The GeekHiker

Strange, it is, trying to blog now, after the road trip is done and while I’m still traveling.  To a degree, I think its like trying to start a novel in the middle and trying to figure out how to catch up the readers on the hero’s journey, when the hero’s journey is halfway through.  Kinda like trying to tell Luke Skywalker’s story by starting in the middle of the trash compactor scene.

But, well, here we go anyway.

It’s funny, I’m finding, how hesitant I am to have confidence in situations; whether they will last, whether they can occur again. I don’t know if it’s a sense of doubt that comes from life experience, or simply that I try to lower my own expectations in order to avoid disappointment.

To wit: my first couple of days on Hawai’i.

I’ve been rather unexpectedly lucky in my time here so far.  I arrived at the hostel only a couple of days ago, not having any plan whatsoever. The morning following my arrival, I started talking to a couple of girls, one from the U.S. and the other from Germany, about their plans for the day.  The former has been on the island for a while, and knows the best happy hours and such, whereas the latter had rented a car and was looking for company touring the island. So the three of us connected and have spent the past few days exploring the island together.

Given that I’d arrived on a holiday weekend, I had pretty much given up on renting a car, had no idea how I would get to Volcanoes National Park or anywhere else, and was worried I’d be stuck in town.  Instead, I’ve had the company of two new friends, an offer of a couch to sleep on in Bremen, Germany, and have managed not only to go to Volcanoes, but to actually circumnavigate the entire island by car.  In the process, I’ve gone hiking, drank some wonderful beers, managed to get to the southernmost point in the United States, and made a couple of new friends.

I’m new to this. The road trip, for all its up and downs, was a relatively solo afair; one just doesn’t meet that many people when traveling by car (the noteable exception, of course, being the extended stops in certain cities and those wonderful readers who I met with on the way).  So I don’t know if this type of thing, meeting up with other travelers, is necessarily a normal and common experience.  The girls told me tales of being at other hostels here in Hawai’i where they managed to meet no one to travel and explore with, even when having a car to tool around in.  Maybe I’ve just been abnormally lucky in my first stop?

Far be it for me, though, to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth and claim he has bad breath.  So my old habit kicks in, for better or for worse: I find myself hoping that this bit of kismet will continue as I travel along, but stuck with cautious doubt that maybe my luck at the first stop is a fluke and nothing more.

Whether that’s optimism, pessimism, or simply realism, I have no idea.