Oh my God! I had told them, I was like, "Yeah, I don't know about the fireworks. They're pretty dangerous." And like last time I went downtown a few years ago, I was walking around downtown. And I was crossing the bridge by the community college where the park is, this bridge. And someone just beyond the bridge was lighting off fireworks kinda like on the curb. And they did it wrong. They did it wrong. Somehow it wasn't stable enough and the firework tipped over into the street, pointing at people. And it was shooting off at the people like an explosion. I was like, "No!" It was one of those ones that is supposed to go up really high and go "Pew, pew, pew, pew! Psh, psh, psh!" But this one was going into the street, so all you heard was screams. And I was running away.

What was really surprising was how green New Mexico was. We've flown -- 'cause we're from Hawaii -- so we've flown from Hawaii over to Michigan. And the route, the flying route, the airline route, goes across the Southwest. When you're looking down from the airplane, it's all desert. That whole southwest region of the country is pure desert, it's just a beige, sand color. And you wonder, "How in the world did any life exist or survive out there?" Because it looks like -- how in -- how do you find water to stay alive? How do you endure the heat that's in the desert? So we're -- hour after hour after hour -- going through New Mexico. And it was so green. It was such a stark contrast to the deserts of Arizona and the desert of Texas. This one we didn't go through Texas, but we've been to Texas -- the room attendant on the first -- the first room attendant going to LA, he said, "Yes, don't bother with the Texas Eagle route because it's all desert. Nothing to see." But New Mexico had those big plateaus and the mesas, um, the -- it's not canyons but it's these water erosion formations. It had hills and mountains and forests and trees, shrubbery, grasslands for the cattle. And, you know, there was cattle and horses and bear. It was surprising. We just didn't expect New Mexico to, to be beautiful to look at. But the colors of the rocks, they were red and pink, besides the beige sand color. The formation of the mesas and the plateaus was, it was just really lovely to look at.

Um, it actually probably truthfully started Spring Break 2014. I went home to visit my family and my two brothers were there. They were in high school at the time and we were all downstairs. I was watching NBA TV on my laptop just ready to lay low for the week. And one of my brothers is like "We should do something." And just really threw it out there like, I think he wanted to go somewhere. I was like "Go somewhere? Like go where?” And he's like, "I dunno, like New York." And you know, we had a good chuckle ‘cause you don't just go to New York, or at least I don't -- never had. And, um, somehow, someway, we just let ourselves think like, "But can we? Like can we really?" Or like, "What's actually stopping us? Like what's literally stopping us from doing it?" And before we knew it, we were entertaining this notion, and a day later, we were driving to New York City, driving to the heart of Manhattan, which was the craziest thing for me. And I know a lot of people go to New York. A lot of people go to big cities, but for me, I never stopped to think -- I never figured I'd go to New York ‘cause I could never think of a good reason to, and it's like, what, am I gonna pay for a plane ticket to New York, and for what? To see the Statue of Liberty? I don't have that kind of money. And then it was such a surreal experience because it seemed like I was locked out of New York City for 30 years of my life. I just didn't know how to even, what context would allow me to ever go there? It just seemed complicated and out of reach, and then because my younger brother's like "Why don't we just go?" And we did. We found ourselves in Times Square like 30 hours later, and I was -- I remember sitting being like "I can't, I can't believe I've done this, we're now in Central Park. I -- yesterday, I was watching NBA TV in my dad's basement and now I'm in a place I never thought I’d actually go."