The Seabaussie Travel Journal, Day 1 - or, what day is it?

As you may recall, Rene was going to set  up a blog for our travels.  While one of our kids could probably do it in about six minutes, we haven't figured it out yet.  If you don't want to be on the email list, instead of telling me of the rejection and having me try to remember who gets on the list and who doesn't for the time being, just delete my email.  I'll deal with the rejection later.  In the meantime, I'll send emails.  If there is someone I missed, please forward and let me know so I will add them the next time.

We're in Melbourne.  Our body clock is slightly off.  We got up at 5:00 a.m. local time this morning, but the jet lag is not as bad as we experienced going to Europe.

The flight was a hoot.  We were delayed almost two hours out of L.A.  The tire pressure for one of the tires was reading low.   So, that gave us the chance to watch from the plane's sky cam while the pilots taxied all around the tarmac for 45 minutes like that was something normal to do.  And then someone got sick during the time we were inspecting the runways and had to get off the plane.  And Qantas had to find that person's luggage.  I guess they found it.  Or they told the person they found it, and just took off, because it wasn't that long for them to find, or say they found, the person's luggage.  But with the the time they spent driving the plane around the runways and just sitting there, we had to refuel.  Whoa.  I guess if they hadn't, the pilots would have had to pull a Sully and drop that thing in the Pacific.

After we took off, I skipped the first meal, went to sleep, slept for what I thought was an incredibly long time, got up, got up, watched a two hour movie, Tracks, about a woman who made a journey alone with four camels and her Black Lab from the Outback to the Indian Ocean in the late '70's (she was a determined one, that one).

Then I checked the flight status.  We had been in the air for almost seven hours.  And weren't halfway there yet.  An epic fail on my estimate for time travel.

It took us 33 hours to travel 10,000 miles and all we had to do is show up and sit in a chair buckled up for 20 hours, sleep, watch movies, read books, and listen to music.  I remember my grandmother telling me that when she was a little girl how they used to saddle the horses at 4:00 in the morning to make a 15 hour day on Saturdays to go to Cape and back (about a 40 mile round trip from where she lived, I am guessing).  So we weren't really roughing it.

On our flight to Melbourne, we sat in the same row with a young man, Huan Ruan.  Huan's day on Saturday had started in Boston after  a little more than a week in the US for the first time in his life.  Huan now works for actian, a US company that has a satellite office in Melbourne.   Huan was born in China and immigrated to Australia at his father's insistence.  They have no other family in Australia.  Huan and his wife just up and moved there.  I can't begin to think what a culture shock that would be.   He and his wife have been living in Australia for 11 years now.  They  have two beautiful children,  Lucas (8 months) and Natalie (almost 4).  Natalie calls Lucas George, after some cartoon she watches.  It seemed to me that Huan was being a good and dutiful son and would have preferred to have stayed in China.  But they have obviously done well and made their life in Australia and assimilated into the Australian culture with their two children with such Anglicized names.

Yesterday was a cloudless, beautiful day here, though we really had no idea what day it was other than a day in May. The locals were complaining how "cold" it was (it was 70).  Some of the more fashionable were wearing wool scarfs and had light wool jackets.  Rene and I had windbreakers on.  We are adjusting to for cool feel of a mid fall day and sunset being at 5:30 p.m, but enjoyed our walk along the Yarra River yesterday.  Melbourne is a center of commerce, but the place of life is more relaxed than anything we experience.  More on Melbourne tomorrow. 

          Cheers!