moving on..

pictures, pictures, pictures... from top to bottom: mohawk crafting, our "place" here at the coopers, the blown up porsche i was talking about at the mca, australia day out at the palace with alissa, bondi beach

so.. last day in sydney. bittersweet as hell.

yes.

but apparently thailand is well known for a certain full moon party-- i believe that is what they call it these days-- lasting for a day or two. i suppose i can survive with those kinds of rosy thoughts in my head. haha yeah, i should be just fine.

good news on the CHUG front-- the car has been revived and will be shipped to us in bangkok on thursday! thats right! we will now have the car to tour the thai countryside. it was actually really cheap to ship the car over, only another $1800 and we know that we will get the money back when we sell it. so we are back in the high life again...

kidding.

but we did get a small refund for the remaining portion of the vehicle registration which may come in handy later on in the trip when i am eating bamboo for survival.

we've met lots of people here-- i wanted to do like a "profile" of each person we came across in our travels but i never got around to sorting it out enough to get it on paper. maybe later down the road. but it seems all the people we came across had some sort of intricate role in making the trip here in australia exactly what it turned out to be...

so surround yourself with the people you love-- i think its worth it.

the plan in thailand is to take about two weeks to make it south to ko pangan for the full moon party on 14 feb. from there, thinking about heading northbound towards chang mia.. not really sure. we are sticking with goals in the 2 week range and then we figure out the next two weeks'ish.

sounds like a plan. more from thailand!

sydney the wonderful

what a bummer. i had this nice, long, well thought out posting all done and i was hitting the "post" button and somehow it got deleted. ill try and make another run while things are still fresh in my head.

things have been really swell these past couple days.

we checked in the casa de cooper and are now staying with some other friends of mine from last time. the cooper sisters bec and ilana, and then bec's boyfriend dan. we all hung out a lot when i was here last time.

dan picked us up from damians on wednesday to take us over their place. i had showered up and got myself all cleaned up to see mr. and mrs. cooper-- this was a big day. we pull in to the house, im sitting on the couch and ask ilana "wheres the rest of the fam?"

dan pipes in, "haha mate, their gone. the bottom half of the house is yours. we went shopping, their is plenty of food in the cupboards. beer in the fridge-- lots of it. welcome back to sydney boys"

so we had just checked in to the ritz carlton. i am reasonably sure the looks on me, bryan and nate's face at that point would make for a humorous photograph.

we have been partying a bit more than normal on the trip which has been nice. i guess a few funny stories come to mind when i think of drinking and the past few days..

1) our drunken mess landed me a new haircut. nate carved out a mohawk in my head with his beard trimmer. haha, now that is some skill. it took just under two hours, but who was counting?

2) we managed to drink like champions on australia day (aussie 4th of july). we went to damo and adrian's place for a bbq. we ended picking up a case of beer and getting to work. this event slowly evolved in to meeting up with others in coogee for the nighttime activities. thngs were getting silly. and by silly i guess i mean trying to get home and walking hells half acre trying to get back to the coopers house. i think we ended up taking 2 different cabs, and walked for about a cumulative of 2 hours. at one point after the second cab and a lot of walking, i suggested to nate that we should just cut our losses and jsut sleep outside on the sidewalk. seemed a brilliant idea at the time. so we did for a little while until we found the rose bay police station. they werent much of any help there in getting the drunken americans home, but it was kind of funny to see the looks on their faces when we just walked in and yelled "where the hell are we?" we ended up eventually finding the place.

i met up with an old friend alissa which was excellent. we had met 9 or so years ago when i was on exchange through the rotary club in japan. back in "those days" we had kept in contact via standard snail mail-- and look at us now, still making time for a beer or two to catch up. real cool. she came with her boyfriend and some other friends that i had met previously, so it was nice to see all them.

we made it to the MCA in sydney (museum of contemporary art). real neat stuff. it was a very unique museum-- it didnt carry the standard modern art museum feel (ala tate modern, national gallery in victoria, etc) with white walls, minimalist design, etc. it was just a more dynamic place-- the exhibits and space changed drastically as you travelled through. the edward keinholz exhibit was the most stunning and impressive. he's an american artist (i had never heard of him) who creates these diorama-like scenes, full scale-- old dolls, army figures, toy cars, all kinds of crap just mashed together to create a big giant scene. they centered primarily around political stuff with the war effort, centering on the usa, australia and france. it was abstract "models" (literally just a hodge podge of old crap mooshed together to create interesting figures) that were accessible enough for me to conjure in my head what i thought the guy was trying to convey. very cool. i am reasonably sure i am doing the exhibit no justice by my spotty description, but i guess this will do.

we took a driving tour with dan around sydney which was great. took in the good stuff-- watsons bay, lady macs chair, the north shore, circular quay. it was great. it was nice to get some good footage with the video camera and then also get some good still photographs.

i have to say one thing i distinctively miss from home would be a giant burrito from qdoba. i cant get that thought out of my head.

speaking of food.. i am real high on this whole cafe scene here. nice beach suburbs with little cafes... coffees, drinks, etc with a simple but very stunning menu for food. i mean, i could sit at these places all day with a sandwich just sitting and watching all the people go by and having some conversation. now, naturally i cant stop thinking about owning one myself. certainly enough you would need a very distinct demographic back home to be successful, but it seems so accessible to me. have a nice selection of various styles of coffee-- turkish blend, flat white, espresso, etc with a very simple but unique menu. maybe throw in some craft beers and a few wines and you are rocking. have a patio and some good tunes, bring it on. throw in some personal touches in the way of design and style-- golden. so i have been thinking about that a lot... it would be a very happy way to live life i think.. meeting people all the time, have some regulars-- it would be a fun business.

so naturally im getting a little tender about leaving sydney in a few days for bangkok, but the excitement of a new adventure is tugging at me a bit.

i recall my little brother alex asking me not too long ago something to the effect of "now that you are out of school, what is the number one place you would want to live?"

and well.. i told him i couldnt quite answer that as i didnt feel my heart was with one city in particular. chicago is great, but the cold and lack of sunshine in the winter months bothers me. out west, i just have no idea. east (mainly nyc) seems a bit large for me, maybe too much going on. midwest in michigan is nice, but i need a tiny bit more action (at least for now).

but sydney... sydney. ahhhh, sydney.

despite any surprise attack that adelaide put on me, or the artistic glam that melbourne threw my way-- sydney is the absolute best place, hands down. it amazes me how much my love for this place is renewed every day that i am here. there is something new and dynamic about it with every moment. it has style, it has influence from all over the world, it has all types of demographics-- families, young professionals, bums, punks, rich mofo's, etc.

so, alex... i cant give you my final answer just yet. i love sydney for what it is and what it has been for the past 5 years or so of my life. i think that perhaps my perception of this city is slightly skewed by the state of mind that i am always in when i travel through-- study abroad (academic vacation) or backpacking (extended vacation). so i will take that in to consideration.

so to say this is "the place" -- maybe its a bit early, alex. but i can tell you that the one question that persistently tugs at my sleeve is this...

"so when am i coming back next?"

g'day melbourne

so i finished up in the great city that was adelaide last friday. i truly enjoyed that one. the picture at left is in adelaide at victoria square which is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the city. i ended up seeing kelley stoltz play at the grace emily on thursday night like i had planned... i had a chat with the guy afterwards only to find out he grew up in detroit, his grandparents lived about 2.5 minutes from my house in west bloomfield. real small world. needless to say that was kind of a funny conversation to have...


bring on melbourne!

the place has got style, there is no doubt about it. the architecture is all very contemporary and just the overall motif of the entire city is very distinctive-- from apartment buildings to the infamous federation square (pictured at left). i think that part of this comes from the fact that the place wasnt settled until 1835, with major changes to the actual landscape and such coming around 1839. so compared to most standards, the place is VERY young. now, becasue of this, i feel the stylistic elements of the city parrallel this idea very closely-- to a point where i think in about 30 years or so, we will look back on melbourne and see it is very dated (stylistically). It is pleasing to the eye right now though!

i arrived at the spencer street bus station on friday evening in the pouring rain. most of the time this would really suck, however, i was quite pleased to have the opportunity to tote my brand new rain jacket that i picked up before the trip.

bryan and i set up an interesting scheme to meet up once we both got in to town, but oddly enough those emails never made it from me to bryan-- which makes the way that we did meet up a stroke of pure luck.

coincidence? probably not.

i was just walking down the street after noticing bryan was late for what i thought was our 7pm meeting time, and i hear my name being shouted from across the way. sure enough, it was bryan across the street and we picked up right where we left off.

we went out in st. kilda that night with a friend we had made that night at the hostel named karim. we really havent been hitting the bars that much so far on the trip, so we made this a big night. needless to say, it was a good one.

i kind of picked things up the next day from where i left them the last time i was in melbourne. i had missed a lof of the museums last time around so my interest was primarily in seeing the national gallery of victoria (ngv) and also the australia center for contemporary art-- both in the city. bryan opted to check out the stanley kubrick exhibit in federation square instead. i was particularly impressed with the contemporary design and sculpture exhibit at the ngv but also a lot of the temporary exhibits they had-- one in particular on the evolution of contemporary design in furniture. now of all things-- the evolution of design in contemporary furniture is not something you catch every day, and as you can imagine there were some pretty far out concepts. i tried to snap a picture of this one couch made of only cardboard and i thought the ngv federales were going to have my head for even attempting such a feat.

to change gears a bit now... the "volvo great ocean race" (haha ironic name) is a sailing competition that goes around the world. the current leg of the journey had the teams stopping in melbourne believe it or not! the abn-amro 1 boat was slated to arrive from cape town saturday evening and we thought it may be cool to see. turns out we were correct-- it was awesome. these guys had been sailing from south africa for some 6,000 miles and they pulled in to melbourne to an anxious crowd of spectators and a whole sleu of media people and champagne. what was even cooler was that in order to dock the boat safely in the docklands at melbourne, they had to pass under the bolte bridge. now that seems like an easy task, but for these monstrous 20+ meter long sailing vessels, the main mast was too tall to pass under the bridge so they had to effectively tilt the boat at a ridiculous angle to get it under the bridge. incredible to see! photo at left is the abn-amro 1 team celebrating with champagne as they rolled in to melbourne leading the race.

now as bryan and i are on this whole "classy" sports kick, we immediately jump to the australian open-- also taking place in melbourne at the moment. the whole feat of scoring top notch seats (row 8!) for FREE i will hand to bryan who effortlessly orchestrated the whole event. i just played along. i mean, the thought of seeing a tennis match sounded cool, but i wasnt losing sleep over the thought of missing out on it while in melbourne. needless to say we got a day pass for two solid matches (both were american as well)-- lindsay davenport/svetlana kuznetsova and also the andy roddick/marcos baghdatis (photo below) upset match. i was a newcomer, so the rules and such were new to me but by days end i was really in to the stuff.

i have to admit, when roddick lost i felt pretty damn good for the unseeded greek dude that beat him. it was a pretty classic case of the underdog seriously whooping ass and being classy about it. at the end of the match he stood at one side of the court to have (of all people) jim courier interview him. courier asked baghdatis if he would be watching the match that evening to see who he would play later in the week.

baghdatis looked at him and replied in kind of broken english.. "my coach will watch the game tonight, i must go to bed with my girlfriend.."

hahaha i thought it was great. and the jovial aussie crowd couldnt agree any more as they burst in to laughter and applause.

i am sitting here now, having just arrived in sydney fresh off the bus from melbourne. it was an overnight ride, and i didnt get much sleep at all-- but it sure does feel quite nice to be back in the city i once called "home."

holy adelaide!

adelaide claims to be the proper city of australia. it was, after all, the first city to NOT be organized by convicts. australia was in fact settled predominately by prisoners that were shipped over from europe. the island of australia was seen as a very remote location to drop the criminals and just leave them there-- a lot of germans, irish, etc. naturally, they began to settle certain areas. adelaide, however, was not one of them. so naturally, the city carries this emblem of purity on its sleeve.

and with this purity.. it kind of gets the rap for being the bible belt of australia. and yes, there are a few more churches than most other parts of australia... but lets be fair: religion isnt the most popular thing in australia, so it kind of makes this city stick out a bit and give it the unfair label.

now at first glance when you walk in to this place at about 7 pm, the first thought that crosses your mind is "not another brisbane!" the streets are empty, store fronts are closed and well, there aren't really many people out.

but hold on there cowboy, this place is something else. i feel like it has grabbed me in a few ways, and i find adelaide to be one of the more delightful places i have come across..

1) it has the most accessible and plentiful music scene for a city of its size that i think i have ever seen. they have this place called "the grace emily" which just pumps out solid music every night.

2) i like the european flair. the cafe lifestyle. the variety.

3) coopers (a favorite beer of mine) is a south australian beer so every pub, club, hideout, music venue, restaurant or otherwise has it on tap.

4) the people tend to be of a million different varieties. and when i say variety, like the rest of australia, it is predominately white--- but, you see all "types" of people: the punks, students, professionals, families, the emos... everything! and that is nice -- something you dont see everywhere in australia (this country can get real homogenous at times).

so yeah, i like the place.

over the past 3 days of being here i have seen a good concert every night... all of which priced at $10 or lower for a solid show. the first, nuala honan... the second, a contemporary string quartet.... the third, a guy by the name of loren. very very solid stuff. i will share the tunes when i can.

bryan and i were having a midday beer at "the austral" which is a bigger pub on the main drag here in the city, and out pops a few familiar faces! christ, this place isnt that small. but sure enough, it was the two swiss guys fredi and thomas who had helped get us out of the CHUG conundrum. what a small world!

and adelaide even has a beach! adelaide itself is set a ways inland so it takes about 20 or 30 minutes by tram to get there but its a lovely place when you arrive. bryan and i managed to chum with some 13 year olds and they showed us the local "cool spot" to jump off the pier. it was actually pretty fun. its really nothing to secretive, but we thought it was great jumping off this 30 to 40 drop off the pier in to the ocean.

bryan jetted for melbourne to get a tour of the great ocean road for a few days. i am sticking around for another day or two. i havent really decided. theres another show on thursday i really want to see. its actually an america guy playing. he is from san francisco, fella by the name of kellie stoltz.

anyway, lots of cool things about this place. i am real glad we actually made it here and i was able to stick around for a while. initially i thought about just calling it good after CHUG and catching a plane to sydney.

more to come when i get to melbourne-- thanks for reading.

outback adventures: the desert that prevailed

wow, its been a while.

i am going to have to reach back a ways to give you the full story of this little adventure we have thrown together the past 10 days or so. ill begin by saying, everything that happened i could have never guessed.

last time i posted we were rounding the corner to head in to the outback. so we started heading over around townsville and began experiencing the desert for the first time..

initial observations:

"holy crap, we are drinking a lot of water" (10 - 15 liters a day and you only piss when you wake up)

"shit, it is real real hot here" (up to about 122 degrees hot)

my ipod crashed around this time which is a pretty big bummer. i guess i pretty much expected the little bugger to go out seeing as how i typically ruin one piece of electronic equipment per trip that i do. last time two times its been a camera, so why not diversify in to the ipod area?

we were hitting up all the small towns as we went along-- by small, i mean about 400 people in the town small. not too many people here folks. funny little quirk we notice in these towns are the staggering responses we get when we mention the volvo. apparently they are not looked to highly upon in australia. some common catch phrases for volvo drivers in australia:

1) only dickheads drive volvo's
2) whats the difference between a volvo driver and a porcupine? the pricks are on the inside instead of the outside!

ohhhh fun and games. those silly aussies. but they were serious. one guy wouldnt even let us use his gas station!

silly aussies.

and the roads we are driving on.. sure they call them "highways" but these things are 1 lane wide and it isnt unusual for you to be able to count the amount of cars that pass you by in any given day on a hand or two.

the sunets i should note are absolutely stunning in the outback.

so we get to this little town called mackay and we notice CHUG is dripping some oil. we look it over, bryan and i with our infinite knowledge of automobiles (coming from the motor city of course) assess the leaking as minor and continue on.

at a town called cloncelly (i think i may have messed the spelling) we wake up after sleeping and find that there is a decent (maybe a liter) amount of oil collected on the car beneath. we took it to a mechanic. given the fact that we had the damn volvo, the guy wouldnt look at the car but his partner secretively did and said we had a leaking tappen cover. he showed us how to make the repair and it would now be up to bryan and i to fix it. his parting words... "i would do the workfor you guys ubt my boss would kill me if i touched the car"

note to self: no more volvos. geez!

so we pushed on to mount isa, the mining capital of australia. we went to discount auto parts store and took out our detailed list of parts and sealants we needed to get. we must have looked pretty silly in there honestly. we didnt have a damn clue what was going on.

we made the repair in the scorching heat and pushed on.

it still leaked.... and leaked.... and leaked. all the way to alice springs. at this point, the car is smoking, the odor of engine burning is mildly intoxicating and both bryan and i are a bit disgruntled.

at alice springs we pay a mechanic to "fix" the oil leaking problem. $170 later we were on our way. we both felt pretty good and decided to keep going on to ayers rock now that CHUG had a new hair-do and makeover.

we got ayers rock which was really cool because we were able to climb the thing, something i hadnt got to do lasttime i was there. the climb was fairly difficult, but real neat at the top. the wind was blowing like hell.

after the climb, shit started getting real interesting with the car. in fact, ill just tell you.

the damn thing blew up. completely puked on us. CHUG saw his last days while trying to get out of the desert en route to adelaide.

there are a few twists. we heard the engine grinding and that was about the time we knew we were done. see now, we are in the middle of the desert... recall the statements about seeing no cars on the road, and the 122 degree heat.

ok, now do you get the interesting part? here we are on the side of the road, after the car has officially died bryan and i collectively have about a cup of water. "that should last us about 32 seconds in this heat" -- i believe that was my immediate thought. (see pic)

we were waiving the occasional passers by on the road down and trying to get their water off of them. we were actually successfull - five liters of water and two bottles of beer.

speaking of the beer... after we got the 5 liters of water, i figured we were ok, so i cracked one of the COLD beers. i think at that point bryan really wanted to kill me. this situation of clear and present danger was looming, but damn that beer looked tasty. i offered him the other one with no luck. it tasted good though.

eventually a trucker named graham picked us up off the side of the road and took us in to the nearest town about 100 miles away. that was cool. he was a real interesting fellow, and i have to say the young boy in me was very excited to be riding in a big 18 wheel giant truck.

once we got to the next "town" (about 500 people, a roadhouse and a supermarket) they wanted $500 to tow the vehicle in and get it off the road (otherwise, the police threatened we would have to pay a $1200 fine).

SHIT. that was the first thing i thought of. not having enough money was the second.

bryan and i agreed that we had to get crafty and get CHUG off the road without paying all that money. and well, we did. surprisingly, this german dude named holger popped out of the woodwork with a 4 wheel drive vehicle and offered to go back with us and tow CHUG in.

excellent.

we got the car and came back. we slept that night in the car, which saved us from having to sleep on the damn gravel. so that was cool.

the mechanic was quite surprised (and probably a bit pissed off that he was out $500) the next morning because we had managed to get the car back to town.

bryan and i now decided we needed to hitch hike our asses out of this place. and that we did. after about 4 hours of sitting on the side of the highway with a sign that read "ADELAIDE" (our destination) we finally got a bite. two finnish girls and their campervan. it was too good to be true. we had managed to get a ride south.

we loaded up and left, on our way south to adelaide. we stopped in coober pedy that night (which it should be noted... 85% of the worlds opals come from this area of australia) and camped with the two finnish girls and two swiss guys that were driving in our little "caravan." it was fun.

we got pretty drunk that night, i have to say. well deserved i suppose.

the next morning we left for port augusta-- this was where our ride was going to split off for perth and bryan and i would need to find a new ride to get down to adelaide. we were the hitch-hikers, but i ended up driving the whole way from coober pedy to port augusta. funny how that works!

when we arrived in port augusta it was kind of late and we camped by the water. it was definitely getting cooler which was very, very nice.

the next morning the finns and swiss left and bryan and i needed to find a new ride to get down to adelaide. they dropped us at a gas station and bryan and i got to work with our newly acquired nack for mooching rides.

dennis, a retired copper miner walked by about 5 minutes after they left. he told us he was going to adelaide the next morning. we would need to go to his place about 50 km away and then wake up early the next morning and leave with him.. sounded awesome. clearly, this was one of the more random occasions, but we were happy to take it! he was a real interesting guy, had been a copper miner all his life and now just had financial interests and "overseeing" power left in the company. we drove with him in to the south australian countryside to his place in the middle of nowhere. he showed us our beds for the night (first nights sleep in a bed!) and the shower (second proper shower of the trip thus far) and it felt like we were staying at the ritz carlton. he even took us out for dinner that night. what a guy.

the next morning we arrived in adelaide after dennis drove us down there. we bought him a kebab (he picked the place, i swear!) and told him if he ever came to the USA we would do our best to return his incredible favor.. he left, and bryan and i looked at each other smiling...

"what next?"

it indeed felt like yet anothre chapter was now beginning. here we had managed to crawl our way southbound and we finally made it to adelaide. and what was funny was that we arrived on the exact day we had sort of "pseudo planned" to with CHUG. amazing. it was like we had completely winged the whole thing, but yet it all worked itself out. this idea of just playing it by ear and kind of letting the road guide you as you go was demonstrated at its finest.

this concept of coincidence we talked about. why did the aussies hate volvos? was it a coincidence the damn thing blew up? not really. all things fell in to place properly, and yeah we are out $1800 but worse things have happened i suppose. here we were in adelaide ready to pick up and keep moving.

ADVENTURE AT ITS BEST.

coastal!

i will apologize right now for no pictures in this post. i think when i find these cafes that have super cheap internet, it usually means the computers are too old to recognize my camera when i plug it in. bummer, but i will take note for next time.

seems we are getting the hang of this "pointing on a map and going there" style of travelling. everything is quite open-ended to say the least. we are doing our best to just kind of do whatever pleases us that day. its funny though, the common answer to jsut about any question bryan and i ask each other about next destination usually gets answered like this:

1) lets just play it by ear
2) i dont really care
3) we'll see
4) we'll figure it out later

haha, i love it.

currently we are in airlie beach soaking up some sun. its a small little beach town, similar to byron bay. theres more commercial stuff here, it doesnt have the hippie mentality of byron. the box jellyfish have arrived here though and so there is to be no swimming in the beaches cause those buggers will kill you.

CHUG is moving like a champ. there has to be some sort of after-market suspension on that automo-boat. i will be writing in my journal while bryan is driving and the thing is so smooth it actually manages to improve my penmanship as we go along. driving over train tracks? go an extra 15 km per hour just cause its that smooth. lovely volvo. we also found out that there is liek an extra "hidden gear." all along when we thought we were flooring the thing, we could actually just apply more pressure to the accelerator and the thing jumps in to this mystery gear out of nowhere-- great for passing cars.

to kind of backtrack a bit..

when we were in brisbane, we saw this chick kate bradley play at a bar downtown. was pretty good. so we picked up a CD. listen to that occasionally in the car (yes, we have a SONY mf'ing CD player in the beast) and its alright.. funny how live always sounds better than album stuff though.

brisbane struck me as a tired city trying desperately to liven up. (sounds like our old friend detroit, doesnt it?) its got modern architecture, transport, amenities, etc but its still just a louzy "commute city" -- and by that i mean people work in the city and commute out to the burbs after work. so post 5pm, the place is DEAD.

the kebabs of brisbane, however, were absolutely flipping phenomenal. for those that thought i couldnt get a kebab down under, think again! im already on number 5! nice guy named kamiil expertly crafted the thing, and even threw in some extra sauce. what a champ!

on from brisbane we hit up a vineyard. norse winery was pretty small and run by two older danish folks. very different wine by my standards.. the reds were so light, translucent even as you looked through the glass. now, trsut me 100% when i say im no wine expert, but after my enquiry the woman got in to some interesting bits on the difference between norhtern australia grapes and american ones. so i will share some here.. the growing season in the extremely hot parts of northeastern australia forces the grapes to be picked in a MUCH shorter time than those that we are used to in america, italy, or otherwise. becasue the grape is picked much quicker, it doesnt have time to age and develop which creates a much lighter red wine as opposed to the deep dark colored red's that we are used to. so theres some wine verbiage for you.

the scenery as we drive is second to none.. seeing the sunset over endless green rolling hills with a good tune on the radio is pretty swell. we stop all the time for photos or if it gets dark we just sit on the top of CHUG and look at the crazy stars. the southern cross was absolutely brilliant last night. so that sort of flexibility is jsut excellent and suits both our needs well.

other than that, i am eating FAR too many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but that is the only thing that stays fresh (sort of) in the HOT car for extended periods of time. we pack a giant water jug in the back of CHUG for drinking along the way. we head in to the outback here pretty soon (which is about 1900 kilometers to get to ayers rock) so we will be heavily stocking on food and tons of water. we may get some jimmy cans with extra fuel just in case we run out on the road.

we have talked to many folks about making the drive in to the outback and the biggest thing people warn against is the heat. it gets up to 42 C which is about 114 F! we will start makign the trek westward to ayers rock tomorrow morning. should be good.

given the remote location, im not entirely sure if i will be blogging for the next few days or so. we plan on taking two days to make it to the rock, then about a day or two to get southbound in to adelaide. as soon as i can throw something new in, i will.

keep rocking, check back soon!

happy new year!

i took this picture the first day we arrived when we were walking around circular quay and the opera house. such a cool area-- cafes, people, beautiful scenery and an incredible harbor. one of my favorite places in the whole world. if i were to have a wider lens, you could see the harbor bridge just to the left. that kind of gives you some perspective.

we are currently in surfers paradise up the eastern coast. we left byron bay earlier this morning.

new years eve in byron was pretty cool, nothing too over the top crazy. they put a strict alcohol ban down in the city due to last years debauchery which was kind of stupid. it was basically a bunch of people crowded in the beach running around half naked screaming. very different from last years festivities in rome-- no firebombs to speak of which was nice.

new years day was the real interesting day. bryan and i were looking for a car as mentioned previously. we wanted to go to this hippie town called nimbin to check things out and we thought maybe we could find a car on the way there. turns out when we got to nimbin we saw a big advert for a guy trying to sell his car. we gave him a ring and traevlled up hells half acre to find the damn place. adrians car almost exploded trying to climb the hill to this guys house, but when we finally got there a 1986 white volvo station wagon sat just glowing there. the guy that owned it was a real interesting fellow. he was an artist from zimbabwe, his wife a kiwi. together they are complete greenies-- they planted all the trees at their place, organic farm, etc. real interesting to talk to and stuff. they were both stoned out of their minds while we were talking to them, pretty funny.

we bargained the guy and his wife down to 1800 from 2500 aussie bucks-- with full expectation that we can get rid of it when we get back to sydney. this thing is an absolute MONSTER though. we have named it CHUG cause this thing is a hoss. donald trump would have gladly used it in '86 to tour the coutryside comfortably. i really think we could run over a horse and this thing would jsut keep purring. its really a cool car. so we plan to take chug for about a 9000 kilometer spin around australia. just today we drove it to surfers paradise and the thing is a complete champ. and becasue it is about 50 feet in length (ok i exaggerated), sleeping in it is better than any bed i have slept in in a while. so this has been kind of fun.

we are going to take it up as far north as townsville and then over in to the outback to uluru. from there we wanna head south to adelaide through the grampian mountains and then up and around the southern coast to melbourne. after a stint in melbourne we are going to head back to sydney. both bryan and i are looking very forward to this little adventure.

other than that, planning to head up to brisbane tonight after a short beach stint here in surfers. its real touristy and such here so we dont feel real hard pressed to stay.

while racking in some car time we have been listening to Triple J a lot (one of australias big radio stations). by all means check it out on their website, maybe get a streaming feed or something. the programming is amazing, very little commercial, we heard danger doom the other day (got to check that out, jeff-- pretty sweet stuff) all the way to ambient stuff and even obscure indie stuff back home that gave me a run for my money. so thats pretty nice for the road.

i have included some photos in this batch.. one obviously of chug, the other of the campfire we managed to make while sleeping on the beach last night. i am excited at the thought of not sleeping with all the damn critters at night. bryan, adrian and damian had me in a complete stupor last night when they started going on about all the snakes. jesus.

more to come with some time. i feel like i am in the midieval (sp?) times with this damn dinasour of a computer right now which is sort of prohibiting the uploading of more pics. bryan has other ones on his blog, so you can check those out as well. bryansack.blogspot.com