Saturday, January 20, 2007

McCandless' in the Wind

We just said goodbye to the McCandlesseses, parents of Peggy's friends from San Didgerigo. T'was a good weekend with them, they're heading down to Melbourne to complete their tour of the Grand Slam tournaments, with the Aussie Open being the last to see. Word from Victoria is hot hot hot, with court side temperatures reaching 100 degrees. Luckily, their tickets are for the evening matches when the rains roll in and cool things off a little. We got to take them around our haunts here in the Eastern Suburbs in the evenings this week, they spent the daytime harbourside and even caught a show at the opera house. Judging by thumbcounting, Sue and Mike were our 19th and 20th visitors, but I've been known to make mistakes when trying to count that high.

Just over my shoulder, Peggy is furiously packing up our kitchen dishes in boxes, washing sheets and dusting off various bits and bobs to deliver to Jason and Polly, recent implants from North Carolina. They responded to our ad on Craigslist Wednesday night and agreed to purchase our stuff. Peggy was overjoyed that we were able to make that transition so easily. We'll do a delivery each week for the next couple weeks, slowly purging everything you see here into someone else's home. Funny to see another couple coming to town with the intention of only staying a few years, retracing the steps we went through not too long ago. I wonder how many of them never leave?

Holden had some scary moments this week. We parked it up a hill and had a bit of trouble getting it started. Peggy filled this car with every concievable lubricant and oil, only to have it smoke when the engine started. We're guessing it was just some oil burning off once the engine turned over. Our backset is full of transmission fluids, engine oil, power steering fluid, wet wipes, etc. It looks like an auto motive super center. 24 more days there, Holden. Keep rolling on.

posted by ncawthon at 11:21 AM

Monday, January 15, 2007

20 Clicks from Sunday

A fantastic weekend away. We spent Saturday hiking about 10
kilometers, or 'clicks' as they call them in the armed forces, to a
spot called the Blue Hole. The hike was in the north of Sydney, just an hour's journey away. It was a river walk that often delved deep into the bush and away from cars and houses. There were an immense amount of lizards on our path to scare the living bejeezus out of us. These iguana looking reptiles were up to 3ft in length and would be fearless in lying out in the sun, usually in our path. After awhile, both Peggy and I took up sticks to nervously tap rocks, trees, dirt to flush out the lizard before it jumped out to scare us. We walked a good 10k in pretty intense heat and were proud of ourselves for the
exertion, trimming off a few of those Christmas calories. The Blue Hole, however, was disappointing in that an algae-filled, polluted cesspool hardly counts as a blue hole.

Sunday and Monday (we observed MLK day on our own) we went up to the Blue Mountains, about three hours east of Sydney, for an overnight camp trip. The day's journey took us to Lithgow and a hike to the glow worm tunnel. This was one of the coolest hikes either Peggy or I have ever been on. The round trip was a rigorous 8k up and down a cliffside, but the terrain was diverse and challenging and the payoff was fantastic. We climbed over numerous logs and skipped over many a stream to arrive at what was an old train tunnel cut out of the
cliff. The tracks had all been pulled out and nature left to reclaim the area after about 50 years or so. A few hundred meters inside the tunnel, little pinpoints of blue light started to glow, immersing you in a cosmic cocoon. The glow worms were just massive in number, giving the pitch-black cave the experience of being in outer space. Very ethereal. So, after 90mins of hiking, seeing not a soul, we bathed ourselves in this cool, dark cave full of glowing worms. Doesn't get any better than that.

posted by ncawthon at 9:30 PM