Three Doors Down...

It has been a long time since I have spoken to you. I have a good enough excuse though. I've been homeless. Ya, homeless. Really, it's not all that bad, but you do have a feeling of restlessness when you don't know where you next meal or pillow will be. It's a unique feeling. I recommend everyone tries it at least once in life. In fact, my whole week has been informative.

After coming close to passing out from exhaustion while packing I got a vital three hours of sleep before I left to the airport. Once at the airport I saw that someone had left one of those airport baggage carts right where I was dropped off. I thought it was a good omen. If the sidewalk was made of wood I could have knocked on it. I wish I had.

I get to check in my luggage and as usual I am over weight. I play a bit of a shuffle and stuff game until I finally make every barely copasetic. Then I inquire about my seat assignment. The bleach blonde said I had none.

"But I booked it online. I clicked on the little seat and everything."

"Ya, I'm sure you did. They are not guaranteed."

I walk to screening for my anal exam. I remove my shoes, my keys, my wallet, my watch, my walkman, my cell phone, my .22 pistol and my fillings. Miraculously I made it through without the metal detector going off. It was a first for me. Maybe this was going to be alright after all. But wait! Where is my carry on? Oh, it's going through the screening for a third time.

I have a small set of screwdriver heads that could almost puncture skin if you shot them out of a cannon at someone. They had to go. This being the first time they decided that I couldn't bring them I was at a loss of words. I asked what my choices were.

"Oh, well, you can mail them home or throw them away. You had better decide soon so you can get on the plane. Now, I have to escort you out."

Sure enough, she escorted me away from the place like I was Jabba The Hut at an all you can eat buffet. I went to the information desk and asked him how much to send my stuff. He pulled out envelopes. I may not be a highly trained expert in the art of TSA security or Airport Information Services, but I do know that a whole screwdriver set will not fit in a size 10 envelope. He looked at me as if to say, "That's all I've got. What about you?"

I went to ask Hawaiian Air if they could hold my stuff at the courtesy desk for me. The line was so long I thought I'd have to walk half way back to my house to find the end of it. I quickly abandoned that idea. I came crawling back to the mongoloid working at the information desk. The best he could do was recommend that I have my hardware declared as lost. I envisioned this to mean that they will ship it to the set of the highly rated TV show thus landing me a credit in the episode where a crazy Muslim stabs someone on the island in their sleep. I was wrong.

The idea is that I leave there as a lost item and I have my mom come by and pick it up for me later. I run the risk of someone else seeing it and claiming it to be theirs or it actually becoming lost. I asked him if it would be possible to have my name on it so it would be obviously marked as mine. He looked at me incredulously and said, "Well, if it had your name on it than it wouldn't be lost, would it?" Well, duh! What I thinking!? Wanting my stuff to still be owned by me and all...

I walk back through security once again and see the person in front of me wearing black tennis shoes walk through with them on. I tried the same. I was sternly told, "I'm sorry, but those kind of shoes have to be removed." What? Was I wearing the wrong color?

I get to my over crowded gate and inquire about my seat. I am told to wait. Then they board First Class. I assumed I would be in steerage. My name was finally called and I was finally assigned a seat after the Second class citizens were already boarding. My seat was dead last in the line. The guy next to me was very tired. I know because even though he was sleeping the entire time he kept snoring and jerking every few minutes, thus bumping me into the isle as the cart comes by to smack into my elbow - frequently. It was so wonderfully synchronized I was beginning to wonder if it was some beautifully planned ballet.

Sitting in the low income section I was also the last on the list for any form of service. By the time the food cart came to me all of the food that didn't contain sawdust was gone. The person three seats down got a plate of warm lasagna. I got a stale roll with a dry slice of pressed turkey sweepings. *Yea*

My ride to campus was waiting for me when I arrived in Honolulu. A bag got a strap caught in the conveyer belt causing a back up and I didn't have any patience left to get my last bag. I jumped over the belt onto an island in the middle. I freed the bag and gave it to the owner. Just then I saw my bag passing before my eyes. I grabbed a hold of it, did a cartwheel over it landing on the other side and then pulling my bag off the belt in fluid motion. I actually got a light applause from the crowd around me. I only wish I had some visual documentation for proof of my spectacular feat.

I arrived on campus and began to wonder where I would sleep that night. I found a party for some employee's of some department that I don't work for. The food was pretty good. I would consider working there for the pot lucks alone. After that I followed up on a lead for a place to rent.

This place had new carpet and a fresh paint job, but no furniture at all. They then informed me that they have decided to go with someone else but as a consolation prize I was welcome to sleep on the floor for the night.

The next day I wandered around and paid tuition, spent 10 hours trying to clean up my computer lab for my job, and continued the house hunt. Again I had many close calls but no luck. One piece of valuable information I learned is that sleeping in the back seat of a car is not that bad, but avoid leather and/or vinyl seats. I felt like I was floating in a pool of my own sweat.

At the end of my third day I found a place here in Laie. It's a small room upstairs in the house of a lady who has had most of her children move out. The backyard is the famous Hukilau Beach. The actual entrance to the beach is only three doors down. I later found out that some of my friends live three doors down in the other direction.

Thus ends my homeless experiment. I went three days with no bed, no place to stay and eating only what I could find for free. All in all, it was not so bad. If at any time I started to get tired of it I just kept telling myself one thing: This will make for a great blog subject.