Today’s my fourth day on Oahu. Currently, I’m sitting in an outdoor bar on the beach. I’ve got a grass umbrella busy keeping me in the shade and the bartender’s a fat, cocky asshole with slicked back gray hair and a flower print shirt. The Piña Coladas are cold, though.

It’s totally fucking beautiful here in Hawaii. The weather is anywhere between the mid-80’s to upper 90’s but there’s a persistent warm wind from the ocean that keeps you from ever getting uncomfortable. Crazy, craggy mountains surround everything and the ocean just keeps going, far past the horizon. It’s some incredibly sweet shit.

My trek here started with 24 hours of no sleep, due partly to nerves and the idea that if I was tired enough, I might pass out on the plane to San Francisco, rather than the alternative of a five hour, white-knuckled and sweaty with terror (I am deathly nervous of flying). So, really tired and more than a little cracked out, I boarded the plane and following the plan accordingly, I passed out for about two hours. The remainder of the ride, I found myself oddly complacent at being over 37,000 feet in the air—a state of mind that I am not at all used to. My terror-free condition continued all the way till touchdown in California.

I ambled around San Francisco for the day, a city somewhat familiar to me in that I recognized several areas from my last visit there. I paid my respects to In N’ Out, ordering myself a 4×4 (that’s four burgers and four slices of cheese with a bun slapped around it…epic) with onions and fries and tossed back a double shot cappuccino at a Peet’s. Other than those memorable occasions and a few other brief flashes of lucidity, I was shuffling around the city, ass-deep in a tar pit of sleep deprivation.

Early the next morning, I hopped a plane for another 5-plus hour flight to Oahu. Again, I found myself completely at ease while in the air. Hopefully, this new-found calm at high altitudes will persist in the future. I spent much of the flight quietly headbanging to my mp3 player, reading geeky fantasy fiction and picking away at a week’s worth of television that I laboriously transferred and unencrypted from my TiVo to my laptop. After an easy commute, I landed on the big island.

Since then, I’ve been all over the place here. My hotel’s in Waikiki, just a short walk from the ocean. It’s a big tourist area, full of hotels, stores, food and a shocking amount of prostitutes, but it works well. At times, it seems the sidewalks themselves are paved with Japanese tourists. I’ve never seen so many of them and living in New York City, that’s saying something.

I’ve visited a massive Japanese market, filled with bizarre, anal-retentive houseware inventions that regardless of necessity, you feel the urge to purchase. I’ve eaten a frightening number of malasadas, which are these unbelievable Portuguese doughnut-like things that I can’t say enough good things about. I’ve eaten gigantic sushi rolls comprised of Spam, rice and seaweed. I’ve had a shitload of Piña Coladas and look forward to trying my first Loco Moco, which is a local breakfast delicacy of soft-boiled egg atop a hamburger that’s laid over a bed of white rice with gravy covering the whole thing. Perhaps tomorrow. Today, breakfast comes in the form of funky coconut and pineapple and rum.

I climbed Diamondhead, which is basically a huge volcanic crater and at one point I walked through a tunnel carved out from volcanic rock. The climb was fairly easy, although there were a couple sets of ridiculously long stairs.

I hit an amazing Buddhist memorial temple at the foot of some mountains. Crazy beautiful, with an unbelievable glut of koi fish and these sparrows that were tame enough for me to manage to touch one. I took a ton of photos. I also rang a huge ceremonial bell.

I then checked out this place called the Nu’uanu Pali lookout. It’s this crazy cliff overlooking a massive amount of land. The wind there was ridiculously strong and the view was pretty sweet until a noticed a sign there that said a battle had occurred on that spot between Hawaiian tribes and many of the fighting natives were forced off the cliff, falling to their deaths. The experience went from fairly cool to fucking awesome. I took a few photos of the deadly drop as well.

Today, I’m going hiking to some waterfall. Before that, I intend to try a Mai Tai.

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