The Canadianvasion

6/12/2010 to 13/12/2010

Of course it was raining when I left Yamba – another travel day, another wet ride.  This one ended up being ok though, as things warmed up and dried out as I got to the Byron Bay coast, and I was just about totally steamed off by the time I made it into town.

Byron Bay is a hippie / organic / alternative culture tourist haven.  Like Yamba, it is blessed with beautiful landscape in the hinterland and great beaches, though the surfing is almost an afterthought (at least at the main beaches).  Unlike Yamba, it is packed with chotchkie shops, hostels, and vacation apartments, meaning it is a major backpacker and schoolie (think spring break) Mecca.  It’s also crammed with tourist agencies, who (for a fee) will book your day trip to a place called Nimbin, where you basically step off the bus and get accosted by hippies wanting to sell you weed and space cakes.  For what it’s worth (not many of the visitors care to know this, they’re so spaced out after their trip to Nimbin – or should that be “trip in Nimbin”?) it is the easternmost point in Australia and has a beautiful lighthouse at the cape where one can be the first in Australia to see the sunrise.  In my time in Australia I’ve never seen such an oversaturated, commercialized, tourist destination as this one (which is probably why I’m skipping Surfer’s Paradise altogether).  Don’t get me wrong – as I said it is blessed with a natural beauty not many places can compete with.  But unlike Yamba, Byron Bay knows it and flaunts it.  Both places are “exclusive” property locations, but Yamba is what happens after locals and what I would call “community conservationists” see Byron today.  In any event, everyone should go see it – it’s a beautiful spot, with wonderful shopping opportunities, and probably the only place where you can quasi-legally get stoned in Australia if that floats your boat (but even that is so transactional that it loses its illicit appeal).  Just suffice it to say it’s not the place I am looking for on my adventure around Australia, and I’d go so far as to say I think it has lot quite a lot of its soul.

The hostel?  Party central.  Flyers up every morning with the day’s and evening’s happy hour offerings, empty beer bottles, wine bottles, and goon bags around every corner.  Not that it was dirty – it was actually a nice-ish hostel – just that everyone’s daily routine involved waking up late, hung over, going to the beach, probably starting to hit the booze at beer o’clock, back to the hostel for quick hotdogs or hamburgers or pasta dinner, and then out on the town.  Rinse and repeat.  Maybe throw in Nimbin for one day (in which case the routine is: wake up, get on bus, buy space cakes, come back to Byron and hit up Subway, buy three foot-long subs with chips and cookies, realize you ate one too many space cakes, have most god-awful trip of your life, and spend the next 18 hours in bed), and that’s what goes in amongst the backpacker crowd here.  The ones who have money go shopping for the same stuff you can get anywhere else (Billabong, bikinis, sunglasses, dresses, etc).

The hostel also had $10 per day parking, and there’s no place in the “central business district”, as they call it, with free parking.  I was here for eight days.

Anyhow, a few days in I’m tired and 3/4 asleep in my bed at 10pm.  Not anymore.  The door to the dorm room crashes open an in stampede four bulls into the proverbialchina shop.  Yep.  Canadian girls.  In their defense, they’d probably never stayed in a hostel before, but they were the LOUDEST people I have ever experienced.  At 10pm, they take half an hour to find their beds and settle in, all the while whispering at a talking / yelling volume.  Tired?  No…they head straight out on the town and come back at 4am not even bothering to whisper.  The next morning (I really should have seen it coming), they wake up bright and early at 8am and block up the bathroom for two hours straight getting ready to go SURFING!  Not to the prom or a wedding…TO PUT ON THEIR SWIMSUITS!!!  Later that night, admitting defeat, I joined them out on the town.  They were actually pleasant girls, which I guess was to be expected.  We had a nice tapas dinner, and then did the typical evening exercise in Byron Bay – walking from one bar/club to the next, to the next, and back to the first in search of something that didn’t suck, for lack of a better word.  They left the next morning, and the world was a better place for it.

Apart from the partying that went on all around me, the lighthouse was really a pretty cool spot.  About a 30-45 minute walk from town, the path takes you through littoral rainforest, up and down hills, back up again, down a little bit, and back up a really steep bit for a mile.  It’s nice to be out of the direct sunshine, even if the humidity is a bit higher in the forest, but avoiding spiders the size of your fist is not a favorite pastime of mine.  I did this around 4pm, got some nice pictures, and headed back to the town and hostel.  I did some research and found out that if I wanted to see the sunrise in the morning, I’d have to get up at 4am to get there in time…hmm…Well a few days later I decide to do it anyhow, with two other girls from my room whom I’d really met after going to the townie bar the night before for some live music.  We got up at 4am, I led the way up the hill, and we saw the sunrise.  The lighthouse is a nice place, and the sunrise is a nice thing to see, but one doesn’t really serve as a great backdrop for the other…or at least you can take about two nice pictures of both together and that’s it.  My unintended sunrise at Seven Mile Beach a few weeks back was a lot better.

That’s just about all that went on at Byron to be honest…it’s an interesting place, but I’m feeling more and more like I’m just biding my time until Christmas.  Spending eight nights in one place doesn’t really give oneself the feeling of “adventure” – more like vacation.  I’m not a backpacker, and I didn’t come here to party every night.  But I have to do it (bide my time, that is) since I’m driving back down south for Christmas, and I’d prefer a 10 hour drive over a 24 hour one! 

I’m really looking forward to heading away from the party coast and into the outback just after the New Year.  I think it will mean a lot more hardship for me, but that’s part of the adventure.  The coast is by all means a beautiful place, but it’s an easy place as well.  I can’t wait for a change in the landscape, even if it means trading the more temperate (and wet) coast for the dry and hot interior of the country.  For me, the Australia is the sparsely populated, less visited places in the outback, not the coast or rainforest.  Can’t wait to see what it has in store for me, my bike, and my sanity!


Oh, and the $10/day parking rip-off?  The exit gate was broken the morning I left, so I saved myself $80.  Karma...

At the carwash, a Winter in Yamba, “On the Goon”, Shane’s $10 Tour

1/12/2010 to 5/12/2010

Finally it was time to leave Coffs Harbour, really not soon enough.  Most of the week there was spent watching movies in the hostel, though the last two days were pretty fun; between walking in the rainforest and taking the hostel’s free canoes down the creek and into the surf (flipping the boat in the process), it still couldn’t make up for the lack of activities the town had to offer. 

I woke up around 8am and packed my things, not worrying about waking anyone since the Swedish blueberry pickers had already done that at 6.  I could hear it raining outside, but made no mind since I just wanted to get out of town…until I made it to the parking lot.  It was coming down in SHEETS.  I quickly put my left-hand pannier back on the bike (it’s getting harder and harder to take off / put on, will need to look into why) and ran back to dry ground.  It took another half our or so for the rain to subside enough for me to pack my roll bag and make the soggy journey northwards.  First though, I stopped by the local McDonalds for breakfast and free WiFi of course – and ended up staying for a few hours since the rain was getting lighter and lighter, and there was no point in riding in a downpour.

I finally moved on around noon, and decided to take the scenic route once more.  Bad idea…since it seemed that all the rain that had passed over Coffs Harbour just went inland, along the route I wanted to take.  About halfway to Grafton (next big town), I just decided to bag the scenic route and took the first sign back to the Pacific Highway.  Another bad idea…it should have been indication enough that I had to zoom all the way into my GPS to even see the road that it wasn’t paved at all.  At the time I didn’t really care, but about 30mins and less than 15km down the road, I realized that riding in loose gravel / slippery mud really isn’t that fun on a heavily-laden bike.  I finally made it back to the highway (rain still very much in tow), and on my way to Grafton.  I stopped there for an hour or two, to upload Coffs pictures and blog entry, and also to dry off.  It seems that my wax jacket isn’t as waterproof as I had thought it to be.  Somewhere down the road I’ll see what I can do to waterproof it again.

Well, it really didn’t stop raining the entire way from Coffs to Yamba, but I finally got to the hostel around 3pm.  And what a difference!  The hostel here was purpose built, about two years ago, and you can tell it’s almost brand new.  If there weren’t bunk beds, dormitory rooms, and shared bathrooms down the hall, you’d think it’s a pretty respectable hotel…in that things actually work, there are nice fixtures everywhere, paint is not fading / cracking.  It even has a rooftop terrace and a hot tub on the third floor balcony, and there was a café / restaurant / ice cream joint in the first floor (which had a good mix of locals and backpackers at all times).

So to step back and describe Yamba…it’s a town of about 5,000, though population can triple during holiday season.  Weather in winter is usually 25°C and sunny, in summer it’s 30°C and sunny.  Just five minutes down the road it the world’s 10th best surfing wave, the founder of Billabong grew up here and has a $25m “vacation” home here, and so do a lot of pro surfers.  It has nice boutique shops and restaurants catering to local and tourist tastes.  Most importantly, it has an unrushed, laid back, and friendly vibe to it; all the locals know each other by name, and they know the vacationers who call Yamba their second home alike.  But at the same time it’s not built up at all, the local council has pretty much blocked any further development of land, and it’s unpretentious / not commercialized.  So you can understand why it was named the best town in Australia a few years back…which didn’t hurt property prices (I’m told certain places selling for $300k a few years back now go for $2.5m with little additional development – also meaning developers have stopped looking to Yamba to build).  Clearly weekly rent can be pretty expensive as far as vacation places go, but it’s very nice nonetheless.  As a side, I’d like to be the guy who determines which town in Australia is “the best” so I can invest ahead of time.

Unfortunately, I happened to arrive in Yamba during winter weather…25°C, but even worse, cloudy and rainy.  The entire east coast of Australia has been getting hammered by rain over the past few weeks – it’s not necessarily a bad thing though, as the country is in a persistent state of drought, so filling the dams is always a good thing.  Otherwise it’s back to not being able to water your lawn, no washing your cars, and two minute showers!  The rain, or at least the cloud cover, lasted the entire week, which is why there aren’t any pictures in this post – light was too flat to take anything interesting.

Anyhow, the week was pretty laid back…I picked up the replacement Spot GPS tracker along with more dry bags and some bandanas (thanks mom) from the post office on day 2.  It took about 5 minutes to set up the tracker and confirm the first ping, so it’s working.  I spent a few hours working on the blog, setting up the “Where am I?” page, and updating the photo gallery as well.  It’s nice that I’m finally putting the blog together three weeks into my trip…I’ll keep tweaking things along the way until I’m happy with the layout and content, so keep visiting!

Whereas most of the backpackers up until now had been German, in Yamba we had Scandinavians.  Load of ‘em.  Sure, there were a couple of Germans (literally two), and some French / French Canadians, but the majority of people staying there were from Sweden, Norway, or Denmark.  And it’s not like they were staying there for a couple of days and moving on…I think on average the Scandis had been there for two weeks, with some having been there for months!  Scandinavians are always pretty interesting folks, they get their drink on pretty well, and are generally fun to be around.  One of them was the young Swedish version of Ellen Degeneres.  Absolutely everything (everything!) reminded me of her…from facial features, to haircut, to mannerisms, to goofy booty-wiggle dancing.

Later on in the week, together with Judd (Welsh guy whom I’d met in Coffs Harbour) and the rest of the backpackers, we “went on the goon”.  For the uninitiated, goon (or plonk) is the cheapest of the cheap boxed wine.  Cheap as get out, way too sweet, and gets you drunk.  It is the favorite amongst the backpackers due to its inherently high alcohol volume to price ratio.  That’s about all it has going for it.  It’s also known for giving some of the worst hangovers known to man (next to HEB/Wal-Mart jug sangria), and being the catalyst for many a poor life decision.

Also a highlight – actually the highlight – of Yamba, was Shane’s $10 Tour.  Shane was one of the owners of the hostel, along with his parents.  It was his idea to build the place after a couple of property deals fell through around the time Yamba was named the best town in Australia.  So, next best thing for him was to attract all the on-the-cheap surfing enthusiasts to his hometown.  And he’s done a fantastic job.  Beyond the great hostel, he is the most engaged hostel owner I’ve ever met (actually, the only hostel owner I’ve ever met), and an absolute asset to the Yamba YHA.  Beyond giving tours, he mans the reception desk, the café’s bar, serves as waitstaff when needed, organizes surf tours three days out of the week, and during the rest has lawn bowling and yacht racing events.  He’s really helped to created a close-knit family environment at the hostel.  Anyway, back to the tour…Come noon, about 10 of us pile into Shane’s van, and he takes us around town.  He shows us the regular sights: the several local beaches within walking distance, the multi-million dollar non-waterfront vacation homes, and the multi-multi-multi-million dollar waterfront ones as well.  We then head to the lighthouse for pictures, and then to the harbor for pelican feeding.  These pelicans were as big as the ones you see in south Florida.  And we were feeding them by hand.  Pretty fun stuff, but chaotic.  Next stop, a place called Angourie Point.  Angourie is where the owner of Billabong has his $25m house, and it’s also where the world’s 10th best wave is to be found.  After showing us the point, and driving us past Mr. Billabong’s house (who is also known to walk around town, meet up with the tour and anonymously chat with the backpackers, he’s that laid back), we went cliff jumping about 50ft from the coast in a former quarry.  Apparently quarry workers dug deep enough to hit the water table and flooded all their work…oh well, but made for great swimming and jumping from 30-40 feet up!  On the way back, jokester that Shane is (late 30s going on 15), he fooled us all into thinking there was a venomous snake in a small rock crevice, and he dived in to trap it and show it to us.  Of course, it was just a big rubber snake, but he scared the crap out of most of the group when he threw it out at us!

Unfortunately my time in Yamba came to an end too quickly, and with the worst of weather (though it wasn’t that bad).  I think if I weren’t on my tour around Australia I could have easily become one of those Scandinavians who has been there for months on end, continually extending their stays.  I’m sure I’ll be back though!

Bad Dog!, More Germans, and The iPod is Dead? Long Live the iPod!

Date: 26/11/2010 to 30/11/2010

Finally leaving Port Macquarie on the 25th, I decided to take one of those “scenic” drives…I really don’t know why I so often choose to drive completely out of the way, spend even more money on gas and run the risk of dropping the bike on dirt roads.  It probably had something to do with me doing nothing in Port Macquarie for five days, aside from accruing bed bug bites.  If the point is to drive around Australia, why go from A to B to C, when you can do A to C in half the time?  Especially when B isn’t even worth seeing…  I guess it’s one thing to go on a scenic drive if you live in, say, Switzerland (why else drive mountain passes when there are perfectly good tunnels that get you from A to C?), but along the Australian east coast the landscapes are so similar that the scenic route just ends up being the long way.  Oh well, time is the one thing that I’ve got enough of…

So from Port Macquarie, I drove on to a town called Kempsey.  Running low on gas, I hit up the local gas station, and this delivery van driver filling up his truck asks me, “are you coming to Kempsey or leaving?”  I thought this was a bit bizarre, but told him I was just riding through.  His response: “Good, if you get off in town, I’d take your valuables with you…especially this town.”  Nice to know there are shady places in Australia too.

To the “scenic” part of the drive…from Kempsey, I turn off the highway on to the road that serves as a shortcut (first warning) to a town called Armidale, the so-called country music capital of Australia.  It was a nice, winding road not dissimilar to the drive I had in the Hunter Valley – smooth curves, high speed limit and little traffic, though the views weren’t half as good.  Around 20km into the ride, I begin to pass signs that say “2km east of XYZ road suitable only for light traffic.  Not suitable for caravans” (second warning).  So, 2km east of wherever the sign said it would be, the road turns into gravel.  Not too bad though, as I’m getting used to riding on dirt / gravel roads.

The ride was more or less uneventful until the last part, when I was 1,400m up in a really windy section of the road.  I exit a blind left-hand turn and continue uphill on the road.  Coming down the mountains were two crusty yokels with their six or so horses in tow.  I keep on up the road, wave to the townies, and – BAM – their young border collie (whom I hadn’t seen before) bolts from behind one of the horses straight for my front tire.  I try to maneuver around it, but the road was too narrow and I didn’t have enough time to react, so I hit the dirt and my bike ends up propped up against the hillside, with my leg in the smallest of recesses between the left pannier, the ground, and the frame of the bike.  If I landed any differently, it’d probably be broken.  Crusty yokel #1 takes his sweet time getting off his horse to help me (I had to turn around to make sure they were still there), but finally comes around and lifts the bike off my leg, so I could get up and finish picking up the bike.  There really wasn’t any point in yelling at the guy.  He seemed nice enough, and his body language was definitely apologetic.  He cracked a joke or two, lit up what was most definitely not just a cigarette, and went on his chubby, hairy, merry way back down the mountain.  As a side, dogs seem to love my motorcycle…I just wish they’d admire it from a distance like everyone else.

There was a point to this whole ride…at the end, were the Wollomombi Falls.  Once believed to be the tallest waterfall in Australia, they are actually second or third.  They are still pretty impressive, with a total vertical drop of 220m.  The light wasn’t that great for pictures, and the flies seemed to love being right in front of my lens, so I got back on the bike and rode on.  Then ensued the much-longer-than-I-had-imagined ride to Coffs Harbour.  In total, I rode in excess of 350km today, and all I got for it was more scratches on my bike, a bruised leg, and an ass that is starting to KILL me.  Really, you’d think Yamaha would make a halfway comfortable seat when designing a bike meant to chew up miles on paved or unpaved road.  Nope, they definitely went for the “wooden park bench” motif.  So I’m getting used to sitting a bit further up the seat, where the pillion passenger would be, to get some pressure off my aching rear end.

Enough about the ride into Coffs…though to be honest, that was about the most exciting thing about the week (other than no more bed bugs).  The hostel was OK, nothing to write home about though.  Later in the evening, the hostel organized a bus to drive us into town to the local pub, which was a pretty weird place.  The largest age differential had to be in excess of 50 years, distributed pretty evenly across the board.  It was a good time though, had a few too many beers for my budget, and ended up walking the 2km back to the hostel in consistent rain.  That rain would continue at least once a day pretty well through the rest of the week…

The next day, I decided to walk around and see what Coffs Harbour was about.  To be honest, not much from what I saw.  There was a surf lifesaving competition going on at the main beach though, with teams of 8-9 racing rowboats out into the surf and back.  It was pretty cool to watch – some teams didn’t make it past the first wave, as it pushed them back onto the beach, and others flipped over halfway out to the buoy.  I hung out at the beach watching for a while, disappointed that I had forgotten my camera.

Back at the hostel, I plugged in just about every electronic device I had to give ‘em a charge…just for laughs, I decided to plug in my iPod, half expecting to knock out the power to the entire hostel.  To my surprise, it booted right up!  It was a VERY nice surprise to finally have my music back.  It definitely helps while writing blog entries and going through pictures.

Something odd that I noticed while in Coffs was the number of people working while on holiday.  I counted at least 10 people who either worked in the hostel for a few weeks at a time, or even out picking fruit (bananas and blueberries) to make ends meet.  I thought most people save up to go on holidays, not go on holidays and then find a way to pay your way around.

For most of the rest of the week, I hung in or around the hostel like everyone else there – the walk to the beach was about 20min, and the weather was spotty at best.  I ended up meeting two more German girls (surprise), this time from Dortmund (Verena) and Aachen (Britta).  For whoever's keeping track, I've now met Germans from Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Bavaria, and now Nordrhein Westfalen.  We went one day to the Dorrigo National Park for a hike in the rainforest, which was actually a nice walk…of course, I went in my flip flops and picked up a leech along the way (flicked him off pretty quickly though).

As you can tell, there really wasn’t much going on in Coffs Harbour…I didn’t even bother seeing the Big Banana since the weather on the last day was atrocious, but I’ve got two more opportunities to catch it – one riding back down for Christmas, and the other racing back up for New Years in the Whitsundays.

That’s about it…most boring blog post ever, pretty much covers how exciting Coffs Harbour was.  In a couple of days I’ll have a new post up for Yamba, the coolest place in Australia you’ve never heard of.  I promise, I’ll make up for this one…

Pacific Sunrise, The Waiting Game, and Don't Let the You-Know-Whats Bite

Date: 20/11/2010 to 25/11/2010

After the failed campsite search, I rode on to the Great Lakes region of NSW.  I had looked for possible beach campsites and marked some down in my GPS.  By the time I got to Elizabeth Beach, it was around 9pm, but there was an almost full moon that night so there was still plenty of light.  I talked to a few locals who suggested a site or two a few miles north on Seven Mile Beach, near Forster.  I drove on, making a bazillion u-turns checking out potential spots (which is why you really should pick out your campsite during the day, but I’m an idiot).  Pretty much all of the campsites that I picked out earlier ended up being duds – they were either parking lots with hilly / sandy approaches to the beach (so I’d have to leave my bike a couple hundred meters back), or weren’t sites at all.  The absolute last one I had marked on my GPS turned out to be golden though.  The road leading towards the northernmost point on Seven Mile Beach was pretty bumpy, but by the time I reached the end I was at a totally secluded beach, with headland to the north and a view all the way down the full seven miles back towards Elizabeth Beach.  The view was absolutely perfect, and even though it was 10pm, I didn’t need my headlamp to set up my tent.  I did need to find a couple of different spots to pitch it though, since the soil was too sandy, and my pegs wouldn’t stay in the ground.  I must’ve looked like an idiot shuffling my half set-up tent up and down the beach looking for some solid ground.

And….notch up another night without sleep.  As if you’d expect anything else.  The upside of no sleep was being up around 5am for first light and the sunrise.  That was amazing – I am normally the type of person who, given the chance, will sleep until noon instead of getting up in the actual morning, but I’m beginning to understand why some people are early risers.  I packed my sleeping bag, foam mat, and attempted to pack up the tent too, but it was too wet to be useful, so I just hung it up on my bike to dry out.  For the next 45 minutes or so, I trekked up and down the beach taking pictures of the sunrise.  Words really can’t describe the beauty of the colors as the sun rose over the Pacific to the east.  Despite my sleep-deprived haze, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sight.

The solitude of my beach campsite was demolished pretty quickly though, and around 6:30am droves of surfers showed up at the end of the gnarled dirt road in their utes, with boards in tow.  Between 6:30am and when I left around 10:00am, I counted at least 20 locals taking a crack at the waves at what was my bedroom just the night before.  It was a pretty cool couple of hours, just sitting, waiting for my things to dry, and watching surfer after surfer ride the waves into the shore.  I honestly don’t know what people on this part of the coast do for a living; but I know what they all do before they go and do whatever it is that pays the bills.

Around 11am, I headed towards a town called Seal Rocks on a suggestion from the same locals from the night before.  Another day, another potholed dirt road…this time, to “Treachery Beach”.  Terrible name for a tourist spot, but it’s a pretty incredible beach.  A very popular surfing spot as well, it has huge sand dunes separating the beach from the hills inland.  But the campsite there was pretty seedy, and the beach smelled like dead fish.  So I move on once again.

In typical form, I decided to take another hours-long ride down the highway to the next big town instead of camping, aware that insomnia was just a campsite away.  I’m sure I’ll figure the whole camping thing out, either as a result of built-up insomnia forcing me to get sleep, or finally getting used to the cramped arrangement.  So anyhow, I drove on to Port Macquarie, which is an important waypoint, since I was having my replacement Spot GPS sent here.  Unfortunately it wasn’t supposed to come for another few days at least, so I guess I’d just spend the next 4 or 5 days here, relax, and catch up on sleep lost in my tent.

Covered in Treacherous Beach dust, I arrived in Port Macquarie around 6:30pm, and surprise, I run into the same German girls from Newcastle (two of the brainless in “Peter and four other brainless people” pub quiz team fame).  Australia is a pretty big country, but the hostels dotting the land on the other hand, make it seem like one cozy neighborhood – just the houses change every few days.  Half of the people you meet are going in the opposite direction, and you end up getting to know them for a day or two at most.  The other half are moving in staggered fashion (think rabbit & hare) with you, in the same direction, and invariably staying at the same budget accommodation as you.  On one hand it’s kinda too bad, since you limit yourself to meeting an increasingly limited group of people, but it is nice having familiar faces every once in a while to hang out with.  I’m probably exaggerating it a bit, but it does make sense that you run into familiar faces since the east coast of Australia is pretty limited geographically, and most people do the logical thing and go north-to-south or south-to-north.

In any event, I cleaned myself off and had home-cooked Thai dinner with a hyperactive Thai-Canadian guy, the German girls, and a French guy with whom I also shared a dorm room in Newcastle.  That night was the first time I had been in a top bunk bed in about 10-12 years, and I swear I clung to the wall in fear I’d fall off an break my arm or leg.

Over the next few days I hung out with a Swiss guy, Reto.  We walked around town, saw the lighthouse and had a pretty nice BBQ with steamed potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and about a kilo of marinated chicken.  I spent a lot of time culling pictures and working on my blog from McDonalds, so there really wasn’t much noteworthy that went on during the middle of the week.  Oh yeah there was…I was just about eaten alive by everyone’s lovely bedfellow (if you’re in NYC), the bedbug.  First I thought they were chiggers, another great thing to discover one has, but they definitely turned out to be bedbugs.  The itching kept me up at night, and I almost exhausted my entire supply of cortisone cream in a few days.  The welts, you can imagine, look lovely.

Enough of bugs (though I’m sure there’ll be plenty of that as the trip goes on)…On Friday, after four days I think, my package finally kind of arrived.  I say “kind of” since you really can’t tell these days by the tracking status descriptions.  “Arrived at international delivery location” sounds like “go pick it up, it’s at the local post office”, but actually means it’s about 300 miles away and might not get delivered at all.  By that time I couldn’t stand another night getting killed by bedbugs, so I drove on to Coffs Harbour.  I’ll deal with the package on Monday and have it redirected wherever I’m next, if it’s even re-directable…otherwise I’ll just have Santa send it for Christmas.  For now, it’ll be cortisone cream to get rid of these welts and a super-hot load of laundry to kill whatever bugs decided to tag along to Coffs to see the Big Banana.

Newcastle & Hunter Valley

Date: 18/11/2010 to 19/11/2010

So after a big night out in Terrigal with the schoolies, I woke up at 7am (surprisingly without hangover) and packed my things.  I checked out of the hostel around 9am and hit the (albeit short) road to Newcastle.  I didn’t really need to plot out the drive for the day, since it was a pretty straightforward +/- 50mi drive up the coast.

The hostel in Newcastle was definitely more than a “roof over your head” type of place.  Probably an old mansion of some sort, it had big rooms, high ceilings, and a massive lounge with leather sofas everywhere.  I met a guy from Hartlepool named Nathan, and we ended up hanging out most of the time.  Played pool (I won), and ping pong (absolutely obliterated the guy, I felt bad) before heading out for a “free BBQ” organized by the hostel.  I put “free BBQ” in quotation marks since it was about the cheapest BBQ I’ve ever had.  Not that beggars can be choosers, but it consisted of two $0.10 sausages and a slop spoon’s worth of couscous and pasta salad, on top of a two-for-one drink voucher. 

After the dinner was pub quiz.  Nathan and I, and some German girls (Caroline and Christina from Heilbronn) were on a team named “Peter and four other brainless people”.  You can imagine who answered most of the questions.  And you probably won’t be surprised by the fact that we still lost.  I am amazing in trivia so long as as it has to do with geography.  The second you move away from the obscure map-related questions, I’m useless (for those interested, Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein are the world’s only doubly-landlocked nations, and the world’s greatest single adjacent time-zone difference is held by the Afghan-Chinese border – it’s 3.5hrs).  My experience, both from Sydney and now from Newcastle, is that pub quiz in Australia is about 70% “trivia” questions, and 30% Australian sports / celeb gossip inanity (“Who was the Australian bronze medalist in tiddlywinks in the 1928 Commonwealth Games?” or “Australian swimming legend Ian Thorpe recently broke up with his fourteenth girlfriend.  Name the previous thirteen in order from shortest to tallest”).  For once, I’d like a pub quiz to be 100% geography related questions…that’ll be the day.

After the pub quiz, we had some live music (local singer-songwriter who had a pretty unique guitar style, sorta similar to Newton Faulkner…a lot of percussion while playing).  Newcastle, by the way, is as close to the Austin of Australia as you get.  It’s a huge university town, the live music capital of Australia, and is a pretty funky place.  It was recently listed as one of the top five most livable places in the world. 

Unfortunately, the weather while I was there was garbage.  The first day was just cloudy, which I could deal with.  But the next day was WINDY!  Constant wind >35kph destroyed my plans of lying on the beach all day.  Instead, I was dumb enough to walk around town and take pictures.  In wind you wouldn’t even want to sail in.  I took a few pictures, but the light was too flat to get anything good unfortunately.  The rest of the day was spent surfing the web, working on blog stuff, and dominating ping pong.  I wish I could get paid playing ping pong and answering obscure geography trivia questions…that’d be awesome.

On Saturday, I got up around 7am and packed my things once more, waking up every single person in my hostel room in the process.  At least I wasn’t the first person, since some poor sap left around 4am for work.  I drove towards Cessnock, the economic center of the Hunter Valley.  About a two hour drive from Sydney, it is the most visited wine region in Australia, but it churns out some exceptionally average wine compared to what else is available in the country (Barossa, McLaren Vale, Margaret River, and pretty much anywhere in Victoria are all far superior regions).  I ducked into the local McDonalds for free internet so I could check out my route and get attacked by flies again.  I swear I don’t smell that bad, but the local flies beg to differ.

After a coffee and sausage & egg muffin, I hopped on the bike and headed northwest towards Pokolbin and the rest of the Hunter Valley.  Along the way I came across some seriously beautiful vineyards and wineries.  I saw Wyndham Estate (apparently the home of Australian Shiraz), Tyrrell wineries (also a pretty big Australian name), and some other, smaller places.  Then there was Tempus Two.  Admittedly, it is advertised as the best cellar door in the Hunter Valley, but this place looks like a new shopping mall.  The parking lot alone is as big as a lot of the local vineyards in the valley.  The building itself has multiple restaurants, cheese tasting places, and multiple cellar door / wine tasting rooms.  I drive into the parking lot and turned right around.  There are plenty of food items I have no problem with being overly commercialized.  Beer, chips, etc are all fine with me.  I have a problem with wine though.  When I think of wine and cheese, I associate them with some sort of artisanal culture.  Something where the proprietor hand-crafts his products and tries each and every one.  The owner is as much an artist as a producer, and is proud (though humbly so) of the products of his hard work.  Tempus Two was as much a factory and marketing magnet than anything else.  Maybe the wine is nice, I don’t know, but the image that the cellar door portrays is one of a conveyer-belt kind of cold efficiency and marketing machine than one of humble craftsman proud of his locally-grown vintage.  If I’m ever lucky enough to own a vineyard, I might make tons of money doing the Tempus Two thing, but I’d go so against the entire romantic image associated with viticulture that I’d basically be selling my soul for an extra buck.

But that’s all really beside the point.  You go to wine country to drink the wine, and I couldn’t do that on my motorcycle.  I might as well have been visiting lettuce or cabbage country.  The landscape was nice, and the vines sure were green.  But I couldn’t really enjoy what everyone else was – and they seemed to be enjoying it come 3pm.  So I moved on and found the most amazing ride I’ve don’t anywhere, including Switzerland.  The Broke/Wollomombi Rd (for those in Australia or planning on going), which encircles Pokolbin State Park, was fast (100kph speed limit), winding, and hilly/mountainous.  No stop lights or signs.  No traffic to speak of.  And to either side of you, vineyards or horse farms with mountainous backgrounds.  I could have easily been in Tennessee, Kentucky, or Virginia, just with more vineyards.

The day was getting long, and I needed to find a campsite.  Long story short, I didn’t find one.  I found a subdivided property full of vacant (but “sold”) lots that could have easily been out of a Friday the 13^th movie, and two unfenced but obviously privately-owned, properties with vines growing on them.  None of the three felt right, so I made the LONG ride to a spot northeast of Newcastle along the coast called the “Great Lakes” region (also the Myall Lakes National Park).  I have a feeling that failed camping attempts will continue to be a topic of this blog…

And I'm off..

Date: 16/11/2010 to 17/11/2010

I left the apartment around 10am after saying goodbyes to Beau, Georgia, and Fiona.  Beau and Georgia were incredibly gracious hosts over the past two weeks – I had moved out of my apartment on November 1, then spent more time there than originally planned as I had interviews to schedule for INSEAD.  We had good times and drank most of the wine I brought to theirs (4-5 cases of French and Australian wine I couldn’t import back to the US).  It was a really relaxing time considering what was to come, and a nice break from the last few weeks at work, where they got every last drop out of me.

So I headed from Beau & Georgia’s apartment in Redfern / Surry Hills towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  One thing that can be said about Sydney is that it isn’t particularly well signed.  I guess coming from Switzerland, where everything is extremely precise, anything would be “poorly-signed”.  But this is a city without bus stop names (you just have to know where to get off), every other intersection is completely devoid of street signs (you just have to know where you’re already driving), and highway exit signs are about 50m before the actual exit.  As for the Harbour Bridge, I don’t think there’s a sign in downtown Sydney that says where it is.  I mean you can see it, but I had no idea where to turn to get on the damn thing.  I pulled about three u-turns trying to figure out where I was going and then decided to bag it.  Once I found myself on one highway or another I just decided to follow it west to find another bridge over to the north side of Sydney.

After another half hour of driving through Sydney suburbs, I made it to the Hawkesbury River, where the first day’s ride would really begin.  I had poured through maps to pick what I thought would be a good country drive: mostly back roads along the Hawkesbury and through national parks, all with views.  What I didn’t catch was that the bulk of the roads were loose dirt/gravel.  Not a problem, I thought.  Until I came to the first uphill switchback.  Not even a day in to my adventure, and I drop the bike.  There really isn’t much to say about it: I was riding uphill in loose gravel (I had never done gravel or off-road riding before I left, so it is fully my fault) and tried to take the switchback like any other, staying in my lane – in this case in the left on an uphill left-turning switchback, so imagine the steepest part of the switchback.  I lost traction and speed, halfway up the switchback and dropped the bike.  I fell off and rolled back a few times, and thought to myself, “$#%@*, what have I gotten myself into?”  The adrenaline was really pumping now as I tried to figure out how I’d pick up my bike and get it back downhill so I could get back on it.  Luckily, I had checked out a bunch of videos online on how to pick up a motorcycle without killing your back, and it worked.  Backed up to the bike, got into a squat position, got a good handle on the frame of the bike, and just walked backwards.  After 5-10 minutes of slowly working the bike back downhill with the clutch and brake, I took a look at the damage: none.  Well ok, the panniers and handguards had some scratches, but there was nothing on the bike.  I’m happy I didn’t waste $250 on engine bars now knowing the panniers will end up taking most of the brunt of any fall.

Fast forward a few hours, more gravel road, some great riding, and beautiful views of the Hawkesbury and the Central Coast, and I made it to my campsite.  Without the Spot GPS I had left with.  Somewhere along the way, it must have flown off my backpack and I wasn’t going to backtrack 2 hours to pick it up.  Oh well, first casualty of my trip I guess.

The campsite, it must be said, was in a beautiful location.  Behind me were sheer cliffs about 100m up with mansions perched on top.  In front, secluded beachfront looking to the south.  It took me about 30mins to set up the tent (I hadn’t bothered trying to set it up before I left, at least it wasn’t raining).  In stuffing everything important into the tent, I managed to submerge my iPod in water, and it’s shot…second casualty in one day.

I got no sleep at all.  Between the off-and-on rain showers and a totally empty campground which gave me a creepy feeling, I was kept up pretty much all night.  That keeps the streak of zero hours slept while camping intact…I honestly don’t know why I thought it would work this time (last time I went camping was like 10 years ago).  I’ll eventually figure it out, but I imagine it will take quite a few more sleepless nights to get into a routine.  I packed up the tent, and made my way to the nearest McDonalds (free internet) to find a proper bed.

I found a hostel in Terrigal (about 10min drive from the campsite) and checked in.  The people there were interesting, between the older couple returning to Canberra from visiting their daughter, and the drunk 19-year old schoolies on break.  It was a very welcome change from the eerily quiet campsite from the day before.  At least I got a good night’s sleep for once in two days.  I figure for the next couple of nights I'll stick to hostels until I get my footing and then will give the camping thing a try again...

My First Post / Intro

In short: I will be riding my motorcycle solo around Australia for six months. Then I will ship the bike and myself to South Korea, catch a ferry to Russia, and ride again solo from Vladivostok, through Mongolia and Kazakhstan to Europe (destination TBD) for three months.

For much of the trip I will be camping in the wilderness, with DSLR camera, HD camcorder, and HD helmet cam in tow. There will be many pictures and lots of videos of good and bad times alike. I will also have a SPOT GPS to track my progress and let others know where I am. I hope you all enjoy following my adventure over the next nine months. The planning thus far has been a great work in progress, and while the end is quite a ways away (+/-22,000mi without detours), the mere act of setting off in the coming weeks will be an amazing achievement.


I've had some trouble thinking of what I wanted to write as a first post on this blog. Perhaps I've given too much thought into authoring the ideal post -- something that captured my thoughts (of which there are too many at the moment) and set the tone for the nine months to come. Several intense weeks of business school essay writing has taught me that short, concise essays are the hardest to write. This has never been more true than for this first post.

Instead of cramming every last thought that has come to mind over the past days, months, and indeed years and sound like a rambling idiot, I'll let someone else describe what this trip is all about:

As for Peter's trip, my thoughts are as follows.

Peter has dreamed of an adventure trip since he was about 8. Originally, he wanted to the the "Peking to Paris" route, but due to Chinese restrictions, that was not possible (for China, he would have had to have a "minder" with him at all times, and would have had to pay him along the way, as well as return him to the place of origin) India was also a thought, but that also had unrealistic restrictions (he would have had to leave an insurance deposit of 4 times the cost of his motorcycle with the government).

Remember, this is the 16 year old boy who went to Switzerland for a year, he has moved across the world (twice!), he loves to ski (alone and listening to classical music), he loved to ride his motorcycle through mountain passes, he adores photography, he loves geography, he is very adept with technology and gadgets, he is independent and very methodical.

Peter, as you know, does research better than just about anyone I have ever known. He has been in contact with several people who have done the trip (and actually with several who are doing it right now, there will be other people doing it while he is), he has been very responsible in his "purchases" to make the trip as safe as possible. He has researched his bike, and has chosen one that he feels best suits his trip. He has gone to his motorcycle safety classes (both in Switzerland and here) and did very well. I am not sure how much you know about some of accessories. He has very good motorcycle clothes, from the boots, to pants, a leather jacket, a very substantial helmet (a spare visor, because he said that the one he has may well be broken at some point, and a replacement will be necessary), he has 2 pair of gloves with reinforced knuckles as well as hand guards (there again, he said that things might fly off the road, and he needs the protection), he also has bought a vest to wear under his jacket ("body armour," as he explained it, he could get hurt if he falls off his bike, and this should go a long way to protect his vital organs, the thing really is pretty amazing, it is a rather flimsy vest with very heavy plastic breast plates, chest plates, shoulder plates and an articulated spine protector), he has several sets of inner tubes for his tires, and quite an extensive supply of tools and spare parts.

He has two GPS systems: one for him, and one for the rest of us... his, obviously will help keep him on the right routes, "ours" is actually a SPOT GPS system. (you should be able to find it if you google it) It will connect to either google earth, or a similar system so we may see where he is in real time. It also has 3 buttons; the first one will send an "i am fine" message, the second will say that he needs help, non-life threatening, but still in need of help. The third button will dial the 911 equivilant in the area where he is. Russia is a bit difficult with this, in that they will not allow it to be too precise, but it is a pretty amazing system. He has travel insurance which will cover any medical expenses he may encounter, and, in the event of a serious problem, it will repatriate him, he is also in the process of getting a Blue Cross/Blue Shield catastrophic policy that will kick in in the worst case scenario. He will have a cell phone for whichever country he is in, as well as his laptop which he will use to communicate whenever he can duck into an internet cafe or something similar.

I was out to dinner with friends a few weeks ago, and told a few men about his trip. One man looked as me, and as he looked at all the other men in the restaurant said; "Every man in this room has the dream of going on that trip or something similar, very few of us have had, or ever will have the opportunity to do it. And, any one of them who tells you he hasn't dreamed of it, is lying!" That is pretty much the sentiment across the board. At this stage, I have scores of people who are looking forward to his blog. It is going to be amazing. From time to time, things will go wrong. From my vantage point, that is part of life; what counts is how you deal with it.

Peter has never chosen the "normal" path, and I would not expect him to begin that now. He loves his life and is going to experience everything he can. This may be a bit more outside the box than some are comfortable with, but what is the difference between this and his being an exchange student at 16, moving to Zurich, and the Sydney? In each instance, he has examined the opportunity to see if it works for him. Think about the kids who went on Outward Bound when they were teenagers, there isn't a great deal of difference between the two, other than age, and different languages. The same skill sets will be necessary.

For Peter, this trip will be the adventure of a lifetime. I strongly doubt that the stars will ever align for it to happen again.