False Alarm…Real Scare!

January 14th, 2018

Yesterday, January 13th 2018, at 8h09 am, I sat in my room in Waikiki, searching on my computer for a place to spend the next 3 weeks as I had decided to extend my stay in Honolulu until the first week of February. 

During the years of dreaming about this adventure, I’d often pictured myself spending a month on the beach in Greece.  However, throughout my travels in the fall, the longest I had stayed in one location was 11 nights spent in beautiful Barcelona.  And now I found myself falling completely in love with my little corner of the Pacific.  For those of you who have been regularly following this blog, you know this has happened before (I’m looking at you Zermatt), however this was the first time I had the luxury of time and the ability to stay as long as I wanted (or as long as U.S. Immigration would allow me to stay).  So instead of a month on the beach in Greece, I would be spending a month on Waikiki beach.  Not too shabby, I think, no?  And don’t worry, I still heart you Zermatt!  It’s just I don’t have to wear a toque here….

So this is why I found myself sitting in front of my computer yesterday morning, when, at 8h10am, I received the following text message;

Well, if you’ve never been in this situation before you simply can’t imagine what you feel the moment you read that message.  Simply, it was terrifying.  Luckily, within 10-15minutes, news started to circulate amongst all the guests that this was a false alarm.  38 minutes after the first message appeared on my phone, a new one was sent;

Turns out that human error was to blame for this momentary island-wide panic.  Someone pressed the wrong button and accidentally sent out this message to everyone in Hawai’i.   While this turned out to be a false alarm, it reminded me of three very important facts: 1) We now live in a time / world where these threats are credible and must be taken seriously.  2) Your heart can stop and beat a mile a minute simultaneously and 3) Life is short. YOLO might be a generational cliché however it rings true with this traveller.  I’ve seen for years in my job that you never what can happen to you and you shouldn’t put off doing things you love because you might never have the chance again.  

So that’s how I found myself at 9:00am booking 21 more nights in Honolulu.

Aloha Hawaii!  (that means I love you!!)