Excuses from Australia

29 July 2012

G’day Blog Followers,
Greetings from Sydney, Australia. My apologies for not keeping up better with this blog. I still owe you postings from Fiji and New Zealand. My excuse is that I’m too busy to write during the day and too tired to do so in the evenings.
I wrote a draft about Fiji during my flight from there to New Zealand. I had intended to finish it up yesterday on my 3½ hour flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Sydney. However, I was totally wasted having gotten up at 3:00AM to make my 6:05AM flight. So instead of writing I kinda slept (you know how you kinda, but not really, sleep on a flight). Why did I take such an early flight? Easy – the ticket was only 129 bucks. Any other flight was at least 100 bucks higher.
I have a little time this morning before I take the train out to a suburb to meet a colleague for lunch and an afternoon of looking at erosion control work on local highways. Yeah, not very exciting to most of you but I took a ferry through Sydney Harbour yesterday and then walked across the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. So I got some of the local site seeing stuff out of the way. Gorgeous city and so is Auckland, New Zealand, by the way.
I’m feeling well except that my feet are tired from all the walking I’ve been doing. Stomach is good (Judy will be pleased to know that I’m eating from my green group).
Pain in the ass about this blog is that it takes so long to download and caption photos. And it’s been hard to find free or reasonably-priced internet. I don’t mind paying 55 cents for an hour of internet like I did in Fiji but It really annoys me to pay 5 or 10 bucks.
Below is a photo proving I really was in New Zealand and not just sitting on my ass on the beach back in Honolulu.

We’re not in Kansas, Toto.  A cold but sunny winter day on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing
(North Island, New Zealand) with Mount Ngauruhoe (2290m – 7513ft) in the background.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 4, 2024: I’m Mad as Hell and I’m not Going to Shut Up!

Image
The Wandering Geographer hasn’t done so much wandering lately, at least not internationally.   Since my ill-fated trip to Chile last November, I’ve been gun shy about getting on another plane to fly to an exotic destination.   Save for a few days in northwest Mexico in February, I’ve not ventured outside the border. Yesterday, I finished a water resources and soil erosion report for our visit to the Heartland Ranch Wildlife Preserve (southeastern Colorado) in late April.   Now I’m ready to do a bit of personal writing.   Needless to say, I find myself despondent, angry, cynical, and in a state of defeatism following the Biden-Trump debate a week ago.   When Biden got to the inarticulate statement, “…we beat Medicare…,” I buried my head in my hands, shook my head, and exclaimed, “No, no”.   I’ve never seen such a fucking fiasco from a President of the U.S.   I wanted to cry but couldn’t find the tears. At the end of this shit-show, CNN had a panel d...
Read more

July 6, 2024: The Debate Debacle – Your Responses

Image
I am heartened that, so far, 180 people have looked at my July 4 blog post (Blogger shows me how many people read each post but not their identities).   I also have received some great responses via email from various sides of the political spectrum.   I would like to share these with you, identifying the writers by their first names and where they live.   I’ve “cleaned up” some of the grammar, punctuation, etc. but I’m not going to comment on these emails although you are free to do so or send me more emails for future publication on the blog. By the way, I’ve decided to scrap my idea of visiting Colorado politicians’ offices in person.   I discussed this idea briefly with a friend who has experience lobbying Congress.   “Should I make an appointment to speak to staffers or just show up at their offices?”   I asked.   “You need an appointment but they are unlikely to give you one,” he replied.   This snapped me into reality:   Why bother mak...
Read more

Sunday, 3 November 2024: A White-Knuckle Return to Antigua from El Salvador

Image
I was pleased when my cell phone alarm went off at 3:25AM – not that I like getting up at that hour but I was just pleased that the alarm went off at all.   I had been having trouble with my cell ever since waiting for my flight to Guatemala in Fort Lauderdale.   I kept periodically getting messages that there was moisture in the charging port and when that happened there was a noisy alarm and a message telling my to unplug the charger immediately.   It was acting up again in El Salvador and there was barely enough of a charge left to keep it going until the alarm was supposed to go off.   In defense of my cell phone, it’s old and used to Colorado’s low humidity. I was out at the gate at 3:55AM for the driver’s scheduled 4:00 arrival.   Four AM came and went, so I did yoga poses on the dark street in front of the gate to pass the time.   Finally, he arrived at 4:45 and muttered some excuse that I didn’t understand.   As I opened the door to the front...
Read more