Australia

 

What a great week.  This trip, while it was the first of what I expected from this job, it was also my first time to Australia, in fact, my first time to the southern hemisphere, so I was rather excited.  I was able to tack on 3 free days among the work, and in typical Swenson "Kamikaze travel" fashion, I fit a lot in.  If every trip is like this it will kill me!

I left Denver at 8pm on Friday, changing in Los Angeles, and leaving there at 11:45pm my body time.  I was nervous about feeling good after an all night flight in a middle seat so I was focusing on that.. But since it was so late, I had no difficulty falling asleep.  And since I sleep so well, I slept most of the trip, and awoke for breakfast.  In the middle somewhere I turned on a movie, but couldn't stay awake... so slept.  Got into Sydney at 7:30am and had the whole day ahead of me.  I didn't fight any jet lag at all during the trip.

Sydney
After checking into the hotel, I walked downtown.  Number one on my list was the Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, and The Rocks section of town (a shopping district pretty much between the opera house and bridge) that has a street market every Saturday and Sunday.  So I hit the shopping first, fun stuff, street music, street food, then walked over to get a good look at the bridge.  I considered walking across it, but decided my #1 priority should be the opera house so I walked that direction.

On the way, I passed a cruise ship in port.  I saw a free contortionist show where "bendy Wendy" crawled into a 16"x16"x16" glass box.  I also saw a couple Aborigines showing and selling their native wares.

Entertainment in line

I walked around Circle Quay to the Opera house, and naturally "fell" in line with the crowd... When the crowd stopped, I realized this was actually a line (or queue as I should be calling it), so I asked someone what was going on.  It was "open day" at the Opera House, a rare day when they let the public tour the building, backstage, costumes, everything... Cool. I stayed in line.  Long line, an hour, but worth it.  Turns out there are 5 theaters.  Beautiful inside and out.

I was amused at this

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Beautiful geometries inside as you might expect!

And Outside!

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Another Theater

The Main Theater

And Another

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And every good tour ends in the gift shop!!

A lego Opera House Replica

Barbie in a Sydney Opera House Dress

When I got out of there, I headed off to grab a Sydney Geocache then stopped to sit on the ground for a few minutes touching my toes to the grass.  Touching the earth is supposed to help with jetlag as your body can identify with your location in the world... Hokey, I know, but feels good and doesn't hurt.. In fact it felt GREAT after walking all day.  Then I hightailed it back to the hotel to get cleaned up to go out with the team leader who invited me to Sydney this week.  We walked to a popular destination close to my hotel, Darling Harbor.

The view from the IBM office, unfortunately no very clear days.  And the glass interferes with the photo.

Melbourne
I had been invited to help an Australian IBM team prepare and interview with a university to provide a facilities system that includes TRIRIGA.  We met long days Mon-Wed, two days in Sydney and a day in Melbourne before interviewing at Monash University in Melbourne on Thursday.  I felt lucky to be able to experience two places in Australia in my week long trip.  (And of course I was able to geocache in both).  I also felt lucky to work with and get to know some Australians.  The IBM building in Melbourne is right on the vibrant river walk, and my hotel was across the river about 1/2 mile away so the walk to the building and back alone was full of adventure, and beautiful.

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Look closely (click on the photo)
The URS building (who I used to work for).

The IBM Building (who I now work for)... Good move?

Thursday evening after the interview, my colleagues left town, but I decided to spend another day in Melbourne.  I started off by meeting up with a friend, Julie, that I met on the Send Out Cards Cruise 4 years ago (to the day apparently).  Julie used to work in an area just south of town on the bay near Port Melbourne, the ritzy port community.

We had dinner at a restaurant she used to work at that overlooked the beach.  Obviously, I don't know her very well, but since we met, she and I have kept touch on Facebook.  I was so glad to have a local Australian friend to show me around and learn a bit about the area, plus it was really nice to catch up.  On the way to dinner we stopped at the beach at the famous Brighton Bathing Boxes. (http://www.brightonbathingbox.org.au/).

All week long I had been asking and planning what to do with my free Friday and Saturday.  I was very tempted to go to "Philip Island" where people watch the colony of penguins that come in from the sea to roost every night... BUT all the Australians I asked about it indicated that it was a tourist trap, it cost a lot of money to ride on a huge bus for half the day and meet up with 1000 other tourists and stand on the edge of pier with a chance to glimpse a penguin.  The final deciding factor was the review that said they "loved it, and the tour gives you binoculars so you can see them.".. hummm!  I agreed there was better things to to with my time.

One fatality of the trip... my curling iron which melted into two pieces!

I did however want to see animals.  It seemed animals are one thing that sets Australia apart.  So  in the end I rented a car and drove 80 kilometers (on the wrong side of the road) to the Healesville Animal Sanctuary, which was really just a small zoo that specializes in Australian animals in natural environments.  But the treat was the drive, through the lovely Yarra valley, wine country, and alpaca country.  I was keeping my eyes out for alpacas and saw a bunch of kangaroos... then a few miles later a bunch more lying in someones field, and when I stepped closed to get a closer look they scattered,  hopping away and over the fence into the adjoining farm... Very cool!

I also loved the birds in Australia.  I'm not a huge bird watcher but they have beautiful and interesting birds there.  These Ibis with the long curved beak are like geese, messy, no one likes them and they are obnoxious, having been known to peck at children.  In the zoo they were shooing them away from the school kids because they were trying to steal their sandwiches.  Then Cockatoos were everywhere!  They were like pigeons or sea gulls here.  Lots of other parrot type birds around too, flying right in front of the car.

After the zoo I went to a nature park with hiking trails and such and took a picnic lunch I had bought at the grocery store.  There was a girl feeding the birds there.  Cockatoos, parrots and even a wild kookaburra.  Cool!

On the way home I passed an Alpaca ranch (coincidentally "Santa Fe Alpacas"), so I decided to stop in and see how alpaca life was different in Australia and US.  It was very interesting and brought back lots of memories.  I got spit on by his girls.  Many things the same, a few different.  Like us, their show industry is somewhat corrupt and doesn't reflect the fleece industry.  Their major customer are the Chinese, so a lot of their marketing focuses on that.  I think the biggest difference is that realizing the labor is too high to process their fleece, they combine the fleece in their country and ship it by shipping container to Peru and have it processed there, then they stock their store with products made from Australian grown, but Peruvian processed fleece products.  We would be ahead if we did that here, as our Alpaca industry is strong but out product industry is weak.

I also happened by a "little league" Cricket practice going on.  Surrounded by the "gum tree" (Eucalyptus) forest.

The next morning I drove out to the "Queen Victoria Market"  a football field sized farmers market/shopping market.  I paid for 1 hour of parking and saw only a small fraction of the shops.  I could have been there all day.  Big variety of quality of things, but lots of life there.  They I drove by the Botanical Gardens and around that section of town, lovely views of Melbourne there, before returning the car and flying back to Sydney.

Queen Victoria Market

The Royal Arcade

Melbourne

I only had a couple adventures due to driving in Australia.  The biggest was the one time I did pull out on the road on the wrong side.  Looking up there were cars coming right at me in my lane, so I pulled off to the right to let the traffic pass.  They did, SLOWLY, as they were not sure what i was doing.  The fourth one was a cop who stopped to ask what I was doing. "Well," I explained, "I missed my turn and so turned around and saw the traffic and decided to pull over until they passed."  So the cop asked, "Uh, ok, but why did you pull over to the right?"  And honestly I had no answer except that I am an American (Doesn't that explain it all?).  He said "OK, just so long as you don't have a head-on." (Say that in your best Australian accent and you'll get it!).  Other than that the troubles were only that about half the time I got into the car and was half way in before I realized that I was getting in on the passenger side, and I think EVERY TIME I turned the corner I turned on my windshield wipers, trying to be very conscientious about using my turn signals.

Sydney again and Manly
In Sydney I did a little more shopping, had my last "Pie Face Pie" and decided to take the Ferry to Manly Peninsula as my last Australian adventure.  First Pie Face.... I love Pie Face and want to open a franchise here.  I spent the week asking everyone I met what was "Australian food".  Apparently there is none.  The only suggestion was a government promoted diet of "meat and 3 veg".  Sydney and Melbourne are pretty cosmopolitan and the Asian influence is obvious there, so we ate a number of Thai meals.  Nothing else stood out... except Pie Face.  Pie Face has small street stores that sell meat pies.  I loved the idea, they were different than something you find here, and although not gluten free they were darn good.  Only had a couple but I'm ready to make my gluten free version here.

The ferry to Manly was pleasant.  It's still early spring in Australia so somewhat nippy (since of course I sat outside!) but nice.  it took about 1/2 hour.  Then on Manly I walked the mile long strip of obviously tourist focused stores to the main Manly beach.  I walked up the beach a bit looking at the kite surfers (popular in Australia) then thought about grabbing dinner.  But I wasn't really hungry (Pie Face having just been consumed) and no restaurants struck me, so I headed back to the wharf thinking I might just catch the sunset going back to Sydney.

But as I approached the wharf I was walking along the beach and there were signs blocking off that end of the beach from the public because there were 2 pair of nesting penguins that come in every night about sunset.  they come up the surf, pop out and run up the beach and under the pier.  Wow.  Cool!  And I didn't even have to pay.  So I sat my butt down and waited for about an hour and a half.  The National Parks folks there were not sure if a boat that had been parked on the beach would deter the little guys from coming up, so maybe they were late, but I saw one come out of the ocean.  I jumped up to tell the Parks people, and they said yeah, they were watching this one penguin that had come up to them and was trying to get out on the street!  Wow, he was RIGHT THERE, stepping on their feet.  Pictures were difficult because by this time it was dark and they did not allow flash photography.  But we watched him for about 30 minutes and he ended up running up the other walkway and under a light... so I got a couple decent shots.  These are called Fairy Penguins (or "little" penguins).  They grow to about 13 inches high at maturity, so this was an adult male.  Totally made my day.

Took the ferry back to Sydney, walked back to my hotel (got to see at the Australian folks out on a Saturday night.. My the skirts are short, or am I just old!).  Next morning flew back to the states, my plane landed in Los Angeles about 3 hours before I took off!

Meanwhile at home it's Halloween and Nai has carved his first Jack-o-lantern.  We made Masks from Wintercroft.com... Very cool!  Thanks for the suggestion Sara Grubb.  And I am getting ready to travel again tomorrow.  I'll save that post for next time.

 

Domestic Travel

So I'm flying (again) and the WiFi on Southwest is down (dang).  My knitting and my computer are in my bag in the overhead.   I'm delinquent on my blogging,  so I'm typing this on my phone. ...  I know.  I hate it too, but giving it a try.   I've been considering a tablet, just for such an occasion.

Anyhow,  I'm flying to Atlanta today.   Just got home from Australia (blog post to follow) Sunday, and going to Virginia next Sunday. The travel has kicked in. 

While I was in Las Vegas I signed on 1/2 time to the IBM team supporting Lockheed Martin.  SO most of the travel of late has been getting up to speed on that job.  I had a 2 day trip to Manassas, Virginia,  a 2 day to Detroit, Michigan,  and now a 1 day trip to Atlanta.  I'm hoping the Lockheed Martin work will now settle in and the work will be from home.  That is the promise anyway...  A few weeks at home wouldn't hurt my feelings.  Those three trips were pretty routine with nothing to mention, I did get in a couple geocaches, but other than that is was fly, work, and fly home.. perhaps a meal or two with new colleague I am trying to get to know.

During the travels it's interesting that Colorado color are long gone, this is Detroit, and 2 weeks later when I went to Atlanta they were just starting.

But I left Las Vegas after my last blog post and flew to Salt Lake City, where Mike and Nai met me, driving from Colorado, and my daughter, Kelsey, joined us, flying from Albuquerque.   It was an eventful weekend starting with a joint birthday party for lots of family members, the party was at Mike's sister's house and with her daughter getting married that weekend we had about 27 at the party, including a number of relatives we hadn't seen in a long time or I had never met.

One notable mention was that Mike and I decided to use the occasion to toast our renewed commitment to our relationship.   In the toast he happened to mention that we had filed with the county... making us legally, no questions left, MARRIED.  I had requested we do this because I wanted to seal any ambiguity about our status.  But I was most surprised at the reaction.  We were greeted with congratulations and well wishes all around.  So in the end I guess the confirmation was well overdue as we have been common law married for a couple of years by now.  Just before I left for Australia we celebrated our 15th anniversary... Life is good right now for us.

Mike took a day to go fishing with his son, Jed.  While Kelsey, Nai, and I, went to meet the new grandson, Johnny, and another soon to be grandson Rider that Mike's daughter, Sara, is about to adopt.  Rider is a delightfully pleasant soul and is almost completely deaf.  In fact he was just nearing his second birthday and just about to get a cochlear implant. Johnny was only 2 months old and was asleep in my arms nearly the entire visit. It was fun seeing Sara, Cory, and the other 3 kids too.

Mike's nephew generously invited Nai to the bachelor party where they drove go-carts and has great fun.  Kelsey and I went to the bachelorette party but ran out of gas on the way.  We were pushing the car off the highway when a man and his son got out to help push, then a cop stopped to help with traffic control, and finally someone saw our situation while driving by and returned with a gallon of gas!!  Utah is so nice!  By the time we arrived at the party, we had missed the "twister with paint can lids" and we were the only guests not covered in paint.   Can't say I'm upset about that.

The wedding was beautiful and accompanied by the usual drama.  But while the guests were enjoying the Cold Stone ice cream bar and cotton candy machine, we hardly noticed.  Kelsey flew out at 6 the next morning and Mike, Nai, and I started the 9 hour drive home.

The following day I got my wisdom tooth out, and it turned out to be painless.   I only have 2 wisdom teeth and the doctor recommended I only remove one since the second hasn't broken the gum yet.   So he numbed me up with some Novocaine and reached in and pulled it out.   The whole thing took about 15 minutes.   He told me I would have pain later but I never really did.  Weird!

That weekend the exchange program had an event where we went to Manatou Springs in Colorado and went into a cave there and the kids did a ropes challenge course.  I think they were challenged, but they did great!

 A week and a half later we went down to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta.  We drove down Friday, saw the balloons Saturday morning and had a chance to visit the folks and my kids a bit.  The weather turned out exceptional for a perfect mass accenting morning.  Headed home Sunday.











The following weekend was homecoming.   Nai was really looking forward to it.   They ended up electing him homecoming king.  So he went to the volleyball games, football game, dance and after party.   He had a complete experience including crowd surfing the dance hall.   His friends told him they want him to have great experience in the US.  He said he never could have imagined he could have so much fun.  Meanwhile we had some friends up from Canon City to play games.  He said the photos at the dance were too dark so we have no homecoming photos, but we did get out for a hike the next day that was beautiful.

Mike was recently hired on as a ski instructor at Breckenridge.   He has also signed up to volunteer a couple of days a week at the boys and girls club here in town.  So he'll be keeping busy while I'm travelling.  He also recently bought all the equipment to keep our skis tuned and is learning to do that. .. so as usual, never a dull moment at our house.

Las Vegas

Maybe I mentioned to some of you when I took this job, if they had offered me domestic travel I would not have taken it.  It was the prospect of international travel that intrigues me.  So when I had my final interview with our team manager, he mentioned that I would probably be assigned first thing to training for 3 weeks in London. That was kind of exciting.

Well a few days before I started, I talked to my boss. I wanted to clarify scheduling around the trip to London.  He said, "Oh yeah, I'm glad you asked. I wanted to clarify London."  He said, "One of the trainers is pregnant, and on bed rest. She lives in Las Vegas. Another of the trainers is one of the guys leaving our group. He's been in China and would like to come to the States. So we are moving the training from London to Las Vegas."

Well, having supported TRIRIGA (headquartered in Vegas) for so many years, I have spent more time then I care to ever spend in Las Vegas. Including 7 years ago when I took the same class, and spent 3 weeks in the same building, that I'm in now. I was not very excited.  (Same hotel, same restaurants... Repeat).

A couple of weeks later I had lunch with my boss, (Who coincidentally lives in Denver) and he told me that we have this class cycle in November and then again in January. And since they're having so much trouble with scheduling trainers, I'm going to teach the class in November. Yikes!!

Actually two classes are going on at the same time; A) the one I am taking, with subject matter for what I hope to be doing; and B) training for the job that I have been doing by the seat of my pants for 7 years, and I'm actually hired to do at IBM today.  I was glad to leave Gilbane because of the challenges that job presented, so honestly I could use the opportunity to sit in that class and learn what they're learning, especially if I'm going to be training that in November. So a little stressful contemplating teaching it.

Anyway, our whole team is here in Vegas, so that is nice since many of us have not met each other before. The first night we all went out for dinner. The subject of London in November came up, and it turns out that London is not going to be ready by November so we are delaying that until January. So? Where is the November training? Since it is so late and difficult to organize they decided right there that table that the November training will be in the Washington DC area.   Hummm, I guess I'm glad that is not Vegas. But refer back to that first statement about domestic travel...  I am chomping at the bit to travel overseas!  However, trying to be patient, because by this time next year I may be begging to stay home.

So, we have finished the first two weeks of training.  And actually the more I'm learning about the job, the more I like it. So that's all good.  I sat in class B one day and am devouring that class material in the evenings, and sitting in class A the rest of the time....  I'm a busy girl.  My two Vegas friends (Dan London, and Mike/Melissa Timmerman) and I have had difficulty getting together at all!  But managed a couple of visits each.  Geez!  Glad I'm here for 3 weeks or I wouldn't see them at all!

Meanwhile, at home, our foreign exchange student (Nai) arrived just before I left for Vegas. He started school that first week and has a very aggressive schedule.  He also had significant difficulty with the altitude, and the exhaustion of living in a foreign language.  I told him since I was going to be gone for 5 days, I wanted to hear about 5 new friends he had made.  Friends will help out a lot.  So he does seem to be making friends and settling in well recovering from the altitude by now.   The coldest it ever gets all year long in Thailand is around 70 degrees. These days (early September) it never even hits 70 degrees in Fairplay. I think he's having a bit of a culture shock.  He and Mike are at the ski swap shopping for winter clothes bargains today.

I went home last weekend for the long labor day weekend, and we were going to go camping, but due to the weather and homework schedule we ended up doing some labor day sale shopping, and spent labor day at my sister Monica's house playing games and bar-be-queing before dropping me at the airport to go back to Vegas.  On our day of shopping we did happen to hit Breckenridge at JUST the right time to see the finish line of the Rubber Ducky Race (with 11,000 ducks) and see an art show.  So we managed to make memories!

When I go home from Vegas (Next Friday), Mike's niece is getting married in Salt Lake. So I will fly straight there, Mike and Nai will drive, and my daughter (Kelsey) will be joining us, flying out from Albuquerque. That should be a fun long weekend for all.
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During my travels I intend to pick up a geocache on every trip, square dance on every trip that I can find square dancing, and blog once per trip.... So I do plan to square dance at a club in Vegas this coming Wednesday evening.  Just went to snag a geocache so i could finish my blog... Then (while looking) I remembered I hate Micro caches.  I'll snag one later and update the post.

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Highway 50 Coast to Coast

Last year when I told Mike that the National Square Dance Festival in June 2015 would be in Springfield MA, he said we should consider driving out.  Well by the time summer 2015 rolled around Mike was planning on spending the summer in Montana (where he has wanted to live his whole life).  I thought this summer would be a nice time to stay in Fairplay, be alone, and do WHATEVER I wanted to WHENEVER I wanted to do it.  Since he had planted the idea of driving to MA, I thought I'm going to do it, I'm going to drive, I'm calling it my freedom trip, I'll eat where, when, and what I want, I'll stop when I want, I'll sleep when I'm tired.... No hotels to confine my travel plans, I'd sleep in the car, or if I wanted a hotel I'd get one.... No planning.

Well, Mom didn't like the idea of a "freedom trip".. too dangerous or some other malarky.  But she offered to come with me, so I wouldn't be driving alone, and frankly.... you don't turn mom down on an offer to spend 3 weeks together.  So I agreed that would be fun.  Later she vetoed the sleeping in the car idea, so while freedom was being whittled away, we still had a great trip planned.

Mike and I lived on highway 50 for 7 years in Canon City.  Highway 50 is one of the oldest coast to coast highways.  President Eisenhower decided to build the interstate system after travelling from DC to the West coast on highway 50 in 1919 as a young Lieutenant Colonel in the Army.  It took them 52 days to get the 81 Army vehicles coast to coast, and that was not going to be acceptable is the country had an emergency and had to respond.  There is no Interstate 50 because while the state highway system numbers go North to South the Interstate numbers go South to North, and highway 50 would have caused confusion with Interstate 50 in many states since both were in the middle.  Highway 50 also has a garage sale in May every year where people coast to coast on Highway 50 have a garage sale on the same date.  This is a quirky interesting fact to me, and made me want to drive highway 50 end to end.  This has been on my bucket list for many years.

In February 2015 Mike and I went to Lake Tahoe to ski.  We took highway 50 across Utah and Nevada, including the section known as "the loneliest road in America" on our way to Tahoe.  It was lovely!  I also took a day on that trip to drive on over the mountain to Sacramento, completing the Western half of the trip, from Canon City to Sacramento.

The sign in Sacramento

The drive to Massachusetts was the perfect opportunity to do the Eastern half.  So no decisions needed to be made, get on 50, stay on 50 until you see the ocean in Maryland.  Then turn left and drive to Massachusetts.

I met up with Mom in Pueblo and we had lunch before starting off on the trek.  We also incorporated a geocache in every state as we passed through.  In Kansas we learned that highway 50 followed the Santa Fe trail.  We had dinner in Dodge City, but then rather than stay for the night felt we had to "get out of Dodge".

In Indiana we took a detour off 50 and visited Columbus, another bucket list item of mine.  In Columbus the main employer, Cummins Engine, paid the architectural fees for any public building that agreed to use a name architect off of the Cummins list when Columbus rebuilt the city after WWII.  It was interesting.  We did a walking tour of town.

In West Virginia we stopped in the town, Spencer, where my mother was born.  It had been 80 years (since she was 2) since she had been there.  Obviously she didn't remember anything, but it was fun to go.  We also stopped in Buckhannon where Mom's grandparents lived while she was growing up.  By contrast, many happy memories there.

But then I had my third IBM interview (reference post from 7/26).  We had to spend 24 hours in DC that were not in the itinerary (Yeah ok... I know.. "FREEDOM TRIP"..  why was there an itinerary... Well, I am a Swenson after all!).  But everything was so perfect with the job process, I just knew that had to take priority, so reluctantly, our drive on highway 50 had to end in Washington DC, in front of the capital building.

From DC we went North. Stopped in for a night with my cousin in Maryland, visited the liberty bell, spend a week in Springfield Massachusetts, where I attend Square Dance Caller school for the second year, and the National Square Dance Festival.  Then Mom and I drove home via my birthplace, Madison, Wisconsin (where I hadn't been back to since I was 2) and St Paul/Minneapolis where we were able to visit a cousins daughter, friends from college days, and Dad's cousins that I had not met before.  We concluded our pilgrimage at my sister Monica's house in Loveland, Colorado, where we met up with the rest of the family for the 4th of July. 

Fast forward a month.  My first three days with IBM are in Herndon, VA.  I was to fly in on Sunday for IBM orientation starting on Monday.  I requested as early of flight as I could get, and arrived at Dulles at 2pm.  After waiting for my car for an hour and checking into the hotel, I started back on 50 to complete the highway 50 coast to coast tour in 2015.  Woo hoo!.  The drive was slow through DC and stuck in traffic going over the toll bridge across the Chesapeake Bay, but beautiful!  enjoyed every minute (even the traffic).  I got to Ocean City and dipped my toe in the Atlantic just as the last rays of light were hitting.

I had hoped to stay for dinner, but decided I really better get back.  After all I was starting a new job in the morning.  Our sailing instructor we had on Saturday advised me that the thing to eat in Ocean City was crab.  Well, I did find a place and got some crab cakes to go,

The Sign in Ocean City

Otherwise, the trip to Herndon was great.  I am now an IBMer!  Not too much to say about my first 3 days except that it is exciting to be part of this company.  There we 50 people starting on the same Monday from many different jobs.  I'm sure there are a number of other locations as well.  And they do this every 2 weeks.  Yet, I didn't feel like a cog.  I am a a valued individual, one of 430,000 of us world-wide.  The other guy starting my same job and I did have the opportunity to go out to lunch with our boss.  I also took a moment to enjoy what being in the city has to offer and spent my evenings shopping.  Oh, right, I also need to make a note to sleep more when I travel to help combat the jet lag!  Until next time....