Greetings from the land down under! After an exhausting round of traveling I finally touched down in Australia yesterday. I can't believe it's Friday already!
Here's how it all started. Tuesday morning I woke up just ten minutes before my friend Erin was to pick me up to drop me off at the airport. I hurriedly jumped into what I knew to be my last shower and shave for a couple of days and then proceeded to cram everything spread around the room into my backpack while Erin waited patiently in the living room. I hope I didn't make you late, Erin!
From Dallas I took a quick three hour flight to Los Angeles where I met a couple from Ohio (hi Karen!) and their super-quiet dog who rode under the seat. Who knew you could even take dogs onboard with you? Once I got to LA I had almost 14 long hours to spend before my trans-Pacific flight. A new friend from CouchSurfing named David suggested I hit up Santa Monica so I headed for Ocean Avenue just in time for rain. Can you believe it? Whoever sang "It Doesn't Rain In Southern California" was a lying bastard. But I walked around anyway eventually meeting up with David at his sports collectibles shop not far from the beach. The rest of the time was spent reading more of Paulo Coelho's book Eleven Minutes, which I've been reading off and on for weeks now whenever I have to time to kill near a bookstore. I started this book in Germany, continued it in Geneva, Switzerland, a bit more in Midland, Texas and almost finished it in Los Angeles before catching the "Big Blue Bus" of Santa Monica back to LAX airport for my 11:45pm flight to Australia.
My flight was somewhere around 16 hours long across the Pacific, taking me to Sydney just after 8am. From there I had more than four hours of layover time. Luckily they had a fairly extensive bookstore in the airport so I was able to stretch out Eleven Minutes across a fourth country and third continent. Some day I plan to actually finish that book!
After finally catching my last flight of the longest day ever I made it to Brisbane just after 2pm for a meeting that has been a long time coming. Amy from AmyRTW.com was waiting for me not far from the city center at the hostel she's been staying at the night before. We've been emailing back and forth and reading each other's websites for months since my sister Abbey met her in Austin and passed on her address.
We soon made it over to the home of my first Australian host (and Amy's first CouchSurfing host ever) Gina where my long day of traveling finally came to an end. I was so happy to take my backpack and my shoes off. Gina wasn't home yet (she had to work through the night) but two of her friends were there to greet us at the door. We had a great night of great food and good Australian "Crownies" beer. Right after 10:00pm I found it hard to keep my eyes open any more so I made it to bed after the longest day ever.
What a shock to wake up to Tuesday morning, fly all over the place, and then wake up what feels to be the next morning to find that it's already Friday. Where did my week go? Crossing the International Dateline means Wednesday, Dec 8 never existed for me. That's so strange to think about. I departed on Tuesday and landed just 16 hours on Thursday. Very strange.
So I made it Dad! You can rest easy now:)
Posted December 9, 2004 08:57 PM @ (GMT - 6)
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I'm so glad you made it there safely! And how cool that you and Amy finally got to meet up. Will miss you much at Christmas but hope you have a great one over there. Love you Jim.