“I could not be in a better place at a better time, than right here, right now.” That is what I wrote in my blog October 13, 2006. Perfect. The words to describe what I had experienced over the previous week had not seemed worthy enough except in their simplest form. I was in Naha, Okinawa. It was the realization of a dream. But it was so much more than I had ever imagined.
I was wasting time at work on instant messenger with my friend Ly as I often did. She was excited about her upcoming business trip to Hawaii. It was as much for pleasure as it was for work. She had friends and family there she was excited to visit. Don, a mutual friend of ours was looking over my shoulder from time to time interjecting his own comments for me to relay to her. At some point she mentioned “It would be cool if you two could be there.”
I pointed the comment out to Don who said “I can’t, but you should.”
I quickly responded “I can’t.”
He looked me square in the eye and said “Why Not?”
I didn’t say anything else about it, but for the next three days I couldn’t think about anything else. It invaded my work, my lunch, even my sleep. Every reason I could come up with to not go just didn’t work. I tried to convince myself I couldn’t afford it, but it was the off season. Ticket and hotel was only $600 for the entire trip. I had more than enough to cover that. Jake’s mother was able to take care of him while I was gone. Finding time to leave work was always hard, but none of my projects were even close to being due. I had the time. I had the money. I had a friend to be there with.
Three days later I got back in touch with Ly over instant messenger and asked “Were you serious about meeting you in Hawaii?”
“Yes!!”
“I can’t find a reason not to.”
“Really?!?! This is going to be great!!!”
I booked my plane ticket online right then and there.
Traveling has been on my mind since I can remember. From a very early age I’d listen to my father tell me stories from his trips in the military and think about going there. I learned at one point that I was born in Okinawa, Japan and decided that one day I would go there. When I was very young I want to learn a foreign language. I start trying out Spanish at around 8 years old because my father was already fluent in it. I never really learned it, but it was a way of opening me up to the idea that I could go anywhere I wanted. Foreign places didn’t seem that foreign to me.
I grew up in a small town in the north eastern corner of Washington State. With a population of around 4000 people, there wasn’t a lot of influence from the outside world other than television. Even with this limitation, it allowed the freedom to explore on my own in a way that I don’t believe I would have otherwise been able to do. I got in the habit of leaving on my bicycle early in the morning and not coming back until late in the evening. On average, I put 50 miles a day on that old 10 speed. I’d stop by my friends houses get them up out of bed and we would take off. Riding to nearby lakes and rivers. Learning on our own what we needed to get by on our own.
Soon I was armed with a drivers license. The distance I could cover in one or two days grew substantially. Now camping out meant the cascades instead of Douglas Falls. An afternoon hike could start half way across the state instead of 10 miles away. Friends that I would visit were now in surrounding towns instead of surrounding houses.
Once I had moved out on my own, even though my budget was quite limited, I still continued to take off for days at a time. Sometimes with my friends, sometimes by myself. By this time cabin fever had planted itself in me. It was incurable.