I recently went Australia. We flew from LAX to Melbourne. It was a 15.5 hour flight which is still difficult for me to comprehend.
A-380
Black swan and cygnets in Budj Bim
Swanson Street in Melbourne
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We’ve seen a fair bit of Australia on our first trip here from Victoria to South Australia to New South Wales. Here’s just a sampling of pictures. I must say Australia is quite expensive. It is it’s own place, but there are many cultural elements from both the UK and the US that will be familiar to Americans, leaning more towards the UK in customs but the US in commercial arena. It’s been a good trip. Wife got a lot accomplished with her work which was the reason for the trip and I was able to do some work remotely (I’m a web developer).
I will say this if you ever go to Sydney and/or Melbourne be sure to do the I’m Free” walking tour. They’ve been doing they Sydney tour for about four years and the Melbourne one for about a year. If you liked it, you tipped the tour guide what you thought it was worth. We gave them $30AUS for each tour. You’ll learn there is quite a rivalry between the cities, as a tourist Sydney is easy to take a liking to it, but Melbourne requires a little more work to get to know and once you do you’ll take quite a liking to it as well.
Grand Final Parade in Melbourne
Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge
Kangaroo and joey in Wagga Wagga
We’ve travelled more this year than any other. We did a 6,000 mile road trip that made a triangle route from Arizona to Oklahoma to Montana and back to Arizona. In Montana we briefly stepped over the border to Canada. We went to Virginia. I went to California. Been to Texas twice and we still have two more trips to go for Texas, one flying and one driving. Then there’s another overseas trip that is in the works. So I can we’ve been coast to coast and border to border in one year, and the furthest north and furthest south in one year. Well, technically the trip planned will not be our furthest north ever and we won’t actually go cross or go to the Mexican border.
Street art in Melbourne
Not so long ago in a city not so far away I started two podcasts, The Conestoga Podcast and the Escape from Cubicle 17 Podcast. The former was for the now defunct Conestoga convention held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The other was not tied to any convention, but it was more or less the same format. I would interview authors, artists, editors, and fans. In all I did 52 episodes. If you go to the Podcasts page, you’ll see more information about them.
I’m doing this because I’ll be attending LoneStarCon 3, the 2013 WorldCon, in San Antonio, Texas. Chances are I’ll run into some of the people I interviewed. As both sftulsa.org and escapefromcubicle17.com domains are now defunct, this is the only place the podcasts are preserved. I’ve restored all the Cubicle casts, but not all of the Conestoga casts, but I am working on them.
Well, I do have a Raspberry Pi now. Got it at PyCon 2013. Took a bit of effort to get it on the Wifi but that’s all over now and it works great. Need to play with it some more, and figure out what to do with it.
Well, just spent the last three weeks in Montana on Lake Flathead. The view changed every day. This is a panoramic shot in the predawn hour today (I used AutoStitch so there’s there is some distortion). We got to go up to Glacier National Park and Waterton.
A few of the highlights besides the magnificent Glacier National Park and driving the Going to the Sun Road: Glacier Distilling, East Shore Smoke House (ate there four times, I can recommend the sweet potato fries, the Buffalo Burger and the Wild Sockeye sandwich, not to mention their excellent Montana beer selection), Richwine’s Burgerville in Polson, MT (an old style mom and pop burger joint with good burgers, huckleberry shakes and frozen huckleberry lemonade), and high tea at the Prince of Wales Hotel overlooking Waterton Valley (I think the high was from the price) When you drive to GNP go up the east side of the lake, it’s much more scenic than the west side. We didn’t get to see much in the way of wildlife. Saw a few deer, plenty of birds, and some bison at a distance on the National Bison Range. No bears, black or grizzly, no moose, no mountain sheep :-(.
My only minor regret is NOT playing on the 9 hole golf course at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo. BTW SKC is a very nice tribal college. It functions as a community college, so enrollment isn’t limited to just tribal members.