Alrighty then. Now that I'm back to civilization, bugs didn't carry me off, and I have internet once again... I suppose it's time to start getting caught up on my trip to Uluru (aka Ayers Rock).

After a 3-hour flight from Sydney I landed at Ayers Rock Airport, then hopped the bus to the Ayers Rock Resort where my tour group was waiting. After purchasing my $25 park ticket, we headed out.

Surprisingly, the first stop we made was not Uluru, but Kata Tjuta... another giant rock formation in the neighborhood...

A photo can't do it justice, but that's all I got for you.

Yes, it's really that red. My camera is set to "vivid color" and has a polarizer, but this isn't Photoshop trickery.

The trail for the "Valley of the Winds" walk.

Saying goodbye to Kata Tjuta as we leave the area.

   
Next it was at last time to head to Uluru for the sunset...

A dingo ate my baby! Then boarded this bus...

Uluru as the sun is low. Note the haze in the background.

That haze is actually smoke from bush-fires in Central Australia. Scary, but makes a pretty sunset!

Uluru turns purple after the sun goes down... which doesn't show too well in this photo.

   
From there it was back to camp for dinner and an early bedtime. Tomorrow, it's time to get up-close-and-personal with Uluru.

Alas, there's no wi-fi at Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) to upload any photos. Guess that gives me something to do when I get back.

P.S. If you never hear from me again, it's because I was carried off by an army of bugs in the middle of the night. One thing they don't tell you in the travel brochures is that The Outback is overrun by bugs. Lots of bugs. A massively huge number of bugs. A vast array of bugs in astounding numbers. Bugs!

Today was finally my chance to take it easy, which meant visiting a few museums instead of walking all over Sydney again. Luckily Kazza was kind enough to head back into the city to map out my morning, so all I had to worry about was keeping dry until the rain finally let up this afternoon.

   
The Australian Museum is a massive repository of the critters which inhabit the continent. There's also a special exhibit for Aboriginal art that's pretty great...

The way Native Australians "see" the world is endlessly fascinating to me.

Seal vs. Penguin... FIGHT!

Not a happy kitty. Probably a little upset about being shot and killed.

Most all the exhibits are dead, mounted, and stuffed... but there are some exceptions.

What would a museum be without dinosaurs?

A pity dinosaurs are extinct... some look like they'd make a fun pet.

Yeah, seeing one of these monsters would have me totally losing my shit.

Not all the insects shown are some scary shit... just most of them.

Fun with dead people in the "Skeletons" exhibit.

Ride 'em cowboy. The most disturbing thing about this? No ears on the horse.

   
The Art Gallery New South Wales is a fairly traditional art museum with a smattering of impressive works by popular painters... but it also has a beautiful selection of Aboriginal art which makes it uniquely worth visiting (alas, none of it photographical)...

It's amazing how museums never seem to run out of paintings.

Ape Girl with scary hand monster. How charming.

Demon angel with bat wings, snake, and lizard. Rock on, little dude.

Rabid Dog Pack vs. Wild Boar... FIGHT!

   
The National Opal Museum is a small exhibit which is mainly a front for an opal jewelry store, but it does still manage to give some insight into how opals are created and crafted...

Apparently dinosaurs made the opals. Or became opals. Or something.

Now dinosaurs help you purchase beautiful opals from the many jewelry showcases!

Pretty! As in "pretty fucking expensive."

   
And thus an early end to my last day in Sydney. I was just too drenched and tired to do anything else. Maybe when I swing back this way I'll have some better weather.

Well, the crappy weather I was expecting yesterday finally decided to make an appearance today. Not that I am in any way complaining... I am so very grateful for yesterday's unexpectedly beautiful weather that I'll gladly suffer through a little rain.

After meeting up with Kazza we headed east to visit St. Mary's Cathedral. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in the beautiful interior, but the exterior is quite nice as well...

Impressive. Most impressive.

The nun looks pretty bitchy, but...

...she gives all the kids an iPad, so she can't be all bad.

From there we were off to Mrs. Macquarie's Point. There's an interesting story behind the name, and it's a great place for spectacular Sydney Harbour views, even in the rain...

Yes. Mrs. Macquarie's Chair is just as comfortable as it looks.

A Rainbow Lorikeet... they're everywhere.

Still a pretty sight, even in the rain.

Heading back towards the city you run right through the Royal Botanic Gardens...

Leaving the Asian Gardens section of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Inside the Royal Botanic Gardens Greenhouse at the Tropical Center.

The Fern House atrium at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

It's Springtime in Sydney, so all the flowers are blooming.

Bats are hanging around everywhere... mostly sleeping, fighting, or drying their wings.

This is called a "Cockatoo," but I call it "Fucking Bastard Bird"... vicious, nasty, and total destruction with wings.

From there it was time to take a ferry across the harbor to Manly...

It's the world-famous Manly Ferry!

Cruising by that Sydney Opera House. Again.

Walking down The Corso towards Manly Beach.

Manly beach. Where only manly men dare swim in the rain.

Everything in Manly is pretty manly...

...especially the Manly menus, where they make cute little kangaroos into fajitas.

After returning to Sydney, it was time to visit the Queen Victoria Building, which is a real jaw dropper. Certainly the best-looking mall I've ever seen...

Not wanting to get drenched, it was time to visit the Queen Victoria Building!

Seriously beautiful everywhere you look. This is an entryway.

Center atrium at the Queen Victoria Building.

Awesome diorama clock at the QVB.

The sexiest damn mall you'll ever see.

It was as we headed toward Darling Harbour that the rain decided to get serious...

Rain pours down on the bridge across Darling Harbour to the Harbourside Mall.

But that's okay, because I was more interested in visiting my 138th Hard Rock than the weather. Unfortunately, Sydney's new Hard Rock is yet another "Hipster Lounge" travesty, but it's massive size means you get to see a lot of memorabilia even though it's pretty spread out...

Hard Rock Cafe entrance.

Welcome to the cheesiest hipster lounge you ever will see!

The Hard Rock Cafe Sydney's so-called "shrine" to INXS.

Not the most intimate and cozy Hard Rock property I've been to. The place is massively huge.

Leaving Darling Harbour at night.

Something I didn't know: Sydney has a monorail. It was a convenient way to escape the rain and head back into the city...

Hey, it may cost $5, but that's still cheaper than a ticket to Disneyland.

Another perfect day Down Under... albeit with police horses waiting in my hotel lobby...

No. They weren't there to arrest me. I think.

And.... I guess it's time to log-off and go charge every piece of electronics I own. It's shocking how much gadget crap it takes to be civilized now-a-days.

Better living through chemistry, I always say.

In theory, adjusting to the 17-hour time change in Sydney is a piece of cake. That's such a huge amount of time that you can quite nicely compress a full day into it, which means your internal clock doesn't need much of an adjustment. Just force yourself to stay awake a bit longer than you normally would, get a full night's sleep in the middle of your flight, then arrive in Sydney the next morning as if nothing happened.

I took a fist-full of sleeping pills just to be sure.

And ended up getting five hours of quality sleep, which is two more than I normally get. So not only did I land in Australia fully acclimated to the time change... I also felt better than I have in months.

For the past week I have been checking the weather forecast in Sydney. As the day of my trip got closer and closer, the weather outlook got worse and worse, ending with overcast skies and rain for the entirety of my stay. So imagine my surprise when I land to beautiful blue skies and an abundance of sunshine. So instead of spending my first day relaxing, I met up with my long-time blogger-friend Kazza and headed out into the city.

First stop was Sydney Tower for panorama views of the city...

Then it was off to the Opera House (of course)...

From all the photos I had ever seen, I had thought that the Opera House was smooth concrete painted white. It's not! It's tiled. Beautifully tiled...

Next it was off to walk across the world-famous Sydney Harbour Bridge...

You can climb up one of the pylons for terrific views of the harbor...

Amazingly, you can pay big money to climb up and over the bridge like these guys...

Across the harbor and under the bridge is Luna Park, made famous by its scary clown-face entrance...

We wanted to kill time until dark for some night photography, so we ate dinner at a really good tapas restaurant...

And then back to the harbor at night...

By the end of the day, the clouds and rolled in and the weather turned cold and incredibly windy, so I was grateful that I had at least one perfect day in Sydney.

I'm sure tomorrow will be perfect too... but with less nice weather.

Hello from the future.

I am posting this entry a day early because most of my September 22 will be spent in a metal tube being hurled across the Pacific Ocean.

And not in a good way.

To understand why the flight to Australia sucks so bad for me, it's helpful to remember that, despite what you might have heard, the earth is round. Airplanes use this little-known fact to their advantage when plotting a course so that they fly the least amount of miles in the shortest amount of time. This kind of thing is known as "The Great Circle" routing. As an example, if I were flying to Amsterdam over in DutchyLand, the pilot would fly over Northern Canada and Greenland like so...

Awesome map courtesy of the The Great Circle Mapper!

The above journey is about 4900 miles (7890 km) compared to the over 6000 miles (9650 km) it would take to fly along the latitude lines straight across a map...

Map courtesy of Google Maps!

The problem with Australia is that there's no "Great Circle" route to take. This can be confirmed on The Great Circle Mapper by typing in my SEA-LAX-SYD route like so...

Since the curvature of the earth can't help us here, it's about 7500 miles (12050 km) from LAX to Sydney direct.

Which is a 15 hour flight.

And considerably longer than my previous longest flight of 5030 miles (8095 km) from Istanbul to Newark.

Blehhhhhhhhh.

I suppose it wouldn't be too bad if you were flying in "World Business Class" with lay-flat seats you can sleep on... but to buy an upgradable ticket would have cost me three times as much money plus a big bundle of airline miles. So I booked a coach ticket and used my frequent flier status to get a free upgrade to Delta's new "Economy Comfort Class" seating. It apparently offers 4-inches more legroom and 50% more recline over the "Economy Discomfort Class" seats you get from a regular coach ticket.

Still not a fun way to spend 13-1/2 hours, but it's better than nothing.

But the important thing to focus on is that I'm off to Australia, which is someplace I've never been.

That plus a handful of sleeping pills might just keep me sane for the flight Down Under.

And so it begins...

   
Nothing like having the crap scared out of you at 2:30am.

Since it seems impossible for me to sleep more than three hours anymore, I decided I might as well check in for my flight to Sydney. I go to the airline website check-in page, as usual. I log in and pull up my flight, as usual. I verify my passport info and enter my emergency contact, as usual. Then I get an error saying that I can't be checked in because travel to Australia requires a visa.

Well, no shit. I paid my $20 AUD to get an Electronic Travel Authority, which is a nifty kind of "electronic visa" that doesn't require a visit to an Australian diplomatic office to submit an application. An ETA is able to be pulled up by airlines directly, so there's no need for a visa stamp in your passport.

In theory.

Except apparently Delta's online check-in system can't access ETAs.

At least I hope that's the problem. I'm going to try and stay optimistic that I can go to the airport ticket counter and they can pull it up there. If they can't, then hopefully they can use my ETA receipt to get me processed, or else my vacation is over before it begins.

Wheeee! The travel drama has already started, and I'm not even at the airport yet.

   
Catch you on the other side.

Literally.

I hope.

   
UPDATE: Well, it took some computer trickery, but they finally managed to find my ETA visa. Guess that means I get to go to Australia now.

Not the best day.

And yet, I should probably be grateful because it wasn't the worst day either.

It was just long and busy and difficult and ended too soon for me to get caught up on the mountains of work that never seems to go away. This puts me in the odd position of wishing that a long, never-ending day was even longer. Which is wholly depressing and surprisingly encouraging at the same time.

I leave on vacation in a couple weeks, so at least there's that to keep me going...

Though, given the absolutely heinous exchange rate for the near-worthless US Dollar, I may have to declare bankruptcy by the time I get back. So even vacation is not exactly the drama-free escape I was hoping for.

Is anything ever?

As I was looking through my email in-box this morning, I happened across a message that, from all appearances, was spam. After all, how many real emails do you get where somebody is offering you an all-expenses-paid trip out of the country? And all I had to do in return was write articles about my journey and take some pictures (i.e. what I always do when I travel). Talk about sounding too good to be true! Free travel would have to be at the top of my dream list!

Amazingly, the offer turned out to be legit. They found my blog, liked my travel writing and photography, and wanted me to be a guest corespondent for them... all to a really cool destination.

Alas, I couldn't work the trip into my schedule.

Damn.

Needless to say, I was bummed the rest of the day.

Not that I have cause to complain, mind you. I already travel quite a lot... it's just having to pass up on something FREE that's bothering me.

Argh.

Today I had to make the long drive back home from Spokane.

WITH NO DAVID'S PIZZA FOR THE ROAD!

Oh how I used to love road pizza. Remember road pizza? I remember road pizza. Nothing makes a long drive fly by like road pizza. Except perhaps Jägermeister and cocaine. But Oprah says you shouldn't drive while drunk and high, so I guess that wouldn't work.

Except Oprah doesn't drive at all. She has a chauffeur drive her ass around! So who the hell is Oprah to tell me that Jägermeister and cocaine is a bad substitute for road pizza? She's probably drunk and high in the back of her stretch limo all the time! If I had Oprah-money, I know I would be.

Sigh.

I really miss road pizza...

Mmmmmm... yummy road pizza!

Don't miss Oprah though.

Last night I went to Famous Ed's, which is a sports bar run by the same people that run David's Pizza. They had my beloved "Da Vinci" pizza, so I ordered up a pie...

It looked kind of like David's. It had a taste that was reminiscent of David's, but... not so much.

For one thing, they added clove garlic to it, so the subtle flavors in the pesto were destroyed. For another thing, the feta cheese had too many crumbs, so it was also too salty. Something was off with the crust too. Not that it was a bad pizza per se, but it just wasn't David's.

Oh well. Better than nothing, I guess.

Hopefully they'll re-open at their new location soon and the universe will go back to normal.

And I can go back to having my road pizza.