To be honest, I almost didn’t believe it. It was 7AM and by the end of the day, I would be in Hawaii, a place that I had secretly always dreamed of going. Sure, it may not have been hard to believe with how seemingly easy travel has become but with such a history of life letting me down, I couldn’t let it get my hopes up.
Just then, my alarm went off but I was lying there wide awake, too excited to be tired.
Up until that moment I had been suppressing my enthusiasm in an attempt to counter jinx anything from canceling this trip. Typically I keep my excitement to a minimum with anything awesome until it was a sure thing. But if you were watching closely you’d see the crack of a soft smile as bit of excitement escaped my lips.
After shutting off my alarm the United Airlines boarding pass alerted me: “5 hours until boarding for Oahu Hawaii.”
Hawaii…
…the word rattled around in my head…
I kept thinking of when people would mention Hawaii how incredible it was and how much they loved it. Almost as if I haven’t lived unless I experienced it. Plus, I couldn’t think of a SINGLE time anyone had something negative to say about it. Now it was my turn to see what all the hype was about.
It felt so close, but we still had 18 hours and over 5000 miles before I could really show my excitement…
So December was just a few days away and although 2012 had a great start1* the second half was plagued with obstacles.2* Most of them were felt like just another challenge to conquer but with the recent loss of Rockett3, our rescue kitten – that hurtle was just too hard to handle. Even knowing full well his time would be short when we took him in, I still wasn’t prepared for how deep of an imprint his paws would leave on my heart.
It had been almost 2 months now, but it still hurts like hell. Working from home everyday definitely didn’t help… but a trip to Hawaii was certainly a welcomed distraction.
With everything ready and all the bags packed waiting for us in the living room, it was time to go. I grabbed the last and perhaps the most important item for this trip, the camera.
If you’ve read my bio you’ll understand my slightly obsessive documentation and value I place on capturing moments which create memories. But what you might not have known was that this trip began an important evolution for me in photography. I was on the verge of purchasing a new full frame DSLR and since Canon’s 5DmIII left me disappointed, so I took a gamble with the Sony a99.
Behold – my switch to Sony began.
Switching From Canon to Sony
As soon as I stepped outside the cold sleeting raining hit me right in the face. I guess I needed a break from NYC and these East Coast winters more than I realized.
With the first leg of the trip underway – our first obstacle was to get out of New York City. Just a week ago it took us almost 2 hours to get out of the city with all the Thanksgiving traffic. But this time I was pretty surprised how quickly we made it to the Mahattan Bridge. There was hardly a car on the road. We blazed through the city and out the Holland Tunnel – probably the fastest we’d ever done.