Heading further Oeste

Following the long journey across Missouri and Kansas, we finally arrived in Denver looking for some help in filling our propane tank. After multiple unsuccessful attempts, we parked in downtown Denver to explore the area. I quickly remembered the presence of the Greenpeace members soliciting donations, as we were approached by a good 15 people in our short hour walk through the city. After some disc golf in Arvada, we headed towards Granby where we’d be meeting up with a high school friend, Mike Armstrong, at the dude ranch he’s working at for the summer.

I-70 threw its first test at us as we ascended the front range…and Evan and I couldn’t have had larger smiles on our face. As we began to head up hill, Hoppy kept slowing and slowing until we finally found a nice spot in second gear that would give us a reliable 30 miles per hour up the hill. We certainly weren’t in any hurry to get anywhere, and it was a good thing because we didn’t have a choice. We made it through the mountains after driving through some snow and dropped into the valley where Granby lies under the auspice of gray clouds and a fine drizzle. We drove right into the ranch and found Mike sweeping the floors like a good first year ranch hand. We dropped off his mandolin, stayed the night and went on our way to Rocky Mountain National Park.

After greeting an adolescent moose at the entry gates, we made the decision to drive to where the summit pass was closed to cross our fingers and hope they opened the road. Holly and I went through this same procedure last year and got shut down, so we had to drive a couple hours out of the way to get where we were going. So we drove to the parking lot at 11,000 ft. and decided to go for a hike to pass the time until we were sure they wouldn’t open the gate. A short hike proved difficult to complete because of the deep snow and no tracks to follow. We found a steep hill to body slide down to pass the time and shortly after we returned to the car, some rangers appeared out of the fog and opened the gate! It’s hard to convey the excitement we experienced then, as we would have had to drive another 2 hours to detour and continue heading north. We had our doubts as to how Hoppy would handle the high elevation…but she didn’t seem to mind. The ranger warned of the 50 ft. visibility because of the intense fog, so we unfortunately didn’t get to see much of the surroundings on the highest paved road in the continental US (12,183 ft). We dropped down the east side and found a campsite in one of the few campgrounds that was open. There has been significant damage to the forests in the area due to the pine beetle infestation. The pest has killed entire hillsides and appears to eat all of the bark off the trees. It looked eerily like autumn in some places because of the deep green and auburn mix of tree colors from a distance. A large number of campsites were closed because they had to clear all of the trees in the area. The next day the weather cleared and allowed us a magnificent view of the skyline.

After a quick stop through Boulder to show Evan Pearl St., we headed north to Fort Collins to visit my friend Christina Minihan from my last study abroad in Australia. We had an incredible stay in FoCo, as they call it, where we went on brewery tours, played in the park, climbed trees, a little disc golf, food fights, fishing, etc. Christina is a ball of energy and happened to have some time off from her internship to be an incredible host. One of the highlights of Fort Collins is the New Belgium Brewery, a staple of the local economy and of the social scene. Every day they offer free tastings and there is always a crowd ready to have four glasses of whatever you want to sample off the menu. Atlanta has a few breweries that have the same premise but none are as generous as New Belg. They have a fun atmosphere, as the best known symbol of their company is the cruiser bicycle after their headlining beer Fat Tire. They had hula-hoops outside for the people waiting to keep themselves busy with, postcards that they would mail for free, disc golf discs for sale, and a wait staff that was incredibly welcoming. One of the more interesting facts I remember from the tour was that the founding couple of the brewery were originally an electrical engineer and a social worker. I was intrigued by the change in lifestyle they must have gone through after gaining success…supposedly they founded the company vision while on a hike together. Crazy Coloradoans. We toured the Colorado State University campus while there, they have an incredible green space in the middle of campus that is lined with old growth trees and is just plain expansive. Christina was moped-sitting for somebody, so Evan and I got to ride around campus looking like the guys from Dumber and Dumber. It was just generally a really fun stop that brought me back to my childhood a little bit, just being silly around the neighborhood.

Heading west through southern Wyoming, we stopped next outside Ogden, UT at Snowbasin Ski Resort. They helped host the Winter Olympics in 2002 and are a very expensive resort to ski at. We tried to mountain bike here but were 3 weeks too early for the mountain to be open. So instead we played disc golf during the 40 degree rain/hail storm. It was only a 9 hole course and the 9th hole was a doozie…488 ft with a 134 ft. drop in elevation. We promptly lost 4 discs on this hole, as the wind would catch your drive and throw it deep into the woods for you to go find. I found all but one, fortunately. We left Snowbasin and went to Eden to visit my dad’s aunt and uncle, Le and Gordon Langren whose condo I stayed at to ski in March. They kindly allowed us to join them for dinner, some card games, and again for breakfast. They told me about some relatives in Boise, our next stop. They also mentioned that they would be in the Portland area later in the week, just like we were going to be. We left with a few more resources than we came with, and looked forward to seeing them again soon.

The drive from northern Utah to southern Idaho is a mundane one. Idaho has a phrase that it uses: “Keep Idaho Green” – it’s questionable whether this part of Idaho was ever green to start with. We arrived in Boise to meet my dad’s uncle, Glen and Helen Fairborn, relatives I don’t think I had every previously met. These are relatives of my dad’s birthmother who passed away in 1968, and are some of the kindest people I’ve ever met. They invited us for dinner and breakfast as well, after a wonderful tour around Boise. Glen worked for Ore-Ida, the well known potato/French fry company. It took a while to dawn on me where the name Ore-Ida came from…but it wasn’t long until I realized where I was in the country – near the border of Oregon and Idaho. Georgia Tech played in the Humanitarian Bowl there at Boise State multiple times while I was in college so I recognized their stadium. One of the main things we wanted to do while here was float the river through town, a popular thing to do in the summer. Unfortunately, they were letting a lot of water out of the dam upstream that flooded the river and made it dangerous. We played a little disc golf and headed out of town seeking the Oregon Coast.

Starting off in Hoppy

Howdy Pilgrim! After crossing the Mississippi and finding some time to sit down to start the account of yet another summer of freedom and travel, I begin to realize yet again how lucky of a kid I am. Evan Wimpey, a friend of mine (of internet fame from the “Lecture Crashers” videos on Youtube) from Georgia Tech, is driving my 1984 Toyota Huntsman Motorhome that has been chugging straight from St. Louis to Denver like a champ today (16 hrs). This style of travel isn’t for everyone, because we oftentimes have trouble pushing 55 mph over the rolling his of the Great Plains, but after a few hours of realizing there’s no hurry anyways, the RV (from here on known as “Hoppy”) begins to grow even more on you. We’ll talk more about my summer home in a little bit.

I began the journey last Thursday, May 28^th when I picked Evan up from a MARTA station in north Atlanta. He threw his bags in the back and had the biggest smile on his face for the first few hours from the pleasant surprise of such an incredible road tripping vehicle. From there, we made our first stop in Franklin, TN to see Gil and Jill Eustice, the parents of my former girlfriend Melissa Eustice who passed away in a car accident in Feb. 2008. I coached the summer league swim team for two summers with Megan and Melissa while their dad Gil ran the actual meets and the officiating. The Eustice’s moved to TN a couple years ago and I really wanted to get to spend an evening with them in their new home. They are infamous for having lots of cats, and there was no mistake as we were greeted by 13 of them. They had an elusive white squirrel that lived in the back yard that’s managed to stay away from their grasp. After a nice dinner and time to catch up on their new Tennessee life, Evan and I headed north to Bowling Green, KY where we’d be caving at Mammoth Cave National Park the next day.

Arriving right on time to our 6 hour tour of Mammoth on the Wild Cave tour, a concert pianist named Janet Smith was our guide for the day. Janet proceeded to bring us up to speed on what we were getting ourselves into, and said that where and how far we went would be determined by our abilities to keep up. There were only 6 of us on the tour, all in good shape (as weren’t allowed on the tour if you exceeded certain dimensions because we’d be squeezing through crevices all day) so I was excited about a serious day of caving. We descended into a 230 ft. deep shaft that had been blasted to access deeper parts of the cave, where we popped out into a nice big cavern. We walked along the cavern for a bit, came upon a small hole next to a rock on the side, and proceeded head first down the hole for our first crawl. Janet is a speedy caver…did I mentioned she’s 73 and leads this tour every summer? Our expedition covered 6 miles over the course of the day and took us through holes that you could only squeeze through if you laid out like Superman and inched your way through them. One of my favorite parts was when we all got to a spot where we could sit together and turn our lights out and experience the intense darkness and silence that deep under ground. I can’t imagine exploring the cave in a time where your oil lantern could fail and leave you stranded 8 hours underground. Not the kind of thing I’m interested in. These caves are much different than the stereotypical cave site because they connect together to make an incredibly long network – 370 miles and growing! They still actively find new passages. The caves are different additionally in the sense that they were formed by flowing water and thus do not have much in the way of stalactites or stalagmites, as the area above the caves is largely capped by sandstone which prevents water from seeping in. I really enjoyed the parts of the tour where we popped out from under a rock into a large cavern where a different tour group happened to be walking by…I could imagine how jealous I would’ve been if I were one of the kids on that tour. At the end of the day, we were filthy, tired, and hungry, but extremely happy with our caving experience. Just for information, if you wondered what “spelunking” means like I did, spelunking is what a novice caver participates in. If you have experience caving, then you are a true caver.

From Bowling Green, we ventured west to St. Louis. The weather was superb all weekend for us, raining only at night while we were asleep. We made our first grocery stop, went on the Annheiser-Busch brewery tour, stopped at the famous Arch and learned a lot about St. Louis’ role in the westward expansion of the US. I guess I’ve crossed the Mississippi on road before, but learning more about Tom Sawyer, riverboating, and what it must’ve been like to ford the river was very rewarding. We met up with college friends Eli Riddle (at Washington University’s Med School) for some famous Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard. It goes to show that a business really has something special when the locals are as numerous as the tourists late on a Saturday night. Some of Eli’s friends recently graduated from Yale in New Haven, CT, so it was nice to get some insight on what my new home will be like. The following day we met up with Patrick Odneal (working near his hometown at the world’s largest concrete plant) and toured the St. Louis Cathedral and Forest Park. The Cathedral was incredible, one of the few churches esteemed enough to have the “Basilica” designation. The entire ceiling of the building was covered in mosaic tiles, taking 84 years to complete. Afterwards, we drove around St. Louis’ flagship park that covers more ground than Central Park. The plethora of free museums, expansive greens, sports fields, pavilions, etc. was impressive and is something to be cherished by the resident’s there. We set up my slackline for a little fun in one of the groves of trees. You’ll see me talk more about that later but slacklining is a balance control ‘sport,’ if you will, where you tie a 1” wide nylon strap really tight between two trees and essentially tight rope walk across it. It’s fun, easy to set up, free, and challenging. We had some St. Louis style pizza and then played disc golf outside of town. St. Louis was a fun place to visit, emphasized by some great friends and incredible weather.

Hoppy has been running fabulous. I didn’t know what to expect from small truck a year older than me, but the 97 hp 4 cylinder hasn’t had any trouble yet. We’ve had to add a little oil and a little radiator fluid but otherwise haven’t had any complaints. We learned a little bit about packing groceries against doors that could open during turns, but otherwise haven’t had too bad of luck with the novice camper syndrome. My parents were extremely helpful in getting me prepared and set up to hit the road, I certainly couldn’t have done it without them.

My road trip is tentatively planned to last until July 15^th, when I will return home, pack up my stuff, and head to Connecticut. My two roommates Jon Berggren and Steve Young will have already been working for a month and will hopefully have most everything figured out by the time I get there. We settled on a nice little 4 br 1 ½ ba in the west haven part of New Haven, check it out at 128 Maplewood Ct. New Haven, CT on Google maps. I start work on July 27^th and am excited about the working world. Oh wait, I have 2 more months of road tripping before then…woohoo!

American West Road Trip Planning

All,

I've decided to take some time to road trip out west for a good chunk of the upcoming summer. As I have finally graduating with my mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech, I will be starting work July 27th in Stratford, Connecticut with a helicopter company named Sikorsky (they make the Blackhawk) and hope to enjoy my freedom before then.

I'm going to be driving in a 1984 Toyota Huntsman RV that I recently bought. It sleeps 3 with a toilet, shower, stove, fridge, generator, etc. The trip dates are May 28th to July 15th and I'm welcoming people to join me along the way for as long as you want. Call me at 706-399-9745 or email drew.hess@gatech.edu if you're interested in coming for any part of it so we can start brainstorming!

-Drew (still working on my road name for the CB)

Cairns

8/1/2008

Cairns (pronounced Cans) #2

Taking it easy for a night so I can recap my experiences over the last two weeks. Not only do I want to update y’all, but I want to make sure I remember everything that’s gone on for my memory’s sake. I’m picking up at a mental lapse that occurs in Sydney…

After a little over two months without a haircut, I started getting complaints about it as well as getting tired of brushing it out of the way (mind you, I got my last haircut the morning I left the US). A few of the guys in class had gotten a cut recently, and after asking around, it seemed the going price at the campus barber shop was $15. Reasonable, you say. Well, I stroll in to the salon, and sit down for a mop chop. I tell her what I want and then she gives me over to the other lady to wash my hair. I get my hair washed sometimes at the hair cuttery in Atlanta, so it wasn’t that big of a deal until I noticed how awkwardly long she was washing my hair for. I was tense for the first part of it but realized I should probably enjoy the head massage while it lasts. I didn’t understand why a customer would want or need a full shampoo and conditioner rinse BEFORE the haircut, but whatever. When the lady finishes, she says “Come thru” to me. I didn’t know what she meant so she repeated “Come thru…” and I said “I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re trying to say” and she just tells me to sit up. I sit down in the barber chair and the stylist says “So, you’re having trouble understanding accents aye?” I replied by saying I didn’t know “Come thru” meant for the person to get out of the chair, as it certainly wasn’t obvious for me. They had a nice laugh, and the lady proceeds to cut far more off of my head than I instructed. Luckily I had short hair in DC so I could deal with it, or else I may have been a little more flustered. The next shock came when I stood at the register, ready to hand my $20 bill only to hear her say “Forty dollars please.” I was so shocked that I couldn’t even respond to her, awkwardly pulled out another $20 bill (food for the next week), and walked out the door. I couldn’t imagine hair salons in Australia were up for bargaining, so I kept walking, laughing in disbelief while hating myself for making the assumption about the price. I failed to realize all of the guys in my class got buzz cuts without shampooing, ah!! The worst part of the story is that I then had to go buy gel for my do because it was too short to stay by itself, not to mention the drastic change for all of the people in my class, now making fun of me for needing ‘product.’

The next mental lapse comes on the following day before our presentation where I attempt to iron my pants. My lightweight Columbia hiking pants were a bit wrinkly, and using the iron without a functioning steam button was not a good idea. I touch the iron to the pants, immediately burning a hole in the crotch area. Hm…let’s just say I wasn’t too happy with myself for ruining a favorite pair of pants. No excuses for either story here, just a period of bad logic running it’s course. There’s more to follow.

I took a look at my bank accounts while in Sydney to get an idea where I’m standing, since I’ve only been dealing with cash since I left home. I’m very fortunate in many ways financially, primarily that this $11,000 program was paid for by generous scholarships, for which I could not be more thankful for. Secondly, I worked for ATA Engineering this spring, so I’ve had a few months to pad my bank account for this occasion. Due to some technicalities in NZ, I ended up living off the cash that I brought until last week, of which I’ve finally finished off. So when you consider that I’ve spent around $4000 since leaving home in May, you can see why living on the cheap side is a necessity for somebody who has to live on what’s left until after graduation. Not to mention I have two more weeks of traveling after our program finishes, so every extra $25 for a sheep shearing matters.

On Sunday, we made our way to Cairns and moved into our nicest accommodation yet – a $200/night hotel with incredible views, pools and service galore. Waking up on Monday morning with the shades wide open, I couldn’t believe the sunrise I could see from my queen bed. We’re 100 yards from the ocean, overlooking the coastal tidal zone just down the street from downtown. Cairns is the gateway to the tropics here in north Queensland, servicing nearby World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest. It’s definitely a tourist attraction but weirdly doesn’t have a beach. There’s a “Lagoon” area where a manmade pool buts up to the ocean and that’s where most people lay out. The beaches in the area are a 15 minute bus ride away. Our classes pretty much ended on Monday, as we had one last classroom session followed by a field trip on Tuesday and final on Wednesday.

Tuesday, we traveled north to Mossman Gorge by way of a sugar mill. I don’t think our coordinators planned far enough ahead to arrange a tour, so we kind of drove through their staging yard, read a flyer, and left. There are lots of kane fields in the area, and the only real thing we could see were train cars full of chopped sugarcane. We snagged a few stalks and cut them up on the bus ride to see if you could taste the supposed 80% sugar inside. The stalks were sweet but took some chomping to get the sugary taste. In Mossman, we did a short hike through the forest followed by a couple hours of free time in Port Douglas. Apparently Bill Clinton vacations in Port Douglas, so that may say something about its ‘laid back but classy’ aura. Merritt and I attempted to rent windsurfers but decided taking the catamaran sailboat out would be a better use of our time in the choppy waters. It was enjoyable to sail in the ocean again, not quite as fast as I’m used to without a jib, but a lot of fun to catch a wave on the sailboat to ride into shore. When we returned to the hotel, Merritt, Nick, and I cleaned up and headed out to check out some lawn bowling for the evening. The sport is quite popular in Australia; I think I’ve only seen it in a couple places in California while in the US. It’s a less straining version of bocce ball basically. We arrived at the rink not knowing a thing about the sport and left with significant experience. We intended on playing each other, but later found ourselves in a social night tournament consisting of about 60 people (avg. age 55). The people helping to get us set up kept mentioning “The game will start at 7:30” and we didn’t understand because we just came to muck around. We kind of fell into signing up in the competition, listed as beginners so we could be split up fairly to the teams. Frank and Pam were my teammates – they were able to clean up the mess I created since the beginners bowl first. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the bocce ball idea, the came is centered around landing your teams balls closest to the white “Jack” for points. Lawn bowling is different in that the game is play on turf or closely cut grass, with gutters snagging the balls that roll long. The balls themselves are also interesting in that they are weighted on one side and they are shaped like squished spheres so they roll like tires, wobbling at first and then straightening themselves, then falling to the flat side normally when they run out of speed. The weighting causes them to tend to one side, especially when they start to slow down. This aspect is what makes the game so interesting. The terms used to describe a shot are “weight” and “grass”: weight meaning the speed of the ball and grass meaning the width compensation for the curve. I received lots of coaching and managed to score quite a few points for the team. We learned etiquette for the game, learned a lot from the locals about the sport, and felt very welcomed and in an Australian environment. It cost $6 for the four hour game, and we were lucky enough to catch a ride home with Ruth, a generous elderly woman headed toward town. Merritt was on the winning team and won a $25 butcher shop voucher, which they kindly exchanged for cash instead. It was an awesome experience, I couldn’t have asked for a better evening (or day, at that).

We have had glorious weather so far in Cairns. It’s been 80 and sunny every day, so I assumed it’s like this every day. We got lucky in more ways than one, as the three weeks prior in Cairns were rainy, windy, and gray, and it hailed in Sydney so much it looked like there was snow on the ground. It’s hard for me to sit on the beach contemplating a swim and think that it really is winter here. They say it’s paradise in the winter (dry season) and unbearable in the summer (wet season).

When the roommate signup sheet went around in Sydney, I got a taste of what my independence has gotten me. I’ve made a conscious effort to make friends throughout the different programs, but haven’t really spent much time with any one group of people aside from Mike. That being said, people have kind of paired up so there are groups of friends and they’re figuring out who they like and don’t like. On one of the bus tours, apparently the other groups were confronting the Energy group because they didn’t agree that the engineers must be smarter than everyone else. Anyways, for me this means I’m kind of out in the open and am not really attached which means it’s easy to get overlooked and forgotten about. I arrived in this position by being independent and doing my own thing, which was a conscious choice. It doesn’t bother me too much, it just makes it hard to get in touch with people when they all group up and go off together. I’d rather be by myself doing what I want to do rather than sticking with the group just for the sake of being with people. A lot of this feeling may stem from getting annoyed at people drinking incessantly and being immature, which may be a product of the age difference between the freshmen and sophomores and myself. At any rate, it’s been nice to spend some time with other kids to share the study abroad experience even if I haven’t made lots of permanent friends. I do like the idea of having even more friends to stay with across the country though.

The food situation in Cairns has been nice. We have a nice buffet in the hotel every morning that’s included in the program costs, from which I normally make sandwiches for lunch. Along the Esplanade (coast walkway), there are some nice barbeque grills that allow us to grill out since we don’t have any other means of cooking. It helps that the price of beef here is very low - $2 for a T-bone. They have marinated shish kebabs at the grocery store for $1.30 each, both of which have proven great ways to eat dinner.

On Wednesday, we finished our academic program with the final exam. The only warning we received from our professors as to its content was that it was easy and usually everyone passes. This statement normally implies to students that they don’t need to study too much, especially if they have 500 information-packed slides from the previous six weeks to look over. Thirty one multiple choice questions challenged us to remember detailed facts from all different parts of the program, supposing we memorized necessary equations and knew the efficiencies of energy use of different forms of steel shaping. Needless to say, I had trouble recalling any specific numbers from the thousands of efficiency numbers that I’ve seen since June 21^st and I’ve been paying close attention in class. I can’t imagine what the kids who play Sudoku every day thought of the test.

Thursday, Merritt and I decided to try to find some windsurf rentals up the coast. I’ve had two learning experiences and wanted to give it another shot. We were lucky and got a ride to Palm Cove with the tourism information director from the hotel, a nice 30 minute ride that happened to be on the way to her lunch appointment. We were asking about deep sea fishing, so she stopped at her house on the way to let us talk to her husband, who was tuning his fish finders in the driveway. He showed us some of his recent red snapper catch, then we hopped back into the car. Jacky said to us while we pulled away “Well, you’ve now seen some of the local wildlife: the husband.” We arrived in Palm Cove to find perfect sailing conditions but no windsurfers for rent. Port Douglas, apparently the only place in the area with the necessary equipment, was another 45 minutes and a $46 round trip bus ticket away. So to pass the time, we decided to swim to the island off shore. It didn’t appear that far away, but didn’t feel like the smartest idea when we started swimming. I was frustrated to find that Merritt was only interested in doing slow breast stroke to get over there, so it took 35 minutes of swimming to get close. When we started nearing the exposed land due to low tide, I remembered a sign at the beach in Cairns that warned of crocodiles in the area and suddenly didn’t feel so safe. As we got closer to the land, we realized the bottom was covered in coral and it wasn’t going to be an easy exit. Merritt got scared when he kicked the squishy bottom a couple times which flustered me a little more. We decided to swim back without spending any time on land. On the way back, a boat passed with a few people in it who waved as they went by. It was comforting to know they didn’t think we were in distress, as Merritt was starting to get a little tired and frustrated with the distance we had left to go. We got to shore a little ways down from where we started, as the current was picking up. When we got to our stuff and started walking to the bus stop, a guy with binoculars asked us if we were the guys swimming out there. He said that some people had just gone out to look for us, as they place we just swam across was called “Shark Alley” and produced a 6 ft shark the day before. We also didn’t realize the buoys in the water on the other part of the beach were holding up nets to keep the crocs out. Fortunately our 1 hr 10 min swim was eventless and we lived to tell the tale. On the way to the island, I was telling Merritt how stupid of an idea the swim was and we started talking about how Captain Cook had to take a few chances in order to reach the other side of the world, and this was a small challenge compared to that. Ignorance is bliss and I don’t intend on employing that kind of stupidity any longer. I’m almost home Momma…

Today, a group of kids and I went to Fitzroy Island for a real day in the tropics. This place appealed to me because for a $40 ferry ticket, you could spend the day on the island hiking, snorkeling, and sunning on an island protected by national park. We hiked straight to the summit, an incredible 1200 ft. high 360º view of the mountainous coastline with Great Barrier Reef offshore. The hike was hot until we reached the winds passing the summit, cooling us off for the next hour as we soaked in the view. We could even see whales breaching repeatedly about a mile offshore towards the reef. Stunning. We later made our way down to the beach where I swam around with my swim goggles (couldn’t fit the scuba goggles in my pack). I was really impressed with the amount of life in the water. In the hour that I was in the water, I saw sea turtles, a sting ray, a squid, lots of fish, and lots of neat coral. The rest of the day was spent lounging on the beach, trying to be smart enough to avoid lobster-like skin from the extremely intense sun. They Aussies say “Slip, Slap, Slop” for their encouragement of sunscreen use. I did a pretty good job, knowing that I’d be out in the sun the following day on my scuba trip. When we got back into the port, I found a shop to book my introductory scuba dive. Merritt and I were going to sign up together, but it turns out he doesn’t have access to his bank account until Monday so he canceled. I guess I’m going to have to make friends on my own tomorrow. I’m super excited about diving on the outer section of the GBR, this is top notch. Visibility(I’m told) is up to 20 meters out there.

Sydney #2

7/25/2008

Cairns

Looking at the dates of my past blog entries, it appears I’ve kept from updating you for the longest period yet on this trip, something that is going to take a while to catch up from. I’ll start where I left off.

On Tuesday of our second week, I went to see what I thought was going to be an opera at the Sydney Opera House, but turns out I was just too naïve to know the storyline. We saw “My Fair Lady,” which is obviously a musical instead of an opera. The reason I signed up for this event was because it was the only ‘opera’ that our director was offering tickets to, but I didn’t previously know what “My Fair Lady” was about. Apparently I should know it as a classic as anyone I asked about it said “The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains…” Fortunately, I wasn’t the only kid who didn’t know anything about the story, so I didn’t feel so bad. We got all dressed up and made our way downtown, ready for my classiest experience all summer. I bought a glass of wine, only to find out that I would have to drink it in the following 4 minutes because the show was about to start and drinks weren’t allowed inside. We got a few pictures and entered the theater, which was much smaller than I imagined. I didn’t realize that inside the iconic structure, five different theaters reside inside different sections that serve different purposes. As the show started, I couldn’t convince myself that they didn’t have microphones on. We were a few rows from the back, as far away as you could get, and I could hear the actors even when they were whispering. Absolutely incredible sound - I was most interested in the music emanating from the pit, as thoughts of my visit to Citta della Pieve in Tuscany to see my cousin Troy conducting for the orchestra filled my mind. The play was satisfactorily long, a full three hours with an intermission, where I found out some of my friends were taking perhaps the most expensive nap of their lives. I kept thinking during the play about how incredibly different those actors lives’ are than mine, their specialty being delivery and accent versus logical thinking and precise calculation. It was a very enjoyable experience, almost surreal to walk out of the Opera House after a show.

The next memorable experience I had was the sunrise coast walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee. My friend Mike and I got up early one morning and made our way to the beach, arriving just as the light of the early morning allowed the surfers to enter the water. I was encouraged to see all of the exercise activity going on at that hour, as a surprising number of people were jogging, exercising on the beach, surfing, etc. Mike and I needed to be back on campus in time for class to start, so we walked quickly along the coastal walkway, stopping to take pictures as the sun rose. It was a great start to the day, I’m very glad I was able to get up for that experience.

Thursday night, most of the kids went down the street to a bar where they have “Trashyokee,” the perfect chance for people to belt out whatever song they like. They didn’t have Foreigner’s ‘Juke Box Hero,’ so I decided to save my voice for another time.

Friday, Mike and I took the train a couple hours outside Sydney to a town called Katoomba, the gateway to the Blue Mountains National Park. We were very lucky to have great weather during our two day stay; it was nice and chilly in the mornings but perfect to keep cool during a long hike. Once in town, we found a quality hostel, dropped our bags and hit the trail. We hiked from Echo Point around to the Three Sisters. The landscape here is pretty interesting, the mountains are less mountainy than the name implies. It looks like a plateau with wide, gentle canyons brimming with eucalyptus trees. There is a large precipice that runs along the top rim of the canyon as it winds its way through the area, so you can imagine a plateau that stops at a ledge, drops down a 100 ft vertical rock face, then gently slops downward to the bottom of the valley. We saw quite a few falls along the hike, got some great pictures and unsuccessfully tried to hitchhike back onto town because our trail terminated a few miles out of town. It was fun to laugh at ourselves as all the cars drove by, though. We bought groceries at the store to cook for dinner, only to find that the kitchen we were cooking in didn’t have an oven for our pizzas. Fortunately the pizzas fit into the microwave, but it wasn’t ideal by any means. We roomed with a Dutch brother and sister, in town because his car broke down again. He said that he spent $800 on the car when he got to Australia a year ago, has spent at least that much in repairs since then, and paid over $1000 in parking tickets. Yikes. The next day Mike and I went to Wentworth Falls, a short train ride away, to do some more hiking. This trail was enjoyable because there were far less people, the trail was more rustic, there were lots of falls, and the ecosystem seemed to change every 30 minutes. One second it would be rainforesty, like New Zealand, then it would change to dry skinny tall trees, then a harsh rocky environment then followed by more rainforest. I can’t accurately describe them from a scientific standpoint, but the differences were quite obvious by the sights and sounds. One more interesting thing about this hike was the presence of coal just beneath the surface. There were remnants of old mines that were phased out when national park status was given to the area, but you could see the black presences in the place of some fallen rocks.

When we returned to Sydney, Mike and I decided to be spontaneous and go down to see Beethoven’s symphony Missa Solemnis performed by the Sydney Opera in the concert hall of the Opera House. This theater was much larger than the play hall, the organ was pretty incredible sitting high above the choir loft. The playbill for the symphony describes Missa Solemnis as one of Beethoven’s greatest works, written as church music for the crowning of a prince but was far too long for church and was four years late for the deadline. Given its connection to the church, it was not only an instrumental, but had four lead opera singers backed up by a choir. This was the kind of production I was after, as everyone was dressed to the nines and the music was the main attraction. I was blown away by the way the symphony worked together to produce such music, it seems almost unnatural to me to be that in sync with the people around you. I also cannot begin to comprehend how one goes about composing a body of music like that. How can you distinguish the differences between choir, opera, strings, wind, and tympani inside your head, any then translate that into written music? I don’t know, but I can appreciate the geniuses who do. My favorite parts of the performance were the parts of music where the different sections of the symphony played in waves, so you could hear the individual instruments as they blended into the wave before them and the wave after them. I also enjoyed watching the string instruments during a really fast section, where all of the musicians seemed to be moving with fury for a few moments in such controlled motion. My least favorite parts of the show was the $100 ticket and the 1 ½ long performance. A small price to pay for a memorable experience.

Tuesday thru Sunday, Sydney hosted the largest event in the city’s history: World Youth Day. The actual day, Sunday, was preceded by a week of activities consisting of and for the half a million Christians from all over the world who descended on the city. There were concerts, reenactments, performances, etc. that took place across the city. It was an interesting atmosphere in many ways. First, I’ve never been a part of such a massive gathering of Christians before, and second, I’ve never seen such a mix of people from all over the world, especially where a display of your nationality is encouraged. Unfortunately, I didn’t participate in any of the activities during the week aside from the walk from downtown to Randwick Racecourse, and that was because the buses could run because of the blockade for this walk. The racecourse is across the street from campus, and it hosted to largest events of the week, specifically the Evening Vigil and the Mass delivered by the Pope. On Sunday morning, I woke up and decided to see if I could get into the racecourse to attend Mass, which I did. There were so many people there, it was ridiculous. Adding to the craziness of the scene, most of the people there participated in ‘Sleep Under the Stars,’ and had set up their spots the night before. Everyone was sitting or laying on the ground, most with the thin metallic emergency blankets nearby. I saw a sweatshirt that said “I slept at Randwick Racecourse, only God knows why.” There were flags from around the world being flown all over the place, I suppose to show their presence as well as provide some sort of landmark for people to navigate by. I arrived just as the procession was starting – I believe the Popemobile already arrived and the priests and other people made their way down the read carpet and onto the stage. There was some incredible music, an orchestra with full choirs, opera singers and the like all working together to produce some wonderful hymns. The sound was very clear, and I found a good place to watch the action behind one of the big screens, as I was about halfway to the back and a little to the right of the stage, so I couldn’t see much by naked eye. The camera work was amazing, it was like watching a DVD before your eyes. It was a surreal experience, I felt like the second coming could have happened any second. I thought it was also unique that I was in the same city as the Pope for the second time in a couple months, but when he came to DC in April, I couldn’t go because the tickets went fast. The feeling surrounding these Catholics seemed to be much more contemporary than I’ve experienced in my visits to Catholic churches. I was also encouraged to see so many Catholics from around the world. It reminded me what a long history the church has and how extensive its missionary efforts are/have been. The presence of nuns and monks was surprising as well, I really respect the amount of devotion they have for committing their lives to Christ in such a strong way. I found it frustrating that so many people around the city complained about the WYD people, talking about how they were making the city a mess, making noise with their songs, and clogging the streets. I think it was incredible display of faith and was glad to be a small part of it.

Tuesday, I woke up at 5:15 am and hoped on a bus to Bondi Beach to check out the big swell that the forecasts were predicting. I arrived about 15 minutes before first light, so I decided to sit and watch the waves and the first couple guys go in to make a judgment on where I should paddle out. The first guy ran by me with his board, stretched, and started his paddle. After 15 minutes of struggling against the waves, he rode back in to shore. Frustrated he ran back up by me, looked back out at the ocean, and ran home. I could see a rip on one part of the beach, taking careful note to make sure I wouldn’t get caught up in it. The southern part of Bondi has rocks on it, so the waves actually hit and bounce back towards the oncoming waves. The only reason I mention that is because of the really neat way the refracted waves move through the oncoming waves, intersecting in very linear ways and throwing up a spray of water at the point of intersection. You can feel the refracted waves as you paddle out, as you get a boost every now and again as you paddle down a wave that’s going back out to sea. I got very lucky when I decided to paddle out. I timed it just right and caught a break in the sets, allowing me to get outside just before my arms wore completely out. I could feel the strength of the swell in how much water was moving with each wave. Duck diving through the wave felt inefficient because, as I tucked under the front part of the wave, the swirling water behind it would suck me back towards shore no matter how deep I dove. The surface was pretty messy, and the waves were crumbling more than barreling, which was comforting in some respect. On the other hand, though, I was paddling into waves with a 10 foot face and kept pulling off because I wasn’t ready. One wave I pulled off, turned around, only to see this monster wave breaking another 20 meters outside of me. I tried to duck dive under it but just got destroyed, and it carried me a good 100 meters towards shore. By that time, I was inside the break zone and decided to go to shore to rest. I waited a few minutes then tried to paddle out where it was smaller, but couldn’t get out. My arms were shot and breakfast was calling, so I went back to campus. After class, I headed back out to the beach without checking the surfcam. When I got to the beach, I couldn’t see any people in the water but I could see that the sea was raging. Huge nasty waves moving incredibly amounts of water filled the bay. I got some neat pictures of the fury of the waves, and a really cool one of a crazy guy braving the waves.

It rained the next three days, so surfing wasn’t really an option and I needed to do some work on my project, so things worked out well. Our group project was a 15 page paper and a presentation titled “Overview of Net Zero Energy Residential Home Options.” The idea is to suggest options for homeowners on how to lower energy use inside a household as well as generate power on site as well. Some interesting topics we covered were low consumption appliances, power generation, energy storage, building layout, lighting, spatial conditioning, and negative crediting. I enjoyed learning about the spatial conditioning aspects of the house, focusing on geothermal heating and cooling, chilled beams, and passive down-draft cooltowers. I realize that a 10 page paper can barely scratch the surface of the options available, but I was pleased to research a topic we suggested rather than settling for one of the recommended subjects.

Sydney

7/14/2008
Sydney

I’m finally getting a chance to sit still for a few minutes so I write down all that’s been happening since I arrived in Sydney a week ago. I’ve been having trouble keeping in touch because the internet isn’t quite as accessible as they led on it would be. Since it’s winter break for the students here, most of the buildings on campus are closed after business hours and my free internet in the room shuts off after 7 pm, so while you guys are sleeping I have internet, and while you’re awake, I’m sleeping. I getting it straightened out this week, though, so here goes.

After getting settled into our dorms on campus at the University of New South Wales, we explored the main street we live on, Anzac Parade where there are tons of asian restaurants. I think it’s the cheapest option for dinner available (about $7), aside from buying groceries. The catch there is that we don’t have any facilities in the dorm to cook for ourselves, so unless you can microwave it, there’s no real way for you to eat here. Unless…you can survive on peanut butter and honey sandwiches like I am. No, I’m just kidding…I’ve been eating egg salad sandwiches too. We’re only provided breakfast and lunch at the dining hall downstairs; I think people aren’t considering how much even just a $10 dinner every night for three weeks adds up to. People keep giving me crap for being so cheap, but when I’ve already spent tres mil dolares ($3000) since I left LA, I’d say I’m in the lead for spending the most money.

On Sunday morning I went to a church called Hillsong, a very contemporary worship-based church that was similar to Buckhead Church in Atlanta. The guest pastor was from Louisiana and did standup comedy for most of his ‘sermon,’ but had a good message in the last 15 minutes about generosity, something I need to be more comfortable with. Jacky helped me realize that when she was telling me about how when she gets too much stuff she wants to give it to other people who can use it. I like that idea a lot.

Our ‘uni’ is situated in a convenient spot for access to the city – we’re pretty much directly south of downtown. The bus stop outside my window takes me downtown in about 20 minutes. There are a couple different buses that run to the beaches: Coogee being the closest, Bronte, and Bondi. The bus system can be figured out by knowing which number bus goes where…and you better have figured that out before you go to the stop because other than asking the driver, there’s no real way to figure out which goes where. Although we’re south of downtown, the area is referred to as the ‘Eastern Suburbs’ and the city center closest to us is Kensington or Randwick. Our campus is nice, our dorm is right next to the athletic field (a huge circle used for playing cricket and Australian football) and the tennis courts. Campus takes up one rectangular block of the area, with one main center walkway and an up-sloping hill that has endless sets of steps. It is a sort of technology school like Georgia Tech; it’s pretty obvious that everyone here is focused on science. On Sunday I took a run through campus and went down the other side of the campus hill to the beach. Lots of the people I passed looked at me funny in my t-shirt and shorts as they were dressed with big coats and scarves, it was a chilly 60 degrees during this bitter winter…not. It reminds me a lot of San Diego because the sun warms things up during the day and you can wear a light coat at night. Today it looked like it was going to rain in the morning and later at the beach it was a cloudless sunset.

On Tuesday, we took a fieldtrip for class to a steel recycling plant called OneSteel. This plant takes in scrap metal, melts it down and sells bars of high quality steel to customers for further manufacture. It was a great tour, the plant site mixed with the way they make their product was very interesting. This plant is situated right next to a large highway and also is surrounded by residential housing, so it was designed to have minimal sight, sound, and pollution effects. Because of this, you wouldn’t be able to tell it is an industrial site if you stood on the other side of the trees surrounding the boundary. The buildings were set up to absorb and contain the sounds from the processes so even the difference between internal and external sounds of the plant buildings were incredible. They bring in scrap metal from all over Australia and dump it into their indoor scrap yard. A large magnet then grabs loads of metal and dumps it into a bin. The bin is stacked with light scrap at the bottom, heavy scrap in the middle, and light scrap on top of that. The bin then supplies the working metal for the furnace. This plant uses what’s called an ‘electric-arc furnace’ and is basically a huge lightning bolt style electricity arc that melts the metal so it can be formed into other shapes. The temperatures for this process are ridiculously high, somewhere along the lines of 6000º C to keep the metal in a molten state. We watched from inside the control room the furnace loading process: the cap opens as you can see the radiating glow off the roof of the molten metal in the furnace, the bin releases a load of fresh scrap metal into the furnace and huge flames shoot up feeding on the impurities and coatings of the scraps, the lid comes down and clamps shut, the graphite electrodes spark up and the incredibly loud sound of repetitive, constant lightning bolts pulse through tons of metal, heating the pile from the middle into a molten soup while a lance with measuring equipment waves through the soup, spitting lava-like debris out of the lance hole. Then we got to see the bottom of the furnace, where the metal exits, being formed and cooled at the same time. The bars of metal are glowing yellow orange and are radiating so much heat you can’t stand to get closer than 10 feet or you’ll get barbequed. The rods are sent down an assembly line until they cool enough to be cut to length and stacked. The plant reminded me a lot of my time at the chemical plant in Augusta, FinnChem, where I often thought about how much stress the work environment puts on the operators’ bodies. With so much heat, metal dust, and electricity pulsing through the area, I couldn’t imagine the effects on someone’s body over the course of 20 years.

Following the trip, my Penn State friend Mike and I went for a walk along the coast to check out more of the beaches, and made a stop to check with a lady about a surfboard I found for sale on the internet. This was our first attempt at figuring out the bus system on the fly and it worked out pretty well. I felt like I was making forward progress on exploring the nearby area. Since we traveled well on Tuesday, he decided to accompany me on Wednesday to an area next to the University of Sydney to check out another surfboard. After class, we hit up a few thrift stores in the area and then went to see how good my bargaining skills were. The guy I found on the internet was moving a few days later to France and had a combo board/wetsuit for sale. He was nice and the equipment was in pretty good condition – the board was impeccable other than a repair from this guy’s accident on a 5 meter tall wave the year before. It was a little longer than I was hoping to get, but I figured I could use that as a arguing point and if it wasn’t cheap enough then I could walk. So whenever I offered him $225 for the board and the wetsuit which he had listed for $300, he looked at the ground, groaned and said in his thick French accent “Ohhh…you are mean…” We settled on $260 for all of it: a 6’6” pintain surfboard, full 3/2 wetsuit, and a shortie 3/2 wetsuit. I’m pretty pleased with the purchase, I’ve been out on the board 3 times and it feels much different than my 6’8” at home because it’s a lot thinner.

Later that night, I walked across the main drag of campus to find some wireless so I could talk to Amira on Skype, but I was having trouble finding any buildings open at 8 pm. I decided to walk a little further to see if I could find another one. As I walked out onto the main walkway, I heard some scuffling behind me. I turned around to see this group of guys surrounding this other guy on the ground. I thought they were friends wrestling at first, but after I saw one of the guys standing up kick the guy on the ground and another grab his backpack, I knew they weren’t friends of his. I stood about 20 feet away trying to see anything distinctive about the 6 guys in hoodies, but they were running down the street before I knew it. The guy on the ground got up, picked up his glasses and started walking towards me. I asked if he was ok and he was fine, just stunned from being mugged. I didn’t really have any options for helping him since there were so many of them, but I stuck around to help describe to the police what I had seen. It was really surprising to me that it happened on that part of campus because it was right next to the tennis courts (with lots of people on them), in the well lit center of campus. He lost his wallet and car keys but still had his phone and house keys so he was able to call the credit card company and the cops. I had my laptop in my backpack and probably would have been fuming if those guys had chosen me instead. People have been making fun of me for carrying around a pocket knife but you never know what could happen. It seems that only the couple girls from Philly are the ones who brought the keychain style pepper spray. It was a good lesson that walking alone or even girls walking without a guy is not a good idea. The thing I hate most about the ordeal is that the victim had just gotten repaid a debt from a friend so he had around $400 in cash in his wallet, so those thieves were in a sick way rewarded for their efforts. Mom, I know this doesn’t help your worrying at all but I figured you’d rather hear the story than not. Let’s just say it helped to make me more aware of my surroundings.

Thursday, we had a field trip to show us some sustainable buildings around Sydney. We briefly visited a development that had solar power and rainwater reclamation, but didn’t inform their tenants of the energy conservative building because research shows that people tend to misuse energy in that setting, for whatever reason. Our next stop was a five star rated commercial high rise with a very unique design. With a mostly glass shell, the individual levels were open air, no walls to separate offices or areas. I assume they had low cube divisions, but from what we could see the offices were very airy. One side of the building butted up against the foundation of the building up the hill from them, where the architects cleverly left the bedrock exposed to the building to act as a heat mass, where it’s cool in the warm weather and warmer in the cool weather. They also used ‘chilled beams,’ which were just metal pipes that had cool water running through them, effectively cooling the air around the beam which then sank to the floor acting as AC. The last thing I’ll say about this relatively boring field trip was about the heating for this building. Theoretically, the heating system would be activated by running hot water through the pipes beneath the floor, heating the floor which would heat the air at the ground level. Heating air at the ground level wastes less energy than heating air from the ceiling (since we’re not walking around up there).

I went surfing Thursday afternoon by myself and again on Friday. Thursday was pretty good, consistently chest high surf with a few overhead waves. Friday was much smaller and weaker, just like today’s waves. Friday night, I went to a rugby game with most everyone in our program. It was a good game, fun to see in person, but not nearly as popular as I expected. There were 10,000 in attendance and it was a very social atmosphere, kind of like a baseball game. Afterwards, our group went out to a couple bars in Paddington. It was the first time we’ve been out in a small enough group to meet real Aussies. It was fortunate I went there because the next day I navigated for our group to make it to the Paddington Markets, a Sunday artist market around the church there. It is a very trendy area and reminded me of NYC with all of the interesting styles walking around. Afterwards, we went downtown to the Paddy Markets, a flea market full of cheap trinkets and souvenirs.

Sunday, I went downtown and took the ferry over to Manly. I didn’t know much about the town but heard a couple guys were going and decided to tag along. It’s on the north part of the harbor and gave us a great chance to see the city from the water. There were hundreds of sailboats on the water, big 30-40 footers cruising in the wind. We got to the Manly Wharf and decided to walk down the main street to see the beach on the outside of the peninsula. On the way there, one of the most coincidental things happened. We’re walking and talking and I saw a girl that looked like one of Melissa’s best friends from Augusta. I look a little harder and see Coleman Carter, a good friend of mine who went to Lakeside and goes to UGA. We were both flipping out and wondering what each other were doing in Manly. Turns out she came to Sydney for a week by herself to go to Hillsong Conference, a conference hosted by the church I went to the week before. She met some people through a friend and was spending the day with them and just happened to be walking down the street where we were. Her friends gave us some suggestions for things to do in the area, we exchanged numbers and decided to meet up later. We went for a walk out to the North Head, a west facing landmass protected as a National Park. Mike, Bryan, and I hiked up to secluded rock cliff and sat to see if we could see any of the Right Whales that were migrating northwards. Sure enough, we saw a couple groups pass by, about ¼ mile offshore being trailed by boats. We couldn’t see much more than the mist from their breathing and a little of their backs and tails. It was definitely a plus of the trip though. Later, we walked down the beach and watched the surfers before heading back to the ferry terminal. Coleman met up with us there and we went back downtown for dinner. We ate in a little restaurant in Darling Harbor and then Coleman and I walked around making our way back to the ferry. It was good to catch up with her, I hadn’t talked to her since I saw her at Melissa’s funeral and even then I didn’t get to say much. I couldn’t believe all the things that had to go right in order for us to run into one another…what are the chances. I felt bad for her because her flight left the next day and she hadn’t gotten to see much of the city since she was in a conference all week. It was good to hear her say that this trip inspired her to travel more, a lot of people from back home are scared or just don’t have an interest in doing that.

In class today, we watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth followed by a rebuttal film that spoofed his movie and countered it with scientific evidence as well. The most interesting rebuttal was that, in the past, it appears that a rising general temperature drives CO2 up instead of the reverse. One thing that really bothers me about Al Gore is his self-centeredness. When he came to speak at Georgia Tech, I could only stay for the first 45 minutes of his speech and all he did for that period was stand-up comedy about himself. I value his efforts, though, because he is trying to get people to realize what’s going on in our world. I can’t get over the fact that, apart from global warming, the world population is increasing so rapidly. The world population increasing almost four fold during one person’s lifetime is something that nobody’s really experienced…except maybe Adam. I’m not sure what we can do about that, or if we need to do anything.

After class today, most of our group went to Bondi Beach for surf lessons. I tagged along for the free ride down there and got to see some of the group catching the whitewater on their longboards. I got lucky and got a hold of one of the longboards and had some fun. It’s so much different than shortboarding, the rides are so much longer and smooth. I also had a fun session afterwards on my board on a different part of the beach. I surfed next to a kid I met the other day who was out there with his dad. My new 13 year old friend was telling me where I should go in Byron Bay when I’m there, they said I won’t want to leave when I get there. I found a couple guys in my program who’re wanting to rent a car and go surfing after we’re done classes on July 31st, so I think I’m going to have some travel partners for one of the two weeks I’ll be on my own before I go home.


Upcoming events for this week: Opera at the Sydney Opera House, Sunrise Cliffwalk, Blue Mountains Hiking Trip, World Youth Day.

The Red Centre

7/5/2008
Uluru

Leaving the outback, heading towards the city, lots of red sand below us. We just finished with our trip to the Red Center – a few hours in Alice Springs, sight seeing in Uluru (aboriginal name for Ayers Rock).

Tuesday was Territory Day in the Northern Territory, the equivalent of our July 4th (that was soon to follow). We ended our afternoon class by following our professor around the hotel as he pointed out different architectural designs that were efficiency suicide as far as energy conservation is concerned. In a climate that never gets below 80 degrees (as they have a wet and a dry season in the tropics, as opposed to our four seasons), it’s not smart to have windows facing constant sun, necessitating constant use of the AC. We actually calculated roughly how much heat the sun was pumping into our conference room… It only became evident how absurd the design was after he finished the calculation, showing how placing 20 space heaters in along the windows in the room and needing the AC to counter that.

In the evening, everyone headed to Mindil Beach, where Darwin was having its official celebration of Territory Day. Apparently, people in the Northern Territory (NT) like to be different than the rest of the country and are typically seen as the rebellious southerners of the American south would be seen – slow talking, carry guns, drive 4WDs, that kind of thing. I got to the show a just in time for the grand finale, as I was finishing dinner with a friend who’s a chef a little later than planned. I was very surprised to find our friends so quickly, as there were thousands of people packed onto the beach. The tide was out and there were four large palettes on the edge of the water, a hundred yards or so from the crowd. Beyond the palettes, you could see the lights of a hundred boats just offshore. There were four large green lasers slicing through the smoky air throughout the show, it was pretty awesome. I think the only show that rivals it was the one I saw in Pamplona before the Running of the Bulls. After the official show was over, the civilian show was just beginning. For the next couple hours, people lit thousands of fireworks on the beach in fairly close proximity to the crowds…but I think only a couple people got hurt this year, unlike years passed. It was fun to see the community out and see how many people there actually are in Darwin.

Following Wednesday’s classes, we went to the other side of town as a group to see what they called the ‘deckchair cinema.’ We watched Lucky Miles in some lawn chairs in the open air. We saw some huge bats and had a friendly little possum searching for crumbs beneath us. Possums here are much different than in the US, and those of NZ were much different as well. They are much furrier and cute, but pests nonetheless. The movie was about some illegal immigrants to Australia and their attempt to survive in the bush after getting dropped off on a beach from Indonesia. It sounded like a great plotline, but the movie was a disappointment. Afterwards, I went home to get packed and sleep for our 4 am departure time the next morning for Alice Springs.

In Alice Springs, we went to the Center for Appropriate Technology, an organization run by aboriginals to provide technology and support for lifestyle improvements for aboriginal communities. Mostly, this organization designs and provides solar powered electricity systems for rural communities. It was very interesting to hear their managing engineer talk about the challenges of providing a system that could withstand fairly harsh weather conditions and require little to no maintenance. It’s almost funny to hear them talk about finding old photovoltaic (PV) systems (solar power system) that have stopped working and have since been put to use for other means – like using the panels for a table, or using the batteries as anchors, etc. It’s also very interesting to me how one goes about teaching someone how to use and maintain a system that just supplies power for an outlet…without knowing what is actually going on to make that power. I realize that a lot of people don’t really know how electricity works, but teaching someone using representative pictoral symbols and communicating in broken English would be an extreme challenge. We saw their display of other appropriate technology like water heaters, water pumps for wells, low maintenance latrines, and other equipment designed for these rural bush communities.

Supposedly Alice Springs’ water supply is predicted to run dry in 65 years. That was the only other interesting thing that we informed about in Alice. We took a 6 hour bus ride to Ayers Rock, stopping along the way to give people a chance to ride camels and see a wallaby or two. The camels were very interesting, especially the way their reigns are connected. Instead of a harness, they pierce the camels’ nostril and tie a rope to the piercing, making the camel follow whoever’s controlling the reign connected to the inside of their nose. They appeared very ornery but I couldn’t tell if it was because of the way they were being treated or they’re just like that in general. Also, it was crazy to see their hind legs that have a hip, a knee that bends like a bird’s (forward), a lower knee that bends like a human’s (backwards), and an ankle. I didn’t ride one but was jealous of my cousin John Joe’s all day ride in Morocco wearing a turbine, whereas this ride was for only for 100 yards.

The stars on the first night at the Ayers Rock Resort were pretty amazing, there was a dune nearby that perched us above most of the lights in the little town. After everybody went to bed, me and a buddy just sat up there talking about how so many people miss out on the relieving freshness that living in nature brings. Camping and hiking become rejuvenating to those who appreciate it. The Milky Way is oh so present from that viewpoint, a huge cloud of stars almost like a rainbow across the sky. It was weird not to see Orion’s Belt and the North Star, but instead the Southern Cross and Scorpio. Quite a few shooting stars with far fewer satellites than I’m used to seeing. Last ones to go to bed and first ones to get up for the sunrise, I’d heard that sunrise and sunset are the main attractions at Uluru. I guess as it is with any desert, there’s literally no chance of rain and very little clouds to obstruct the view. They said that the rain is very erratic in those parts, some years raining 20 inches in two storms and zero rain for a couple years thereafter. We went to the Cultural Center on Thursday morning to hear a talk from one of the rangers. It was surprising to find out that, after the area became a National Park, the landscape became dangerous from the European way of land management, as they didn’t practice the regular fire control like the aborigines were accustomed to. Because they put out every fire that started in the park, the undergrowth became a dangerous amount of fuel and proceeded to wipe most of the park out in a 1978 fire started by lightning. Because they hadn’t continued to burn sections regularly, they in essence shot themselves in the foot by providing enough fuel for the fire to be uncontrollable. In the aboriginal fire practices, burning occurs at a slow enough level that most trees and fire activated seeds live through the flame. But with increased fuel, nothing could withstand the heat and the park was nearly wiped clean. From then on, the park management realized that putting the traditional owners of the land back in charge would be the best option for managing the habitat. Also, the huge rock formation, formerly known as Ayers Rock but now being called by its original name Uluru, is a sacred place that no aborigine climbs. Conversely, most of the people who come to Uluru come to climb the rock, a 248 m monolith, the largest in the world. The rock is a unique, red sandstone looking giant, continuing another 4-6 km into the ground. The rock is almost smooth, with ribs and ridges that appear to sanded by a glacier or something. The crazy thing is that, while there are markings from water flows, most of the water flows haven’t cut into the rock like we normally see because there is so little rain throughout the year. From afar, it appears like a uniform rock rising out of the outback. Up close, it’s much more textured and has ridges, holes, caves, and valleys. The crazy thing is that where the sides of the rock plunge into the ground, there is little evidence that it is eroding. The flat red sand runs up to the rock just like water would to an iceberg, no piles of sand or rock at the sides. It’s also interesting to find out the history of tourism in the area. Before 1960, few people came to see the natural formations in the area. Following that, people came to climb the rock and that was about it. They told us that many Japanese tourists still fly in for the day just to climb. But now, as the Australian culture is coming to respect and appreciate the aboriginal culture, people are buying shirts that say “I did NOT climb the rock” instead of those from days of old that said the opposite. I could definitely have spent more time there, but for some reason we had to rush back to the hotel to eat lunch and have free time. In the evening, we went back out to the sunset viewing area with a bunch of other tourists who were having cheese and wine as the sun set. We were between the rock and the setting sun, watching to rock to see the changes in color as the sun’s rays change the way they hit the face. There were clouds on the horizon, so we were able to see the changes in color until the clouds blocked the sun out for the most colorful part. Looking back over my pictures, though, you can definitely see the different moods of Uluru in the span of 45 minutes.

This morning we woke up early to go out to Kata Tjuta, or The Olgas, for sunrise. These huge domes of rock are the only other real geographical feature of the area, 34 round rocks that are about 500 m tall. The previous day, the ranger said the hikes around there were the best in Central Australia and recommended we do them. So I prepared for our outing to be hiking, only to find out we were going to a viewing spot for sunrise and then driving back. I was frustrated that we were so close to being able to hike but didn’t have time to due to some poor planning by our director. It was awesome to see the sunrise from that perspective though, I certainly can’t complain.

We arrived in Sydney yesterday afternoon and unpacked into our one person dorm rooms. We’re on a main road south of Sydney by about 20 minute drive, 30 minute walk to the nearest beach in Coogee. I ran there today in about 15 minutes, but I’m not sure where the best surfing will be yet. I got lucky and have access to free (albeit spotty and slow) wireless internet in my room, so I did some research on the bus system and used surfing equipment (board and wetsuit). It’s weird not to be rushed by a timer cutting you off like I’ve been living with for the last month. It’s definitely a welcome break from constant use of computers, but when you need to do research for a new place or for school, it makes things so much easier to flip open your laptop. We were playing pool in the game room tonight and talking about how the kid who’s always recording on his video camera is probably not going to look at his videos until he gets bored when he’s 42, at which point he’ll pull out his 20 year old laptop and see if it works. For me, the aged piece of technology that we always pulled out was the silver VHS video recorder box – it must’ve looked like the news crew was doing a special every time mom taped one of my baseball games.

I’m looking forward to spending some time in Sydney, I foresee a really busy three weeks ahead. We’ve got two field trips this week, and I’m probably going to take weekend trips for both of the upcoming weekends. The pope will be in town next week for World Youth Day/Week, supposedly the largest event that Sydney has ever hosted (according to a catholic girl on our trip). This morning, I went with some friends to a church called Hillsong, a very contemporary worship based church down the road from the university. It was much like the mega church Buckhead that I’ve been to in Atlanta, and it was ironic that the guest pastor was from Baton Rouge and told jokes for most of the sermon, even showing funny pictures of what life is like in the “Dirty South,” as he referred to it. He showed a guy lying in a swimming pool in the back of his pickup, a guy at a nascar race with the #3 shaved into his back hair (I’ve seen that!), a Cajun’s first kiss which was a little girl kissing a pig, a doorbell that was the hind of a deer where the button beneath his tail, those kinds of things. It was good standup comedy but certainly more than I’m used to. He did make good points though about being generous, of which I need to learn to be more of. I feel like what I’m learning in school here, though, is pulling me in the opposite direction. Let me explain – I asked our professor (who’s household grid power usage is 70% lower than the average Sydney household) how one differentiates between being frugal with energy and just being plain stingy or cheap. He made a good point that he’s not living a different lifestyle because of his new energy sources, he just had to make some conscious decisions about where that energy is coming from and how its used. Now that statement should come with a note because he has certainly helped mold his family’s habits so they use less energy. That difference is something that I think takes stealth and some understanding on the people participating in the energy savings because it is indeed realistically possible to pay less, use less energy, and live the same with a little coercing, it just needs to be done in the right way. I guess by stealth I mean solving problems in early steps, so people don’t have to think about them. For example, when my mom came to visit my apartment in Atlanta during Spring 2007, I asked them not to use the heat because Nate and I were trying to keep from using the heat or air for the whole semester (for costs reasons , but I suppose you could say we were energy conscious, even if it for stingy reasons). Now if we could have somehow found a way to add insulation to the walls instead of asking my mom to use a pile of blankets, we would have stealthily found a way to be energy conscious. But instead, we needed to use the heat because the pile of blankets would have been unreasonable for mom’s cold toes. I realize that my mom is worth much more money than I could ever pay, so I should spend whatever necessary to pamper the woman who gave so much of her life for me. But I’m going to try to be able to pamper her in cost effective ways now ;) One of those ways, as it’s recently dawned on me, is massaging her shoulders whenever I get the chance. It takes so little effort and reaps such great benefits, I think I’ve found a great way to say thank you.

Picture upload

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that I figured out how to upload pictures on Picasa. I'll be uploading more in the next few days.

http://picasaweb.google.com/hess.drew/