Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

1) I’m back and recovered from jetlag but I still feel like shit. Achy joints and flu-like symptoms. It sucks.
2) I’m starting to put up photos from my trip up at Fotki. Don’t bitch. There are a lot of photos and I’m uploading them when I can. Hey, you take 1400 photos and then try to post-process them all…
3) There’s a finite chance that Philly Girl from days of yore and Jackie attended the same party two weeks ago. Spooky.
4) I went to see Jamie Cullum last night. Holy shit he’s awesome live. A twentysomething ADHD short jazz singer with a mop of hair on his head. But a kickass live show.
5) The bachelor pad is going to be no more sooner than I had expected. My landlady is selling the place that I live, so I need to pack up and find a new pad. Oy.
6) I have had a busy week and need to catch up on sleep.
7) Mark Cuban is pretty smart. I agree with a lot of his investment and philosophies about technology. YouTube and Facebook are both overvalued and overhyped stocks. So imagine my happiness when Cuban said that only a moron would buy YouTube. lol

So I’m sitting in the Qantas Club lounge (First class r0x0rZ!) drinking Monteith’s before getting on my plane home. I did have an awesome final morning in Auckland before I decided to head to the airport.

First, I got up the nerve to do to the AJ Hackett Bungy Jump at 9:30. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I sac’d up and worked up the courage to jump (well, fall) off head first (tethered by my feet) and bounce up and down a few times before they pulled me upright. For all of those of you who were praying for a mishap so you could get my frequent flyer miles, I’m sorry. They did take good pictures – the first being prejump and like “what the fuck?” and the second is as I prepare to take the plunge. I had shitty form. But hey, I got a free fucking tshirt out of the deal.

Second, I decided to crash the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. We (as members of the CYC) lack proper reciprocity rights. Normally, you have to get a letter from your club of origin and present that upon arrival saying you’re a member in good standing, blah blah blah. I just walked in and talked at great length with the front desk staff and had a drink at the bar. It was nice to see fellow yachtsmen, especially a club that has won and defended the America’s Cup (but lost it to those damn Swiss). I was happy that I visited and kind of frightened that I wasn’t dressed properly or welcome. But it was a good time and I can’t wait to visit their facility again.

So I’m heading back and can’t wait to celebrated my belated birthday with my friends. Somehow I get the impression that they’ll stick me with the bill…

Edit: Yes Tim I KNOW THE LINKS ARE BROKEN GOSH!
I put the pics here.

So today I did a tour of New Zealand Wineries in Auckland, courtesy of John Meadows at Wine Trail Tours. It was my first real experience with wine other than the “oh, it sounds like it’ll match” with wine. I don’t know shit about wine. I’d like to pass myself off as a cultured individual, but for serious, those who know me will deny this. Wine is intimidating. You hear people talk about wine and how it has various qualities, blah blah blah that most people don’t understand. To me, it’s “good” or “not good” – very binary.

It was interesting to me, mainly because I was given an opportunity to taste approximately 30 wines without fear of saying that it didn’t work for me. What I found out that with the 5 wineries, I like sauvignon blanc and pinots. To me, that was interesting. I did get to talk about what I drank in terms that I considered snobbish without feeling like a tool. It was good to have a guy like John explain what the hell I was drinking and why things were a certain way. I did find out that a lot of NZ wines lack corks, mainly because corks tend to cause around 5-10% bacterial infection rates that makes the wine taste like shit. I’m still used to the fact that most US “wines” that have screwed on caps are the super shitty Boones farm variety. Needless to say that I am bringing home a lot of wine (I got one bottle for you, Tim and Holly) that I will *have* to drink, preferably not with myself because that would imply I have a problem.

Tomorrow I leave Auckland on the way home. I’ll be sad to come back but I feel glad that I came down here. I will come back though.

Well, I’ve completed my first few days in Melbourne and am waiting in the Qantas Club lounge for my flight over to Auckland. I’ll get to that in a minute.

I’m not doing too well. It’s been a shitty birthday and I’m worried because that my mom and stepdad’s house was at one point under 4 feet of water due to the massive flooding that Northwest Indiana got. But they’re resiliant but still, it sucks and I feel bad for them.

The flight itself was marred by weather delays, which totally sucked ass. I had to beg to switch to another flight to LA in order to have an attempt at making my connection to Melbourne. It was a flat out sprint once I landed – from Terminal 4 to the hellish International Terminal. I was told that despite having a valid boarding pass, the security mope said it wasn’t valid and that I had to go to Qantas to recheck. Well, the Qantas groundstaff in LAX were complete assholes and rude. So, after rechecking security – I had to haul ass to the gate and was the last one on. But the flight wasn’t that bad. And I knew that I was kinda fucked because of the connect and would see my luggage later.

But once I was onboard the flight wasn’t that bad. The food sucked, but it’s airline food. On arrival, my luggage was MIA but that’s expected. I finally made it to the hotel around 10am after an endeavor with Skybus and proceded to get on through my day in Melbourne. I took a lot of pictures and will use the flight to further collect my thoughts and write about what I did each day.

Oh well. I’m going to get some coffee and write more once I have a working and free internet connection in Auckland.

I got a new travel buddy today. His name is Flat Stanley, and I will be bringing him with on my trips around the world for Mrs. Fuhrmann’s Second Grade class from Douglas MacArthur Elementry in Indianapolis. Mrs. Fuhrmann is my friend Amy’s sister. I am glad to have a traveling buddy who doesn’t take up much room, doesn’t care about what hotels I stay at or won’t mind if I go out to the pubs.

I’m sitting on the floor at San Jose airport after visiting my friend Drew for the day and getting out of the urban highrise living that I do and went to suburban sprawl. The Bay Area is nice but I could never live there. California is indeed a special place.

Yesterday morning was quite exciting. My flight left O’Hare at 7:55am. I wanted to be out the door by 5:45am because the El is pretty unpredictable sometimes and I didn’t want to hurry. The last thing to do when you have an early morning flight is to take sleep medicine and wake up at 6:50am. I quickly showered, finished packing and hopped in a cab and sped to the airport. The good news is that the minimum time it takes to the airport with a highly motivated and speeding taxi driver is about 22 minutes with zero traffic. I was able to check in with 3 minutes to spare and walked down to ran (well, waddled – since I’m in sandals and my knee is sore). Regardless, it was quite interesting. I did learn that if you plan on getting up early and packing before you go, you more or less jinxed yourself. You’ll oversleep.

But I had a good time. I ate pretty good Indian food and had a snack in Japantown as well as got to have one of the infamous Jack-In-The-Box milkshakes. they are pretty thick and rich and like drinking slurry because of the viscosity.

The TSA’s pointless object search is still underway, randomly searching people’s stuff at the gate to make sure that they are not smuggling Starbucks onboard or that bottle of water to keep themselves hydrated. It’s stupid and rather reactive. But whatever. Stupidity gets people hurt.

My mouth hurts. Fuck this braces shit.

Thanks to her kickass pitching, the US wins the Gold at the World Softball Championships. Hurray for Cat.

I spent the weekend at Disney with my mom, which was fun. Disney isn’t a single’s hangout and it was fun to do nothing. We flew Delta down, so I got to experience Atlanta’s airport (shithole) and Cincinnati on the return (the new terminal is nice). Other than that we met up with my step-grandmother who asked more or less if I’m gay because I’m not married. What a self-esteem booster.

Anyway, I’m off to San Jose on Saturday morning to chill out for the day and head back. Nine more days until I’m off to Australia, 11 more until my birthday. Hurray for me!