It's Time To Fly

Tuesday, November 2, the longest day in the year

God always reads our knee-mail

Sign outside a church in Moss Vale NSW.

So, where was I?

Or, more rightly, where AM I?

Once I actually arrived in Sydney it was terrible weather so we had lunch and walked out in the rain long enough for me to take a picture or two to prove I was there - before heading out for Canberra.



And yanno, I slept in the car a lot cause I'd been up all night.

But whatever, Canberra was wonderful. It feels like a lot longer than 6ish years since I've seen Sandy but it was truly a great visit. She and her friends did a damn fine job of making up for the airline mess in Perth and leaving me with a good couple of days to end my trip.

It's good as well to catch up with someone and find that they struggle with some of the same things you do. Even though we're worlds apart, we're close. And that makes me very happy.

And although my horses in the sweeps came in 11th and 14th, I am totally in awe that I was in Australia for the history making moment of the Melbourne Cup.

For those of you who know as much about it as I did - it's been run 145 times (I may get some of this wrong) and only four? times in all that time has a horse won two back to back.

It's a handicapped race (meaning the horses carry extra weight based on their track records to make all the horses basically 'equal'). The winning horse was carrying 56kg (ish) which I think is the highest amount any of them have ever had to carry.

So, for the first time EVER a horse (a mare, and 7 years old even) has now won three races in a row.



I teared up. It was an utterly amazing experience.

Then I got drunk.





Then I hauled my sorry ass out of bed and flew from Canberra to Melbourne, then (late) from Melbourne to Sydney. THEN Sydney to LAX and now I am sitting in yet another airport bar waiting for my last flight back to Vancouver so I can grab a shuttle and crash in the hotel before heading back over to the island tomorrow.

I'll spend 22 hours actually on a plane today and so far, about 6 hours sitting in airports. The nightmarish thing is it's only 12:24 pm and I left Canberra this morning at 8 am.

Once I get home on Thursday, I have to work on Friday and then I have a grand total of 2 days off in the next 14.

By Sunday, I'm sure I'll be hard pressed to remember I was even gone.

I have learned one more thing though - I have to stop wearing white freaking t-shirts to travel because then I inevitably spend 95% of my in-transit time with some sort of shit all over the front of my shirt.

Honestly, about flight number 2 today I even drooled a little bit of chocolate bar to join whatever that red sauce is on my right breast.

*sigh*

I had thought I might get a decent bath at some point (since I don't have one at home and I've been missing it a ton) but water's too scarce in Australia so it may very well turn out that the high point of October/November 2005 will be the airport hotel bathtub.

I may even sleep in it.