Slacker indeed. Someone was joking around at dinner last night about how they too pretended they could keep up a blog, and as far as the internet knew, they were still in Thailand. Which kind of reminded me. Interweb's stupid expensive up here, so this'll be Ben's Bullet-Riddled Australia:
last last monday - I did Rottnest Island. No cars, just rent a bike and a snorkel set. Class operation. Great snorkeling, but I didn't sneak down into the closed off Fish Hook bay, which is apparently awesome. If you're in ever in Perth - which you should be at some point - do Rotto, and do Fish Hook Bay. Little Salmon, and Little Parakeet bay were aces too. Met a salesperson at the EMS/REI equivalent out here that got married in Little Parakeet. That's how nice it is.
last last tues/weds/thurs - did some museums in Freo, the maritime museum was decent (had the Australia II and the boat of the guy that triple-circumnavigated the globe, which were great) the motor museum was also decent (the private collection of some mining dude), but the shipwreck museum was awesome - and free! the huge chunk of the Batavia alone was worth the price of admission.
last last friday - king's park in perth was great, i think i like it more than SF's golden gate park. met a dude - Terry - riding a motorcycle with his pet dingo - Brandy - sitting on the gas tank. Cool guy, cool dog. Talked to the caretaker of the belltower on the barrack street jetty, had some entertaining stories about travel. fyi, don't take your kids to a turkish bath without doing some research.
last saturday - After a few days of my fruitless attempts at trying to mooch time on a sailboat, Katharine - a college friend of my brother's living in Perth - managed to sneak me into the weekly yacht races from the Royal (Royal! Dress whites required. I looked sharp, if i do say so myself.) Perth Yacht Club, and it was rather excellent. Mark (the captain)'s boat was a 24 footer, and I hope I get a chance to spend more time on similar boats.
monday - first day of the tour with Red Earth Safari's. Hit the Pinnacles in Nambung NP at sunset, which was wild.
tuesday - kalbarri NP, nature's window, z-bend gorge. also good times
wednesday - i have the short term memory of a chipmunk
thursday - i'm not being fair to chipmunks. but i did sleep at a sheep station, and it was great fun, and touristy as it sounds. great marketing, that , convince people to pay to sleep in seasonal worker accomo. still, fun. i found the weirdest thing about being in the southern hemisphere is that the stars rotate the wrong way. and if you're setting up a sunset shot, the sun cuts right to left as it drops here. stupid sun.
friday - snorkling in coral bay. i came this close (hands 4m apart) to a reef shark. Rather fun. had a minor scene over complain about the planned, non-included dinner being a bit steep, but glad there was - met a pair of rather cool san franciscans - Jon and Jen - while eating elsewhere. Future Ben, when you read this, get in touch with them. The paper's in your wallet. The wallet is in your pants. I also emailed you their info. Or should have.
saturday - today - did the scuba here in exmouth. with Jon, no less. Grand time, still wondering what i missed ditching the tour's trip to tourquoise bay, and whatever else they did.
so, like everyone asks for, this was less words and more pictures.
ha!
hopefully i'll write on something insightful at some point (don't hold your breath), but until then, eat bullets. picturewise, the uploading scene's a little screwy, and one of my cards full of pictures is... ill. but not dead yet. kind of developed a hidden partition. we'll see when i get back to perth. until then, i'll be picturelessly yours. just use your imagination.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Perth-tacular? Perth-fect? Perth-eriffic? I'll stop now.
On particularly nice days in Berkeley, I used to wonder why people lived anywhere other than the bay area, and now i know why - it's because they haven't been to Perth. It's got hot days (highs of 41C, which don't bother me nearly as much as i expected), cool nights, and you can't swing a cat without hitting a gorgeous beach. It's part SF, part Boston, and even has a little Marshfield (small Massachusetts town with the ancestral Gallup beachhouse) in it. It's greener and cleaner than Sydney by yards (meters? metres?), and even has some hills. That's perhaps the one strike against it so far - It's not hilly enough, which is a minus for the biking and motorcycling prospects. Another strike may be that otherwise, it's too awesome. Interesting tidbit, Perth is the most isloated city of its size in the world. Qualified metrics like that (blah blah of it's size) are always a little screwy, but it's more than 2700km to Adelaide (the interweb tells me that's about the same as London to Moscow, or Boston to Houston), which - any way you slice it - is still a hike.
The condensed reader's digest version of the past few days goes like:
Awesome.
The slightly expanded version:
On Friday, the second day in Perth, a friend from MIT - Scott Torborg - finally calls me back. Scotts in Perth for diving, I meet up with him and some of his Australian dive buddies - Chris, Mark and Steve, to name a few. Good people, Scott's friends. It felt like I finally met actual Australians - most of the Aussies i met in Syd were really tourist-adapted. Real Australians, as far as I can tell, are equal parts hilarious and hilariously foul, so it was a grand old time. I got a crash course on how rebreathers work (specifically Scott's top secret prototype rig), which was damn cool. Steve hooked me up with a pimp old phone of his, so now I might actually be able to receive calls. You should test this - don't worry about waking me up, I figure I'll sleep when i get back to the states. Dinner at the Indian Ocean brewery and watching the sun set into the Indian was damn cool.
I crashed at Chris's place for the next two days, which was huge. Best nights of sleep I've gotten in Oz - hostels kind of cheap out on mattresses. We had breakfast at the Wild Fig near Hillary's, great food, but even better people watching. Herb Alpert's "Music to Watch Girls Go By" must've been written for the Fig. After that, I went for a dive with Chris. In the Western Australia Aquarium. With sharks. And rays. And turtles. And awesome. It was my first dive in nearly five years, and it took me a few minutes to calm down and remember how flippers work way too well. There's a series of swim reflexes you really just need to shut off while scuba diving if you want any prayer of controlling your attitude. We ended up at a barbecue (yes, someone called it a barbie, but they may have just been putting on a show for the yank) and I had a ton of great food and great conversations - about Australia, America, travel, motorcycling, to name a few. One fact that stuck with me I learned was from a Dutch guy - Dennis, I think, but I'm crap with names - apparently Amsterdam is over 50% immigrants due to super lax immigration requirements - one of the reasons Dennis expatriated. Oh, and on the ride home, I almost killed Chris and I. Right hand turns are the more complicated here, not left in the states. You look right, and then left out here. And I did! But paused for a split second, wondered if I did it right, decided I did, and went. Cars had moved during that pause. Nothing absurdly close, but cose enough to be entertaining. Lesson learned. Look right. Multiple times. I think the mistake was more from not being used to cars - compared to motorcycles - than a right-hand-drive thing. Anyhoo.
Sunday I dug up a hostel in Freemantle, the port town at the mouth of the river that gets to Perth proper - the Swan River. I bummed around Freo (Freemantle) for the day, read some, and listened to some music. There always seems to be a movie on at this hostel, and they just suck me in occasionally - although watching movies feels almost criminal when I'm here to explore. I dig this place - Old Firestation Backpackers - but the movie thing's a downside.
The unix computers here don't play well with my card readers, I'll toss some pictures up later. I want to make word things about the hostel and the day trip to Rottnest as well, but now, Ben needs food.
The condensed reader's digest version of the past few days goes like:
Awesome.
The slightly expanded version:
On Friday, the second day in Perth, a friend from MIT - Scott Torborg - finally calls me back. Scotts in Perth for diving, I meet up with him and some of his Australian dive buddies - Chris, Mark and Steve, to name a few. Good people, Scott's friends. It felt like I finally met actual Australians - most of the Aussies i met in Syd were really tourist-adapted. Real Australians, as far as I can tell, are equal parts hilarious and hilariously foul, so it was a grand old time. I got a crash course on how rebreathers work (specifically Scott's top secret prototype rig), which was damn cool. Steve hooked me up with a pimp old phone of his, so now I might actually be able to receive calls. You should test this - don't worry about waking me up, I figure I'll sleep when i get back to the states. Dinner at the Indian Ocean brewery and watching the sun set into the Indian was damn cool.
I crashed at Chris's place for the next two days, which was huge. Best nights of sleep I've gotten in Oz - hostels kind of cheap out on mattresses. We had breakfast at the Wild Fig near Hillary's, great food, but even better people watching. Herb Alpert's "Music to Watch Girls Go By" must've been written for the Fig. After that, I went for a dive with Chris. In the Western Australia Aquarium. With sharks. And rays. And turtles. And awesome. It was my first dive in nearly five years, and it took me a few minutes to calm down and remember how flippers work way too well. There's a series of swim reflexes you really just need to shut off while scuba diving if you want any prayer of controlling your attitude. We ended up at a barbecue (yes, someone called it a barbie, but they may have just been putting on a show for the yank) and I had a ton of great food and great conversations - about Australia, America, travel, motorcycling, to name a few. One fact that stuck with me I learned was from a Dutch guy - Dennis, I think, but I'm crap with names - apparently Amsterdam is over 50% immigrants due to super lax immigration requirements - one of the reasons Dennis expatriated. Oh, and on the ride home, I almost killed Chris and I. Right hand turns are the more complicated here, not left in the states. You look right, and then left out here. And I did! But paused for a split second, wondered if I did it right, decided I did, and went. Cars had moved during that pause. Nothing absurdly close, but cose enough to be entertaining. Lesson learned. Look right. Multiple times. I think the mistake was more from not being used to cars - compared to motorcycles - than a right-hand-drive thing. Anyhoo.
Sunday I dug up a hostel in Freemantle, the port town at the mouth of the river that gets to Perth proper - the Swan River. I bummed around Freo (Freemantle) for the day, read some, and listened to some music. There always seems to be a movie on at this hostel, and they just suck me in occasionally - although watching movies feels almost criminal when I'm here to explore. I dig this place - Old Firestation Backpackers - but the movie thing's a downside.
The unix computers here don't play well with my card readers, I'll toss some pictures up later. I want to make word things about the hostel and the day trip to Rottnest as well, but now, Ben needs food.
Friday, February 2, 2007
Perf!
I'm writing you from Australia's sunny left coast now - madness! Flight was an easy five hours. I find flying pretty dang easy, but the marvel of modern flight still hasn't worn off on me. I felt like flying over the Oz trivialized the size of the country - which it does. The weird part is I've never thought it flying across the States, and it's just as true for that. Curious.
Anypoop, two kickass days under my belt. Aside from getting up at 5:30 after like four hours of sleep each night. Wednesday I made a day trip into the Blue Mountains, about 70km west of Sydney - a two-hour trip and $24 return ticket from Syd to Katoomba. I got some package deal with a Blue Mountain tour bus for $40, but never used the bus. Tour busses remain dumb. Random dude sat down with my at breakfast, and was entertaining. I like to pretend I'm better than tourists, but when I asked the dude where to go in the bush, and he said don't. He worked in the bush his whole like, and takes his vacations outside of it. I'm not being particularly articulate, but it definitely made me realize I'm a tourist in my own way. (speaking of tourists, I know I've been trained that laughing at other cultures is bad, but the horde-of-camera-wielding-asian-tourists thing gets me every time, and I'm not sorry.) And speaking of breakfast, one thing that pissed me off here was the European view of breakfast as a light snack. Then, in Katoomba, I get a solid, Americany eggs-bacon-toast breakfast, and it just felt like a lead brick in my gut. I remain confused.
Anyway, the Blues were gorgeous, I hope to spend a day or two there on my way back down the east coast. Here's a meh picture, I'm too lazy to bust out the SLR's card reader:
(The only way i have to resize these things is typically MS Paint, which leaves a JPG marginally nicer than crumpled newspaper. I'm sure you can deal though)
This is from the Giant Staircase, which drops of the plateau right behind the Three Sisters. The Three Sisters (go google it) are a 'landmark of spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people', said so in that way that sounds like the person saying it doesn't really care, know, or understand what the deal is. "Oh honey, look, that's of Aboriginal significance!". Definitely a weird scene. Anyway.
Had a great two-hour conversation about the world with Steve the Hungarian-Australian, and then took a suspiciously expensive bus a little further out to Blackheath. I hoofed it out to the national park (4k away! That's like 12 miles!) only to find that they've had some problem with fires, and everything not burnt is closed. The burnt stuff was also closed. I bummed a ride back into town from an older dude named Ollie driving an ancient Holden. '64, if memory serves. Designed in Detroit, built in Oz, I think.
Back in Blackheath, I've got two hours to kill before my train rolls through. Blackheath is a wee town, and great in the way small towns are. Seeing two people walking on the street greet each other warmly makes me smile. It was also bad in the way small towns are. In that without knowing the people, there was squat to do. So while wandering around in this sub-Keene sized town, I see a guy in a UNH shirt in a group of college students. I obviously can't pass this up, so I ask what the deal is, assuming I'll get something along the lines of 'no mate, just know a bloke who went there.'
Turns out Dan - and Lindsey, whose conversation with Dan I so rudely interrupted - was actually from UNH, and the group (of American students studying abroad) was abseiling (rappelling) for a group bonding/fun time thing. Dan has the bright idea of sneaking me onto the tour bus (read: asking if i can go), which worked perfectly. So instead of riding home alone on the train, I get a great conversation and two thoroughly fun hours hanging out with Lindsey and Dan -
I also got to feel like I knew a crap ton about Sydney - which couldn't be further from the truth.
After that, it was a horrible night of sleep in the same room as Nathan, the worst snorer I've ever head. I had a full size blanket wadded up to just pillow sized, and was sweating buckets under it in the futile attempt to block out the sound. Even under the blanket, it sounded like a chainsaw was starting - in my brain. Words do not do the one-man lumberjack competition justice.
The flight was a blast, Qantas is great - hot breakfast, spiffy 3D map thing (with exterior temperature!). In between staring out the window and dozing, I caught most of some Russell Crowe movie - A Good Year, i think. I was surprised to find I liked it, except that Crowe's character at first reminded me way too much of my landlord in Berkeley, which was a bit unsettling.
Made it Perth proper, then to my hostel, grabbed a kickass spicy chicken sandwich for lunch with Adam (a motorcyclist doing business with the hostel owner), did my laundry, line-dried it (Perth is not cold), wandered around Perth, saw a footy (heh, footy) team doing tryouts running up a huge staircase, met my first Bruce (a farmer, father of a kid trying out), talked to Bruce about politics (Bruce also said there was a single American girl living near his farm. He also asked if he mentioned she was single), and then moseyed back to the hotel.
The kicker on the day was a great dinner with Katharine - a Middlebury friend (Middlebuddy?) of Rich's. Katharine's been in Perth for three years, and had a pile of recommendations for Perthy things to do. We talked about a ton of things, but mostly travel and all the quicky crap Australia does. I learned that I really should have done another major in undergrad - she got to hit Iceland and Antarctica for geology stuff, and has done multiple laps around the world. Me? Australia's the seventh time I've left the east coast of the US. She also explained why everyone thinks I'm Canadian - they don't want to offend Canadians by assuming they're American. And here I thought it was just because I've got some hip Canadian vibe going on. I'll have to call the next Aussie that does that out.
Anyhoot, Katharine let me ditch my motorcycle gear with her while I go up and down the west coast - which is a huge favor, and ought to make what I want to do next way easier. I'm off to Freo (Freemantle) to try to swing a working crew gig on a boat going north, and the less crap I have, the better my chances. So I'm gonna cut this novel off, and start trying to swing that. Wish me luck!
Anypoop, two kickass days under my belt. Aside from getting up at 5:30 after like four hours of sleep each night. Wednesday I made a day trip into the Blue Mountains, about 70km west of Sydney - a two-hour trip and $24 return ticket from Syd to Katoomba. I got some package deal with a Blue Mountain tour bus for $40, but never used the bus. Tour busses remain dumb. Random dude sat down with my at breakfast, and was entertaining. I like to pretend I'm better than tourists, but when I asked the dude where to go in the bush, and he said don't. He worked in the bush his whole like, and takes his vacations outside of it. I'm not being particularly articulate, but it definitely made me realize I'm a tourist in my own way. (speaking of tourists, I know I've been trained that laughing at other cultures is bad, but the horde-of-camera-wielding-asian-tourists thing gets me every time, and I'm not sorry.) And speaking of breakfast, one thing that pissed me off here was the European view of breakfast as a light snack. Then, in Katoomba, I get a solid, Americany eggs-bacon-toast breakfast, and it just felt like a lead brick in my gut. I remain confused.
Anyway, the Blues were gorgeous, I hope to spend a day or two there on my way back down the east coast. Here's a meh picture, I'm too lazy to bust out the SLR's card reader:
(The only way i have to resize these things is typically MS Paint, which leaves a JPG marginally nicer than crumpled newspaper. I'm sure you can deal though)
This is from the Giant Staircase, which drops of the plateau right behind the Three Sisters. The Three Sisters (go google it) are a 'landmark of spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people', said so in that way that sounds like the person saying it doesn't really care, know, or understand what the deal is. "Oh honey, look, that's of Aboriginal significance!". Definitely a weird scene. Anyway.
Had a great two-hour conversation about the world with Steve the Hungarian-Australian, and then took a suspiciously expensive bus a little further out to Blackheath. I hoofed it out to the national park (4k away! That's like 12 miles!) only to find that they've had some problem with fires, and everything not burnt is closed. The burnt stuff was also closed. I bummed a ride back into town from an older dude named Ollie driving an ancient Holden. '64, if memory serves. Designed in Detroit, built in Oz, I think.
Back in Blackheath, I've got two hours to kill before my train rolls through. Blackheath is a wee town, and great in the way small towns are. Seeing two people walking on the street greet each other warmly makes me smile. It was also bad in the way small towns are. In that without knowing the people, there was squat to do. So while wandering around in this sub-Keene sized town, I see a guy in a UNH shirt in a group of college students. I obviously can't pass this up, so I ask what the deal is, assuming I'll get something along the lines of 'no mate, just know a bloke who went there.'
Turns out Dan - and Lindsey, whose conversation with Dan I so rudely interrupted - was actually from UNH, and the group (of American students studying abroad) was abseiling (rappelling) for a group bonding/fun time thing. Dan has the bright idea of sneaking me onto the tour bus (read: asking if i can go), which worked perfectly. So instead of riding home alone on the train, I get a great conversation and two thoroughly fun hours hanging out with Lindsey and Dan -
I also got to feel like I knew a crap ton about Sydney - which couldn't be further from the truth.
After that, it was a horrible night of sleep in the same room as Nathan, the worst snorer I've ever head. I had a full size blanket wadded up to just pillow sized, and was sweating buckets under it in the futile attempt to block out the sound. Even under the blanket, it sounded like a chainsaw was starting - in my brain. Words do not do the one-man lumberjack competition justice.
The flight was a blast, Qantas is great - hot breakfast, spiffy 3D map thing (with exterior temperature!). In between staring out the window and dozing, I caught most of some Russell Crowe movie - A Good Year, i think. I was surprised to find I liked it, except that Crowe's character at first reminded me way too much of my landlord in Berkeley, which was a bit unsettling.
Made it Perth proper, then to my hostel, grabbed a kickass spicy chicken sandwich for lunch with Adam (a motorcyclist doing business with the hostel owner), did my laundry, line-dried it (Perth is not cold), wandered around Perth, saw a footy (heh, footy) team doing tryouts running up a huge staircase, met my first Bruce (a farmer, father of a kid trying out), talked to Bruce about politics (Bruce also said there was a single American girl living near his farm. He also asked if he mentioned she was single), and then moseyed back to the hotel.
The kicker on the day was a great dinner with Katharine - a Middlebury friend (Middlebuddy?) of Rich's. Katharine's been in Perth for three years, and had a pile of recommendations for Perthy things to do. We talked about a ton of things, but mostly travel and all the quicky crap Australia does. I learned that I really should have done another major in undergrad - she got to hit Iceland and Antarctica for geology stuff, and has done multiple laps around the world. Me? Australia's the seventh time I've left the east coast of the US. She also explained why everyone thinks I'm Canadian - they don't want to offend Canadians by assuming they're American. And here I thought it was just because I've got some hip Canadian vibe going on. I'll have to call the next Aussie that does that out.
Anyhoot, Katharine let me ditch my motorcycle gear with her while I go up and down the west coast - which is a huge favor, and ought to make what I want to do next way easier. I'm off to Freo (Freemantle) to try to swing a working crew gig on a boat going north, and the less crap I have, the better my chances. So I'm gonna cut this novel off, and start trying to swing that. Wish me luck!
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