Road Trip planning overview

So just in case you'd like to join us on the road,  and we'd  love your company,  here's a general overview of our road tripping plan.

We're  working our way south along the east coast, then cutting west and the up into the Rockies. We plan to hit  some version  of the following:
Savanah,  GA
New Orleans, LA 
Chattanooga,  TN
Nashville, TN
Memphis, TN
Little Rock, AR
Oklahoma City, OK
Santa Fe, NM
Petrified Forest National Park,  AZ
Sedona, AZ
Grand Canyon , North Rim, AZ
Mesa Verde National Park,  CO
Arches National Park, UT
Denver, CO
all by May 28th.

May28th-June 2, road trip hiatus for Blair and Kevin's wedding, YAY! (flying round trip DEN-EWR)

Resume road trip June 3rd:
Boulder, CO
Yellowstone National Park, WY
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Glacier National Park, MT
Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands, SD
Minneapolis, MN
Madison, WI
Chicago,  IL
Detroit, MI
Niagara Falls, NY/ Canada
Rochester, NY
Ithaca, NY
Leominster, MA
sometime before July 18th.

Disclaimer, it's not set in stone, and if the Hamburglar dies before we make it home, it'll be a game time decision to rent for a while, or pack up and fly home. We have no reason to expect she won't make it other than that she's old. We're staying in budget motels, hostels, and will likely do some camping along the way. Come meet up with us! Send us your road trip suggestions, locations we can't miss, or Playlist ideas (we bought the Big Chill Soundtrack and Getting to Yes on cassette yesterday).

Road Trippin'

The road trip has begun!  Our ride is a 2000 Ford Taurus that Christiana's mom graciously offered to sell us for a dollar.  After bringing it up from NJ to MA and getting the necessary legal requirements sorted we spent some quality time with family and friends and then hit the road.  Check out us and the car below:

Naturally, any good road trip car needs a name and sometimes our car makes a robble robble noise (any 15 year old car has a quirk or two) so we have named it "The Hamburglar"

We also combined some bumper stickers and used a marker to create this masterpiece. 

More updates to come as we're already in North Carolina and heading to South Carolina tomorrow.

Adventures in Texas

Jim and I landed in Austin, TX after some 17 plus hours of flights and by the magic of crossing the international dateline, had a nearly 38 hour long April 8th. We spent the next six days in Austin, Dripping Springs, Johnson City and San Antonio, enjoying the sights,  but best of all, enjoying family at my cousin's wedding.

Enjoying some water ice on Dirty 6th

Killing time by visiting  the grocery stroe, delightfully named after H.E.Butt. The delight and shock of an American grocery store after being gone for a while was not lost on us. What, 20 different kinds of cereal, soda that only costs a dollar?!

Keep Austin weird and inspriring

My cousin Mike, the grooom, pinning a corsage on my grandmother

Mike and Krista say their vows, the rain holds off to get this beautiful day.

We took a side trip to San Antonio. I found free parking.... Boston  style.

A visit  to the Alamo,  complete with a fascinating  history lesson about American expansion and Texas's journey to statehood.

Did you know Davey Crockett  died at the Alamo?  Here's  a living Jim modeling his hat.

Cribbage in Zilkér park

A visit  to the Harry Ransom Center  at UT to check out their Lewis Carroll  Alice in Wonderland Exhibit 

And of course a quick visit  to the LBJ  presidential library. This statue is life size, he was a big man.

Also, special thanks and shout out to Peter for being our gracious host for a few days!

Melbourne

Our last international stop was Melbourne.  It's a really cool city that feels like a distinctive place unlike Sydney.  There are really good restaurants and cafes so we ate a lot and drank a coffee from a different place every day.  It was also fall (southern hemisphere) and Melbourne is far enough south to actually get seasons so we finally had to break out sneakers and slightly warmer clothes again.  We didn't plan it this way necessarily, but we started our trip the furthest north we've ever been in Iceland and ended it the furthest south we've ever been in Victoria, Australia.

Melbourne has all these small alleyways (they call laneways) that sometimes seem really sketchy but often have cool street art and lead towards a bar or restaurant.  Down the alley in the second picture past all the trash cans was a bar in an old science laboratory.  It's a fun city to just wander around.

East Melbourne is a cool neighborhood to walk around in that has tons of decorative cast iron.  Supposedly it has the most of any city in the world.

Bells by the river that are going off at different times during the day.  This was right after the footy game we went to so they were playing the Melbourne Demons song which as I mentioned before sounds like "You're a Grand Old Flag."

 We happened to be in town during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival which is the third largest in the world and has almost 500 shows.  Every night we would just pick a show to see and most of them were phenomenal.

This show was one of our favorites.  A one man show comedy noir that also turned out to have a lot of impressive magic in it too.  It was awesome.  We also really enjoyed Gillian Cosgriff who did some great stand up and sang some really funny songs.

Alas, here we are at the Melbourne airport at the end of our international journey.  I feel like we look a little different from the picture of us at Logan seven and a half months earlier.  More tan anyway.  Follow us as we kick off the American road trip soon!

Live Sports Abroad Part VI: The Australian Football League

The final entry to Live Sports Abroad is the Australian Football League.  We saw a match between the Melbourne Demons and the Gold Coast Suns at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Football?  Is that soccer in Australia?

Nope, they have their own brand of football (commonly referred to as footy) that is not like soccer or American football.  It involves lots of running and kicking of a very bouncy football shaped ball.  It is the most popular sport in the country.

That looks like the biggest stadium yet.  Is it?

It is.  The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG for short) is actually the largest stadium in the Southern hemisphere and holds just over 100,000 people.  The game we went to only had about 27,000, but some teams draw more.  The MCG was also the main stadium for the 1956 summer Olympics and the recent cricket world cup where Australia was victorious.  Since it's so big we were able to get general admission tickets and still get really good seats.

Cool, tell me about the game.

The first you notice is that the field is really big and oval shaped.  The you realize there are a lot of people on the field.  Each team can have 18 players on the field and there are no offsides or rules about where they can be so everyone is running a rounded everywhere.  One of the great moments is how play starts.

What's so special about that?

It's better viewed in person, but the person in yellow in the above shot is one of the referees Initiating a faceoff.  He's bent over because he just bounced the ball off the ground up into the air for the players to jump after.  You can see the ball at the top of the shot.  It's a really fun way to start play.  The ref fun doesn't stop there though.

It doesn't?

No, when the ball goes out of bounds the referee will throw it back in backwards over his head.  Seems like a really random way to go about it but it's fun to watch. 

So, what about actual gameplay?

It's frenetic.  With 36 players on the field plus refs and the ball bouncing everywhere it is a very fast paced game.  Also, the ball always has to be moving.  There are basically three ways to move the ball.  You can run with it but you have to ocassionally bounce the ball off the ground when you do this.  I'm not sure of the actual frequency required.  You can pass the ball by punching it out of your hand. You can't just throw it.  You can kick it to another player.  This is important because if you kick it a distance and a player on your team catches the ball, play stops and that player is awarded a free kick from where they caught the ball.  All of this is hotly contested because it is a full contact sport.  There are four quarters that are supposed to last twenty minutes, but the clock doesn't stop as in soccer so they add extra time and most quarters go five to ten minutes longer.

The way to score is to kick the ball between the goal posts.  So, catching a kicked ball near the goal posts is a good play, because you have a free shot to score.

There are four goal posts?

Yes, if the ball is kicked between the middle goal posts it is a goal and worth 6 points.  If it is kicked between the outside goal posts it is a behind and worth 1 point.  Those are the only two ways to score points.

Way to screw up that picture, Jim.

I know, but this is the best example I have of a player making a free kick to try and score.

Any cool mascots or Jumbotron action or anything else happen during the game?

Nope, I didn't see a single mascot.  The Jumbotron had stats and replays and that was about it.  Some of the stats are good though.  Clangers was my favorite.  The Melbourne team song is to the tune of "You're a Grand Old Flag" so that's fun.  It's funny, there was very little pomp and circumstance at the game for something that is wicked popular.  The crowd is crazy into it though which is fun.  We went to a quarter full game too.  It's probably insane when the place is full.  Here's the crowd after Melbourne scored.

Halftime show?

A bunch of little kids playing miniature footy.

How'd the game end up?

Melbourne held the lead most of the game.  The Gold Coast got close a few times but every time they did, Melbourne would score to put it further away.  Your final score: Melbourne 115 Gold Coast 89.  The first two numbers are the number of goals and behinds for each team.  17 goals × 6 = 102 + 13 behinds = 115.

Anything else?

They had the same four beer deal as at the rugby match in Brisbane.  Also, we had giant hot dogs from Don who apparently speaks like a caveman.

Touristy Sydney

Unless you're in the harbor area around the Sydney Opera House, most of Sydney feels like a big anonymous city.  It's a very nice city, but it doesn't have a distinctive feel like Melbourne does.  Anyway, I'm sure you're wondering where the requisite photos of the Opera House are.  Well, look no further:

Us together.  It's all connected, but when you're up close you can see it's three separate buildings.  It's also not as white in person as you might think.

My best opera pose

The view of the harbor from the bridge

On the other side of the bridge

The photos above and below here are an example of advertising working really well.

This is across from Bondi Beach which is a half an hour or so bus ride from the center of town.  There is also a cliff top walk from Cooggee Beach to Bondi which is about 9 km and passes six beaches on the way.  It's really nice and cool to have so many beaches so accessible and close to the city.

And of course, we had to play cribbage in the Royal Botanical Garden.

Sydney's Big E

We happened to be in Sydney during the Royal Easter Show which is a giant state fair for New South Wales.  Since we love the Big E we had to check it out and a prepurchased ticket gives you free public transportation there from the center of Sydney which is a sweet deal.  It didn't disappoint.  

Along with the booths of interesting as seen on TV type products that sound cool, but that you probably don't actually need, most booths had something called a showbag.  It's basically a bag specially put together for the fair full of that booth's products.  There is also a showbag hall where you can buy bags of a specific candy or toy or sports team.  I feel like each state at the Big E could have a showbag and they would probably do well.

There are competitions for just about everything imaginable.  Above are hats and quilling, and there are competitions for lots (heaps if you will) of different animals.  We saw rabbits and goats being judged the day we were there.  That's just the tip of the iceberg as there are competitions for everything from bookbinding to flowers to frogs & reptiles and rats & mice.

Any good fair needs to have some delicious food.  While there weren't the number of deep fried options we are accustomed to in the US, we did get to eat some tasty traditional Australian meat pies.

There are so many animals at the show to see.  This is a goose, but they also had every farm animal you could think of.  My favorite were all the crazy breeds of chickens.  Some chickens look really weird.

Of course you can also feed the goats and sheep.  This goat got a little excited.

The most famous event at the show, however, is the woodchopping and sawing competition.  It is an international competition, but woodchopping and sawing as a sport was started in Australia so they (and New Zealand) are the best at it.  It's all a lot of fun to watch, but the most awesome competition was the Australia vs. New Zealand relay.  Australia was a bit ahead for most of it but the last New Zealand competitor absolutely demolished his log and the Kiwis took the narrow victory.  It was really exciting.  Oddly enough this was also the only competition we saw in Australia that started with the national anthem.

We finished our day with a motorcross show and a pretty impressive fireworks display in the main stadium of the fair.  All in all, we ended up spending about 9 hours (way longer than we figured we would) at the Sydney Royal Easter Show and had a great time.

White Whale, Holy Grail

We were able to go see Mastodon (one of my favorite bands) in Sydney so I managed to go to a metal show with my unruly (for me, anyway) beard which feels like a good thing to say I've done.

Special thanks to the Merrigans and to Darren from the Mastodon crew for hooking us up with tickets.

The Blue Mountains

Near Sydney are the Blue Mountains,  a national park named as such reportedly because of the blue haze created by the sun interacting  with the the oils in the eucalyptus trees. I've read conflicting  accounts of whether  or not that's actually  why they're  blue,  but really, who cares, nature is beautiful and awesome .

To kick things off, here's Jim modeling his face biscuit. To be clear, this is a cookie, but here you can have a sweet biscuit  (cookie), or a savory biscuit  (cracker).

Here's the view  from the top of our trek down Wentworth falls. It was cloudy, but that's better than rain, and really, it's still quite beautiful. See  the blue?

At the top of the falls

The trek leads you through some pretty awesome paths under these rock shelves

Small falls

Peeling eucalyptus bark. Like snakes, these trees actually shed their outer coat. I have no idea why, and neither did our guide.

Looking up at Wentworth falls

This formation is called the 3 sisters.  A sacred holy site  for the native Aboriginal  peoples.