One of the top questions I’ve found searchers of Aim for Awesome are looking for is – Where is Hawaii? Answer is below…

It was 1984 and I had just finished up my Air Force training at Keesler Air Force Base, in Biloxi, Mississippi. I was handed a piece of paper that was to decide where I would spend the next four years.

It said something that didn’t register in my brain:

Hickam AFB, Honolulu, Hawaii

I was sure I had received someone else’s assignment. I couldn’t really speak. I was shell-shocked, and we were not at war.

All my friends were either screaming happily about where they were going – or withdrawn into a shell – wondering what Minot North Dakota must be like – for instance.

Me?

I didn’t know what in the world I was to think. I had no feeling at all about going to Hawaii – I couldn’t point to within 2,000 miles of where the Hawaiian islands were on a map. I knew it was a state. I just figured I’d never go, so why find out where it’s located?

Friends saw me looking like a zombie and figured it was something tragic in my assignment. They grabbed the paper out of my hand and read it screaming… Hawaii! Peter is going to Hawaii! Holy #*($*!!!

But I sure wasn’t happy at the time. In fact, I tried (half-heartedly) to exchange my assignment with someone else. It wasn’t approved and I was sentenced to four years in minimal security lockdown at Hickam AFB, on Oahu.

Hawaii – I should have known – is located southwest of California by a couple thousand miles (about 2,400 miles). From Japan? Around 3,850 miles southeast. From where I grew up on the east coast of the USA?  About 6,500 miles away!

Hawaii is the most remote place on the planet. Well, remote populated place.

Hawaii is where the weather is always right. It’s where the people are amazing if you stop and get to know them. Sure you might have to go out of your way a bit, the world’s population doesn’t greet you with open arms wherever you go – right?

Where is Hawaii? Right where it should be! Far away from the other people of the world… isolated and utopian!

I enjoyed my time at Hickam on Oahu immensely. I enjoyed it so much, I moved back to Maui after fifteen years of being away.

It’s the ultimate place to live on the face of the earth… and can you live there too!

Google Map – Hawaii is located HERE!