Reflections: Oahu, Hawaii

Published 6 September 2012

Extract from my diary, 6 September 2011:

What a f**king day! I went SKY DIVING! 14,000 feet, jumped out of a plane strapped to a man I’d met five minutes earlier! ‘What the hell am I doing?’ was pretty much all that was going through my head the entire time preceding the jump. Seriously, what the hell!?

[…random babbling…]

Then…we jumped…

…and we fell and we fell and we fell and we fell. For a whole minute. I thought I would have been screaming my head off but I could barely make a sound. You don’t know which way is up or what is going on at all for a few seconds. Then it’s just shock and amazement. It’s impossible to comprehend, let alone describe.

One year on, I still cherish that day as one of the best days of my life. Unlike many backpackers, I set out with the intention of avoiding all extreme sports. I didn’t understand why anyone would put themselves in a potentially fatal situation, when they could choose to be safe on solid ground. That was before I met Lucky.

I met Lucky in Los Angeles, and it just so happened he was flying to Honolulu the same day as me. We met up in Waikiki and took the lengthy bus journey up to the North Shore, where all the good surfing is. He wanted to get off the beaten track; I just wanted to get away from the many honeymooners in Honolulu who were making me want to gag on a near constant basis.

Lucky suits his name. He’s basically a nutter. A blonde, long-haired German who blows any preconception that Germans are boring totally out of the water, he was abuzz with energy, exploring our surroundings with an enthusiasm I can only compare to that of a 10-year-old boy.

He was just what I needed.