One year and one hundred posts

This absolutely bewilders me, but this post marks the crossroads of two achievements, mostly unrelated to each other, yet both significant in their own right.

First. This is the one year anniversary of my (third) coming to Australia. For it was a Friday night, exactly one year ago, that I deplaned my, uhhhh, plane and set off on this adventure that I've documented on this blog.

Second. This is my 100th post on this blog. One freaking hundred.

Of these two achievements, the most surprising, without doubt, is the 100 posts. Yes, I've been slacking on updating this thing recently, but that can really be attributed to a rough patch at work and a mild case of writer's block. This will change. And I'll get back to something that resembles a routine, with a couple of posts a week.

But 100 posts?? Still displayed on the right, in the "What is AK All Day?" section that I should probably get around to updating one of these days, I say: "In two months, the easy money is that I won't have updated [this blog]." Believe me, at the time I wrote that, I had every reason to fully believe that statement. For despite how brilliant and witty and inspirational and beautiful my words may appear, let me assure you that they don't come easily. Oh no, my friends. Maintaining the quality of writing on this blog, to the level that you've all come to expect and respect, is work. And work is hard.

Now, back to the first point: being here for a year. Surprising, this is not. For unless I simply couldn't find work here, the plan was always to be here for at least this long. Notable, however, this absolutely is. For it's been a fantastic year, full of new people, new adventures and new places. And it's with this in mind that I'd like to take a look back at some of the posts that have led up to this one, as I review my One Year in Sydney:

Welcome to Andy Blog 2.0
Kicking off a new era in style, with an immediate reference to zombo.com. In case this hasn't already been made abundantly clear, at zombo.com, the only limit is yourself.

A precursor
Do toilets in the US and Australia really flush in opposite directions? This was my first foray into this mystery. And much to my glee, we've yet to get a conclusive result.

The defence against hating cricket
Includes the comment, "I can't see how I personally could ever warm to [cricket]." Twelve months later? I've been in a freaking cricket winter league and played a position that I really had no business even attempting.

This is the story of seven strangers...
My first official accommodation! And a nominee from myself to myself for one of my best-written entries on the blog.

Portuguese Chicken Wars
Yikes, this one has gotten me into a bit of trouble as of late. Without a doubt, this is -- or I guess because of some recent revelations, was -- the winner of the People's Choice Award for best blog entry. Friends constantly asked me about it, and if there had since been any developments. Random people who somehow found this post online sent me strange and somewhat creepy emails about it. And well, let's just say that with these latest revelations, things have changed. More on this in the next few days, I promise.

The weekend trips have commenced
My first foray outside of Sydney on this trip, and a weekend full of randomness, with debates about shrimp/prawns, naked ninjas jumping off of cliffs and a movie about a gang of tap dancers from Newcastle. As well as the first appearance of the AK All Day Face in a post!

Two pictures tell a thousand drunken words
Still depresses the hell out of me.

There are cane toads, there are kangaroos... and then there are cassowaries
One of the recaps from my trip up to the Great Barrier Reef, detailing the horrifying night drives, with especial consideration given to the terrifying cassowary.

Melbourne -- there's an angle in here somewhere
The epic recap from my weekend trip to Melbourne. A fantastically awesome weekend that also contained some pseudo awesomeness and some not-so-awesome stuff.

A new home. And the grueling agony of an impossible choice.
The move into my next house! Which was a monumental decision to make at the time. And in hindsight, it worked out in every conceivable way possible. I don't think it would be an understatement to say that the entire course of the universe was influenced by that decision.

Worst idea ever
I still have nightmares from which I lurch out of bed in a cold sweat.

Meeting and exceeding expectations, Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3
Every other weekend trip up to this point had offered a nice bonding experience with a friend, or perhaps the chance to experience some culture. This was just pure raunch. And I loved every minute of it.

A postcursor... of sorts
The follow-up to my study on which way the toilet flushes in Australia. The video here? Anything but conclusive.

The toilet flusheth again
No more finality here! Will there be in the next video I post? Yeeeeaaaahhhh, probably not.

Bringing it full circle
Changing accommodation again, this time into my current place! I'm thinking a video tour is due sometime soon.

Back in America
Most of the entries on this blog -- including this current one, unfortunately -- are written and posted far too quickly, without enough time devoted to the crafting of my words. Because if there's one thing I know that people are expecting out of this blog, it's Pulitzer-caliber writing. But "Back in America"? It's easily my favorite of the 100 that have appeared on the blog to date.

And we'll end it on that! One year, one hundred posts. Where will I be on September 14, 2009? No idea. Will I have made it to two hundred posts? Or maybe just a hundred and two posts? I have no idea. But for now, we know I have to cover at least a few topics: some Portuguese chicken, some more flushing of toilets, a few Kleinballs here and there and many, many, many more AK All Day Faces.

So there's that.

There are cane toads, there are kangaroos... and then there are cassowaries

This is Part Four of my thematic recap of my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef.



It's been one month since I finished my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef with John, and this is my fourth of what I was hoping would be many more entries on the trip. So it's time to get on it and combine a few entries, because, well, the details are fading. Fortunately, the one set of memories that will be engrained into my memory for perhaps the rest of my life is night driving on this trip.

We've all driven at night. We've all probably had close calls with animals while driving. We've all driven during rainstorms. And I'm sure we've all done looooong night drives, all the while fighting fatigue.

Combine all of those and you get the drive that John and I did on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day.

You see, we had taken our time driving north our first few days. Noosa was fantastic (and mostly rain-free!) and Rainbow Beach was a compulsory stop because beyond being our gateway to Fraser Island , we found a great campsite right on the water. But after taking our time, we realized we had to get on it. So after spending Christmas Eve Day on Fraser Island , we hit the road at 8, hoping to make it to Airlie Beach (959 kilometers north) by the next morning. After a brief detour through Tin Can Bay (read: we got lost... again), we were back on the main highway and heading north. And pretty quickly, as it became dark, we were blindsided by a cacophony of dangers:

• It began to pour. Not a drizzle, not a steady rain, not heavy rain. No. It was pouring.
• Driving down the road, it quickly became apparent that we weren't alone. Nope, standing on the side of the road every few kilometers was a kangaroo, just waiting to hop on out in front of us.
• And what beings were on the road with us? Hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of cane toads.
• Finally, heading down this two-lane "highway" at 100 kilometers per hour, we had 18-wheelers flying by us in the opposite direction, kicking up water and wind as they flew by.

So there we were, crouched over the wheel, as dusk turned to the pitch black of night, trying to look past the rain-soaked windshield to (a) stay in the left lane (a challenge that was difficult enough in its own right), (b) keep an eye out for kangaroos ready to hop in front of us and (c) trying to keep control of the van as big rigs flew by us.

Fortunately, the one thing we didn't have to worry about were the cane toads, for they absolutely riddle the road (they've completely overrun Queensland and the Northern Territory -- think The Simpsons episode where Bart unleashes them in the country), so there's really no sense in trying to avoid them anyway. Instead, every minute or so, we'd simply make some cane toad pancakes.

Anyway, as the night wore on, the weather calmed down. The roos and cane toads were still out, yes, but at least the visibility was much better. And it being Christmas Eve/Christmas, the roads were pretty much empty. So, in between the many stops for coffee and other artificial products to keep us up and listening to some ungodly talk radio, we started making good time. That is, until about 5am, when the sky opened up and unleashed a torrential downpour the likes of which I've never seen. I thought earlier in the night was bad? Nope, this was bad. And so there I was, on a highway with a speed limit of 110 kph, going maybe 30.

Now, I'm rereading my post up to this point, and it really doesn't do that night justice. So I'll pass on Exhibit B, with photographic evidence. For a few nights later, John and I headed into Mission Beach. And what do you know, but we were facing pretty much the same exact conditions: rain, roos, cane toads and big rigs. But this time, there was a twist. For we were driving through one of the only places in the world where cassowaries are still native. What's a cassowary, you ask? The photo to the left... that's a cassowary. And it is the ugliest thing you have ever seen. Honestly, John and I had seen one face to face in a wildlife park only a few weeks before this trip and I had to divert my eyes. It's absolutely huge (some grow to be over six feet!) and has a gigantic bone protruding from its head, a nasty turkey-like wattle and a piercing, intimidating stare.

Oh yeah, and then there's this video and this lovely quote from the Wikipedia entry on cassowaries: A cassowary's three-toed feet have sharp claws; the dagger-like middle claw is 120 mm (5 inches) long. This claw is particularly dangerous since the cassowary can use it to kill an enemy, disembowelling it with a single kick. They can run up to 50 km/h (32 mph) through the dense forest. They can jump up to 1.5 m (5 feet) and they are good swimmers." What the hell is this beast??!? Some sort of a freakish cross between the T-1000 and a velociraptor??!?

So driving down the winding road to Mission Beach, imagine the same scenario again: rain, roos, cane toads and big rigs. But now, thanks to signs like in the picture on the left (!!!), we were all too aware that there was some sort of beast looming in the forest besides us, just waiting to step out onto the road, demolish our van and then disembowel us with a single kick! So there we sat, bracing for what I quickly talked myself into believing was an inevitability.

(Quick sidenote on this last picture. Really? Really??!? You're worried about the cassowaries? I mean, I know they're a protected species, but let's reread this passage from Wikipedia again before we jump to conclusions on who exactly we're protecting.)

Of course, the inevitable did not come to fruition. And after driving probably 20 kph to get into Mission Beach, praise be to whoever the praise is due, we survived without any encounters with (let alone seeing) any cassowaries. For which I am -- and always will be -- supremely thankful.

We ended up staying in Mission Beach for two nights because, during the day, it was frickin' gorgeous. However, come the day we left, we hightailed it out of there in the very light of day. And for the rest of the trip, we never drove at night again.