I missed my chance to be on Google maps. I got out on the roof an hour after the Google hi-res photo plane passed over. I really thought it was to fly over at one, but by the time I double checked, it had already passed over. So much for the idea of seeing me on Google maps. The fact that I got upset about this was to Christy only further proof of my already well established geekness. I mean, sure a blog in Brooklyn told me to do it, that is not geeky is it? And really, who wouldn't want to be seen on Google maps?

Google was flying around Sydney yesterday as sort of a PR stunt for Australia Day. Australia Day! For you who do not know, nor are inclined to look it up in Wikipedia, this celebration is for the day when the First Fleet of Captain Arthur Phillip set up the colony of New South Whales in 1788 in Sydney Cove. I like to think of it as Thanksgiving and Fourth of July put together.

One cool thing they do is bring old sailboats into the harbor. It looks like this:

There are also plane stunts, parachuters, a huge car show, and fare food, all of which we saw and enjoyed. They also have fireworks, but I missed them because I was too busy at home eating kangaroo roast. Very gamey.

Next big thing down here, at least for me and my American friends, is Super Bowl Monday. Yes, it starts on Monday. The game here starts somewhere around nine in the morning. Go Bears!

Posted by Colin J Allen at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is one more story I would like to add to the world trip. Christy's bag arrived to our doorstep this evening, after a 38 day absence. Thirty-eight days ago is a long time back, especially if you are say, traveling around the world with all your possessions on your back. I was beginning to think that it was gone like Elvis, yet somehow the bag came back from the dead.

Back when we were waiting in the check-in queue in Heathrow, there was something going on with the baggage system, something slowing everything down. Come to find out in Paris that there was a strike going on with the baggage handlers. They lost one third of our flight's luggage, and somehow, everyone on the flight seemed to lose one of piece of luggage. My two bags got through, but Christy's was stuck with the all other lost bags in Heathrow, in terminal four.

We had hopes that it would show up in Paris the next day. No such luck. Or maybe it would show up before Christmas, so that she could give people gifts. No such luck. We hoped that they would at least send us word of any word of progress when we were in New Zealand. No such luck. And we hoped that it would greet us when we got back here to Sydney. No such luck, at least till today. I think that it was thanks to our wonderful Flight Centre travel consultant, Verity, that the bag came back. Squeaky wheel perhaps, that or the strike finally got resolved. Maybe a bit of both.

It is not fun to lose your bag when you are in the middle of a trip. I can now say I have seen the results, and they are not pretty. Christy is a rock star and dealt with the loss better than the usual person. What do you do when you find yourself in a wintery Paris with no clothes other than what you have on your back? All the gifts from foreign lands, how do you replace them? I still wonder about one woman, a diabetic, had her medicine in her bag. What are we to do if to comply to safety regulations—no liquids for carry-on if you are flying in the EU—if the airlines somehow make baggage transport an optional activity?

I have many bad things I can say about India, but they sure as hell would not lose my bag, nor would the baggage handlers decide to rise up and stick it to the man by enacting a strike that nobody has heard of nor will now speak about. I suppose I may support your latest struggle to get paid a living wage, but that doesn't mean I like you for sticking it to us while you are sticking it to the man.

But all is well that ends well, by in large. I'm just happy that the bag is no longer fated to mold away in London for the rest of its years.

Posted by Colin J Allen at 2:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With mixed emotions, I am back home at Sydney now. While I am sad that the trip is over, and that it will be a long time till I go on an exciting adventure, I am pretty happy to be enjoying the comforts of a sedentary lifestyle. I like having my own bed to sleep in. I like using my own kitchen. My own living room. My own computer. My own routines. The comfort of my own personal normal, something that I've grown to miss in the last two months.

Well, as I settle into my daily routine, I recon that I should wrap up what I did for the last part of the trip, as it is well worth mentioning in this final travel posting. When I last left you, I had just arrived in Queenstown on the southern island of New Zealand. The town is somewhat of a hub for most of the stuff that goes on in the south part of the island, and as such it is basically a year round resort town. And now, in the summer months, the activities could be broadly classified as extreme. I hate that label, yet I don't how else to clump together bungie jumping, hang gliding, para-sailing, jet boating, river surfing, super-swing riding and a few others that slip my mind. Easy ways to kill yourself? Easy ways to spend a large amount of money for a thirty second adrenaline rush?

I passed on the most of these thrill events because of the price per second thrill rate. I ended up hang gliding for forty-five minutes, in what turned out to be perfect conditions. It is very surreal to be flying in the air, it feels more like a movie than a reality. It is a stunning, amazing experience. I feel like I got my money's worth, especially when Christy, who opted for the less speedy paragliding option later in the afternoon, heard the gossip that my guy flew us double the time that he was supposed to. Luck had turned its face towards me, and would happily keep looking over us for the rest of the trip.

The next day we went on a wine tour. We got bused out to drink various Pinot Noirs famous to the region, and other similar sturdy grape varieties. It was a perfect day to be hanging out near grapevines and drinking the good stuff. I usually refrain from mentioning movies, but if you remember all the dialogue in Sideways about the Pinot Noir, Miles and Maya really are onto something. It is a special and beautiful drink.

Of the factoids I picked up, one wine guy said that it was the only place in the world without phylloxera infestation, however, a quick google search says that the bugs have actually made it to the island, so pox on that guy. Maybe they some how killed all the bugs in the last few years. Yeah right. Suppose I will have to drop the whole island purity idea I had till just now. Sigh. Anyhow, 2004 and 2005 are good years to buy New Zealand wine, but the grapes that are out now are a month behind, so it looks like 2008 is going to be a tough year on the Kiwi wine guys.

Fjordland. Yup, that is really its name. We drove over to check out some fjords by spending a night on a boat within one. In case you don't know, a fjord is a body of water that was formed when huge glaciers shoved down mountains to get to the ocean, turning stream beds into huge sound-like bodies of water surrounded by unsettling steep mountain cliffs. The fjord we ended up on is called Milford Sound, which goes to show that those early european settlers must have gotten fjords and sounds confused all the time. I'm not sure how, really, considering that fjords tend to be epically beautiful while sounds tend to be like, well, like sounds.

Luck stuck again on the water, in the form of sea-born mammals. We had three close run-ins with a pod of dolphins. When we signed up for the trip a few days back, the big boat was full, and we somehow ended up on a smaller boat with a wooden hull that the dolphins prefer. It was a win, win for us. The first sighting was right down in front of the boat, only meters from us. But it got better. We were kayaking in the morning, and they came back to play. This time they were only feet away from me. One of them actually nudged Christy's boat. Astounding.

We wrapped up the trip, excited to get back home, in the Auckland airport passing the time when the place got inundated with rock stars. There was a huge concert, Lolapolaza-style, the day before, so we happened to be getting out of town when they all were. Rock stars stand out like sore thumbs. Lily Allen and her posse came and sat down with us in the lobby along with some unknown British boy band. I played it cool and acted like I didn't know her.

The only bad luck I had was back in Sydney, where I broke one of the bottles of wine. Sad, indeed, yet two out of three ain't bad.

Posted by Colin J Allen at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let me start off with a correction from my previous post. I left you saying that I was off to a shrinking glacier. Franz Josef and Fox glaciers are actually expanding, thanks to this whole earth warming thing that you keep hearing about. That sounds wrong, but really it does make sense. Let me explain.

What usually happens here on this island is this; wind flows over Australia and heats up and it then keeps going east, over the Tasmanian sea where it picks up moisture, until it is suddenly slammed into the Southern Alps of New Zealand. All that warm wet air heads the only way it can, up, whereupon it dumps all that water as snow and rain. Viola, you have yourself a couple of glaciers that flow into a tropical forest.

When you add global warming to the mix, the air that flows over Australia is hotter, which in turn allows that air to carry more moisture when it goes over the Tasmanian sea, and this brings more snow when that hot air is shot upwards when it hits New Zealand. So there you have it, the only glaciers in the world that are not shrinking.

When we when up onto the Franz Joseph ice, the clear weather stopped being nice and the rain was on. It stayed on for the rest of the day, plenty long to soak every part of my body. It was a warm rain fortunately, and my synthetic clothing kept me warm just fine. It was an experience to spend eight hours on a huge piece of continuously melting piece of ice. It similar to the risks you encounter on a mountain--such as steep slopes, scree sliding, and the overuse of knees--with the added bonus risk of plummeting down to an icy death. Honestly, for our group tour it was actually very safe and low risk, but if someone were to have a suicidal streak in them, the possibilities are bountiful up there.

Did I mention that it was beautiful? It sure is. The ice gets a mysterious blue the higher up you get, because it has been compacted forty times the density of fridge ice. It is cool stuff, pardon the pun.

Man, this whole island is stunning. I saw Mt. Cook today as well. It is a big one. I have to show you the pics. Alas, you must wait till I sort through this batch when I get home.

Posted by Colin J Allen at 4:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The last leg of the trip is here. I was getting comfortable in New York, too comfortable for a man with out a bed of his own to sleep on. There are lots of great things to say about that wonderful town, but no matter, I do not live there. It is time to get back to my place.

Good start here at my current location. It is almost like home. My thought today is that New Zealand is to Australia as Scotland is to England. While both here down under are nice and summery, this smaller island comes with a stronger accent, bigger mountains, many many more sheep, and lots more rain.

It is a very pretty place here. I have been driving past bits and pieces of the land of Tolken today, and let me tell you that this place is just as amazing as it is in the theater. Tomorrow, we are off to climb a glacier. Not often you see glaciers, especially so close to sea level. I am excited to see this amazing bit of nature. And who know how much longer they are going to be around. Twenty years is my guess.

This is the first time in our trip where Christy and I have been backpacking in the first world sense of the word. Take away the touts and beggars, and the whole idea of communal living is much more tolerable. This has put me out of sorts, I must admit. After avoiding the meeting of strangers for so long, I'm really just not in the right mindframe to start up talking to fellow backpackers as to where they are going next. I would rather finish up my book with Christy by my side reading hers.

My time is short on this terminal. I leave you now, but I'll return with more stories of adventure.

Posted by Colin J Allen at 4:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just realized when I typed the above header that here in this country, one doesn't often pair the words New York with America. Interestingly, I have found this separation to be the most acute with New Yorkers, who for some reason, think that this city is somewhat of its own city-state. Perhaps it is to a degree, but I must admit that I think that it is good to for all of us to remember this place is soundly American. I like to think of here as boiled down American extract.

Ah, New York. Another of those damn places that are deems itself the 'center of the world.' As someone who as lived here for five years, I can only agree. Still, after visiting Paris and London, I do think that there is no winner in the center of the world contest. Pick one, stick with it and never change your mind. Just don't expect people to agree with you. The disagreement is the fun part.

I digress. I am here to talk about the trip, not ponder about New York, nor even fume about the miniaturization of the Wall Street Journal. I came back here to be with Christy for New Years, and catch up as many of my friends as I can find in the short time I am here. Mostly I have been in Brooklyn, catching up with old friends. And of course, I had to search out some wonderful Bergen Bagels and chow down on perhaps the most American of foods, the burrito.

I even happened upon my friends Brian and Steve, a.k.a. CrudeFeatures.com, this morning at my once local coffee shop, which was a pleasant surprise for me. They mentioned that I seem to spend too much time in these posts complaining about the computer labs, wacky keyboards and lack of time to write while on the road. Hmm. They may be on to something. What, do you guys want to actually know what's going on outside of the computer lab? But there is so much to say about the quality of Cambodian PCs...

I will now make a New Years resolution to not complain as much about the computer labs I write in. Hopefully, this will make this here thing more like a real travelogue. You will have to wait and see.

Next big thing on the trip is meeting Christy's parents on Friday. It should be fun. I learned today that some of the Powers family—other than Christy—actually reads this here site. Welcome, y'all. It seems that I am now writing for two mothers, mine and hers.

Well, I have to get out of here. Happy New Year one and all. I wish you all a great 2007.

Posted by Colin J Allen at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)