The Art of Doing Nothing I write this from a suede couch in Brisbane which I'm pretty sure now has an imprint of my body. My friend Eoin has been putting me up for the past week or so. This week has been a fabulous summation of...nothing. Pure, unadulterated nothingness. And it's been fantastic. Erica and I left Byron and headed to Nimbin. We booked a yurt in a hostel and had visions of wearing tie die and bonding with hippies and singing kum ba ya around a fire in this reportedly free loving, marajuana promoting town. What we arrived to instead was a dirty, scary town, where jobless and homeless try to sell fake pot cookies, and store fronts try to make money on overpriced hemp clothing and marajuana promo posters. It's a sad sad ... read more

See previous post for more of an introduction, but after our first night staying with Chris, we decide to just embrace the fact that we are staying with a 60 year old nudist pot farmer and make some plans for the day. We convince Chris to take a "sickie" and skip work so he can serve as our tour guide. It really didn't take that much convincing. We take off for Crowdy National Park and Diamondhead. I had found the parks randomly in my travel searches, and Chris was the only Aussie who had ever even heard of them. There are 700 national parks in Oz, compared to the 40 or so in the US, so it really isn't too surprising. We pack up and head off in the car, and immediately spot two koalas in ... read more

Road trippin'. - Sydney to Port MacQuarie I feel as I have to start present and work back, which I rarely do, in order to properly capture the imagery of my present situation. I am currently on day 3 of my road trip with Erica. She and I met in the Sydney airport when we were both poorly navigating ourselves from the international to the domestic terminal. She is originally from Kansas and has been in Colorado for 5 years. We kept in touch and planned this road trip together while she was working on a dairy farm and I was in Adelaide. She's a great girl on her own journey. Half shaved head, blonde with pink streaks, self designed tattooes, and every piece of her wardrobe has a story. Very well educated with two degrees ... read more

Goodbye adelaide So unfortunately my farewell was not exactly as I had planned. It started with a great weekend. A Thursday at Sportsmed of good cases and a lot of OR banter, followed by an event at the Mercedes Benz dealership for Eucycle - an organization which trains the vision impaired to learn how to tandem bike on road bikes. It's really impressive actually. They had a very well put together video showing the whole training process, and a lot of the pros and the trainees were there. We drank some nice Shiraz from the Adelaide hills and I was asked to evaluate a professional cyclists knee... Okay. :) He had a herniation of his vastus lateralis as he had a previous ACL reconstruction with an ITB graft back in 1996. You never see that anymore. ... read more

What can I say, I've been down with the flu so I'm going to keep these things on my mind brief and to the point. Just don't want to forget the good things. Australian Vocabulary (I am forgetting SO many): Ta = Thank you No Worries = It's all good That's okay = You're welcome Stubby = Beer bottle Roo bar = bar on the car so that kangaroos bounce off Mate = bro, buddy, pal Serve = serving Heaps = a lot, or really "That was heaps good" No dramas = It's cool Sheila = Australian female Barbie = Barbeque Biscuit = Cookie In the OR: Operating theatre = Operating room Needle holder = Needle drive Nibblers = Rongeurs Artery clip = mosquito/snap Pack = Lap Bobblepin = Olive guide wire Diathermy = Bovie electrocaudery ... read more