G’day Mates – Welcome to our Australia blog. Once we get “in country” it will become “Dateline Down Under.” As usual it will be written by the two of us and you should be able to tell who is writing based on your previous comments from our last blog!Our trip to Australia started pretty much the same way our trip to Canada started…completely confusing and frustrating but ultimately well worth the effort.
For those of you in the mountains…just know, there is no EASY way to get to San Francisco Airport from Pollock Pines…I know, I know… we chose to live here and we love it (well almost all of the time we love it…but on with the story…) We made arrangements with our youngest daughter Erin to drive us from Pollock Pines to the Sacramento Metro Airport so we could rent a car and drive to San Francisco airport to catch our plane to Los Angeles where we catch our plane to Sydney and then on to Melbourne (but I am getting ahead of myself again..) We woke up Monday morning to nearly a foot of new snow so we quickly got dressed and shoveled ourselves out in preparation for Erin to come pick us up. Erin called after she got out of school and we gave her the “all clear sign” to come on up. Two things you need to understand about Erin – She HATES snow and she HATES cold (she also DETESTS icy roads). The sun had come out and we thought all would be fine.
Well, as all of us know…the best laid plans… shortly after Erin was on her way up the mountain, the sun went away and the sky turned grey. By the time Erin got to the Safeway parking lot (she is not a snow driver) it had dropped to 30 degrees, it was dumping white stuff and the road was icy. Well, we loaded up her Honda and off we went, Steve started up the hill to the freeway… but wait…going up an icy hill was not what Erin’s car had in mind and suddenly we are backing back down Gold Ridge to our house in reverse… seems Erin’s Honda doesn’t want to go uphill without chains, so off to our local Kragen goes Steve to buy chains for Erin’s car…When he got back both Erin and I learned new “chain putting on words” (Dads are always SO instructive when it comes to stuff like this) and up the hill we went with the chains on the tires…One mile later we were on the side of the freeway, taking off the chains while the Department of Transportation trucks went rushing by spraying snow and ice all over Dad…
We headed for Sacramento and the airport, we got to the rental car area and lo and behold, we walked in the door just as two thousand other flights disgorged about 5,000 people in the rental car lines! The people were very efficient and had us out the door in a brand new (like 400 miles total) Nissan Altima. Steve fell in love with the car because everything in it is automatic (don’t even use a key to start it!) until he thought about the maintenance costs. Anyway, on to SFO with no incidents.
The flight itself was not too bad given the length of travel. For those interested in the details, we traveled some 7,900 miles from California to Melbourne, door-to-door, in exactly 31 hours. We did (Gee, what the Hell else is new???) hit the edge of a South Pacific Cyclone and got smacked around a bit at flight level 360, but other than that, no worries. Of course, we completely missed Tuesday, which is okay, as we will get it back when we fly back to the Colonies. Again for the detail oriented, if you want to know what time it is where we are, you simply subtract five hours from your local time (in California) and add one day when we are on the East Coast of Australia, and subtract seven hours from your time, and add one day when we are in Perth.
We arrived in Melbourne to an 80-degree day and were whisked to our hotel by a limo (Thanks Matt Knowles!!) where we checked in, dumped out stuff, changed into huaraches, tank tops and shorts and hit the streets.
We remain, Steve and Carol, wandering around the world!
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