Poi tastes like cabdriver feet...

Again with the duffel bag.

This time I had a sober layover in the San Francisco Airport. The thought meandered around in my head that prior to entering an aluminum tube and traveling at 30,000 feet for roughly a couple of thousand miles over nothing but water; a drink may be in order.

But I held fast. I heard that if the notion came upon you, it was wise to make a phone call. I dialed a recovery hot line in the phone book while standing in a long tiled hallway amid a bank of pay phones and talked to some faceless, sober drunk, until the urge passed.

I later learned that it may have done nothing for me, but it kept him sober. And that was really the way this thing worked...it wasn't that altruistic, it was rather self serving...sure, I'll help others, as long as I'm getting mine in return.

I patted myself on the back all the way to Honolulu, arriving at one big freaking expanse of airport well after midnight. I deplaned and the warm, perfumed air was a rush, after the stringent, bracing sub-zero air of Alaska.

No hotties with garlands of flowers to welcome me, just Asian looking people working in an airport, buffing floors, nodding off at checkout counters and cleaning bathrooms.

I wandered around and looked out the big windows at the runway. It was dark, so all I could see were runway lights, but I was here. One may ask, now what? Did I have a job lined up, a place to stay, money in the bank? Have you forgotten who you're dealing with? Of course not.

I read a travelers account of the Islands and settled on the Big Island of Hawaii. Volcanoes, cowboys, marlin fisherman, and the Islanders killed Capt. Cook and ate him not far from where I was supposed to land. Perfect.

I had enough cash to rent a place for a couple of weeks and eat while I looked for work, but this time I had something else in my duffel bag...a big blue recovery based book. I had no intention of screwing this up, after all I was in paradise.

The puddle jumper left Honolulu at 7 a.m. for a forty minute flight to the Big Island. I dozed in a hard plastic chair, equipped with a bolted on, coin operated television.

One of the maintenance workers was buffing the floor around my chair, skinny, Asian with a pencil thin mustache. Kind of a Hawaiian John Waters. He stopped buffing and smiled at me. Uh oh.

He asked me if I smoked. Since he asked in a brusque, oblique way, I knew he wasn't talking about Marlboro's. I had heard legends of Hawaiian weed and thought to myself, why not, I'm not drinking, and I'm only passing through.The thought of the book in my bag never even bubbled to the surface.

He led me through the employees exit to his car, an old Dodge Dart, and we motored out to an empty portion of the runway. Halfway through the joint, I knew it was serious weed, and I was captivated by the planes landing and taking off, here in the middle of the Pacific.

That was when he put his hand on my knee.