go...

It's all over

So Ann did jump out of the plane this morning. We're all very proud of her. Skydiving over Cairns was pretty awesome, as expected, albeit an activity that doesn't take much time. Again, I have no pictures from it. But 14,000 feet is pretty freakin high up there and from there, the view over the area is pretty amazing. You can see two World Heritage Foundation landmarks, which is amazing in and of itself that they exist within a short drive of each other; the Great Barrier Reef and the Australian tropical rain forest. Not to mention the rivers and the fields of sugar cane and banana trees and everything else. And then you jump - or more accurately - fall out of the plane and everything starts hurtling towards you at an ungodly speed. And then a minute later (a very long minute) your parachute opens and you realize you won't die. At least not immediately. So that was fun.

We fly home tomorrow. Early tomorrow. Our transport is picking us up at 4:45am (which is early regardless of what continent you're on) for a 7am flight. We fly to Sydney to L.A. to New York (and my sister then to Rochester). So we take off at 7am on Sunday June 4 and land no sooner than 25 hours later in New York at 5:20pm Sunday June 4. It's a good thing too because I've been feeling about a day older than I actually am the entire time I've been here.

All in all, I am relieved to be leaving Australia alive and wholly in one piece. However, I have sustained some impairments. After diving at the reef, I couldn't get one of my ears to pop. I wasn't that deep, and therefore didn't incur too much pressure, but it still hurt to equalize. And since then, Wednesday, I've had some (hopefully) temporary hearing loss in my right ear. I can hear maybe 50% in that ear. I've been waiting and waiting for it to come back, but it hasn't yet. Maybe the flights tomorrow will help. Also, while white water rafting yesterday, a strap on my rented sandal broke and the front of the sole wouldn't stay under my toes. I don't remember when exactly, but I was trying to stay alive among all the rocks and water and kind of tripped on one of them underwater rocks and sliced the bottom of my big toe open pretty good. It probably should have received a few stitches, but... meh. It hurt to walk on yesterday, but its getting better. And relative to the types of injuries one can incur while in this, the most deadly of continents, I can't complain.

I'm looking forward to seeing my cats when I get back. They're probably going to be all pissed off at me and for the first 10 minutes I'm home, they'll act like they didn't even realize I was gone. They walk around and yawn and sit on the couch next to me and not really pay me much attention. Maybe they'll look at me with a look that says, "oh. hey. Were you gone? Hadn't noticed." But soon after they'll forget about that and it'll take a week for them to stop looking for constant affection.

So. That was Australia.

Posted by Mike at June 3, 2006 08:14 AM