There Must Be A Travel Blog

In order to really lean-in to my 90’s website goals, I’m turning the next few posts for this archive into a travel blog.

Granted, this isn’t just some vacation. I’m not blogging because I’m bored in the middle of a slow beach day in Cancun. This is a trip I’ve been trying to make happen for nearly 9 years now and will ideally involve way more than relaxing and seeing the sights. After this long and getting teased with my company with “We’re sending you!” followed shortly by “Nope, never mind.” I had enough waiting.

I’m off to Japan! Well, at least I tried to get there yesterday. Flight cancelations and re-bookings in LAX led me to make a relatively last-minute call to re-route to Oahu. That saved me several days of just waiting for the next available flight out of California, and the days I do wait I get to spend on Waikiki Beach.

Or would, if Oahu was experiencing normal weather. Instead, they’ve been experiencing a series of storms they call “Kona” here in the islands. These storms bring a ton of rain from the southwest and dump it all at once. They just had one last week that dumped 50 inches of rain, and I got here just in time for another. This is the first time in living memory that two Kona have happened a week apart, so I imagine history will remember this as one giant storm.

Everything is waterlogged and anything that can flood has flooded. Many roads in the mountains have eroded and residents are being evacuated out of the north shore. Power outages are intermittent and several townships have asked their residents to conserve water use as the water treatment plants need electricity to run. I’m reminded of Winter Storm Yuri in 2021, which left myself and my partner without transportation, internet, and running water for about 4 days. We were lucky back then to have power, many weren’t. And that was for 4 inches of snow. This much rainfall has devastated this community that shockingly still has not been able to rebuild after the fires that swept Maui in 2023.

Despite all that, I’m amazed at how lively everyone is here. My Uber driver from the airport, a man named Jamie, told me about his favorite bar spots and how some folks are using power-outages and rainfall as an excuse to hangout in places like that. “Might as well get off our phones and chill, right?” he told me. Every stranger I interact with is either having a great day OR is a tourist, with little overlap. This place feels like it’s in the splash-zone of the climate change cavalcade and yet I still see people finding ways to dust it all off.

I get visits from birds like this sparrow trying to get out of the rain, and I get to spend my time writing for personal projects and reading more about this place. I’ve already met a couple of Japanese people too, who have all been wonderfully friendly. Makes me excited about finishing this initial leg and get to Tokyo on Monday. Maybe I’ll catch a few waves in the meantime.

Once the rain dies down.