Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Stand up, dammit!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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Australia!

On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 4

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After exploring the areas around the Sydney harbor and the harbor itself we decided to take ferries to some of the surrounding spots for (yet more) hiking and to see some of the beaches. There are so many we couldn’t possibly see them all – we had to skip Bondi Beach and the walks along the point north of the beach to the Hornby Lighthouse. But we knew we wanted to see Manly Beach because the last time my wife came to Australia she stayed there.

On The Road - BretH - On The Road - BretH - Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 4 9
SydneyMay 17, 2024

So our third day in Sydney found us on the 30 minute ferry ride to Manly Beach to hike the North Head, where we knew we would find views of Sydney harbor area from a distance. To warm up we walked along the shore near the Manly ferry port and saw the most unusual thing – a swimming pool built next to the water designed to fill with the incoming tide. Apparently these are found all over the place and provide a place to swim and lounge in the water protected from the surf.

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On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 3

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After Melbourne, with my wife’s teaching stint completed,  we headed to Sydney for several days of adventure. We planned to mostly explore the harbor, and take ferries to do some go the amazing coastal walks that looked promising and were high recommended. If we had time we would find another park off a train route and hike that.

On The Road - BretH - On The Road - BretH - Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 3 6
SydneyMay 17, 2024

The flight from Melbourne to Sydney via Qantas is fast and entirely uneventful. Here we opted for an Uber to our room which was a tiny studio apartment in Potts Point, a peninsula not far from Sydney Harbor. To get from our apartment to the harbor (about one and a quarter miles away) we had to pass through the Sydney Botanical Garden. But first thing (and last thing upon returning) was a mini version of the 1000 steps. Actually only 130 (I counted) they woke us up at the start of the morning walk and tired us out nicely at the end of the day.

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On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 2

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Continuing my series from my trip to Australia we’re still in Melbourne and I have several days on my own to do as much exploring as I can.

On The Road - BretH - On The Road - BretH - Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 2 9
MelbourneMay 15, 2024

I am an avid tennis player and spent weekends in my youth watching tennis on TV – Jimmy Conners, John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, the US Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open. I woke up at 3AM in 2017 to see Roger Federer defeat Rafael Nadal in an epic match  at the Australian Open that marked the beginning of Federer’s renaissance just before retirement. So it was natural that I visit the site of the Australian Open in Melbourne. I had arranged for a tour of Rod Laver stadium but that was canceled at the last minute but the grounds are open for wandering and photographing. Highlights are the iconic statue of Laver outside his stadium, and a small tree-lined square surrounded by the busts of famous Australian tennis players, from the distant and the recent past.

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On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and Sydney

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I recently came back from my first and hopefully not my last visit to Australia. My wife has students in pre- and perinatal trauma resolution and was conducting a class in Melbourne and having been there once herself insisted I come along. Although Australia was really not a bucket-list item for me I am so glad I went! I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity. The trip was long and jet lag (especially on return to the States) was rough, but it’s a wonderful place to visit.

Since my wife was teaching for four days that meant that apart from the wonderful times exploring with her I had several days all to myself in Melbourne (and one in Sydney) which I used to see as much as I could. The stories accompanying the photos will talk about specific places and things we and I did, but I want to share some overall impressions about Australia (or at least Melbourne and Sydney, from the perspective of a North American):

Things are expensive in Australian dollars but the exchange rate was great. So factoring that in it’s maybe even a little cheaper than traveling in the US.

There’s no doubt you are in a very different place, yet there’s no language barrier. There you are, taking in the very different vegetation and trees, and hearing the crazy shrieks of the cockatoos and the brilliantly colored parrots in the trees and all the while you can understand everything people say and shop and go to restaurants and grocery stores stress-free. About the only language issue I encountered was learning to greet people with a proper pronunciation of g’DAY!

There is a feeling of calm and safety that I think is rare to find in the US. I think a large part of it is that there are simply no guns anywhere. It’s not until I visited Australia that I realized that in the US there’s a pervasive undercurrent of unease and tenseness that, for me at least, only goes away when I am out in nature. Australia felt different; the entire time we were there spending heaps of time  plying the streets of two major cities we heard exactly one siren. And that was a fire engine.

People were unfailingly polite, even (or especially) the drivers. The best example I can give is when I was approaching a marked pedestrian crossing and there was a motorcycle food delivery driver coming fairly fast down the street. As a former motorcycle messenger myself I was completely prepared for the driver to press through quickly front of me but no, he stopped at the crosswalk and without a hint of impatience waited for me to step off the curb and cross and only then continue on his way. We do bear in mind that the population near the coasts of Australia is overwhelmingly white or asian and there are almost no indigenous people to be seen. I’m sure that played a part although they are being as proactive as they can in officially recognizing and honoring the original inhabitants – even a small talk on koalas at the zoo starts off with a sincere-sounding tribute to the people who lived there first and the knowledge that has been passed down from them.

Beyond using public transportation, scooter and electric bicycle rentals are a great way to explore the cities, if you are adventurous and comfortable with riding in traffic. I bought a seven day pass for Lime scooters/bicycles that was good for a total of 2 hours of riding and used that extensively to explore areas of both Melbourne and Sydney (the one pass was good for both cities) that I never would have been able to reach otherwise. Find a scooter with decent battery charge, scan the QR code and put on the helmet, hop on and zip away to a new destination, hop off and walk and explore, find another scooter or bicycle and zip off to the next place. Freedom!

I apologize in advance for the multi-part series of posts but there are simply too many cool experiences and photos I want to share.

On The Road - BretH - On The Road - BretH - Australia! Melbourne and Sydney 8
MelbourneMay 15, 2024

From the airport we took a double-decker “SkyBus” to downtown Melbourne, dropped our luggage in a locker at the bus station and began walking towards the Botanical Garden. Little did we know that these steps would the first of many, many more as we ended up walking miles each day we went exploring. We first passed by the Flinders Street train station, an old building that was a rabbit warren inside of tracks here and there departing to all points around the city.

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