Paddling Into Life, Or The Volcano of Adulthood

I'm going to Hawaii. I bought a non-refundable ticket last night for July 3rd through the 12th.

Before you panic, it is a round trip ticket. I'm still your guy, San Francisco.

Here's the thing. The economy is tight and I live in a magical but definitely expensive city. But I have a plan.

Step one, I procured a bunch of coin rollers from work. I deposited $12 in dimes and nickels today, enough to cover lunch (a new discovery at Crepe and Coffee, the turkey sandwich, with a solid combination of wheat bread, mayo, turkey, mustard, lettuce, and an apple slice), which is almost like proving that there is such a thing as a free lunch, if you consider that liberating my own money from the limbo of loose change--because really, who spends nickels, dimes and especially pennies these days--is kind of like creating money from nothing.

Step two, just do it, damn the costs. I've started a 401k, so I'm saving a bit no matter what each month, which will hopefully be better in the long run than what I could set aside in a savings account right now. So might as well use it. And it's Hawaii.

We put off a trip to Baja in March because of a sudden increase in costs. Maybe the same reasoning could apply, but hell, if you're going to spend money, might as well travel. And there are whales in Hawaii too.

I don't have the funds or time to plan a trip to Europe this year. A trip to Hawaii? It has to be done. I'll probably get to make friends with a shark and toast marshmallows over a volcano. And it will make me much more efficient and budget-conscious, I think, which I am actually excited about, while still doing awesome things like traveling to Hawaii. I went to Trader Joe's tonight, and felt a little frisson of excitement over putting together a dinner of a peanut butter sandwich, bok choi, and a sliced apple. Am I nerdy?

And darned proud of it.

In fact, I would say to you that becoming an adult practically demands going to Hawaii.

Of course, I might not be right about that, but I'm saying it anyway.

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Related travel notes, considered while reading Travel & Leisure, my new indulgence of a subscription, to replace the much-pricier Sports Illustrated:

1) Worldwide restaurants with aspirations of prominence compete for a "Michelin star." Yes, that Michelin. Is it any wonder that the "Michelin Man" is made of so many spare tires?

2) How do airlines, hotels, etc., track the effectiveness of advertising in magazines like Travel & Leisure? There must be the same business-oriented preference for online advertising that is pillaging the newspaper industry (see the demise of the print publication of The Onion in San Francisco, announced this week). With online advertising, you can count clicks in an Orwellian monitoring of people's behavior.

I suppose that some of the special offers, where you have to punch in codes for discounts, will allow both the magazines involved and the merchants in question to track from which sources the responses stem. It makes me think also of Mad Men, of which I've only seen the first fifteen minutes of the pilot episode and yet can't stop contemplating. For all the faults in society in days of old--and what society doesn't have what will one day become faults in the eye of the beholder--could they be said to be better off if they lacked the ability to follow exactly what someone was browsing online?