Friday, July 6, 2012

Sydney Roadtrip 2012!


I'm sitting in the back of an old school Mercedes next to SG with Ian at the wheel and Joan in the passenger seat.  We're on the road to Sydney.  Matt Chandler is winding up a sermon in my earbuds and eucalypt trees are whizzing by.  We just left McDonalds (Maccas - read with an Aussie accent) where Ian got a chocolate thickshake and Joan and I got hot drinks. 

What the heck am I doing, you ask.  Oh, we're just on a little roadtrip with the host parents to Canberra and Sydney.  As an aside, Canberra (Can-bruh) is the capital of Australia and is located in the Australian Capital Territory (like Washington and the D.C.).  It is almost halfway in between Sydney and Melbourne because in the early days of settlement, the two cities couldn't agree on where to put the capital.  The political impasse was resolved by building a city in between.  While there are supposedly some beautiful government buildings there, Canberra isn't much to get excited about. 

The mileage sign just said Sydney is 562 kilometers away.  I don't really know what that means without doing the calculations.  We won't go to Sydney until tomorrow anyway.  We're staying with Ian and Joan's friends in Canberra tonight.  Someone's mother is supposedly cooking up a storm in anticipation of our arrival.  I think I'm going to like these people.

As far as travel conditions go, it's been a positively dismal day.  (Is that a contradiction in terms?)  Drizzly rain, gray clouds, the whole bit.  While I generally loathe this kind of weather, it makes for perfect rainbow hunting conditions.  While Victoria has much more rain than any place I've lived, it also has the most rainbows.  Not half an hour ago, we spotted a towering arch, reaching from ground to ground.  It glowed like a box of spanking new Crayolas.  Spectacular. 

We'll be up around Sydney until Saturday.  I don't know what all we'll be seeing, but Ian typed up an itinerary, which we may or may not stick to, knowing Ian.  Who knew I'd find myself hurtling down a freeway with some of my favorite 70+ friends on a road trip?!  Not me.

More to come,

LMS

                                                         Parliament House, Canberra

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