It begins!

I'm happy to announce that I've successfully violated the rules of quantum mechanics and traveled forward in time! By crossing the international date line on my flight to Sydney, I skipped ahead in the space-time fabric by just less than a day. The effects of this phenomenon were surprisingly small. A little sleep deprivation and a small kink in the neck. Anyways, enough with the nerdiness. The flight went surprisingly well. I slept most of the time and we had a pleasant 1 hr stop-over in Honolulu. There was this awesome Japanese/Hawaiin zen garden in the middle of the airport and I spent most of the break stretching my legs there.

On the flight, I randomly met a friend from the Canadian national cycling team on my flight who was on her way to compete in a world cup track race going on in Sydney this coming Saturday. I was pretty stoked to hear this and am definately going to go cheer her and the other canucks on next weekend. The race is supposed to be huge, with teams coming in from all over the world. Wicked.

My aunt's brother Graeme and his wife Ann-Marie were nice enough to pick me and my bike up from the airport and give me a place to stay for the night. They and their son Chris have been great hosts so far, showing me around their town of Bankstown and giving me tips on getting around Sydney. Tomorrow, I'm taking a train into Sydney and am planning on staying a few nights at a hostel downtown. Adventures and pictures to follow.

Dave

Bonus northern hemisphere trip!

While this does kind of go against the general theme of my blog, I went on an sweet little warm up trip to Tofino and thought I'd start my blogging with that. Actually, my friend Corina and I stayed on Flores Island, just off of Tofino. The island's a Native reserve, and we were lucky enough to get ourselves invited to a traditional potlach. We feasted on tasty smoked salmon, stew and other delights and were entertained by dancing and drumming well into the night. Here's some pictures.

Dave