Snippets

With our mission of mercy firmly ensconced in the past, your intrepid travel team moves forward with relish to Phase 2 of the Great Australian Adventure. 

We are presently north of Sydney following an evening's stay in one of the world's funkier hotels, the Ovolo Woolloomooloo. "Easy for you to say", you say. A former wool collecting and baling factory, the hotel, done up in 1980's kitsch, is about half a kilometer in length and occupies the full Woolloomooloo wharf, 

adjacent to a couple of Australian Navy frigates, battleships, and aircraft carriers.

Our stay was limited to one day; we now find ourselves in Palm Beach. Having trouble locating Worth Avenue and the Everglades Club but making do the best way we can, given the fact that I can't pick up a pair of Gucci loafers.

Now just some random thoughts on Australia. 

The people here are over the top kind and friendly, ready to serve and unflappable. As long as you don't throw them off their routine by asking a question while they are doing something else such as typing, looking at a computer, breathing, etc., at which point they get a bit snippy.

The volunteers continue to keep things fresh and entertaining. 

We have been asked by many of them to be adopted as our children. Ten years back when Lori and I began these adventures, we discovered that we were roughly the same age as many of the other volunteers' parents. We now seem to be closing in on the ages of their grandparents. While wonderful people, these millennials are a scary cohort, indeed. While (relatively) bright and (relatively) articulate, their attention span makes your average goldfish seem like Proust. Living in the present seems to be a challenge; many are on to the next topic before properly digesting what is on the table in front of them. It seems that the notion of the long term marriage has gone the way of the dodo bird. Virtually all of those we met are children of single parents, part of a mix and match yours/mine/ours arrangement. That Lori and I have been harmoniously hitched for 36 or so seems to relegate us to the Smithsonian Museum of Unnatural History.

The wildlife continues to astound.

A Cockatoo

Or Two

Skink

Skank 
(Just kidding. Annie is an amazing woman, despite having attended Lawrenceville and being a Bruins fan)

This is as Close as We've Come to Seeing One

It was very enjoyable living through two summer solstices in the same year.

Diving in the Great Barrier Reef was a thrill equivalent to seeing Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, the Northern Lights, or eating a fresh, steamy Special at Wilensky's.

There were three potential negative outcomes to this experience. I could have suffered a diving mishap and died. I could have been eaten or poisoned by a fish and died. I could have eaten and been poisoned by a fish and died. Glad to report that none of the above happened. Stay tuned for the next episode.