Category: Trip

I woke yesterday and shrugged off the jet lag like a champ. In an instant my energy levels were back to normal (120%) and I was ready to go:

Look at that picture of health 🙂

It was 6 am when I staggered into Maccas for breakfast. I’d been awake for hours and when I left the hotel I saw no one in the streets of Sydney except for toiling tradies. Maccas breakfast was the usual slop, only pricier than previous years:

Sue came to pick me up mid morning, and we headed to Newcastle. A couple of stops on the way home led to an unexpected charity store purchase of a 70s Conan pastiche paperback (Tark and The Golden Tide) but alas – jet lagged fool I was – I passed on this gem:

Sue graciously drove me to mums, and I was tired when we finally arrived. There’ll be more adventures with Sue this trip so you can look forward to them, but a bit later in the day she texted me about something I had brought her

Remember those wretched Nugget Buddies? Sue had requested them and I dutifully stashed them away. It turns out the sealed one – which had aged in my cupboard for six months – was the rare golden Buddy:

Isn’t that beautiful?

I’m in Australia. This is my 18th return visit since I left and my fourth in the Australian winter. Yesterday included my 60th crossing of the Pacific, and best I can estimate was about my 62nd day of my life spent in the air (I really need to calculate that more accurately one day).

The 31 hour journey was hell of course; here’s a series of photos taken throughout, one on each plane and one shortly after arriving at my hotel:

It appears the stresses of the journey seem to have elongated my very head!

After arriving I wandered around Sydney like a footloose parvenu, drifting here and there and pausing only long enough to buy $187.20 worth of postage stamps (that’s not a typo).

The locals welcomed me as they always do, but alas the rigors of travel were impossible to ignore even with the energy of a Big Mac meal, four Chomps, a bag of cheese & onion chips, a frozen coke, a chicken kebab and – as evidence of how dog-tired I was – a zero sugar Solo:

I went to my bed with the sun high in the sky, and now am fully awake with the moon not even at its peak. Jet lag is fun isn’t it?

It was below freezing this morning when we woke. We probably didn’t have clothes warm enough for such a chill, so we lounged in the room for a bit, watching Japanese walking videos on the hotel TV.

I ventured out and bought a turkey sub and an avocado bagel around 8 am, and both were delicious. I’ll let you guess who ate what. I didn’t repeat yesterday’s mistake of Mt Dew for breakfast!

There’s an advertising battle in the city right now between the new Ghostbusters film and the new Godzilla film, and it seems Godzilla is winning. I expect the same will happen at the box office as well.

The above is in the window of a marijuana dispensary right next door to a McDonald’s WcDonald’s near Times Square. The plants appear real. I have no understanding of the current legality of pot in NY, but the shops continue to multiply, always look empty, and seem to focus more on things like gummies and edibles than actual stuff to smoke. We both suspect they’re for the tourists, but who knows?

The meals I ate this trip contained, in order, turkey, chicken, bacon, chicken, chicken, turkey and turkey. The above sign is therefore at least 50% correct.

The last postcards have been sent, the last shops visited, and we’re now on the train home. A successful trip it was!

Now perhaps I need to start thinking about the next vacation, to shores farther afield. I wonder what adventures I may have?