Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Well here I am in Sydney, It’s been a hell of a journey just to get here but Brad and I finally made it as planned. Friday all started with me waking up at 3:30 for our flight to Vancouver which took off at 5:00 AM. I didn’t get to the bed the night before until 12 so sleep deprivation and coffee made the experience quite interesting. We got to the airport with plenty of time but with Brad having problems with his visa and me getting held up in security, we ended up having to run to the plane just to get on. It was just like out of a fancy Hollywood movie. It was almost best that way as there ended up being no long tearful good-byes at the terminal.

Since we were flying on standby passes we got to Vancouver nice and early to maximize our potential of getting onto one of 3 flights going to Honolulu. We didn’t get on the first flight and ended up having to wait in the Vancouver terminal for just about 12 hours and even though I was extremely tired I couldn’t manage to fall asleep. After that ordeal I know hate the Vancouver airport. The second flight came around and we patiently waited to see if our names would be called to be one of the lucky few to “win” the tickets to get away from the terrible place known as Vancouver International Airport. Again no luck. Fortunately the third “lottery” was a couple minutes after the second and the fun began again. Unfortunately this one didn’t look very promising at all and there looked to be a number of people with standby tickets waiting for their names to be called too. Somehow or any other, after the plane being delayed for nearly an hour and against the constant flow of late passengers, we managed to get on. By that point I didn’t care where I was going so long as it was away from the airport.

To top off the crappy wait at Vancouver the flight from Vancouver to Honolulu was the worst flight ever. Against lack of sleep and exhaustion I still couldn’t fall asleep until about an hour before we landed. In Honolulu, again faced major odds that we wouldn’t get onto the flight as the first Honolulu plane that we had earlier missed in Vancouver ended up having problems in Honolulu and got cancelled so everyone from that plane was trying to get onto the later flight. Yet again we beat the odds and managed to get on and fortunately I fell asleep even before the plane took off. This flight went well and I pretty much slept through the entire flight. It was actually a good thing that I was on basically no sleep for such a long time and slept only on the last leg of the journey as I experienced very little jet lag.

In Sydney I met up with a cousin of mine, Mike that I really had never met. For my first day in town he took me out with a friend of his, mountain biking. It was an absolutely beautiful day holding around 25 above with not a cloud in the sky. The trails that we went on were pretty cool and pretty hardcore. There were some pretty hairy parts on the trails that I had to dismount the bike and walk down the rocks and logs that were used as drop offs on the trail. It was pretty damn fun and was just what I needed after sitting on a plane and in airports for the last couple days.

After getting soaked with sweat we went down to Manly beach for a dip. This was the first time that I have ever been in the ocean. I had been to the ocean in Victoria when I was a kid but I don’t consider that the same thing. Here there was some pretty big waves coming at you and the water was very very salty. The water felt great and I thought it was warm but Mike said it was still pretty cold. What really took me off guard was the rip tide from the waves. It was kind of freaky and I can easily see how someone can get easily exhausted and drown if they’re not careful. The rest of the was pretty laid back and chilled out, we had a BBQ later on that night and I met Susan, Mike’s girlfriend and his roommate, Massimo. Along with Mike they are both very cool people. I spent the rest of the day drinking coffee trying to stay up as late as possible to ensure I get no jet lag. Needless to say, it was a pretty busy and exciting day and I slept well that night, a very good first day in Australia.

Monday was a day that I spent pretty much running around getting lost in downtown Sydney. I wanted to go to Bondi beach so I took the bus there thinking that it would be a good way to see the city. Unfortunately I took the wrong bus and it ended up being a bus that snaked through the city going through every residential area and suburb along the way. To top it off, school had just gotten out and there were hundreds of kids on the bus which had to stop at every single stop along the way. By the time I got to Bondi I was beat from tromping around downtown and the long bus ride. I didn’t think too much of Bondi and was a little disappointed by it. It was a very trendy place and all the stores there were pretty expensive which I thought was odd because the area seemed geared towards backpackers.

All in all that was pretty much my day. Sydney is an extremely beautiful city but I’m eager to leave as I’m finding it rather expensive. Stupid cheap-ass me spent way too much time today walking around comparing prices for food and looking for some decent cheap clothing. What a waste and that’s something that I’m going to have to let up on a bit but I’m hoping it’s just Sydney that’s expensive and not the whole country. That said I just bought my ticket for Perth and will be taking off on Wednesday.

Here’s the view that I woke up to in Sydney. Pretty crazy huh?
P.S. It’s funny Tiff, seeing which way the water went down the toilet was the first thing I did.

Tags: Australia

This entry was posted on Monday, November 7th, 2005 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.