Wednesday, February 08, 2012

La Peruse, Maui
 I was in Hawaii again after the holidays.  Whenever I say I went to Hawaii to people I get this response that's like a half wider-eyed "wow cool" expression mixed with a barely distinguishable dark undercurrent of "What the hell?  What's this joker hiding from me?  How come he gets to go to Hawaii and I don't?  Why didn't he take me!?"  Not necessarily because I can see this expression, but because that's generally how I feel when people tell me about their trips to Thailand or New Zealand or Africa or wherever, well, for those people I have Hawaii.  It's no great distance away, but it's probably still one of the nicest places to visit or, as in my case, have family you can visit.  Nothing beats couch surfing in a place you can actually go ocean surfing too!  As a Canadian it seems I'm not one of the ones that's immune from the snowbird instincts like my other fellow Canadians.  The truth is, most of us don't go to warm places for winter - we tough it out.  I assume as things get more expensive and out of reach for the average person not lucky enough to have some disposable income and couches in paradise to sleep on, we'll just have to all move to Victoria or one of the few other warm pockets of BC or just endure the winter.  It's not that bad at the heart of it.  But then again I've never really lived much farther north than the 49th. so maybe I'm just bullshitting at this point.