I couldn’t believe it. I just purchased the most expensive muffin and orange juice in my entire life. Before then, I’d never bought anything in an airport. That being said, I took four bites out of it, be
came sick to my stomach, and threw it away. Flying was something I experienced during infancy, in the arms of my mother. On that day, I was flying alone to a place I’d never been, almost 4,800 miles away from home. But perhaps I should treat you to a little flashback, seeing as to why, exactly, I was in that airport to begin with…Monday, January 11th, 2010
I was so jaded. So bummed out. So irreversibly lethargic, that the moment I returned home from failing my driver’s test, I went straight to bed, fully dressed, still wearing my socks. I awoke many hours later and checked my phone. No missed calls. No texts. Not one. The second dose of cynicism kicked in.
I had been expecting a phone call. I very important, life altering, phone call. I had entered a sweepstakes one a few weeks prior, where upon winning, I would be flown out to Hawaii to be a VIP guest at LOST’s final season premiere. I considered that perhaps the phone call would be coming from a strange time zone and it wouldn’t come until later. It was 3:12 in the morning when I decided to stop banging on the hatch door and forget about it. I wasn’t going to the premiere.
So - With no driver’s license. No free trip to Hawaii. No LOST adventures in the works. I crawled back to sleep, knowing that tomorrow I would churn out a new intangible goal to get my hopes up and over.
I got an event invite on Facebook to attend the LOST SEASON SIX PREMIERE FAN MEET-UP IN WAIKIKI. I must admit. Getting this invite made me want to put my face through my monitor. Way to pour the dead sea into my already bursting open wounds. I was so upset. So depressed. So tired. And - So not ready to give up on going.
A little history on my desires to visit Oahu before it simply became a monument to the greatest television storytelling I’d ever experienced, called LOST. A few episodes into the fifth season I came upon an entry on LongLiveLocke, where Erika Olson had a ridiculously successful voyage to the island and went so far as to meeting Terry O’Quinn himself.
I brought the idea to my fellow Losties and over the course of a few months (while jobless), the four of us began to save up all our monies in hopes of fulfilling our religious pilgrimage to Hawaii. Unfortunately, with many of us in college and attempting to acquire vehicles, the possibility of making the trek was becoming smaller and smaller. Until there were only two of us left mutually deciding that it wasn’t going to work. In December we decided that if we didn’t spend a dime for that month we could go. We gave up for a third time a week or so later. But I always told myself that is Jacob wanted it to happen. It would happen.
On January 13th, I said to my father, “There is a huge LOST gathering in Hawaii in two weeks. I want to go”. I got the response I had imagined I’d get. An optimism strapped battle-axe, swinging in to smash my dreams once in for all. But I was resilient. So, with no help from the parental figures (yet…) I decided to do a little math.
If 20 people gave me 20 dollars, I would have enough money to book a flight to Oahu. So that is exactly what I proposed to the entire Facebook community. This was my final chance to make it. My last hope. Within 24 hours I got five responses from family and friends. High school teachers willing to donate 100$ to help fulfill my dream of seeing LOST with my own eyes. Donations came in from extremely unlikely places, and from people I would of never expected. A turn of events I was ill-prepared to comprehend.
In just under a week I managed to raise close to 700$. Within another week I had booked my flight. My tour of the island and the locations LOST films. And not two weeks prior, I was jaded, burned out, and drowning in my own pessimistic negativity that nothing good would ever come of this. And with the help of a few very generous individuals, I was able to take a step towards my dreams.
And that is how this remarkable trip began…
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