It was a calm hot day, not a cloud in the sky, the type of day Australia’s good at. 

I was tired from staying the night at the airport. Sydney Airport closed up shop at night and had an unnecessary lock-out policy. 

This policy was enforced at the entrance of the terminal building with a wall of metal. 

A large crowd of people gathered outside, waiting for the sun to rise. 

I waited through the surprisingly cold night until the metallic shutters lifted. 

I got to work, charging my phone, getting money from Western Union, buying cigarettes and trying to actually book my flight to Vancouver. My Mum and Dad had to do it eventually thanks to some modern day technological horseshit. 

Technology was often a disappointment. I had no fear of robotic world wars in the near future or a super AI overlord. 

Fuck the machines. Their genius will never surpass mine. 

The hectic morning was over and I had some time to relax. I went straight for the smoking area and packed the nicotine into my lungs. 

I let my mind wander away laying back in the comfortable chair. 

A deep blue sky above me and shiny white planes floating up and up. 

I began to forget why I was in an airport. 

I drifted through a cycle of nicotine, microsleep and blue sky. 

Nicotine, microsleep, blue sky. 

‘I SHOULD CHECK IN!’ 

The thought knocked me out of the cycle. 

I finished off another cigarette and pulled my bag up onto my shoulders. The weight of it feeling heavier than before, I left my momentary peace behind. 

I went to the bathroom for one last shit before the chaos began. Sitting there on the toilet in the strangely large, empty airport bathroom, I searched through my contacts. 

I found Smile’s email address. 

I had thought about Bright every now and then since Los Angeles. 

Maybe more than every now and then. 

A lot of women had entered my orbit since I met her though, perhaps too many. And I now had a girlfriend waiting for me. 

But for some reason, I couldn’t completely shake her. 

Not yet. 

Here I was squeezing some sludge out and thinking about sparking up some contact through her boyfriend just hours before leaving her country. 

I contemplated it, continuing my shit. 

Why would I do this? Just before I left the continent. 

I emailed Smiles. 

He replied straight away. 

It was a dickhead move, an impulsive move. 

But a move, for some reason, I felt I needed to make. 

I knew there would be no last minute change in my plans. I was in love with a different girl now and I was on my way to live with her again. 

I thought for a moment of the sign above that shop in Sydney. 

You’re Running The Wrong Way 

‘Could I have run the wrong way, here to Sydney?’ 

OR

‘Am I about to by flying to Vancouver?’ 

Maybe it was just an oddly named shop and had nothing to do with anything else. Yeah. 

I left the toilet and wandered around the terminal thinking of all these things, before deciding to stop caring. 

It was time to get back to work, ahead of me was more than a day of flying, two long haul flights with a 16 hour layover in Hawaii.  

I went to another toilet and striped my body of metal, stuffing it all into the crevasses of my bag. I took a look at my sunburnt, tired face in the mirror and readied myself for the journey. 

I exited the toilets to find a driving rain had started. The blue sky I had been lounging under just minutes before was now a dark grey soup of clouds. The rain drops battered the glass windows in a relentless barrage. 

A full blown mental HAVE A NICE FLIGHT DICKHEADS! storm. 

I approached the check-in counter with some apprehension. 

“Is this going to cause delays?” I asked the woman at the counter. 

“Not unless the wind picks up!” 

Her cheerful Australianness or Australian cheerfulness didn’t work on me. 

I knew the trick. Much like the British sense of stiff upper lip, the Australians had something similar, the cultural trait of making any disaster somehow seem funny. 

An Australian’s face could be on fire and they wouldn’t think of it as anything other than something to dance around joking about. 

A Mate MATE, me face is on fire ahahahah mentality. 

I turned to the floor to ceiling windows being battered by the wind and rain. It looked as if the wind had already picked up and was intent on staying up. It wasn’t so much raining as an ocean lifted skywards had been thrown back down with tremendous force. 

“Not unless the wind picks up!” I liked Australians, fucking Australians. 

A few hours later as I sat on the plane ready to taxi out the delay was confirmed, as I expected the storm had caused a cascading backup. 

I was too tired to care, another hour or more added to the already ridiculous number I’d been awake and away from comfort didn’t matter. 

’I’ll get to that bed in Canada and sleep at some point in the future.’ 

The sense of arrogance from the captain when he announced the delay bothered me more. 

An arrogance confirmed at takeoff. As the plane made its turn onto the runway, without lining up, midturn, I felt the engines roar into life on both sides. Full power while still turning a corner. I had never felt that sensation in a plane, something about it pissed me off. 

As the plane left the ground we entered the storm, the engines sounding like they had met their end against it. Kicking and screaming into the sky, up and down and side to side against the wind and rain. 

It was the worst 30 minutes of flying. 

A terrible, 

fingernails dug deep into the armrests, toenails dug deep into my shoes 

30 minutes of flying. 

As the plane finally began to level off and regain its composure the captain came back on to announce we would meet the storm again further out over the Pacific. 

‘I didn’t sign up for storm chasing.’ I thought, but that’s what I got. 

It welcomed us back with the same amount of fury. 

I was between terror and bemusement, sure the only thing on my to do list read… 

• Die somewhere off the east coast of Australia. 

I talked to the plane as it went to war with the troubled air, ‘Keep it steady, keep it steady…’ I repeated. 

I just wanted to get to Hawaii and see a beach or a palm tree or something before freezing for a year in Vancouver. 

‘Keep it steady, keep it steady…’ 

Somewhere between Australia and Hawaii the plane started listening. We entered a peaceful glide into paradise from then on. 

As the volcanic mountains emerged I laughed as the friendly woman with a thick Aussie accent seated next to me asked, 

“Have we stopped?” 

at 30 thousand feet. 

“No,” I said looking at the screen with all the flight stats in front of me, “we’ve just started to descend.” 

I looked at her a moment longer trying to figure out if she was seriously asking if the engines had stopped. 

“Really?” she turned back surprised, “It’s so steady, calm.” 

I stepped off the plane still surprised it had landed in one piece and was greeted by an aloha from an airport employee casually giving me a shaka sign with his hand as he stared out into space. 

I got through airport immigration with ease but was stopped walking through customs. 

The tall and heavy set official wanted to check my bag, “We’re checking the small bags today.” he said, with more than a hint of suspicion as to why I was travelling so light. 

His attitude changed from suspicious guard to happy tour guide once he found nothing but smelly clothes and receipts in my bag. He gave me some sightseeing recommendations and bus information and then went straight back to scanning the floor for those small bags that seemed to be so terrifying. 

I walked around the airport terminal, smoked a lot, exchanged some Australian dollars for a little over ten US dollars and made my way to the bus stop. 

Just as I sat down inside the small glass box, an old homeless black veteran joined me. He was carrying a trash bag of what I assumed were his clothes and worldly belongings. 

He was a veteran of the US military and on his way downtown to see if there were any jobs around. 

I told him my story of having been on the road for two years, his mouth opened as he looked out of the bus stop glass, “Wow man, man you did real great, you did great.” 

The bus pulled up, I gave it a few dollars and began worrying whether my plan of buying something to eat or drink and still being able to take the bus back to the airport was going to work. 

The vet sat across from me to the right and the bus left for downtown. 

“We ain’t at home anymore.” he shouted across to me. 

It took a moment for me in my tired, hungry and halfway into a full transpacific journey state to understand exactly what he meant. 

“Yeah.” I smiled back, we must have been at that bus stop talking for at least an hour, it was our home in a homeless comrade sense of the word. 

I bought a chicken pasta and a Dr. Pepper at a store across from the beach and then went over to it. 

I had gotten my first sight of the beach on the bus, the ocean was the clearest, most beautiful deep blue I had ever seen. It did cross my mind to forget about going to Canada and just stay in Hawaii for the rest of my life. I’d be homeless but I’d be homeless in paradise. 

I knew I had to swim in the ocean, it was a moment I really wanted. 

I found a public bathroom by the beach and changed into the shorts I had bought in Mexico a long time before, they had since I got them always been my most reliable and multitasking piece of clothing. 

I walked out of the public toilets and across the hot sand to the sea. 

I had a backpack with everything I owned inside and the only way I could swim in the ocean was to leave it by the beach – where it could be picked up by one of the roaming happy hobos – or to find someone to keep an eye on it for me.  

I walked around the beach looking for the perfect guards. 

“Hi, I’m on a layover, going to Canada. I have nowhere to put my bag, can I leave it with you while I swim in the ocean” I said. 

The wife began applying sun lotion with a smile awaiting the husband’s response. He was more suspicious than his happy-go-lucky wife. 

He looked up and hesitated before smiling, “Well, I guess so, but I’m an old man, I don’t know how much I could do, someone comes along, tries to take it, what am I going to do?” he said. 

I looked at him thinking through whether it was a yes or a no. I was too tired and determined to swim in the Pacific to care, so I put the bag down and took it as a yes. 

“Thanks, where you guys from?” I said as I unbuttoned my shirt and laid it on top of my bag. 

“We’re from Saskatchewan, here in Hawaii for six months.” the husband replied. 

“Cool, I’m on my way to BC, my girlfriend’s already living there, has a place set up for us.” 

“Wow, even better!” he said warming to me.  

“So six months of this then? Pretty good life.” I said. 

He opened his arms and nodded. 

“I’ll be back soon.” 

I ran and jumped in the ocean. 

The water was as warm and peaceful as it looked. I body surfed the calm waves and floated on my back thankful for the 16 hour layover, knowing that in a matter of hours I would be in my shorts and flip flops facing a freezing Canadian morning. 

I left the ocean, took my bag, thanked the couple and found a quiet spot under the shade of a palm tree, falling into a deep sleep on the sand. 

The quiet buzzing of Honolulu woke me up an hour later. I dug my elbows in the sand and looked off past the sunbathers to the ocean, this was everything I expected of Hawaii. Its beauty was almost absurd, more a caricature than reality. 

My soul was full of Hawaiin sand, pacific dreams. Chicken, pasta, Dr Pepper. I could have died there, on that sand. Death can be pleasant. All great life tires. 

I’d like to die either on a great charge, sword in hand, destruction all around, leading the vanguard into the fire. Or, on an exotic beach surrounded by lovers and drug addicts. Bob Dylan floating in the air, a Murakami wormhole opening up somewhere on the horizon, cats and dogs and chinchillas and lions and bears and unicorns running and dancing. Sipping on naturally caffeine-free tea. Heart slowly shutting down. Death can be pleasant. 

There is no place, no paradise planet. No heaven. No, nothing. As serene and peaceful and glorious as those islands. They’re a kingdom of grace and real magic. 

It was hard to raise myself up off the sand to take the bus back to the airport but with Vancouver waiting and my girlfriend waiting, I did. 

I changed back into my flight clothes, smoked a cigarette, got a lecture from a homeless man about the statue I was leaning against and returned to the reality of what this jump to the top of the world was really all about, going to Vancouver to live with my girlfriend.