Back

Something ALWAYS happens to me before I go someplace. I don't know if it's stress or dumb luck. But yesterday I pulled my back out reaching behind a desk to unplug a cable. Great. I can move around, but everything hurts. My friend Renee was able to help out quite a bit with a backrub. But tonight it's ice packs and muscle relaxers. Hopefully it will be tolerable by Friday.

Welcome to my travel blog

Weather

Nine days and nothing to do but wait. Trying to resist the urge to back too soon. I'll just end up unpacking everything again to check on stuff.

Documents

So far, all is in order and I have my documents from the travel agent. There is little to do now but wait. I've started the packing list, and I guess in another week or so I'll actually start putting stuff in bags.

If Douglas Adams likes it there...

From Riding the Rays by Douglas Adams:

"Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent, 35 year old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner. In fact it's not so much a country as such, more a sort of thin crust of semi-demented civilisation caked around the edge of a vast, raw wilderness, full of heat and dust and hopping things.

Tell most Australians that you like their country and they will give a dry laugh and say 'Well, it's the last place left now isn't it?', which is the sort of worrying thing that Australians say. You don't quite know what they mean but it worries you in case they're right.

Just knowing that the place is lurking there on the other side of the world where we can't see it is oddly unsettling, and I'm always looking for excuses to go even if only to keep an eye on it."

So why Australia?

I guess I watched too much Crocodile Hunter and Crocodile Dundee. Frankly, who isn't enchanted with the land Down Under? Hopping marsupials. Giant Lizards and venomous everything. Devils Marbles and Ayer's Rock. Spectacular cityscapes where everyone is your mate. The oldest continual human society.
I had to see it.

So when the time came for me to travel out of the Americas for the first time, Australia was my first choice. There are a lot of places I'd like to see, but Oz has to be first.

O! O! O!

The Nerd Gods have spoken!

A coworker just got back from Sydney and saw The Lord of The Rings exhibit. He's says it not to be missed! As fates have it, it's last day is the first day I'll be in Sydney.