bus stop (some 3 miles away). these were the folks that the lady at the camping reservation place had cautioned us to avoid and even said not to leave our tent at night!
- hung out at mcdonald's, using their free internet to investigate the matter (chile, offshore earthquake).
- headed to higher ground by bus, watched for a couple of hours as nothing (thankfully/anticlimactically) came of the tsunami warning. a nice american couple drove us back to waikiki by way of the coast around diamondhead and we stopped and saw sea turtles.
- we attempted to return to sand island over the next two days but were turned away and just gave up (this was no easy feat, considering i was hucking all our gear in our gigantic backpack). having a week until our next campsite booking, we elected to save our money and joined the homeless that dwell in kapiolani park. concealing our technology (the only visible sign of our relative wealth, as you know how we dress). the laws relating to the dispossessed in waikiki are essentially designed to make homelessness inconvenient and to keep the homeless out of the way of the tourists by forcing them into a nocturnal state of affairs. we slept by day in our tent in the park, took the dinners offered by the various charitable (mostly church) groups every evening, and, by law, broke camp at 10 p.m. and vacated the park between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., when we would wander miserably around waikiki and drink coffee and play cards at 24 hour joints. sleeping by night on the sidewalk was a legal (broken paddle law) option, but we only tried that once and didn't sleep well at all. this was, to say the least, an interesting chapter of our journey and definitely an englightening one. although there was certainly a percentage of the homeless population in that park that were afflicted by either alcohol or drug addiction, many of the folks there were just living as they were, seemingly, by choice. during this time, i couldn't swim yet, because of my tattoo, which sucked, since waikiki beach was steps away and beautiful always.
- then began our camping life along the windward side of the island. with a new birthday ukelele (thanks baby!) life became a relatively even mix of eating (sometimes found coconuts, which i became expert at opening), swimming, reading, strumming, and lazing in the sun. there's really not much to tell. we were living the easy life (which can actually be hard, as paradise can be quite tedious after a while...i know that may sound silly).
- we visited the north shore where we saw the famous surf breaks, though we never surfed.
- we camped inland, vicki was sick, and i hiked around barefoot in the mud for four days.
- march 30th: we flew to las vegas.
- we saw some shows, lost big money (approximately 10 USD), drank cheap drinks and wandered around on "the strip", where droves of folks clacked cards together and attempted to force them into your hands...the cards were for escorts and had naked women on them with little stars or lens flare effects over the interesting bits. vicki collected these and, in vancouver, we later distributed them as party favours and momentos of our time in vegas.
- we took the bus back to los angeles. busses suck. they really really suck.
- in los angeles we reconnected with our friend lillie, who, once again, graciously hosted us. we went for a hike in the palisades and photo shoot in the huntington botanical gardens
- we collected our bikes, stayed at "stay" again, and got on the greyhound headed for vancouver. we almost killed each other when we were trying to box our bikes and didn't have the right tools or sufficient mechanical advantage to take off the pedals (despite that this was one of the first things i learned about, from nathan, in owen sound all those moons ago). in the end, we just left the pedals on and deformed the boxes by pushing the bikes in as such. the (four in all, i think) busses were horrible. sleeping pills (tylenol pm, gifted by lillie, many thanks) and foam ear plugs only marginally lessened the hell that is long distance bus travel. for the first part of the ride, the woman in front of us yelled ridiculously loudly into her (reportedly broken) mobile phone every once in a while, just to ensure that we couldn't sleep. at one point we broke down and changed busses.
- arriving in vancouver (april 9th, 2010, first time on canadian soil since october 23rd, 2009) we were greeted by (world class barista) kyle and we witnessed some violence between drunk belligerant racist skateboarders and transit security
- we hung out for a couple of weeks in vancouver with kyle and the vanhaus folks (chris upstairs, chris downstairs, and miriam). during this time vicki was doing life planning and i was simply bidding my time until my flight to japan to visit my brother, who has been there (here) for three years teaching english.
- i flew to japan, leaving vicki to fly, bus, rideshare, or hitchhike (she not being sure, and me not being comfortable with the last two).
- i watched three movies on the flight and attempted to learn enough japanese from my phrase book (purchased that same day) to get me to my brother, who had thankfully booked my bus to takaoaka, leaving me to sort out only my brief train ride to tokyo station from narita airport. aside from some last minute worrying about which bus was mine and then getting my legs crushed by the person in front of me while on the bus, everything went swimmingly and i soon found myself in a car with my brother and his friends tuan (from utah) and queenie (from australia) en route to a tennis tournament that adrian and tuan were participating in. that night, runnning on very very very little sleep in the past long long long time, i attended a farewell party of english teachers held for my brother and mony, another departing teacher. there was drinking and (too little) food and dancing followed by sleep, beautiful, wonderful, incredibly necessary sleep. since then i've been hanging out with my brother in takaoaka while he finished up there and then we packed up and headed to nagoya, where he is continuing on with his company but will now be teaching middle/high school children, which he is very excited about.
on may 16th i'll be headed back to vancouver, where the plan is to rent an apartment with vicki while she pursues meaningful career-relevant employment and i work part time simply to generate a little income and occupy myself while i continue to ponder what it is that i want to "do" (suggestions?).
