May 2009

Evening all!!

Unfortunately, the promised update about our flight, our arrival in America and our subsequent drive from Los Angeles to San Diego will have to wait until tomorrow night.

I had a cracking piece of journalism committed to this space, something that I was really proud of. I'd covered the two $15 vouchers Qantas gave us as compensation for the flight delay, caused by Melbourne's Sunday morning fog, the pilot who decided to put on his Craig Lowndes hat and shave a good hour off our flying time, the thrill that Sarah received when she was the first person in the whole Economy section of the plane to be served both breakfast and lunch (and a nice sledge directed at her for swiping the cheese and biscuits of not just your correspondant, but also the lady seated on the aisle side of me on the plane), Shaun polishing off not just his lunch, but also that offered to him by the aisle lady, the arrival in Los Angeles, having the bloke behind the counter at Budget Rent-a-Car in downtown Los Angeles thrill me with a dissertation on not just how Shane Warne's extre-marital ways costing him the Australian captaincy, but also juxtaposing it against Andrew Symonds' recent problems with the demon drink, the eventful drive from Los Angeles to San Diego where I basically had to reverse everything I knew about driving a car, the brilliance of the American supermarket and In-N-Out Burger, the sheer size of fast-food soft drink cups here in the United States, and trying, and succeeding, to successfully use my best Ocker Australian accent to gain supermarket discounts, travel information and flirtatious waitress eye contact. It read brilliantly too - so much so that I was thinking of mailing a manuscript directly to Jane Metlikovec, an old friend from Student Village days who now works as a journalist with the Herald-Sun and has dabbled in travel writing recently, until I attempted to insert a picture of the Nissan Altima that is being used as our road trip hire vehicle, only for the computer to tell me that it couldn't be embedded directly from my laptop, and to upload it through this website first. When I hit the browser's Back button to add the finishing touches to my journalistic masterpiece, I was instead met with a blank screen, with my potential Pulitzer Prize having disappeared into thin air.

Such a masterpiece had taken over an hour to compile, and seeing as Sunday May 31st 2009 has just entered its thirty-seventh hour of my life and a certain lady is quite excited about a breakfast date with Sea World's star attraction, a killer whale named Shamu who is the star of the show, that I'm going to have to down tools and call it a night, as what I would have tried to put up on the screen in it's place would have been a feeble replacement (as you would be saying inside your head right now). Never fear, though, I will give a complete update tomorrow (Monday) night, barring what would be the longest Groundhog Day repeat on record, so expect an epistle to appear on this site at around 3:00pm Melbourne time Tuesday afternoon.

All is well, folks - Sarah and I have had a ball so far, my brain is starting to flip and respond to driving on the wrong side of the road and the car, and the resulting differences in driving styles that result, and we are looking forward to a good night's sleep in our king-sized bed at San Diego's Good Nite Inn, which at this stage is looking to be a sound return on the $AUD109, two-night investment that was downpaid around Christmas last year.

Looking forward to returning tomorrow night with my "A" game after spending the day at San Diego's Sea World.

Be good, or be good at it!!

Shaun.

PS - no photo of the bloody car until tomorrow night - trying to post it would cause too many horrid flashbacks!! Toodles!!

Afternoon all!!

Just a quick post for now, to let everyone know that we have made it to America safe and sound, and are currently domiciled at the Good Nite Inn Sea World in San Diego.

Will add a more detailed post later on, as Sunday May 31st is currently entering it's 31st hour of existence, and it's only 3pm local time!! Fair to say that "buggered" would be a good adjective to describe the current feeling. Will leave you with a couple of questions that will be answered in tonight's post

- With a two-and-a-half hour delay of Flight QF093 hanging over their heads, how did Qantas respond??
- Does it have anything to do with the fact that Sarah was the first served for both lunch AND breakfast on the flight, and that Shaun had beef AND chicken for lunch??
- How on earth did Shaun find probably the one and only bloke in Los Angeles who knew who Shane Warne is??
- How did the differences in driving on both the wrong side of the road, and the wrong side of the car, on the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego
- And just how big is a large soft drink ordered from American fast-food chain Jack In The Box???

All that, and more, coming up in about six hours time, on 98.1...I mean, on Shaun and Sarah's American Adventure!!!

Here we are, sitting at Melbourne Airport at the international departure gates, waiting for Qantas Flight QF093, schedulled for 10:15am. Scheduled, though, is the key word. An announcement just came over the public address system saying that QF093 has been diverted to Sydney due to weather here in Melbourne (strange, considering the thick fog that had blanketed the city earlier this morning has now disappeared, replaced by thin clouds and bright sunshine - or at least it is staring out the window here at the airport), and the departure time has been delayed until 12:45pm. AAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!! Means that arrival time in Los Angeles will now be around 10:00am Sunday morning local time - the rental car is booked to be picked up at 12:00pm, and the agency shuts at 2:00pm. Could be cutting it fine - if needs be, a call may have to be made to Budget when we hit America!!

So for now, we wait...................

OK, I know, I said I was going to update this on Wednesday night, and it's now Saturday!!! I beg forgiveness - it's been a busy week with work and travel preparation!!

But here we are, at 7:05am on Saturday morning, just one day away from the holiday that we've been looking forward to since mid-November last year. I'm officially on holidays now, according to Central Cleaning Supplies, my employer of four (and likely many more) years, which is an awesome feeling!! Not completely free yet though, as I've got a pretty big Saturday ahead of me with the Eastern Football League, hosting our EFL Saturday broadcast from 1pm until 5pm today of the Vermont vs Scoresby Division One clash, which (warning - shameless plug coming up) you can listen to live at www.efl.org.au, then dashing back to EFL headquarters to send through the day's scores to the daily Melbourne newspapers and organise our EFL Sunday radio show for tomorrow morning - a show I would normally be hosting if not for Qantas Flight QF93 waiting to whisk me away to the land of liberty!!

So why am I doing all of this work for a show that I'm not going to be on?? The man entrusted with the responsibility of these shenanigans as a rule, EFL Media Manager Anthony Stanguts, is in Italy at time of writing, courtesy of SBS and Heineken, and a contest that they ran for a trip to the UEFA Champions League soccer final which occured last Thursday morning (AUS time). Old Gutsy didn't enter the competition himself - a mate entered for him - but was lucky enough to receive the phonecall saying that he'd won!! Luckily, he did the right thing and took his mate with him!!! I thrust up my hand as soon as I heard and asked for the responsibility of leading the broadcast today, as I love the five-year involvement I have had with the EFL as part of the Media Team, and also hope that by adding these strings to my bow, it might pay off down the track somewhere!!

But I digress, and will start talking again about our holiday rather than someone else's - after all, it's my blog, not Gutsy's!!! I almost can't believe that I'm on the verge of my first overseas trip - and my first plane trip that will be longer than an hour (in contrast, Sarah is a more experienced aeronaut, having completed air journeys from Melbourne to Port Douglas, a marathon four-hour journey in contrast to my Melbourne to Sydney and Melbourne to Hobart efforts, where the plane takes off, levels out for long enough to have one beer, then starts to descend again!!). Part of the reason that it feels so surreal is because this trip has been in the planning stage for over seven months now, and it's strange to feel that all of the planning, all of the research and all of the dreaming is starting to pay off.

The seeds of this trip were planted back in mid-November 2008, when I was on my last annual leave stretch. Sarah didn't have that time off, and so I was a dutiful boyfriend and picked her up from work a couple of times that week (we don't live together yet - I'm in the Melbourne inner north-westen suburb of Avondale Heights, and Sarah resides in trendy inner-eastern Hawthorn). One night as we were sitting in her flat talking, and I was making Sarah slightly jealous by regaling her with stories of the nothing-ness that was being performed on my time off, we started talking about the possibility of taking an overseas trip together. We started throwing up destinations, and when Sarah mentioned "America", an alarm bell went off in my sub-conscious. In my younger and more impressionable years, I was almost infatuated with America, going so far as even performing the Star Spangled Banner as part of a talent show when I was in Grade 6 (won the show too - must have been back in the days when I was partly able to hold a tune)!! I probed further, and Sarah got quite excited when she mentioned the prospect of seeing Times Square in New York and Sea World in San Diego. I immediately thought of the Boston Red Sox, the US Major League Baseball team whom I have taken quite an interest in, to the point of almost becoming as fanatical about the Sox as I am of my beloved Western Bulldogs in the AFL. The next day, during a prolonged bout of nothingness, I decided to jump on the Internet and do a bit of research into this trip. The thought was always to do a "road trip" across America, as I love nothing more than to jump in the car and explore the country via driving long stretches of highway, so I spent the afternoon and devised an itinerary of sorts, which was met with excitement when presented to the beautiful one later that night!! The decision was then made - we're going to America, and we're doing it in June 2009 - a risky proposition for a dedicated footy-head like myself, but given that the Queen's Birthday weekend here in Oz represents a week off for the EFL, it made the decision much easier!!! It was almost fate that Qantas announced a 2-for-1 sale on international fares a little over a week later, and dollars were coughed up and flights booked!!!

So here we are now, almost ready to go. Below is our intended itinerary for the trip, so you have an idea of where we are going to be from day-to-day. This itinerary has gone through some tweaking since mid-November - it started with us touring America in a Recreational Vehicle before I decided that driving on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road in a vehicle much larger than anything I had driven before wasn't the best of ideas, and has since been changed to a intermediate-sized car from Budget, with hotel accomodation on our travels as the go.

Sunday May 31st has the potential to be the longest day in history. Actually, scratch the word "potential", it will be the longest day in history!!! Qantas Flight QF93 leaves Melbourne Airport at 10:15am, meaning that the recommended time of getting to the airport in 8:15am, which means 7:15am for someone like myself that has a phobia of being late!! It also means that rising from the boudouir no later than 6:00am is on the cards, which hasn't impressed Sarah, who just L-O-V-E-S a good sleep-in. I suggested the possibility of rising at 5:00am, but was quickly given "the look" - a fearful thing, as anyone who has experienced it from one Sarah Jane Lynn will testify - so that idea was quickly consigned to the back-burner!! The flight takes a touch over fourteen hours, as we have scored a direct flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, which means that the plane is scheduled to touch down at LAX at approxmately 12:30am Monday morning, Melbourne time. Given, though, that there is a seventeen-hour time difference between Melbourne and LA at the moment, it actually means that we get into LA at 7:30am Sunday morning local time, which makes me wonder whether Qantas have emplyed DeLorean, with the addition of Doc Brown's flux capacitor, to fashion their fleet of aircraft!!! We've booked our rental car in Los Angeles, but I decided to book at an inner-city location rather than at the airport for a couple of reasons. The first, being a dedicated tight-wad, is so that I don't have to pay airport taxes on the rental, saving us a good hundred bucks, and the second is so I can get a look at the intricacies of American freeway traffic before I jump behind the wheel. The car is booked to be picked up at midday, which will give us time to clear Customs and Border Protection, catch the LAX Flyaway bus to Union Station (for you Aussies, the equivalent of catching the Skybus from Tullamarine to Spencer Street...I mean, Southern Cross Station), jumping on the Metro Purple Line subway train, alighting at the Wiltshire/Western station, and walking to the Budget Rent-A-Car outlet on Wilshire Boulevard to pick up the car. From there, we're driving to San Diego, about a two hour drive from all reports, where the Good Nite Inn Sea World San Diego will be our destination for the first two nights - accomodation that I booked just before Christmas when I found it on the internet for $AUD54 per night, and thought I couldn't pass up a bargain like that!!

Monday June 1st is Sea World day - the gates open at 10:00am, and we'll be there waiting to have Breakfast with Shamu, the killer whale who is the star of the show at Sea World, and whom Sarah is most excited about seeing.

Tuesday June 2nd sees us venture to the San Diego Zoo for the day, before the big road trip to Boston begins!! Anticipating to hit the road at about 3:00pm, and will make to Las Vegas that night before turning in, likely at the Las Vegas Hilton, and turning our back on the allure of Sin City for the night, knowing that we will be back later in the journey.

Wednesday June 3rd is when the fun begins!! Full day of driving awaits, with Denver, Colorado being the intended destination, which means about twelve hours of driving through what is reported to be some pretty incredible scenery, where we could experience the searing heat of the Nevada desert and see snow on the peaks of the Rocky Mountains in the same day!! The driving continues for the next three days, with the intended overnight stops being Des Moines in Iowa on the Thursday night, and Cleveland in Ohio on the Friday night, before rolling into Boston late Saturday afternoon (with the hope of maybe catching the Red Sox that Saturday night against the Texas Rangers - but don't tell Sarah, I haven't spoken to her about that yet!!)

Sunday June 7th is my highlight day of the trip. We rise early in Boston to head to the venerable Fenway Park, sacred home of the Boston Red Sox and one of the oldest Major League baseball stadiums in America. To make sure I got tickets to see the Sox at Fenway, which has been sold out for every game in the last 460-odd, I purchased a Red Sox Nation Ultimate Fan Pack back in January (the equivalent of buying an AFL membership). The Fan Pack gave me not only two tickets to a game of my choice, but also a free Fenway Park tour for two, which will be undertaken at 10:00am on this Sunday. I've entertained the thought of taking a Sherrin with me and having a kick on the hallowed turf, but fears of being frowned upon may see the footy left behind!! Then, at 1:35pm, the Red Sox play the Rangers again in the final game of a three-game series, which is going to be so awesome that words wouldn't do it justic.

Monday June 8th sees us leave Boston, and drive for four hours to one of the busiest cities in the world, New York. Times Square is high on Sarah's agenda, as is, unfortunately for the bank account, shopping on Fifth Avenue, and we'll take in a New York tour and a Broadway Show in the two nights we are there.

Wednesday June 10th, which is my brother Daniel's birthday, will be celebrated by taking the short drive from New York to Philadelphia, doing my best Rocky impersonation running up the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, then spending the rest of the day weighing in on the often-raged debate about which of the host of local merchants makes the best of Philly's signature dish, the Philly Cheesesteak - yum!! Frugality will be ignored, as will belts and zippers!!

Thursday June 11th sees us leave Philadelphia, and hit the open road again. The intended destination is Orlando, Florida, where we are booked into the Courtyard at the Marriott Village in Lake Buena Vista for three nights from Saturday June 13th, so we pretty much have three days of quite leisurely driving in order to make it down to Orlando.

Once we hit Orlando, though, it's Mickey time. Saturday June 14th and Sunday June 15th will be spent at Walt Disney World in Orlando, which should be an awesome experience. The Saturday also marks a year since I once again set eyes on the most beautiful girl in the world, and Sarah and I re-started a relationship that laid dormant for seven years, since our days spent at the Student Village whilst studying at university.

We'll leave Orlando on Tuesday June 16th - the birthday of both Sarah's brother Andrew's and her cousin Brigid- and spend three days working our way up to Elvis country in Memphis, then swinging onto Interstate 40, which has replaced the old Route 66, the famous Mother Road, to Flagstaff in Arizona, which we intend to hit on Thursday June 18th. Flagstaff sits a comfortable hour's drive from the Grand Canyon, which will occupy us on Friday 19th June, before again hitting the road late that day and making trip number two to Las Vegas!!

This time, though, we're doing Vegas properly, spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in Vegas, before leaving on Monday 22nd to head to San Francisco.

Tuesday June 23rd is my darling girl's birhday, so we'll spend the day in San Francisco doing whatever Sarah wants, which will likely be a sleep-in, followed by a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, chips for lunch, sightseeing and shopping during the afternoon then more chips, or an alternative potato-based dish for dinner!!!

Wednesday June 24th will see us drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles down Highway 1, reportedly one of the most beautiful drives in America (similar to the Great Ocean Road for us Aussies), before spending the night in Los Angeles and flying back to Australia at 11:45pm on Thursday June 25th. After a five hour stop over in Auckland, New Zealand, we will arrive back in Melbourne at around 3:30pm on Saturday June 27th - unfortunately too late to go to the footy!!

Well, that's our trip in a nutshell (and a bloody big nutshell it is!!). I'll be updating our blog every night (US time, so expect it late morning-early arvo in Australia), so make sure you check back in - I promise I'll try and make it funny and informative for you - as well as posting our happy snaps along the way.

I can't wait for these next twenty-four hours to pass, then go on the trip I have been dreaming about for so long now, with the love of my life by my side.....

G'day all (thought I'd start things off as Aussie as possible)!!

Welcome to the Travel Blog for our upcoming trip across America. Plane flies out on Sunday morning, meaning that seven months of planning, researching and anxious waiting are almost coming to an end!!!

We'll put a more detailed first post up later in the week (check around Wednesday night Melbourne time) - just wanted to put this up so that you didn't see a weird-looking blank screen when you enter our blog page!!!

Check back with you then,

Shaun and Sarah