Jim Travels The World

.once again, off to adventure in another Mobile Command Unit, this time, a bit nicer than the Tasmanian campervan (caravan). after experiencing the luxury of being able to drive your home to a campsite and have electricity, i don't know if we can slug it out in tents anymore. .we arrived at Grampians National Park, about 3 hours from melbourne, and it was HOT. three days there, nearly 100 degrees each day. .still, our first experience with real colorado-like mountains, nice hiking trails, waterfalls, wildlife, outdoorsiness. .plus, there was a badass ice cream shop in the nearby tourist town of Halls Gap we could retreat to during the day to cool off .we didn't join the roo club, but lisa did take a boomerang throwing lesson. and we paid $6 to watch some cultural video presentation about how the grampians were made. apparently (and I haven't fact-checked this yet so i assume it's 100% true), there once was a great warrior, and he encountered a giant emu. the emu chased ...

Yesterday was boxing day in Straya (but only in VIC, NSW, and QLD, because all seven states can't ever agree on anything together). I'm not really sure what Boxing day means, but I dutifully celebrate it anyway. now for your daily weird picture: naked people on products at the grocery store. could you get way with this in america? i think not.

so, last month when Leeser and I were on our great ocean road trip, on the night we spent at the B&B, we went outside to look for something in the car. While outside, we heard this terrible animal scream. The next morning, while having breakfast provided by our host, we told him about it. He said that it was most likely a male koala, screaming at a female koala. Apparently, he told us, male koalas will force themselves upon females, including eating their young so they can mate with unwilling females. What a terrible story, we thought, that these cute little koala bears are actually rapists. we had no cause to doubt the story this sweet little old man was telling us. I did think it was quite extraordinary, given the fact that these creatures are normally so chill. so, fast forward to this week, while watching football with my Aussie friend Gus, we told him this story and he burst out laughing. "Koalas sleep 23 hours a day!", he shouts. "They have to eat eucalyptus le...

lisa and i have spent the last few weekends doing mostly nothing. I've discovered that when you don't own a car, and also don't have a specific plan for something to do including a means to get there, then the likelihood of doing nothing as a default is high. so, we rather impulsively rented a car this last saturday, without much of a real plan other than to drive south along the morning peninsula, but by God we were going to get the eff out of town. aforementioned car We headed out of Melbourne towards Frankston with the eventual goal of getting Point Napean. As we sat in traffic near Frankston, it occurred to me that traveling via train isn't so bad, because I've had no cause for road rage. our first stop: Cape Schank near the southeastern tip of the peninsula dig that crazy rock formation out yonder driving, trying to be very careful, because in this country, they have speed cameras everywhere in every city, and it's not like the US where you can go 5 mph ove...

I've reached that inevitable phase of every blog where i have gotten lazy about posting. Maybe I've gotten to used to Melbourne and don't find it interesting anymore. Maybe I'm just too busy with work. I certainly haven't been doing anything else creative; no writing screenplays or music since I've been here. Instead of promising to post more often about better things, I just wanted to acknowledge the existence of that facet of my blogging life. even this picture is lazy coming up soon, my office is closing from Dec 21st to Jan 4rth for our forced vacation. Lisa and I are taking advantage of this time to travel up northwest to the Grampians, some nearby mountain ranges. maybe then i'll have something interesting to tell you vultures.; just kidding, i love you all.

everything here is in varying degrees of difference than its counterpart in the US. I'm reminded of this all the time, especially when i see posted signs. they are always so damned polite.

land of the hobbits we (me and the rest of Active International) arrived in Auckland last thursday. Everyone here says "sweet as". It's the Kiwi equivalent of No Worries. .. We're on to Taupo (which, you'd think would be pronounced "tow-poh", but it's "toe-paw") to be onsite for the lake taupo cycle challenge, an event Active designed. .. 11,000 cyclists racing 160k around the lake. We were onsite to help the day before the race, distributing 11,000 race numbers. you'd think it would be pandemonium, and it was very busy, but Kiwis are sort of on island-time. Everyone was so chill. .. ..wtf? Then 3 hour drive back from taupo to auckland, 4 hour flight to melbourne, baggage, customs, cab ride, home. all in all, a good experience, but crazy long days and i need a vacation. good night everyone.

land of the hobbits we (me and the rest of Active International) arrived in Auckland last thursday. Everyone here says "sweet as". It's the Kiwi equivalent of No Worries. .. We're on to Taupo (which, you'd think would be pronounced "tow-poh", but it's "toe-paw") to be onsite for the lake taupo cycle challenge, an event Active designed. .. 11,000 cyclists racing 160k around the lake. We were onsite to help the day before the race, distributing 11,000 race numbers. you'd think it would be pandemonium, and it was very busy, but Kiwis are sort of on island-time. Everyone was so chill. .. ..wtf? Then 3 hour drive back from taupo to auckland, 4 hour flight to melbourne, baggage, customs, cab ride, home. all in all, a good experience, but crazy long days and i need a vacation. good night everyone.

the next four days will be in Taupo, New Zealand in support of one of my clients at their annual Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge event. not quite looking forward to that 6 am international flight, but it's all part of the globe-trotting experience that i'll someday be so glad i had. hard to believe i'm going to be celebrating christmas in hot weather. as it warms, i see more and more xmas decorations. it's unreal also, on the train they have bits of poetry (from, I assume, famous Melburnians) in the cars. Most of them are crap but I quite liked this one:

now that my ears have stopped ringing since last weekend, i can now post about pearl jam. Top 5 show, for sure. We got to southern cross station and then walked across the bridge to ETIHAD stadium around 5 pm. we had GA seats, and made it down to the floor asap. We were in the front 1/3 of the masses, maybe 100 feet from the stage. first up was Ian Flynn, some Aussie opening act. he wasn't too shabby. he came out later to sing "throw your arms around me" with eddie as a duet. next up, ben harper. I was a little disappointed because he mostly played stuff from his new album, which i wasn't all that impressed with. the highlight of his show was bringing eddie vedder onstage to play "Under Pressure" finally, around 8:30, pearl jam took the stage. They started with "elderly woman behind the counter..." and it was rolling from there. They played all of their entire first album except Once, Release and Deep. That's 7 songs from Ten! they played two ...

genius

As part of my continuing education series, I bring you another installment of Things I've learned about America from Australians . In Australia, if an Aussie confuses an American person for being Canadian, the Yankee takes no offense. However, if an Aussie accuses a Canuck of being an American, they tend to get upset. What does it mean? I'll leave the conclusions to you. pictured: Another bloody yank. but this one loves the fush n chups. please don't hate.

I don't have a whole lot new to add that you can't already read about in Lisa's blog . She beat me to it this time. All I can say is we spent three days last week travelling down the Great Ocean Road from Torquay to Nirranda and saw the famous Shipwreck Coast of Australia. we hiked to some waterfalls, dipped our feet in the sand, saw the famous twelve apostles got engaged. no big deal.

melbourne is quite known for its laneways, which are alleys that have been converted into miniature shopping districts, with tiny cafes and lolly shops and other little business. people flock to these areas and they are always packed. . always a good place to find the best cheescake or coffee and such. on vacation this week so I thought I might have a not-crowded day wandering around downtown. One thing I'm learning living in a city of 4 million is that you are never not surrounded by people. i can only imagine the shame of being Australia's second largest retailer of cake decorating equipment. or, god forbid, third. .

everyone i know here whinges (that's Australian for complain ) about how St. Kilda beach is dirty and crowded. If this is as crowded as it gets, it'll be fine with me. These people I'm sure have never seen Ft Lauderdale on spring break. Our first really warm day at the beach. Next week we should see plenty of beaches on our trip down the Great Ocean Road

cheeky

Every once in a while I get used to my daily train route and job and eating at restaurants and paying bills just like in America, and then I run across stuff like... and I  remember that I'm in bizarro land...

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Australians, particularly Victorians, particularly Melburnians, are rabid sports fans. Of the 16 AFL (footy) teams across the country, 8 of them are in or around Melbourne. Cricket, footy, and soccer are high on the list but Aussies love any kind of competition. Yesterday, while on an outing to see an exhibit about Pompeii at the Melbourne Museum, we ran across hundreds of people going to the Caulfield Cup (horse race). You can't see it to well from the picture, but people here treat horse racing as a gala dress-up event. Drunken guys in suits and ladies in these crazy star-trek type hats go and bet on these horses. Aussies love to bet too. I believe i read they have the worst gambling problem of any country in the world. But you might expect that from a bunch of ex-convicts. Also, around the bay in a day is a 250km bike race. We accidentally stumbled onto some of the festivities while searching for a place for a late lnch af...

Now back from our whirlwind 8 days in a campervan in Tasmania, Australia. Originally, we were going to go to Uluru (that great big red rock) for our vacation, but we met some people who told us something like "if you've seen the red rock desert of utah, uluru will be a letdown". And my coworker instead told us that Tasmania was the place to go. I have to say it was the right call. Tasmania is: pristine white sandy beaches; rugged coastline cliffs; rainforest waterfalls; snowy alpine mountain peaks; rolling green hills; abundant exotic wildlife; unique subterranean caves; incrediblly fresh and tasty local seafood; strange and quaint country towns. Except for downhill ski and sea diving, we did just about every outdoor activity you can imagine in those 8 days... though we could have skied and dived if we had the right equipment with us. above is the painted cliffs of Maria Island. Maria is where we first came in close contact with kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats (and some...