Travel Blog #1

Endless flights and Sydney wandering

Well, 3 flights and 2 days later, I’ve arrived in Australia. 15 hour flights are strange experiences, as it feels like time-traveling: in one sense literally, as my flight crossed the international date line and I’m now +17 hours ahead of Montana, and figuratively, as you go into a sort of trance-like, sometimes hellish state, sitting in a metal tube over 30,000 feet in the air with bathrooms you can barely stand in.

The beauty of long flights is you’re in a world of unreality, where your problems temporarily don’t exist. How to navigate public transportation (can you tell I rarely spend times in cities?), did my bag arrive with all my things in it, do you have to wade through a battalion of spiders to get out of the airport, these problems are not as real as the stiffness of your legs and the numbness of your backside.

All that to say, I feel a bit nervous but mostly jubilant to get off the plane and start the adventure in earnest. There are logistical things to figure out, which always weigh on my brain until I get through them - good thing our worries are almost never as bad as we think they are - then it’s playtime! So much to see and learn and experience! I have a couple days to play in Sydney, then I’m off to Hobart, Tasmania for my first WorkAway! I’ll be spending my year in Australia primarily in Tasmania so I’m eager to get there and get a feel for the area.

I walked around Sydney a bit today, exploring the neighborhood around my hostel, befriending some Sydneysiders, and generally marveling at the wonderful trees that line the streets - big gums galore! Absolute legends. It’s always encouraging to see huge trees that buildings have been built around, as opposed to tearing up trees to build new buildings, then replanting young trees. It takes so long (in human time) for these trees to get as big as they are, so we should treasure them while we have them.

Tomorrow I’m off to walk around the Botanic Gardens and Opera House, and then the Coastal Walk from Coogee to Bondi! Lots of walking - my favorite way to explore!

In addition to recounting my adventures, I'm also going to share quotes / thoughts / questions / fun facts I encounter along my travels just for fun. Here goes:

An inspiring quote from one of the three top movies to watch on a long flight:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

 - Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Misc thoughts from me:

Toilets are probably the amenity most of us take for granted - put a few hundred people on a plane for an hour without a toilet and there’s gonna be trouble. For 15 hours? Forget about it.

Until next time!

Courage,

Trevor

"Fill your life with meaning. Life is precious. Do not waste a single second."

 - Rog Bennett