So, it turns out I’m not in Kansas anymore – or anywhere even remotely near it. Aloha from our new home: Hawaii! Yes, you read that right. In a plot twist even I didn’t see coming, the year kicked off by trading freeway noise for crashing waves.

Island life is a change in many ways, the biggest of which is that instead of long drives people take short flights for weekend getaways. Our first island hop was earlier this month for a weekend camping trip on Kauai, where I shot my first little vlog from a 360 degree camera – the coolest tool since GoPros, check it out:

Moving out here was tough, more complicated than driving across the country twice, and we had to do it in a fraction of the time. At this point it feels like a blur, Christmas vacation was essentially spent at a storage unit outside of Los Angeles. Most of our belongings had been tucked in there since April, but with all the miles behind us it almost felt like another life.

Half of everything we owned needed repackaging to ship, some of it tossed, other bits donated, but at least we could leave our winter clothes behind. Occasional stays with Rachel’s parents in Arizona lead to some overnight runs to the unit, and after a sunrise visit I went straight to work in LA. The commute into my final day working at a California office did not disappoint, it took six hours, but at that point you just embrace the absurdity of it all. At least I beat rush hour!

Leading up to the official move, we extended our cross-country road trip longer than expected. Well into 2023 we bounced between Oregon, California and Arizona, prolonging any need to sign a lease on the mainland while we waited for our pet’s blood results to return from Kansas. That’s right, Hawaii is rabies-free – so all dogs and cats entering must follow strict import guidelines, many even face months of quarantine upon arrival.

Now settled here, I can say that two pets are plenty, but we almost came with three. During the last days of our initial November visit, Rachel rescued a stray kitten from the side of the road. He was adorable, but scared and very small, weighing hardly more than a pound. At that size and age, no shelters could take him on such short notice, so we had to release him back into the wild, put him down, or take him back to the mainland.

So overnight, tiny Onyx went from rainforest to desert. We nursed him back to life in rural Arizona, and once healthy enough to play he was raised by dogs. Sasha (or cat) was never one for feline friends, let alone to share space and bond with one, so our little mongrel learned his doggone basics from our mutt Scarlet and her German Shepherd cousin. If you don’t know our Scarlet yet, I tried to make her famous on a fellow brand at work, The Pet Collective:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=683636589849767

Onyx stayed on the mainland though, as he was too small to get his rabies shots by the time we were ready to finally move out here. Instead of living that island life, he’s been taken in by my brother up in Oregon. They were already getting a kitten, so now with a partner Onyx is finally learning to be a cat. Pretty cool to see him growing from afar up on Snapchat and it’s nice to know we helped give him a new beginning.

And so, our own journey begins on the North Shore of Oahu, more to come soon! But not too much, there’s no stop lights in the town we found here, and I love it. Reminds me a bit of New York, actually… it moves at a Dolgeville pace but with Manhattan prices.