All Unattended Baggage Will Be Confiscated and Destroyed..

Original Post Date - September 24, 2007

So we made it.

After 40 hours or better of non-stop travel, we landed in Sydney last night around lunchtime. Five hours took us to Vancouver, where I was more than happy to see Kev again, we even went for a pint. That being said, Vancouver blows. I've never seen the kind of traffic that we saw there.. I dunno how people put up with it. And they laugh at Toronto for having an 8-lane highway. From Vancouver, we had a refuelling stop in Honolulu that ended up taking about 7 hours, becuase the air conditioner on the plane broke down. According to the Air Canada chick, we were about 10 minutes from spending the night when the finally got it straightened out. On top of that, there's nowhere you can have a smoke in the airport there, so you have to go completely outside - I think Steve and I cleared U.S. Customs and Immigration half a dozen times - by the time we left, the security detail knew us by name. Leaving Hawaii was a little bittersweet, I was kinda rooting for a layover. Apparently, the USS Arizona memorial is a 10 minute drive from the airport, and I've been thinking of making that trip for a long time. Too bad, maybe on the way back? We left Hawaii for the longest leg of the trip - Honolulu to Sydney -> 10.5 hours, here we go. The ride was awful - My ass was asleep by the time I couldn't see Maui and it never really woke up until this morning. On the upside, we had Victor Kozyn as our flight attendant, and I managed to snap a quick pic of video game celeb Donkey Kong while aboard. After falling so far behind schedule, we weren't really in the scheduled landing sequence once we finally made it to Australian airspace, so we got the added bonus of a low fly-by of the entire city; what a sight. I don't think I've seen a city that looked so beautiful - and we hadn't even been on the ground yet. We landed only to find out that because of the delicate Aussie ecosystem, the government here require that all inbound international flights are required to be sprayed down by a 'non-toxic, eco-friendly, approved by the World Health Organization, pesticide'. After all these assurances, the cabin crew came out in rubber gloves and dust masks - sure it's safe.

Michele met us at the airport, and all I could think about, in spite have having done nothing for the duration of our journey but eat, all I could think about was food. We stopped at the McDonald's in the airport, and I immediately fell in love with Aussie 'cuisine'. Everything here tastes FANTASTIC. I dunno how to stress enough, you probably won't understand until you come here - and I strongly recommend that you do. It was a quick run on the train to Wollongong, where we dropped our bags quickly and took the dime tour of the beach. By then though, all I wanted to do was go to bed. I was so tired that I didn't even bother to call home and check in with anyone. I slept right through until 7:30 this morning - that's when I made all my calls home. Today is nothing really to write home about.. we did take a sweet, independent mission to 'Woolie's' (Woolworth, remember Woolworth?) to get bacon and eggs. Supermarkets here are weird. The eggs aren't refrigerated, and the bacon is strategically placed in like 3 different areas of the store. Things are grossly expensive, so we spent about 30 bucks on breakfast. It was worth every penny.

We just got in from the beach now, and we're killing time before dinner. I'm dying for a smoke, and I can't wait to eat. I'll try to update more whenever I can. Hope everyone is well - Talk to y'all soon.

Cheers.

//.