Descent of Speed

On my return trip from Australia I left via the Brisbane airport. After getting through passport control and security (bags xrayed and such) it was time to go to my gate to wait for the flight. To get to the waiting area I had to have my passport and boarding pass checked again, as well as my bags!

There were a half dozen guys manually searching the bags. They first searched my backpack, and found my Carmex (a small container of lip balm.) The Carmex was set aside. He finished searching my backpack, then proceeded to search my carryon.

First he opend the smaller of the outside pockets, which olds a dozen or so keychains (my souvenirs) but only glanced through about half of them. He noticed there was a nother pocket, and just patted it. Then opened the bag itself. The bag mostly contained clothes. He pushed the clothes back, and checked underneath them near the top and the sides. But never really searched the bottom of the bag! He was worried about a small thing of Carmex, but barely searched my carryon!

 Then he looks at me and asked if I had a plastic bag! I guessed he wanted the plastic bag for the lip balm. I told him it wasn’t a liquid or a gel. He insisted I needed a plastic bag!

There are two reasons you are required to place liquids into a quart size plastic bag. The main reason is to limit the amount of liquids you bring on the plane. If it doesn’t fit into the bag, you can’t bring it. The second reason is to allow the screener to see into the bag to identify the containers (cause obviously he won’t be able to identify the liquids.)

 So here I am being asked to put my lip balm into a plastic bag, shortly before entering the aircraft. I guess its because they were afraid I might spill some in the airplane?

I had two days left in Australia, I was going to Brisbane. I decided to spend the time on the beach on the Gold Coast, about an hour south of Brisbane. Surfer’s Paradise to be exact.

I got a nice hotel room, floor 30 with a blacony facing the ocean! There were a few nice shops and restaurants just around the corner (including the only Hard Rock in Australia) and miles and miles of beaches.

It was late evening by the time I negotiated with traffic. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been easier to take the train? I spent the evening dining at the Hard Rock, and then wandering around the shops and checking out the beach.

Tuesday the sky was cloudy and a little chilly, but I went out to the beach anyways. I spent the morning reading on the beach, then after a delicious kebab I decided to try my hand at surfing.

Several people offer short two hour lessons. It is acutally quite tiring, but I did manage to stand up a few times. I need to work on standing up quickly, as I would hit the beach before I could completely standup sometimes! Of course it isn’t easy to standup on a moving, rocking platform!

The next morning I got up early and got on an early flight back to the USA.

I flew up to Cairns on Friday and discovered that not only does it sit on the edge of  a rain forest, it is also the rain season. They just got like 6 inches of rain the day before. So of course it was raining when I arrived.

I made a mistake in selecting my hotel. I knew it was out of town, but I thought it was a nice hotel. Well it is definitely out of town, but wasn’t the greatest hotel. It was horrible, but was too far out of town to be worth it. After paying $30 for a taxi, I decided to rent a car. Should have done that in the first place, or at least got a hotel in town.

The only good thing about the hotel is it had a small laundry room. Since it was raining I took the oppurtunity to wash my clothes. Clean clothes are nice.

Saturday I took the Quicksilver boat out to the reef. It was a long trip by bus up to Port Douglas, then a 90 minute trip by boat out to a platform. I went snorkleing off the platform. We were there for about 3 and a half hours. Except for about a half hour for lunch I spent the entire time in the water. The reef was absolutely amazing. The weather was overcast for most of the day, but there was still plenty of fish to see. I don’t think I saw anything too exotic other than an enourmous clam. But it was awesome to swim with the fishies.

My plan for Sunday was to take the scenice train up the Kuranda. But with the amount of rain the past few days, there was a mud slide covering the tracks. Fortunately I had a car and drove up there. Kuranda is a small toursit village in the rain forests. Lots of little craft shops and art stores in town, plus a butterfly conservatory and a small wildlife habitat. They had a few koala that you can take your picture with, some wallabies and kangaroos you could feed, and some crocodiles, snakes, and lizards. On the way back I stopped at a few waterfalls. The waterfalls were absolutely amazing with all of the recent rainfall. One water fall, with a ton of water going over it, must have been 30 or 40 feet wide, is reduced to a trickle in the dry season.

I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge! The little adventure is expensive, but it is an impressive climb. The view of the city is unparalleled. While it is quite expensive, you can see where the money goes, as it is a production. They suit you up, and strap everything down so there is nothing that can be dropped. The hat is strapped on, the hankerchief has a wrist band, the radio is buckled in twice. While it was a pretty cool thing, it was still expensive.

I took a water taxi over to the Luna amusment park. It ws pretty dead as it was Thursday afternoon, and there wasn’t many big kid rides. I walked back across the bridge, and climbed the Pylon Lookout. The view is almost as good as from the top of the bridge, and was only $10 (free since I just did the climb.)

I spent the rest of the afternoon at Bondi Beach. The sand was amazing, probably the finest since my trip to South Africa. Seems like half the people on the beach were doing some sort of kneeboarding surfing. I think I’m going to have to spend some more time on the beach next time I come.

Spent most of the week in Sydeny.

We got in Monday afternoon, and took a while to find our hotel. Furlong rode shotgun and navigated, but when he said turn left, and I had two choices, I choose the wrong one. After getting settled in, we went to Kings Cross for dinner. Kings Cross is just outside of downtown Sydney, and has a decent nightlife.

Tuesday we walked around the Opera House. This is one of the coolest looking buildings, at least in the mordern era I’ve seen. We wandered through the Botanical gardens right next to the Opera House.  There was an amazing variety of plants in the garden. We walked over to darling Harbour and spent the rest of the afternoon in the wildlife adventure center, checking out dangerous spiders and koalas and wallabies and other Australian Wildlife.

Wednesday morning was spent at the Australian Museum. The museum has an amazing collection of minerals, but otherwise it was much smaller than I expected. Afterwards we went on a trek for sheep’s placenta (don’t ask.) It was weird, as we got closer to the store that had it, more people knew what it was. We finally procured a box or two, then I had to take Furlong to the airport.

For dinner I was going to go to the Hard Rock Cafe, and discovered it recently closed!

I spent the next 4 days racing at Newton’s Playground. NPG was perhaps the coolest event since the last Gravity Games. The event was a combination music festival and extreme sports festival. Grinspoon headlined, and about 20 sports were represented.

Thursday a half dozen of us went out to an open road for a little practice, before heading into to register. The riders meeting was held that evening at a local pub, the Oxford. The pub stayed open relatively late for such a small town on a weekday.

Friday morning started off bright and early with us being on track by 7:30 am. We had practice followed by qualifying. Afterwards we went back to the Ox for dinner. We decided to call in an early night since we would most likely be up late Sat night.

Saturday was the first day of racing. The first two rounds of luge and standup were run, followed by the entire buttboard race. I didn’t really do well in either one. I need a bit more practice during the winter. A friend of mine wrecked and hurt his elbow in the buttboard finals. By the time we got back from the hospital, Grinspoon had already played!

Sunday was the semi finals and finals of luge and standup, as well as the entire practice, qualifying, race for GS. I was able to watch a bit, as well as get a couple more runs in.

The after party as back at the Ox. Apparently it was set up as a private party, because it start at 8pm, which is normally when it closes on a Sunday.

Monday we spent most of the day driving back to Sydney.

I spent the first week of my Australian Vacation in the small town of Bahturst. The hotel I was staying at was supposed to have internet access, but the proprietor couldn’t remember the password he used for the wireless! I’m slowly trying to catch up on my trip reports.

Bathurst is a small town, about 3 hours from Sydney. It has a pioneer feel to it. Very few of the buildings are more than two stories. While there are a few traffic lights along the highway, there are only two in the town itself. The town has a cricket field, a horse track, and most famously Mount Panorama. This is a world famous race car track, that is also a public road. There is a winery and apple orchard in the center of the track, and a dozen or so residence. There is also a brand new, mostly finished, hotel near the entrance to the track.

Apparently the hotel is supposed to be a time share, unfortunately the only time anyone really wants to be in town is the week of the one big race. Kind of defeats the whole purpose. The hotel apparently sits unfinished, and has for a few years!

Bathurst is a very strange town. Most things shut down around 9pm. Although the pub we were in almost every night will stay hoping till about 4 am on a Sat night! Assuming you enter the pub before the 2 am curfew. The same pub shuts its doors at 8pm on Sun night. While the town appears to be mostly shut down around 9pm, plenty of people are still out and about after midnight!

The first day I was in town I drove out to the Jenolan Caves. This is a HUGE cave complex, still being explored. They have about a dozen different cave tours you can take. Apparently during the week most of the tours are in the morning, and I drove out in the afternoon (spent most of my morning trying to call Bank of America to let them know my cards weren’t stolen.) Unfortunately I ended up going on the “easy” tour. The cave was still magnificent. I’ll have to return next year.

I pulled into Bathurst about 9pm. By the time I checked in to my room, it was pretty late. I knew it was going to be hard to find some food. I was pretty hungry as I hiked all day, but this is a small town where pretty much everything closes at 9. The hotel I was staying at was connected to a pub (that didn’t server food) and I asked the bartender who where might I get food. He wasn’t sure, but suggested McDonalds. One of the customers suggested a place called Zac’s, just up the road. I walked up to Zac’s envisioning the large platter of food I would get, as the customer had put it. Zac’s is open late, closing at 3 or 4 in the morning! Except it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays! Well I don’t know the town, and it was getting even later, so off to the McDonald’s.

Across the street from the McDonald’s is a place called “Hungry Jacks.” This place is either the Australian Burger King, or it is a ripoff of Burger King. The logo looks like Burger King’s logo, and they serve Whoppers. So far they are also the only place in Australia that have had fountain drinks  (well outside of the pubs.)

My Australian Adventure almost ended before it even began! I showed up at the airport almost 2 hours early. The Alaskan Airline counter was fairly dead. As I was walking up to the counter I realized I didn’t really need to be at the airport 2 hours early, as my first flight was a domestic flight. I told the lady at the counter I was going to Sydney, and she asked if I already had me e-visa? What? I responded, I didn’t think I needed a visa. She doubled checked, and confirmed that I did indeed need an entry visa. It is Saturday at 4pm, how am I supposed to get the visa before I leave? She said it was no problem that I need to call Qantas and they will take care of it for me.

She gave me the number to Qantas, and I went off to some chairs and called them. It didn’t take too long to speak to someone. He informed me that I needed a visa, and it should only take a few minutes. Then he said that he couldn’t help me because my ticket was booked through American. So I called American, 12 minutes into the phone call, I was informed I was the next person in line, when the line went dead!

I called back, this time it was only 10 minutes into the call when I got someone on the line. I had to convince them that I needed a visa, when they went to talk to someone who could help. He came back on the line and said “Hi I’m Mike, I’m here to help” and the line went dead!

Once again I called American back. It didn’t take too long to get someone on the phone this time, and I told them that I had just been disconnected. I explained I needed a visa. Again I had to convince her I needed a visa, and that she could help get it for me. She was unsure, went and talked to her supervisor, then came back and told me it would take 48 hours! Well lets see an Australian airline said a few minutes, an American airline saide 48 hours, which one do I believe? I asked to talk to the supervisor.

After a few minutes the supervisor came on and said he could’t find anything that said there was a minimum time limit, and he would try to get past the error the other agent was getting. A few minutes later, I gave him my passport details, and a credit card number to cover the $25 charge, and I had my electronic entry visa.

I go back up to the checkin counter and am told that I had about 3 minutes to spare before baggage would be closed!