I left work around noon. I got home to do some final packing and that is when I got my first twinge. I always get the twinge at some point before I travel out of the US. It is that little feeling in the pit of my stomach. The twinge is part excitement of the upcoming adventure and part anxiety over everything involved with traveling overseas.
We got to the Austin airport and onto LAX without a hitch. As we walked down to get to our bags in LA I was approached by an old lady who was the 'information officer' for LAX. In my mind, I was cringing, "Please don’t talk to me." I am a very grumpy flyer. She asked if she could help me in any way. Before I could utter "Get lost", it occurred to me that I had no idea where our next flight was departing. “Actually, I do need help. Do you know where Virgin Australia is?” She let us know that it was the next terminal up. I told Michelle that I could not remember the last time a person like that actually helped me.
We walked to the next terminal and saw some airline with a line of weary travellers next to another airline with a line of weary travellers followed by Virgin Airline counter accompanied by a chorus of angels. There was mood lighting, soft music playing and a team of a dozen or so 20 year old, blonde haired, blue eyed, Australian accented girls to help us and maybe one other traveller. By far the best service I had ever received at an airport counter.
After a dinner and a 4 hour layover, we boarded the plane to Sydney. I sat down, got situated and promptly broke my individual video player. I almost panicked. This flight was 15 hours long. To put that into perspective, the longest nonstop flight in the world is 18.5 hours. I started to think about 15 hours of no sleep and no movies, music or games to keep me occupied. Right before I broke into tears, I waved down our 20 year old, blonde haired, blue eyed, Australian accented flight attendant to explain my problem. "No worries, I'll reset it for you", and with that she was gone. My screen went black. I almost panicked again but then our 20 year old, blonde haired, blue eyed, Australian accented flight attendant was by my side telling me to give it 5 minutes. As my screen came back to life, I found myself thinking she may be my favorite flight attendant EVER.
The flight sucked bad. 15 hours is just grueling. At one point, I was about to snap. I looked down at my watch and we were only 9 hours in. Holy crap, I had 6 more hours in that tin can. I watched a couple more movies and had a terrible breakfast of wet eggs and tasteless sausage (little did I know that this was a harbinger of many breakfasts in my near future). Then, finally, we landed. We got our bags and headed for customs. At this point, a thought that had been pestering me for 2 days really started to rear its ugly head. I never really made concrete plans to meet with Alexis and Matt, the people we were going to see. What makes this pertinent is that I knew my cell would not work in a foreign country. If she is not someplace we can find her, we are going to be in a bind. As we walked down the ramp and turned the final corner, I saw Alexis' signature blonde hair and Bam! the twinge of anxiety was swept from me and replaced with nothing but the pure excitement and anticipation of the weeks ahead.
We piled into her car and 20 feet later I had my first "WHOLY SHIT!! HE IS COMING RIGHT AT US!!" thought as cars drive on the left side of the road down there. Of course Alexis expertly kept her car on the correct side of the road and there was no issue. Their place was only 30 minutes from the airport. We got to the house and Matt offered me a cup of coffee. After 24+ hours of travel, I turned down the coffee in favor of a beer. Matt sad something to the effect of "I couldn't drink at this time of day" and I realized that the kids were still in PJs first thing in the morning Sydney time. But I was on vacation time and, of course, this would not be the last time that I would be drinking in the morning hours. Come to think of it, one day Matt DID drink before noon and that turned out to be a pretty damn cool day, but more on that later.
After a much needed shower and change of clothes, we piled back into the car and went to downtown Sydney to walk around. Sydney and Sydney Harbor are just plain beautiful. They are similar to SF and yet very different. For one, you can see the other side of the harbor in Sydney. You can differentiate individuals walking on the other side. It just feels very intimate. Yet, when you fly over the harbor, it is HUGE. I understand it has like 150 miles of shoreline.
Anyway, we walked, found a pub, drank some pints, walked some more and then headed to the Sydney Fish Market, Sydney's answer to Fisherman’s Wharf. Matt reacted just like I would have if I was asked to swing by Fisherman’s wharf after I had my car headed out of the city. “Parking sucks, place is smelly, parking sucks, that place is crowded, and did I mention the parking sucks? We’ll never get a spot”. So Matt pulls into the area leading to the Fish Market and traffic is backed up about 10 car lengths. Matt reminds us that this place sucks and there is no parking. We get to the ticket booth, grab a parking stub drive 10 feet and Alexis sings out “There’s one! Right there!” and sure enough, there are 45 cars circling, there is only one open parking spot in the entire complex, and it just happens to be right in front of us. I look at Matt and say something smartass like “Jees Matt, there is parking everywhere!”
So what did we get at this market? Shrimp (prawns actually) for Shrimp on the Barbie. We drove over to Matt’s parent’s house for an awesome BBQ of steak, shrimp, barramundi and sausage. Their house is on the outskirts of town on a big plot with a permanent grill outside. His dad and mom are pretty cool and never let on if they were offended by the state of inebriation Michelle and I were in at that point. It was pretty fascinating hearing their view of our government. What they perceived and what I have been thinking did not come close to meshing. We discussed lots of stuff, like socialized medicine, wars, national debt, taxes etc. I thought Michelle was too drunk to contribute with any sense of enunciation. She thought I was to drunk and too loud. Again, Matt’s parents were awesome and never let on if they thought we were too drunk.
The next day we headed to the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney. I have to say, if this gem was as close to my house, I would be camping there weekly. There were tons of waterfalls, sheer cliffs and hiking trails. The views were incredible. And best of all, once we were done hiking, the pub was pretty close by. We saw the Three Sisters in Katoomba. We hiked toward Pulpit Rock a little farther down the road. I say toward because it was on the other side of the valley. We thought we were one more ridge away, but when we turned the corder, it was 2-3 more ridges away. We all agreed we could see it just fine from where we were and cold beer started sounding really, really good, so we turned back and headed for the car. We stopped for pints at a pub in the Imperial Hotel in Mt. Victoria. After a good hike I was ready for a beer. More ready than I might have realized. I believe I claimed the Victoria Bitter brand beer in my hand to be the best beer I have had in a long time. Later in the trip, I could not stomach anymore of these.
A strange thing happened at the bar. With cold beers in hand fresh from the only guy in the place, we asked if we could order food. The bartender says we can, but we need to order in the dining area. So we walked down 2 steps to the ‘dining area’ and there is a window…to the SAME bartender who just served us beers. The guy asks what we would like to eat. I was like “Whaaaat?” Is this guy joking? I thought I was in a Monte Python sketch. I asked Matt why we had to take two steps and order from the other side of the bar. He just uttered “Don’t screw with the system,” under his breath. So we ordered food and the guy asked where we were going to eat. We told him in the bar, and took our 2 steps back up to eat and order more beers.
On our way out, we noticed a pool table with balls in the return. I set them up to play a quick game with Matt while Michelle finished her beer. Someone asked why it did not cost. No one really knew why, until 10 minutes later we saw 4’ x 4’ sign saying free pool on Mondays. Not sure how we missed that. 1 game turned into 3-4 and some more beers.
On the way back to the house, Michelle had us stop so she could buy some ugg boots at a roadside stand. Apparently ugg is a generic term in Australia. Everyone sells soft shoes lined with fur. This stand also carried kangaroo bass bottle openers and kangaroo scrotums to hold pocket change. I got Austin the later as his souvenir.
We got back, picked up their kids and left to go eat. By some weird twist of fate, a freak storm passed through and knocked out 3 businesses. One was the restaurant where we planned to eat. So we ate at the next place down, a kebab place. I love kebab places. I got kebabs a few more times while we were down there. After dinner, the kids were off to stay with Matt’s parents’ and we hit the rack early and got prepared for the second leg, The Outback and the Northern Territories.
