She's Off

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The first leg is Gold Coast to Sydney for an overnight stay at Sydney Park Hotel in Newtown, an inner city suburb with a fabulous feel. To get the trip underway, the Francis St Cocktail Lounge Apprentice tried out the pub hotel’s speciality cocktail, the Pirate Paradise - well mixed, easy drinking. Walking along King St, one of the main drags, I came across a lovely cosy bar, She Loves You, and tested their signature Dark Rum Daiquiri – very easy drinking. With a morning flight departure & a recommendation from the bartender to check out Sydney Park before departing to see how many of the ‘Big 5’ I spot – turtle, eel, fox, pelican & spoonbill –, I reluctantly head for bed.

Only to wake up in the night and discover my phone’s frozen in charge mode. A brief heart skip, I do an override restart which doesn’t restart it but instead delivers the final death blow – kaput, dead as a door nail (Ed note: when did a door nail ever live?) Really!?! I’m in transit, just departed home less than 12 hours before for 9 ½ weeks away and YOU decide now to roll over and die!?! Really!?! Now with no chance of a phone shop being open before I need to head to the airport for my next flight knowing that I can’t miss a flight as it forfeits the remaining flights. Really !?! FFS. It’s moments like this when you, well at least I, start to comprehend how much is packaged in that little device and how reliant I’ve become on its various features & functionality – I’d be lost without the calendar & its reminders.

So at 1:30am, my brain’s firing on as many cylinders as it can on little sleep, hatching plan B. Thank the gods that I took the old iPhone as a music player. Not having a paperclip to transfer the sim card, 2FA stops me from setting myself up – oh the irony (Ed note: is that the right use?) – though I manage to get apps on in prep for said paperclip – surely there’ll be something at the airport. Comfortable enough that I’ve got bases covered for the coming 2 days with transfer, accommodation & tour, I tuck back to sleep. Unfortunately for my sanity, a section of my brain’s got a different plan. In no particular hurry or order, it pops in with ‘oh what about this’, getting me up & out to at least record that ‘this’, if not set ‘this’ up.

I eventually give up and go thru the morning routine. Having no sim card, I can’t book a taxi. The pub is closed & there’s no phones in the building…because everyone has working phones… It’s off to hail a cab the old fashioned way…without success. Heading in the direction of the airport, I cross at the lights & down she goes, flat out on the road, pack and all. Thank goodness I’m wearing my hiking boots ‘cause they saved me a rolled ankle. Wishing to be swallowed up by the road, I channel Arya Stark & say ‘Not Today’. Picking myself up, conscious of the red flashing man, I scurry across the intersection with my knee smarting, not daring to look whether I’d torn my pants. Up ahead is a petrol station where a kind attendant books me a cab on his phone – I may have been a bit wide eye and desperate looking, more than my usual anyway.

My day starts to look up. Ethiopian Gerbreil was a good chat on the drive to International departures – a lovely contrast to last night’s silent one. I’m from airport kerb to boarding gate in less than 45 minutes and that’s including sculling 1L of water as I’d forgotten the international 100mL liquids rule, being drug/bomb swabbed – I must look particularly dodgy this morning – as well as visiting the sunglass shop where the attendant has a thingy-ma-jig to transfer the sim card – another ray of light in the name of Giovana. A final call to Darryl and she’s off to Africa.



Query to readers:

We’re off. We’re off in a motorcar. 60 cops are after us & we don’t know where we are.
This is a ‘song’ stuck in my head – with lots of words lost. I recall my grandfather singing this however other family members don’t know of it so who knows where it came from other than my imagination. Familiar to anyone?

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Comments

[Matt]

The Blues Brothers
may have stolen your grandfather's line or the reverse..."It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses" sounds like something out of the same stable anyway. Good luck!

[Laureen Stevenson]

start of the trip
It will only get better from here!

[Caron]

Loving the photos and monologue
Susan, SO far everything looks to be absolutely amazing. Please keep the stories and photos coming. Much love

[Amie]

Oh what a stressful start