Sydney is Internet-free.

As of 8:30 yesterday morning, we were just about ready to call a mulligan on Sydney. Despite screaming squealing kicking snot-nosed children in the row behind us, the flight passed without too much trouble, and we scooted our way through customs etc as well. Then it was on to the baggage claim.

Carry-ons, check. Kevin’s bag, check. Mary Beth’s bag…

…

…

…not check.

We watched the carousel slowly thin out, and panic slowly began to set in as the last bags tumbled out and weren’t Mary Beth’s clothes. Hearts sinking, our jet-lagged selves stumbled over to Qantas baggage services and received the bad news that we already knew: her bag wasn’t there. But it’d probably be here by tomorrow.

The sympathetic baggage-claim lady patted Mary Beth on the hand, and seeing her welling tears, filled out a voucher for AU$100 as an apology gift. So we took our free cash, and still wearing our outfits from Tuesday, navigated the city rail and taxi systems to make our way to the hotel.

I’d say our opinion of our newly-started honeymoon hit rock bottom when we hopped out of the taxi at the Lord Nelson, Sydney’s oldest hotel, walked up to the front door, and–it was locked. A sign on the front announced that it was closed for Friday. We looked at each other and almost laughed, in the way you might almost laugh when you stub your toe five seconds after banging your head.

But, a nice lady came up, opened the door, and directed us upstairs to check in. The Lord Nelson is a pub and restaurant on the first floor, with a breakfast room on the second and rooms on the third. Our room is very cozy, despite the pink wall colors, and we have a decent view of the Sydney skyline and the ubiquitous hovering APEC helicopters.

After plopping ourselves on the bed, we took showers, brushed teeth, and got dressed. MB found some of her jeans in my bag, so we were able to wander around The Rocks a bit and finally catch a ferry across the harbor to Taronga Zoo.

Weather is spotty; sun and blue sky one moment, showers the next. Perfectly tolerable, though, so I call it a win.

The zoo was fun enough; you take a cable car to get into the place, and they had walkthrough pens where you could get, like, two feet from an emu with no fence in between. We saw terrifying poisonous spiders and enjoyed the view across the bay to the opera house and downtown, then after four hours or so, hopped the ferry back.

Dinner was at a pizza place a few blocks from our hotel, since nothing says Australia like pizza. We were conked out by 6:00 PM, just as The Simpsons came on the telly. And, predictably, we were wide awake by 5 AM, though we managed to force ourselves to nap until 7:00.

And that brings us to the present, where wireless Internet is hard hard hard to find. Walked a bit around downtown which is fenced off and all but deserted; now we’re gonna keep the wild animals streak going with a visit to the Sydney Aquarium.

Oh, and the LAX/Sydney entries were largely pre-written, so don’t be surprised if our posts from here on out are more of the three-to-five sentence variety. (I can hear the sighs of relief from the readers already…)

Miss you guys!

LAXin’ it up

Made it to Dallas Tuesday night, and had a wonderful Tex-Mex birthday dinner with Nellie (and adorable widdle Evan). Then we headed home and started packing like crazy, experiencing a near-constant state of panic that we were forgetting something for the duration of the evening. Our alarms were set early, but then we had too many nerves to sleep very well anyway.

Mary Beth was out of bed first around 5:45 this morning, and hopped in the shower. I was still snoozing comfortably, snuggled up with Nellie’s chihuahua Belle, when she walked back into the bedroom quietly and - “CRAP!!!” - stepped both feet right in some fresh Belle-poo.

You might say our honeymoon was off to an inauspicious start.

Despite the sailor’s bad omen, we were at the airport with time to spare (thanks again Nellie!) and got to LAX without much of a hitch.

LA is a big big city. We started flying over the suburbs about 20 minutes before landing, and they just kept going, and going, and going. New York is huge as well, but it’s compacted onto a single island and four other boroughs, so the growth is largely up up up, which is much more impressive a sight. And the smog! There is actually smog blanketing the city in a thin cloudy layer around 10,000 feet. Gross.

We landed at LAX right on time at 10:15. We encountered our first major stumbling block of the day: thanks to those pesky terrorists, there are no paid lockers ANYWHERE at the airport. Ditto the bus and train stations. So we realized with a sinking feeling that we’d be stuck lugging our carryons around LA for the entire fourteen-hour layover. Blah.

LA has been working for 15 years on getting its own fancy subway system. And it’s done pretty well for itself; the stations are nicely decorated and the trains were on time. But here’s the kooky thing: over four subway trips, we were NEVER asked to produce a ticket, pass through a turnstile, or anything like that. Despite spending $12.50 on a bunch of tokens, we ended the day not having given anyone any of them. Word of advice, travelers: the LA subway is FREE-ish.

Mary Beth noticed rather quickly that skinny jeans, which she’d long heard were all the rage, actually ARE all the rage in Los Angeles. Women, men, everyone loves the tight pants. Ditto bug-eye Paris Hilton sunglasses; they seem to be a required uniform in California.

We spent our early afternoon wandering the Hollywood & Highland center, which is a five-story outdoor/indoor shopping mall thing that also includes the Kodak Theater. (The Oscars are there, right?) The whole Sunset Boulevard area is shamelessly tourist-oriented; the Walk of Stars is nice, but the rest is just - BUY STUFF. TAKE PICTURES. BUY MORE STUFF.

Oh, and WATCH THIS SHOW AND/OR MOVIE. Good Lord they’ve got posters and billboards. One street corner had no less than four ginormous billboards for the second season of “Heroes.”

Rather than wander up and down the strip all day, MB suggested that we plop our tired butts down and see a movie. Sure! We headed to the Arclight Cinemas for an $11 matinee.

Ho boy. This is an amazing theater. It’s all one big round domed room, seating maybe a thousand people, with a HUGE curved screen behind a heavy blue curtain. It actually has assigned seats! You have to specify where you wanna sit. Since we were almost the only ones there, we grabbed the center two seats in the balcony and stretched our feet out, carry-on bags occupying a third seat.

For the record, Jack Bauer wears Jason Bourne pajamas.

After Bourne laid the kung fu on a bunch of bad guys, we hopped a cab to our dinner destination, Yamashiro, which is a traditional Japanese home built in the 1910s and working as a fancy-pants restaurant for the last 30 years. There we watched the sun set over the not-very-pretty LA skyline while we drank martinis, sampled sushi, and split a fancy lamp chops plate. Shockingly, we did NOT try the so-called Darth Vader spring roll. You don’t want to eat the dark side of the Force right before a long flight, we figured.

One free-ish subway and bus ride later, it was back at LAX, which even at 10 pm on a Wednesday is gridlocked like an evacuation was going on.

All day I’d been saying how sad it would be to visit LA for a day and not see anyone famous. Fortunately, right after we snagged our boarding passes and headed to our gate, Kelly Rowland, founding member of Destiny’s Child, walked right past us. I guess that counts.

Then it was onto the gigantic plane with the big red kangaroo on the side, and into the time warp over the Pacific Ocean where September 6th does not exist.

Got as far as LA…

Hi folks, just a quickie. We made it to DFW with time to spare, hopped the flight to LA without too much trouble, and enjoyed our 14-hour layover. Now waiting at Terminal 4, gate 48B, for the flight to Sydney which is wheels-up in 45 minutes. Touching down on Thursday the 7th of September at 7:30ish AM, or if you’re keeping track, the 6th of September at 4:30 PM, Texas time.

We’ll see y’all on the flipside. Of the globe, in this case. Full LA post coming soon, followed in short order by pics and the battle of Kevin and Mary Beth vs. APEC.

Ciao…

Home stretch…

Packing continues like crazy, as we watch unranked Clemson make #19 Florida State look silly. We’ll manage to get everything into two rolly (rolley?) bags, two carry-ons, and a purse, with breathing room to fit gifts and trinkets in for the trip back.

The amusing mental hurdle of the day: figuring out how to time the birth control pills considering we’re losing a day in there somewhere. So she’ll be taking the Thursday pill on Friday and so forth, I think. It’ll be a struggle.

Departure email has been sent! Now I gotta finish packing. Clemson beat FSU.

Subscribe via email, take two

Not so much with the rssfwd.com. Let’s try rssforward.net! Re-click the link on the side there, cross your fingers, hold your breath, and you should get an email every time I post.

Update: …Well, it technically works; I got the email notification a day after I posted. So, feel free to subscribe, just be ready for postal-service-type delays in receiving the emails.

Test Pack Successful

I’ve gotten some helpful packing advice from the message boards at straightdope.com and Matt, of wherethehellismatt.com fame. Our goal is to have no more than a week’s worth of stuff, and not be afraid to seek out our local Australian laundromat 2 or 3 times during our trip.

Last night I grabbed the smaller of our two rolly (rolley?) bags and put in:
* 2 pairs pants, 1 pair shorts, 1 swimsuit
* 7 underwears, 7 socks, 7 T-shirts
* 2 button-down shirts, 1 polo, 1 fleece pullover

Even without trying that hard (I hear I’m supposed to roll the clothes), I still had room to spare in the bag. So I think we’re good in the Kevin department for clothes; any non-clothes items and toiletries should fit comfortably in my backpack.

Now, Mary Beth on the other hand, took one look at my mostly-packed bag and–keep in mind, she’s well aware she has a bag of her own–said in a concerned tone, “Where do the shoes go?”

Ahh, don’t let the Waco accent fool ya folks, this girl is as cityfied as they come.

In administrative news, you can subscribe to the blog via email! I think. This’ll be my test post to see if it works. Anyway, just click the link in the sidebar there (adding it shortly), enter your address, and you’ll get a message any time I write something in here.

We love our parents!

In this edition: thanks to Dad and Diana for lending us our jet-setting rolling luggage, and to Mom and Mat for helping out with the afore-mentioned battery purchase! Now we won’t die of boredom halfway across the Pacific.

Eight days remain, and mild have-we-got-everything panic has begun to set in. I kinda wish the poison ivy would finally decide to vacate my legs some time before we leave. You’d think six weeks would be enough fun for it.

Mary Beth’s quote o’ the day from yesterday:
“For a 21-day trip, plus Dallas and stuff, I’d probably need…” [thinks seriously] “…40 pairs of underwear.”

Today’s Oz-themed funny

Thanks to Suzi!

Two weeks from today I disappear into the void.

See this post for more info about me and September 6th.

When we fly out of LA, we’ll essentially be chasing the sun westward across the Pacific. Only our measly Boeing 747 is much less fast than the sun (Concorde didn’t have this problem!), so it’s eventually gonna catch up with us from behind, rising in the east just as we land in Sydney.

The result? It’ll be continuous nighttime for us from 6:30PM PST until 7:30AM SST, or a total of twenty hours. Ah, that sun will feel good. Or, maybe, it won’t. I might be a vampire by then.

Mary Beth is excitedly planning her designated “Mary Beth days”, which she’s partially keeping secret from me. Her plans for a visit to the Sydney Observatory were scuttled by a certain international conference, sigh. One thing she’s looking at, though: dolphin swimming. Score!

Meanwhile, the debate over where the APEC protestors are allowed to march might make its way to the New South Wales Supreme Court. The NSW Police wants all protests to happen in a single park south of the Botanic Gardens. The protestors want to march through the streets of the CBD, and wrap things up with a concert right across the street from our steakhouse.

Guess whose side Kevin and MB are on? Gooooooo police! Boooo freedom of expression! Do they make “RELEASE THE TEAR GAS” T-shirts? I’m gonna make one.

At least it’s not APEC’s fault…

Update to that class-wars thing: whereas the hoity-toity of the world get full-fledged power outlets to plug their gadgets in with, while nibbling on their caviar and playing Strip Twister, we proletariat down in Economy have no such luxury. Nor do we have the airline or car-charger versions. That’s right, life in steerage is on battery only.

Currently rubbing my aching forehead while pondering the purchase of a spare laptop battery. Even with the Apple employee discount, it’s still $100ish. Hey, it’s only money. I’ve got plenty!