loPEZ Dispenser

As I sit at the desk in my hotel room, looking out of the floor to ceiling window that offers a spectacular view of Melbourne I cannot help but smile knowing that this has been a great trip. At the same time I am listening to Mae’s “The Everglow” on my mp3 player. The music is making me more homesick than I have been the entire trip. If you have never listened to “The Everglow” then I emphatically insist that you do. It is nothing less than one of the best and most complete albums I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The reason it makes me homesick is that I have subconsciously associated the album with my wife and son. In the past year I have played it (overplayed it Carrie would say) basically everywhere with them: on the stereo at home, in the car and while out on our family runs. Every time I hear the songs I get that warm feeling that comes when thinking about time spent with family. The same thing occurs when I listen to Third Eye Blind, except that the feelings are associated with Carrie and not Andrew, since he was not yet around when their albums were released. There is no one in this world I would rather go to see 3EB with than Carrie. She doesn’t even like their music that much, but she knows how much I do. As a side note, Mae is going to be at the House of Blues in Orlando in the beginning of August. Carrie did not want to go (I wish she did), so I am going with my friends Joe and Luke. I really hope that they (Mae) don’t let me down as I have big expectations.

Back to Australia. The majority of my time here has been spent working. During the week we really do nothing more than drive and work. Yesterday made up for all of that. We went on a bus tour of the Great Ocean Road, which sits on Australia’s southern coast a couple of hours from Melbourne. In 2002 Carrie and I drove the entire Pacific Coast Highway in California. I loved that trip, and the views were breathtaking, but they simply cannot compare with what I saw yesterday. The 12 Apostles region was by far the most beautiful scene of nature I have ever seen. I hesitate to say that it was the most beautiful site I have ever seen, because any straight man must admit that if shown a picture of the 12 apostles with a beautiful woman in view his eyes would, at least momentarily, focus on the woman instead of the ocean, rocks and cliffs. So, besides God’s greatest creation, woman (with my wife at the top of that list, of course), the 12 Apostles region was the most beautiful thing I have ever laid my eyes on. I took a lot of pictures, but looking at them simply does not compare with being there. The pictures are amazingly beautiful, but they lack the sounds, the smell of the ocean, the view of the enormous waves forming far out in the ocean and the final crescendo as they smash into the rocks and sandy beach. I promise you Carrie, that we will come to Australia together. I want you to see what I saw, and I want to be at that magical place with you. Maybe when we do Tahiti or Fiji we can take some extra time and come here. The 12 Apostles stop was only one of many, and all of them had scenes that were extraordinarily beautiful. Go to my Flickr site to see all of the pictures.

Now that I have gushed over the coastal views for far too long I will tell about the rest of the day. In the morning, we stopped at a place that had koala bears. These animals were perched lazily in their eucalyptus trees, making no mind to the fact that there were 25 tourists taking pictures of them. I think that koalas and sloths should be classed into the same animal family, even if they don’t share any other trait than laziness and the need to breathe. At this same site there was a tree full of very pretty birds that would land on you. There is a picture of me with one on my arm at Flickr. Another stop was an Australian rainforest. The classification of “rainforest” is determined by the amount of rainfall and the density of the foliage. Our tour guide said that to be a rainforest 95% of the forest floor must be shaded on a sunny day. I will take his word for it, as I don’t feel like looking up this fact to verify it, but this location definitely met those criteria. We took a hike at the rainforest and saw a lot of really big trees. The ones in California were bigger, but don’t let that make you think that these were not huge.

The tour guide/bus driver was a little bit crazy behind the wheel. He drove very fast on a lot of windy, cliff edged roads. We made it back alive (and on time). I spent most of today walking around the city looking for souvenirs. The weather turned rainy in the early afternoon, which I took as God’s sign to me that I needed to go workout in the hotel’s health club. I am accustomed to hotels with small excercise rooms that have at most a treadmill, an elliptical machine and a small resistance machine. This one has a health club that is as large and more upscale than the YMCA in Oviedo.

I will be heading back home in just a couple of days. I have enjoyed this trip, but cannot wait to be back in Florida with Carrie and Andrew. I was told that since I have been gone Andrew learned how to say “thank you.” I am pretty ancious to hear hom say that. They miss me a lot too, so maybe we will have one of those “running towards each other in the airport” moments. That would be nice.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 6:34 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.