Day-Tripper Yeah

Sometimes I am sorry for traveling.

I read a blog of this guy who has been traversing the globe alone for over a decade.

I don't want to be like him, going on trips alone. I think he at first enjoyed being alone, because there are a lot less decisions to be made, not every little thing has to become a discussion, and  spontaneity is spicier than most curries (which no one will stop you from eating every single meal of every day). Now, after so many years, he has started to create trips for people who read the blog to travel with him.

I don't know what has happened to parts of society that don't want to travel independently. I understand the safety issues that surround it, and what being American means to travel to certain countries, but there is a certain amount of uncertainty in travel. Would I rather go somewhere with a group of strangers, or go somewhere alone and find myself with strangers anyway?
The answer is I would rather travel with friends.

I love talking about my trips, usually after the fact, so if I went anywhere alone, I'd run into the dilemma of no one caring (as opposed to everyone who wasn't with me not caring). When I came back from London I bet my stories were exciting for about a day. Now every time I bring it up I can feel the suppressed (or sometimes not) eye rolls / 'I've heard this story but I'll humor you' looks.
I wonder if it will be different though, because Australia is so far away and people have this romanticized view of it with pop culture and celebrities. It has some of the best beaches in the world, the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney Opera House, and Ayers Rock. But people forget that Australia is the size of the Continental United States and none of those things are even remotely near each other and if they were spokes on a wheel Brisbane would be the Axel and flights are ridiculously expensive....*breath*....So this is the source of my panic? This, that if I don't travel then I will have absolutely nothing to justify my being here so long. Yep. This and, oh, let's not forget the cost of graduate school in the fall!
Excuse me while I go breathe into a paper bag or something....

I am DYING to go to New Zealand, and I'm pretty much going to have to go by myself. I have reservations about this of course, because I haven't so far traveled alone for the amount of time I want to be there. I just know I'm going to love it and I want someone to share that with. It really sucks that things are so expensive and that Australia has decided it's not hiring anyone this year.

A while back the Emilys and I went to the tourist info center in Queen Street and got a whole stack of pamphlets. We sat that night planning little trips and big trips. One we wanted to do was renting a camper van, driving through the Outback down to Melbourne, and stopping in Sydney on the way back up.  At the time of this planning, flight prices were outrageous as they so often are.


After about a week or two of never mentioning the trip again I asked if there was some kind of itinerary going that I could start researching where we'd stay and what routes we would take. Emily gave me what we had so far, and I filled in the rest. It took about 6 hours, but I found every camp we'd stay in there and back, the price differences vs. their locations, things to do in the cities once we got there, and then looked up all of the different estimates for all the different makes and models of the caravans / motor homes. It was to become an 11 - 12 day trip that would take us through the Outback to Melbourne, over to the 12 Apostles, up the coast to Sydney, up the coast to Byron Bay, and then back to Brisbane. This trip would cost each of us - assuming all 4 of us went ~$840.

The next day I said to myself, hey, I wonder if - since the caravans get 11 miles to the gallon, and petrol here is sold in litres at $1.41 each and there are 2.5 litres to the gallon - I wonder if taking the caravan down to Melbourne and then renting a plain old car and driving up to Brisbane and staying at hostels would be cheaper.
There went another six hours of my life that I could've spent on Facebook (where no one was awake) and YouTube. But i enjoyed it! I enjoyed finding cheaper and cheaper options and writing everything down and looking at locations on google maps and comparing gas prices and routes and timing and things. This alternative trip, assuming all four of us went - would cost ~$760 each (assuming we ended up with the most expensive option of every option).

Then I had a little meeting with Emily B about the itinerary and options I came up with. The meeting lasted all of my reading through the pages of notes and then she asked, "Do you think now it would be cheaper to fly?" So then I looked it all up again.
Yes. It would be very much cheaper to fly. Like, $310 cheaper. So cool.
12 hours well spent! I should've looked up flight prices while I was sitting there calculating gas costs when factoring in gallons / litres and kilometers / miles and total travel distance / mileage per vehicle / figuring out the model of the vehicle to even look up the mileage....

Then the next day I spent planning a 15-day road trip in New Zealand that would give a pretty good feel for what the north island has to offer around Auckland. It was then that I found out that flying from Auckland to New York is about $800 cheaper than flying back from Brisbane - so I was like, DING DING DING DING going to New Zealand! Going there anyway, might as well stay a few days and make a trip out of it! A 15 - day trip is yes a bit superfluous but I was a google monster! So many photos of the landscape and hidden gems and really really cheap car rental for really good mileage for the comparatively small island!
 And this 15 day trip only cost $650 (divided among only 2 people!)(that's $43 a day!)
So I tried to get Bethany to fly down here and make the trip with me, but it ended up being too expensive, because a flight to Auckland is $1300. Ain't nobody got $2000 to spend on a 15-day vacation unless you're Sting or Tom Cruise or Elmo.
 
Emily G can't afford it, Emily B can't afford it and also doesn't know if she can leave the country while applying for her new visa / once she's on the new visa, so that's where I find myself. I really need to ask Emmilly if she'd want to go but I think she's in the same lack-of-funds department that is the gift of Brisbane's retail/office/hospitality manager industry.

It really sort of makes me sick how much money I've spent here so far and haven't really done much to show for it yet. At this time two years ago, I had explored most of what I wanted to see in London, and also went to Wales, Hungary, and Bath. I saw two West End productions, and had spent maybe only five full days inside the house (and I think that's generous). Here we haven't done much. Only Lone Pine (which I have my yearlong pass to get in for free and haven't gone back), Gold Coast, and Shorncliffe.  I haven't done much alone except go to Queen Street or Indro...well, and I guess I'll include Annerley for my job interview...and I was in Sunnybank (the real Chinatown) for about 20 minutes while I was lost...that must count...

Brisbane doesn't have any beaches. The only beach with a decent amount of sand area was Shorncliffe, and if you remember the photos, that wouldn't impress many beach-goers but would get some lake-swimmers in a bit of a tizzy. The Gold Coast was exactly everything I ever want in a beach. Too bad getting there is such a complete pain in the 2-hour-long-miserable ass. Sunshine Coast is north of Brisbane, and practically an hour longer time-wise as far as I can tell through the train journey planner.

See now I've had a bit of an epiphany. When we were in London, tuition was covered, rent was covered, and a few meals. The only thing that we had to blow money on was souvenirs and plays and trips. Bethany and Deirdra chose to see a lot of plays, Emily and Robyn and I chose more trips. Because we didn't have weekly rent payments to make, we didn't have to buy every morsel of food for every meal every day in a country where everything is $2-5 more expensive than it would be in America. It kills and disgusts me how much money I've spent so far on just groceries and rent. KILLS. If I think about it too long I feel physical pain and then feel a bit panicky.

I feel like I had some romanticized view of this trip like my nostalgia for London. Just carefree traveling with a bit of work in between. Instead it's been full days sitting at the dining room table on my laptop applying for every single position I am even 1/2 qualified for on three different websites, going to Indro just to get out, eating, and then going to sleep sometime after midnight. I can't say I don't know why we haven't traveled - because this entire post has been dedicated to why we can't / haven't.
No one can afford it, and I can afford it but won't go alone. I can only afford it because I would rather spend money on trips than rent and food. Because at least a trip I can have forever. Not like my $8 squeeze bottle of imported Hellmans mayonnaise. (you've never tasted the mayonnaise in this country - it was worth the extra to get proper mayo)(imagine putting a spoonful of sugar on top of your mayo next time you make a sandwich and then you'll get a taste of what Australia offers in that department).

It's the job market. If any or all of us had been hired in Feb we would be taking plenty of trips together. Like I said earlier it's hard with the economy. I don't want this to sound like I'm blaming anyone for being bored. I'm NOT blaming the people I live with. I am blaming myself for being too chicken to go some place alone.

I am definitely blaming the Managers of every retail / office / hospitality service in the city of Brisbane for not hiring us.

Because what am I?
HUMAN!

And what do humans do?
BLAME THINGS FOR THINGS!

Now I've been trying to look into some more day trips leaving from Brisbane, to a beach or nature reserve or something, but the complete lack of information on public transport to most of these places had just left me so frustrated that I had to go to sleep.
At least in the meantime before we get going on the Melbourne/Sydney trip (if it happens - I could always go alone apparently) some day trips would be much much much welcomed!

The Most Eventful Things to Happen Recently

I killed a huntsman spider two nights ago. All on my own. Sorry I don't have a picture, I was too busy watching it making sure it didnt run into my bedroom. Like the two before it that Emily G killed, it wasn't even close to being full size. Full size huntsmen spiders can be as big as dinner plates, but this one was probably the size of the bottom of a glass, leg-span-wise.

The thing about huntsmen is that they are fast. I came out of the bathroom ready to brush my teeth and go to bed, and there it was on the opposite wall. I froze and watched it for a few minutes. It finally ran across Emmilly's door and up to the ceiling. I quick got my toothbrush and brushed my teeth while watching it. I then ran into the living room to find a book that I could throw at it. I chose a Fodor's travel book. The thing made its way down the hallway, on the crown moulding. I had to wait until it got on the wall to smack it, because I needed a flat surface. I grabbed a fly swatter and tried to steer it off the wall. It noticed me standing there, faced me, JUMPED off the ceiling and landed on the carpet and started CHARGING at me!
My heart sort of clutched in my chest but then I whacked it really hard with the fly swatter and it squirmed and then I took both my hands on the book, reared them up over my head and slammed the book down on it with full force.

It died.  It was like 3 am so I wrote an apology on our chalkboard-painted-dining-room-table that I was sorry if the slams woke anyone.

Then today, I am taking a shower, and I completely slip on the tub floor, crash back and bum first into the sliding glass doors (knocking them off their tracks) and adding about ten more cracks to them, before sliding down sideways in the tub, scrunched up waiting for the soap to go down the drain a bit so I could get back up. I hear Cal yelling if I was okay, because I'm pretty sure I hit a lot of stuff and tried to catch myself a bunch of times, but I don't really remember it in my blind panic.

Then I had a horrendous amount of adrenaline. I rinsed my hair, and slowly finished everything, not wanting to fall again. We were stupid not to have a rubber mat inside the shower, and I was stupid not to wear flip flops. I'd gone in bare foot before and didnt fall any of those times...but I guess I was a bit overzealous this time...I dont really know. But my pride was hurt more than anything until I realized that since I knocked both of the doors off track, I couldn't slide them to get OUT of the tub.

I finally got one to move a bit, and had to slide it just enough to squeeze my fat self out of there, and then had to dodge tiny glass shards while I got my towels. The glass shower doors are textured on the outside, so when I cracked them from the inside, the pieces of the texture that were on the cracks, cracked off. It's hard to explain, but they were akin to taking textured glass and slicing off the extremities.

I put clothes on, put my hair up, and swept all of the glass shards slowly onto the bath mat. Then I got the vacuum. Then the vacuum insisted on sticking to the thin bath mat instead of sucking up the glass. So then I had to shake out all the glass, throw the bath mat outside to beat it later, and vacuum and mop the floor.

Once it was all clear to the best of my knowledge, it really hit me how lucky I am to be alive. It sounds melodramatic, but I am damn lucky that the glass doors didn't completely shatter on me, or that even though they were off track, they still didn't fall on me. I'm lucky that I didn't slip while squeezing out of the shower and falling on the microscopic textured glass shards. I'm lucky that I didn't knock myself out and have to have my friend's husband see me naked while rescuing me from the slippery tub.

And all the while all I could think of was the episode of the Big Bang Theory where Kaley slips in the shower and Sheldon says, "Not surprising. You have no safety mat, or adhesive stickers that allow for purchase on a surface with a low coefficient of static friction." 
"What??"
"....Tubs are slippery."

I guess I am also lucky that I didn't dislocate my shoulder like Penny did while falling. At least she had a shower curtain to grab while falling and then cover herself while being saved. I would have been a naked pile of bleeding ribbons with a shampooey scalp if the worst happened.

Anyway!
 
That is what I have been up to! Killing spiders and falling in the shower. I also got a call from one of the 30 applications I sent out in the last four days, but it turned out to be for a pyramid scheme so I didn't call them back. This is the wonders of Google, ladies and gentlemen. I looked up the woman's name and the phone number and got all of these pages about what the "privately advertised" company was. 

Tomorrow I am going grocery shopping, hoping to pick up a lot of healthy things instead of the cheap things I have been getting. I've had salad and vegetables a lot but I really need to cut back on the pasta. My only protein really is cheeseburgers. I'll be eating more kangaroo from now on - it's like 99.9% lean. I'm also gonna get some chicken. Chicken has always scared me, ever since I first heard that raw chicken kills people. I don't like handling it, I feel like I'm going to die a slow bacterial death just from picking up the foam packaging. But I figure the rate of salmonella poisoning is ridiculously low in any country other than America...because pretty much every country but America cares about the animals' health before they are slaughtered....

This is not the last blog post I'll have in the coming days!
I need to discuss some trip plans :) I also have been slowly compiling a comedic list for everyone, so look out :)