April 2019
caps, hats and cool rules top Sydney exit
Will Dan look sufficiently ‘Manly’ at the beach outside of Sydney? Will it help if he’s wearing a Bondi Beach hat? How about a Kangaroo Hat? An All Blacks Hat? A Uluru hat? Will any hat fit when he gets home? Did Nazy find the right set of earrings? Where can you go shopping in a building that has the panache and glitz of the time it was constructed in the late 1890’s? Hint: Try the Strand Arcade. Is there anything (anything?) to do at the Canberra Airport at midnight? Who was stuck there for an hour? Who has to follow the ironclad house rule to “Be Cool”? Read More...
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West Side Ceiling Mirrors Rainy Sunset Story
Was there a downside to choosing a rare London Black Cab for the trip from Sydney airport to Kent Street. (Hint: Dan, not Nazy, chose the taxi.) Did the taxi driver know about the normal weekend construction on Kent Street? Did the taxi meter spin faster than an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole? How often did Dan hear “I told you so” on the journey? Where were the widely scattered showers during the outdoor production of West Side Story? How did Dan score a super luxury, premium room on the 52 floor of the Meriton Hotel? And where exactly was the mirror? Read More...
earthquake resistant hotel punts Mt. Cook on River Avon
What should you do when you’ve flown 10,000 kilometers to see Mt. Cook — only to have your trip cancelled 62 minutes before departure? Where can you stay in ‘the Old Government Building” (OGB) in a ‘room’ with 22 foot ceilings, two stories, a kitchen, a dinning room, a bathroom installed in the ‘walk-in safe’ and with a view of the Central City Square? And, eh, isn’t it good that the OGB was retrofitted to be earthquake proof. (Or at least earthquake resistant?) Where is Akaroa and why do we care? Why was Dan confused about the turn signal stalk and the windshield wiper control? Who was the best punter? Hint: It was on the River Avon. Read More...
Auriane Lynn Martin rocks the stars with speedy Mom
Can anything make Dan change sequencing practices for The Weekly Letter? Or, more to the point, what can make Dan change sequencing practices? Where has the latest Rock Star been identified? And who made the identification. Where are the physicians (far) too slow? How will (the lovely) little girl respond to family changes? Who helped Nazy celebrate her birthday a few days early and 1200 miles from Dan? And why doesn’t the Santa Barbara Airbus pick up passengers at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal? Read More...
Uluru and Kata Tjuta tower over spotless sunny didgeridoo
What “musical” instrument sounds, when played well, like an extremely thick rubber band being banged against stack of basalt rocks? When played badly, it sounds like cheap chalk, scrapped over a blackboard by a sadistic professor trapped in the 19th century. Where does it make sense to go halfway around the world to see a rock? (Actually, a monolith — or two.) Can it possibly be true that the Milky Way has more stars than Ayers Rock has blowflies? Hint: No. What do you see when you look at the sun through a properly filtered, but large telescope? Hint: Telescopic views may be more impressive at night, when the sun is down.
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Sugar, Sugar Rainforest tours with crocodile and cassowary
Who trapped the tour-guide in a time-loop? (We know that ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ makes you feel happy inside, but wasn’t that popular when we were in Junior High?) What about Classical Gas? Or Sugar, Sugar? What decade, eh, century, eh, epoch did this guy inhabit? Why would you talk incessantly about seeing something like a giant crocodile or a huge bird that ‘looks like a dinosaur’, if there is very little chance of actually seeing one? Does it matter that the most dangerous fauna is about the size of a coffee cup? Where is there a beautiful, pristine (and ‘don’t put your toe into it) beach? Read More...
sea turtles, lorikeets and bats snorkel under hot air balloon
Why does a ‘sunrise’ tour have to begin so far ahead of the actual sunrise? And why can’t we delay sunrise so that Nazy can sleep longer? What’s a box jellyfish? Hint: Think lethal. What’s a stinger suit? Hint: Think jellyfish repelling. How healthy is the Great Barrier Reef? How noisy is a roosting rainbow lorikeet? How about 100,000 of them? What encloses 450,000 cubic feet of hot air even though it is not located in Washington DC? What does sunrise over Queensland look like from 1000 feet in the air? Who said “Don’t pull on my ropes?” Read More...