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October 28-30, 2017 — Australian Central Standard Time then Australian Eastern Daylight Time (1.5 hour time change, 13.5 hours ahead of EDT, then 15 hours ahead of EDT).

Alice Springs

Alice Springs is in the center of Australia (see #4 on the map).

We took a six-hour bus trip from Uluru to Alice Springs instead of an airplane. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any wildlife but it was an experience to be so far away from civilization.

A “station” or what we would call a ranch.

From Margaret:

Alice Springs – a strong pleasant fragrance permeated the air during my walk/run in the early morning. There were unfamiliar sounds and sightings of birds, just as there were in Ayers Rock and Trinity Beach. We got a real sense of the vastness and remoteness of Australia. Our afternoon tour took us to several sites.

Alice Springs School of the Air explained how children in the Outback are educated – long before distance education had become a thing. Students have to be more than 50 km (30 miles) from a physical school to be eligible for this state run program. They are required to have a “tutor” at their home, usually their mother but not always. The tutor keeps them on task to their schedule when they don’t have one of their 1-2 live lessons a day. In the US, there is a massive movement to replace face-to-face education with online education but the need for online in this situation is very clear.

Some of the original equipment for lessons delivered by radio.

One of their modern studios for lessons delivered by the internet.

A second site showed the early telegraph communication. Alice Springs began as the center for the 2000 mile telegraph line that was laid to cross the Outback from near Adelaide on the south coast all the way to Darwin on the north coast. From there telegraph messages could be sent to Indonesia and on to Britain.

One of the buildings at the original telegraph village of Alice Springs

School room for the original settlers in the telegraph station

A third site explained how they deliver medical services by air to people in the Outback, and how it has become a lot more advanced than when it began in the 1910’s.

The fourth site was a reptile center. The presenter was perhaps overly enthusiastic about how to survive a crocodile attack or a snakebite. He seemed to enjoy scaring us. “Oh the snakes will be out tonight in Alice Springs! The weather is perfect. Careful where you walk!” I admit that while I was out running and walking the next morning, every stick appeared to be a snake. It is interesting that extremely few people die from snakebites in Australia. They have the most advanced system of delivering anti-venom in the case of a bite. If you wear long pants, you might be protected because Australian snakes have very short fangs compared to other places in the world, such as Sri Lanka. Larry spent 4 weeks in Sri Lanka, including a 5 hour walk through rice paddies and dusty paths. According to the guide here he should have been very scared.

Thorny Devil

Perentie

Two pythons

The fifth site was a view at sunset of Alice Springs and the West MacDonnell Range from atop a hill. It was a nice way to finish our tour.

Melbourne

Melbourne is on the southeastern coast of Australia (see #5 on the map).

Melbourne seemed a world away from Alice Springs, not only because it is a very large city, but because it is lush and green. Like Sydney and other places in Australia, the people are diverse, though the Aboriginal people were more prevalent in Ayers Rock and Alice Springs. We sense a feeling like Toronto, though on my morning runs in the Botanical Gardens, it felt like Central Park in New York City.

They’re having a mail-in referendum on gay marriage. On Dec. 7, 2017, the Australian Parliament approved gay marriage after the referendum was overwhelmingly in favor.

Parliament Building, across from the Hotel Windsor where we stayed.

Where the Australian Open of tennis is played

Just one of the many gardens and parks all over the city. On the right is a memorial to JFK.

We stayed at the Hotel Windsor, which was built in 1883 during Melbourne’s gold rush. It is way over the top and has had famous celebrities such as Lauren Bacall, Mohamed Ali, Meryl Streep stay here.

Famous people who have stayed at the Hotel Windsor. They will need to add us now.

Just to really go too far, we indulged in the traditional British style Afternoon Tea, which had way too much food.

I was hoping to have a cucumber sandwich with the crust removed and was not disappointed (although they added salmon to it). Champagne, 6 savory pastries, 6 sweet pastries, 6 half sandwiches, and scones. I usually skip lunch so this was a very big shock to my system. It was hard to get up and move around after that. It was worth it to do something like this once.

I prefer living as close as possible to a city. Indiana, PA is not a city but given that our two jobs were at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, living right in town was a great option. We didn’t want to live in what might be called the suburbs. Suburbs have always seemed to be the worst of both worlds. You can’t walk to restaurants, work, and school from suburbs and you don’t have space to yourself like you do in the country. Others would say just the opposite, you’re close to town but have more space.

I’ve never lived in a suburb or in the country (since I was very young) but the concept of living in the country is intriguing. Over the last two days, we had  a brief taste of living in the extreme country of the Australian Outback, followed by the large city of Melbourne. I  can see why people live in both but cities will always be where I’m happiest.

Oct. 23-25, 2017 Australian Eastern Standard Time (+14 hours from EDT, -1 hour from AEDT in Sydney). Trinity Beach is near Cairns in northeastern Australia (see #2 on the map).

“Moderation in all things, including moderation itself”

I’m not sure if I came up with that phrase on my own or if it’s a longstanding quote from someone else. I try to live my life this way. It feels good not to overdo it on most things, such as eating, drinking, tiring oneself excessively, and so on. But there are times where it’s important to be immoderate. A life that is purely moderate is dull and inconsequential. All of this depends on what is meant by moderation. Even spending years to be qualified to have a good job could be seen as immoderate.

For example, I like to stick with foods I like which I would call being moderate but I will try something that looks like I wouldn’t like, which is immoderate. I like to stop at two drinks with dinner when I’m going out but it feels good every once in a while to have a little more. Taking this trip is itself an immoderate act, especially with my injury.

What we did on Oct. 23, 2017 was immoderate. We’re in the Cairns area of far northern Australia, which is closer to the Equator than Cuba. There is one world-class activity here – the Great Barrier Reef and at least two other wonderful activities – the tropical rain forest and the beaches. A moderate way to organize our two full days here would have been to go to the reef one day then return and hang out at the beach across the street from our apartment. The other day would be to go to the rain forest then hang out at the beach some more.

Instead we had a ridiculously full day on Oct. 23 followed by a full day of relaxation. On Oct. 23, we were on the following.

• •    A helicopter over the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)

• •    A semi-submersible at the GBR

• •    A 1.5 hour railroad trip through the rain forest

• •    A series of 3 cable cars through the rain forest

• •    A 1.5 hour boat ride from the GBR back to Cairns

• •    Multiple connections

We found a breakfast place that opened at 7 AM so there would be enough time to get our 8 AM transfer, which was a shock to my system. Even though the time change from home is 14 hours, just hearing 7 AM hurts. In my first blog, I talked about how often I get tested on a trip early on. It happened again but in a minor way. The van that was supposed to pick us up was nowhere to be found. Did we get the directions all wrong? I found the number to call and they said traffic was bad in Cairns and it was on its way.

We just barely made it to the railroad on time. I’ve loved trains since I was a little kid (maybe I’m still a little kid). We went through the Barron Gorge National Park rain forest. And stopped for a view of these waterfalls.

Waterfall from up close by the train

From there it was just a few steps to a 1.5 hour series of cable cars to go back almost to the rail station. It’s wonderful to see something beautiful from two perspectives within a couple of hours. The cable car gave a more expansive view but lacked the sound and the intensity we got from being so close at the rail stop. This parallels many things in life. Sometimes we see the intensity when we’re close to something or someone. When we’re further away we can get the big picture and see the context better.

Same waterfall, this time from the cable car further away

A van picked us up from the cable car station and took us to the helicopter pad for a 25-minute, 40-mile flight to a boat out in the Great Barrier Reef. We could see patches of coral, which were not spectacular colors but clearly not just blue water.

A short boat ride took us to the main boat, where divers and snorkelers were getting ready. We are neither divers or snorkelers so I was hoping there would be something for us to do, which fortunately appeared.

For an extra $10, we could take a “semi-submersible boat”, which was a regular boat with a deep basement that had large windows. This was perfect for us. What we saw was beautiful but not the earth shattering multiple colors that I might have expected. Partially this may be because of global warming and partly because of the sunshine on the day we were there. Still, this was a real treat.

Semi-Submersible. The boat is above water but there is a deep basement for viewing

By the time the boat took its 1.5 hours to get back to Cairns followed by the 1 hour transfer back, we were done. My hip was in bad pain and we both had an early sleep. It was too much for one day but we were left with a day of leisure.

The next day we tried very hard to do nothing except eat, drink champagne, and swim. Unfortunately, I couldn’t swim in the very warm ocean. I was warned against sideways motion, which is unavoidable in even these mild waves. There was a pool as a consolation. I was very happy to have been immoderate these two days. Doing too much one day followed by a day of pure relaxation was perfect.

October 25-27, 2017 – Australian Central Standard Time (13.5 hours ahead of EDT, -1 hour from Cairns). Uluru / Ayers Rock is in the center of Australia (see #3 on the map).

I was really happy that Margaret wrote about our experiences in the Outback. This is her entry.

What a wonderful walk around Ayers Rock (Uluru), a huge rock in the middle of the Australian Outback. It is so much more than a huge rock once you see it close up – complete with holes, striations, streaks of black from rainfall and chemical reactions, crevices, caves, and a water hole. The walk is a guided sunrise hike, of about 8.5 miles all the way around the mountain. Eight of us, plus the guide, began our walk at 5:45 a.m. (70 degrees), and finished at 11:00 a.m. (91 degrees). We were given packs with breakfast and a thermos of hot water, that we carried until 8:00 a.m. when we sat down to eat. Larry was not with me. Instead, he chose a much shorter hike and drive around, given his injury. If I were to have run and walked this trail on my own, I would have completed it in a couple hours, and avoided the heat. But I would have missed out on the explanations of the rock, and the stories of the Anangu people – how they viewed the sacred rock, how they found food in this harsh environment, how they saw the creation of the world. Our guide was not only knowledgeable but she was passionate in how she embraced the native culture. She explained the meanings of the cave paintings, and is adamant that no climbing should be allowed. When you look at the environment without the knowledge, it is easy to see just shrubs, small trees, grasses, insects, lizards, and birds. But the native people know how use every bit of this for sustenance.

Uluru in red, early morning

Railing for climbers, now heavily discouraged

Weathered surface of Uluru

A waterhole at Uluru

Deep holes show up as you are close

More pockets and holes

Your imagination can create stories, as is true for the Anangu

After my return to the hotel, and some down time, Larry and I took a guided tour to Kata Tjuta (many heads, because of the 36 dome-like rocks) – a different rock formation in the Outback. This is about a 1.5 mile hike, but the temperature was 101 degrees. We managed just fine, which surprised me. Larry copes with the heat far better than I do. Both Kata Tjuta and Uluru are amazing geologic formations – some of the geology is the same, some different. Because of the folding of the rock millions of years ago, the time layers of Uluru are actually perpendicular to the earth’s surface, so my morning hike around Uluru was actually a hike through millions of years of formation. I think this is similar to the Grand Canyon, as you walk the rim from one end to another. There are some similarities in the colors and rocks of Uluru and Kata Tjuta to the rocks we have seen in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, and yet very different.

Our guide in the afternoon explains the geology of Kata Tjuta and Uluru

Kata Tjuta, in the early morning sun, not the afternoon when we hiked it

So, what am I doing in the middle of Australia in these hot temperatures? I don’t like heat! And I hate these flies that swarm around your face. Give me cold places almost anytime! Larry has always wanted to visit Australia – in particular, the Outback. Now that I am retired, I don’t have an excuse not to go. I can’t say that I was excited about the trip.

Larry wears a net to protect against relentless flies

I am not a good traveler. I’m not like Larry, who gets excited about seeing the world, and embraces everything new that other parts of the world have to offer. Mind you, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to experience new things, but while Larry prefers new environments, I try to make things like home. I want to feel safe, and I like the comforts of home. I worry about everything – will I understand people with different languages or accents? Will I get my morning coffee as soon as I get up? Will I get motion sickness? Will taking Dramamine make me drowsy for days? Will we lose our luggage? Did I pack too much? Were there things I should have packed? Will the heat get to me? Will I find safe places to run and walk in the pre-dawn hours? Are there insects or wildlife that I need protection from? Can I eat raw vegetables and drink the tap water? Will we have medical emergencies in a foreign country? When we travel – whether in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, London, Paris, etc., I try to fall into certain routines. On one hand, running and walking in the early morning hours in strange places can be scary. On the other hand, it makes me feel at home because it’s such a part of me.

I’m not sure where all this worry comes from. And certainly I’ve done my share of not-so-safe and not-so-comfortable travel in the past. For example, hitchhiking from Buffalo to New York City with a friend, and with only $20 in my pocket, sleeping on the floor of an apartment of someone we barely knew, with cockroaches running around, wasn’t fun. Or maybe it was fun? Perhaps it’s because I felt unsafe after losing a parent when I was 8 years old. Maybe I just don’t want to be that uncomfortable or unsafe anymore. I guess it’s a good thing that Larry encourages me to do things I wouldn’t normally do. He often remarks that he is the gas pedal and I am the brakes. I guess that’s a good thing.

Larry on his early morning trek at Uluru

More of Uluru

Cave paintings

Kata Tjuta in the hot afternoon sun

At the end of my morning hike

Uluru cave

So, here I am on our second morning in the Outback, at 5:00 a.m., at the top of an overlook, after a 20-minute walk from the hotel room. I had no idea where I was going – I just figured it out as I went along. There’s a glimmer of dawn, but it’s very dark. Who knows what creatures will come out from the shrubs and attack me? But somehow at the top of this overlook, the moment feels just right – it is special to be here, and there’s nowhere else I would rather be at this moment.

October 20-22, 2017 — Australian Eastern Daylight Time (15 hours ahead of EDT). Sydney is in southeastern Australia (see #1 on the map).

I wasn’t sure if we should have taken this trip but it feels great to actually be in Australia. Last night, we went to the Sydney Opera House to hear Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #3. This was an amazing way to start our vacation. The opera house is the most famous building in Australia and that concerto is one of Margaret’s most favorite pieces. I’ll show pictures and say more further down.

But first we had to get there, especially after all the issues about my injury from the previous entry. I was hesitant to ask for a wheel chair but was glad to have it. I was treated as a handicapped person with all the perks included. It really helped since there would have been a lot of walking through the four airports.

I used to feel that having an identity crisis is something that teenagers have and never again after that. I can identify a couple of times I have had major or minor identity crises in my life after being a teenager. Certainly, one was when I left working in a can factory in Montreal to start my math teaching career in Buffalo. Maybe 2-3 others happened before retiring, which of course, causes an identity crisis. No longer is the job and title of math professor applicable.

I would call what has happened to me in the past month a minor identity crisis. Am I a handicapped person, at least until this fracture heals in 6 months or so (supposedly)? Should I hide that I’m in pain or assert my need for a cane and wheel chair? My resolution seems to be to put aside the optics of looking old and go with what makes my and Margaret’s lives easier.

In Pittsburgh, they pushed us to the front of the TSA line and we got through in about 5 minutes. In San Francisco, we only had 65 minutes between our arrival from Chicago to the flight to Sydney. It was well over a mile between the gates and it really helped to have someone pushing me in a wheel chair. In Sydney, we were through immigration in just a few minutes.

The lie-flat bed made the 15-hour flight from SF to Sydney more than bearable. In some ways, it was better to be there for so long, since there was enough time between the dinner and the breakfast to really sleep. Having an excellent dinner at midnight (3 AM Eastern time), didn’t work too well though.

A guide and driver met us at the airport and took us on a two-hour tour of Sydney. Sydney had been having a drought and chose the day we arrived to make up for it. There were some hearty surfers and swimmers at the famous Bondi beach but we could only imagine what it would be like on a nice summer day in a couple of months. We commiserated with the German guide about the US idiot President while learning about coffee in Australia. They don’t have filtered coffee, only espresso, cappuccino, etc. The closest we can get to the coffee we get in the US is what they call Long Black, which is espresso mixed with hot water and tastes similar to strong coffee back home.

The tour took us to see the outside of the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), which we returned to later. Australia has its own identity crisis between its British roots, its massive immigrant population, and the aboriginal people. The QVB is clearly from the British roots. My favorite part were the clocks, one of which had a ship sailing on the bottom of it and separate dials for the month, date, hour, and seconds.

My plan for dealing with the 15 hour time change was simple – sleep a normal night’s sleep on the plane and when we arrived in Sydney at 8 AM, just start a normal day. However, what I failed to realize was that the concert we went to at the Sydney Opera House at 8 PM was like starting a concert at 5 AM until 8 AM. I’m a late night person but not that late.

Regardless of the sleep problem, the concert was wonderful. The composer of a wild piece based on wildfires that killed over 100 people in 2012 was the conductor. The piece had jarring sharp sounds, using a very full orchestra including musicians at 3 locations in the audience. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #3 was rarely played from when it was written in 1909 until 1930 because it is ridiculously difficult for the pianist. Vladimir Horowitz was the person who brought it back. It requires almost acrobatic skills and even though it’s music from my least favorite era of classical music, I really enjoyed it. As much as seeing this concert was the thrill of being inside this building, which is easily the most famous one in Australia.

We had taken Ubers all over town from Asian drivers and  were able to get one to return to the hotel around 11 PM for a long needed sleep. I felt almost back to normal in the morning. The next day we took a thirty minute ferry to Manly, which went right by the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge, which Margaret had run across earlier that morning.

We had a quirky hotel, called the Harbor Rocks (the name of the district), just a 5 minute walk (even at my slow pace) from the ferries.  We started each day on the Nurse’s Walk, which is named for the hospitals that were there centuries ago with the convict nurses.

We’re working hard to make sure we don’t get hit by a car while walking with driving on the opposite side. These signs helped to remind us to look the opposite way.

This was an excellent start to our trip. Sydney has a wonderful vibe to it. It has people from all over the world; there are many runners, bikers, etc; and the beauty of the harbors is stunning. I’m dealing with using a cane at times and not being able to do everything I’d like to do. I’m glad we didn’t cancel the trip.

One of the partially true myths I have about myself is that something will test me at the beginning of a trip. This evil event questions whether I have the fortitude to go ahead and not wimp out. Usually it’s something relatively small, like an item left at home or a mechanical problem with the car, or a cold that comes on just as we’re leaving.

This trip’s evil event is a much worse one than usual. On Sept. 23, 2017, I was playing tennis with the IUP Women’s Tennis Team as part of their annual fundraiser. I was teamed up with a team member from Colombia, South America and our opponents were the Indiana High School Girl’s #1 player and another IHS team member. I was playing about as well as I’ve ever played. My fitness was better than it had been for years since I had begun biking 7-12 miles most days.

I taught myself how to play tennis with my friend Bruce Crispell when we we in high school. Unfortunately, tennis strokes are not intuitive so I became a quirky, unpredictable player with terrible traditional strokes. I also compensated for my lack of skills by running down balls that seemed impossible to get. Occasionally, I would get those balls but even if I didn’t get them, my hope was that the player would try a better shot next time that would go out of the line.

I apologize that the last paragraph seemed to be irrelevant and annoying but it explains what happened with the tennis match. I ran for an outstanding shot made by the IHS Girl’s team member that was hopeless. I suddenly turned possibly 180 degrees and my feet got tangled. My fall was bad, really bad. I didn’t hit my head fortunately but the impact and shock to my body made me almost pass out. At first I thought I would just sit out a few minutes and get back in. Thankfully, the coach and my friends the Bungo’s knew better. The police came and then an ambulance took me to the Emergency Room.

I had a bad bruise on my knee but the X-Rays showed nothing. The harsh pain was on my hip. The ER doctor was convinced nothing was broken and said the Radiologist would get back to me if he saw anything. He called it a contusion and prescribed Vicodin.

A couple of weeks later I saw my family doctor and because my pain did not seem to be going down, he suggested a CT Scan, which showed I have a “fracture of the greater trochanter” that should have been caught in the ER. It’s a small fracture of a part of the femur that is not weight bearing. The bottom line is that I’m in pain when I walk but especially if I move my leg sideways. A cane cuts the pain in half or so.

Like I said at the beginning, this was a big test of my desire to make this trip. I and my travel agent had made massive plans that would not be easy to change (shout out to my travel agent, Marlyn Kray of International Travel Expeditions — itexpeditions@gmail.com). It was tempting to cancel and possibly most sane people would have cancelled. Sanity, however, is overrated. Would I be in a worse state in 6 months? I felt that as long as I’m able to walk, it’s not going to be that much different walking in Australia and New Zealand than walking here.

I wonder if the myth of overcoming the danger at the beginning of a trip influenced me not to cancel. Did I just lump this serious problem into the same category as forgetting to bring underwear? We need categories, stories, and myths to make sense of the world. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out when they apply and when they don’t. As I’m writing it makes me feel like I’m ambivalent about making the trip. The reality is I’m firmly committed to doing it.

Margaret on the other hand is much more worried about the trip than I am. She is concerned about the long distance travel, staying in many different hotels, and the unpredictability of everything. She likes travel but not this type of extended trip. This was before my injury. Her feelings make total sense to me. She is willing to go and is possibly getting excited about some of the amazing things we will see and do while keeping her fears intact.

For me, this is a much easier trip than other ones I have done since retirement in 2014. The other ones were mostly to places where you cannot drink the water and need to be careful about the food. Since 2014, I’ve been to Peru (also Buenos Aires, and Rio); Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Russia; Sri Lanka and the Maldives; South Africa and Ghana; and France, Dubrovnik, and Italy. In 2011, I went to Korea, China, Bangkok, and India; and Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Istanbul, and Athens. So this doesn’t seem like much of a stretch except for the pain of the injury.

We leave tomorrow with a flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago, then on to San Francisco, and 15 hours from there to Sydney, Australia. Fortunately, we are travelling business class, which means we’ll have lie flat beds on the overseas portion. Someone will meet us at the Sydney airport and give us a 2-3 hour tour of the city before bringing us to the hotel. We have tickets at the famous Sydney Opera House that first night to see a Rachmaninoff piece.

My fear of the injury and the travel is overshadowed by my fear of not living life to the fullest. I know of people who speak of some day travelling to places of their dreams but never make it. There is always another reason not to go. The fear of not living my life to the fullest was enhanced when I had open heart surgery in 2013. Fortunately, a doctor sensed that there was something wrong with my heart and encouraged me to see a cardiologist. I had a valve replacement and last minute they realized I also need a double bypass. If the doctor hadn’t caught it, I could have had a heart attack or …

So, am I being foolish by continuing with this trip? Should I have waited 6 months and redone the arrangements for then?

I haven’t written anything in my blog for a while and I have no pictures for this entry. I hope to continue the blog when we are on the road with lots of pictures and reflections. Looking forward to hearing from all of you.