The alarm ripped me out of a deep sleep at 4 am. The usually-bustling city outside my apartment was eerily quiet as I grabbed my bags and kissed my pups goodbye. With the US government shut down, I had no idea how long it would take to get through airport security, so I headed out two hours early in case of a chaotic meltdown in government services.
Once there, it was business as usual. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and I attribute that mainly to the fact that it was 5:30 in the morning. I was dressed similarly to the group of homeless people that crowd around the employment services building just north of my apartment. My faded jean jacket, worn-down hoodie sweatshirt and a dirty ballcap that didn’t quite cover a fresh-scar under my blurry right eye tipped off security and I was selected for a random screening.
They tore through my messenger bag, only to find a few notebooks and a copy of “Shantaram” and let me through. Even while not being paid, they did their job; begrudgingly, however.
The flight to San Francisco was a shadow of a dream. I faded in an out of consciousness in an isle seat in the back of the plane, surrounded by groups of sleeping passengers.
Once in San Fran, I grabbed a sandwich on some local sourdough and boarded the plane.
In the past few years, I have traveled to many places that do not draw the majority of casual travelers: Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador; these places aren’t quite known as family destinations. But Maui, in January, well that was another story.
I filed into the back of the plane and was smacked in the face with the smell of babies. Now my brother just had a baby, and one baby, well, a single baby emanates the sweet essence of pure innocence. You pack two dozen babies in the back of a hot plane and you get the palpable stench of vomit and diarrhea. I choked on the noxious fumes as I cornered myself in a sea of screaming infants, puking and writhing in their seats as their sagged-eyed parents tried to hold onto their sanity as closely as their spastic progeny.
This continued, non-stop, for the next 6 hours.
I tell you, there is no better birth control than being packed into a mob of chaotic, 2-ft-tall monsters that are as loud as they stink. I missed the packed Moscow subway in June; it was so bad. At least on the Moscow subway, everyone is quiet.
But, as in so many things, the harder the journey, the more satisfying the destination. I was greeted by my good friend Harmony. The last time had seen her was over a year ago as I pulled away from a tiny Honduran port and onto my next adventure. She looked as good as I remembered; tanned skin and a long Hawaiian skirt that danced in the tropical breeze flowing through the open-aired airport. I scooped her up and gave her a big hug, grabbed my bags and we were off into the tropics of Maui.
Whenever I get to a place, the first things I do is taste the air and drink in the countryside as I drive to wherever I am staying. Maui is no different than any of the other tropical places I have been. Luscious green vegetation grows thick up far-off mountains. Palm and banana trees whizz by while local birds dance through the palpable air.
But the smell.This was different.In all of these third-world countries, the choking fumes of diesel exhaust poison the air, gathering on everything from buildings to trees to people’s skin, burning the eyes and oppressively harming the lungs.But not here.It was just the sweet smell of jungle.The refreshing air, hinted with the sweet smell of fruits and flowers blew through my hair as we continued down the road.There was no poison here.This is America.I am so thankful I am from this country.