Special Ops Engineering: Aloha edition

I've been a bad Special Ops Engineer. There were two trips, in May, back to the Nat'l HQ that I didn't bother documenting. It was travel hell, but beautifully lush and verdant while I was there. Delta credited me about a bazillion bonus miles for the inconvenience of sleeping in Atlanta, twice, and being delayed into Saturday for my return flight on another leg. *handwave* Let's pretend that didn't happen. Moving on to June.

Last week my boss called, sounding very serious. "K," he said. "I need you to fly to Hawaii. There's an emergency." You think I'm joking. I can see it, through the internet. No one's job has emergencies that require a tropical destination. Never in three-and-a-half years has dispatch sent me to Hawaii. But it's true, and off I went!

The problem with working in Hawaii is that over-nighting parts isn't an option. Combine FedEx's "that's not in the continental US" take on the Islands with Island Time, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Instead, the parts get over-nighted to me, I cram them into a "spare suitcase" (you have one of those, right?), and they become a second checked bag when I fly over the Pacific. The problem with this plan is that if I find I need another part while I'm there... well, over-nighting still isn't an option. So you order everything you might need, and end up carrying stuff back home with you too.

Waikiki, while gorgeous, is not really designed for people who have to work. Flying in at after-midnight o'clock gave me a unique perspective on the street signs there: They're non-existant. I drove around like an idiot for thirty minutes longer than necessary, finally got to my room around one, and had to be back out the door before seven. HQ helped with that early wake-up, too, since they're six hours ahead of Hawaii. My phone rang at four AM local time.

The lab I was going to is hidden in the hills, squirreled away like some remote ninja temple. Leaving the freeway, one must traverse a windy residential street until it narrows into a war-torn path, complete with imposing gate and guard who does not know if the Dept. of Health is actually up this road, because he's never been inside "The Area." Near the summit, past several dilapidated and unused municipal buildings, there is a small white sign with faded black letters and an ambiguous arrow. Follow it, turn right into the parking lot, and Lo! and Behold! There is a huge lab building up there, hiding, where no one would ever think to find it.

You think I'm joking again, don't you? Ask M. He's been there too!

The repair itself went well. Everything was sorted by late afternoon. Thursday night I slept like a rock, and I spent Friday adventuring! I drove east out of Waikiki, around Diamond Head, past a broad bay (where I found a new pet: Hermit Crab; Can I keep it?), past the snorkeling bay of infamy, past a blowhole; onward and somewhat inland. I picked up lunch to go and took it to the botanical gardens, which are free, and had a picnic at the visitor's center before wandering down toward the lake. Then I drove around the north shore, had a banana-coconut-chocolate milkshake and dipped by toes in the ocean before heading back to the airport just as the rain began to fall.

There pictures! So it really happened.

I spent a lot of my drive thinking about my brother. How, as a young teen, he spent an entire Hawaiian vacation trying to come up with the perfect description of the blue water he saw off-shore. How that precious brat (I say with all the love and tolerance of a know-it-all big sister) threw around "cerulean" and "azure" as if they were nothing-words, commonplace in a Jr. High vocabulary. He's a published author now, I thought, as I drove. I also thought of my husband, who had not enjoyed his solo adventuring on the same Island but who had brought home fond memories of our honeymoon. I thought of many family vacations, good memories all of them, and how I had favorite places on an Island that had never been home.

I enjoy traveling. I enjoy it enough to say I love traveling, but what I love most of all is when a once far-flung place becomes familiar enough to have favorites, habits, memories ingrained in its very soil, places I would share with friends or family if they traveled with me in the future. I love finding Home in all the places I visit, and then bringing that bit of Home back with me to share.

I took the red-eye home Friday night, and now it's back to work as usual.