No Practice Swing

We’re starting to get our travel plans in order.

The entire plan was to work for four months and then travel for two.
Two months seems like such a long time…until you start to plan a trip.

Suddenly it’s not long enough.

Thursday night Jeff, Nick and I sat down with a bunch of different brochures at our favourite Thai restaurant to try and pound out some of the details. It’s hard enough coordinating travel based on two people’s preferences…try three!

However hard it may be, we’re all determined to take at least one trip together during our travels, so we started looking at our options…

After dinner we ended up at PBH (Pyrmont Bridge Hotel) for a few rounds of odds and evens and wouldn’t you know it, we didn’t end up getting too much accomplished that night except for choosing the type of tour we might want to take through Australia (It’s called the Whipper Snapper, more details later).

Friday night, after pouring over the brochures again, we decided we had the perfect travel plans…all the things that we wanted to see and do were incorporated and the dates of departure on all the trips worked out perfectly (not an easy task).

This entire plan hinged on the fact that we could leave Sydney earlier than we had planned (May 26th).

We made a quick call to Jeff Grand back at home because we wanted to know what his travel plans were before we started booking anything (he’s coming to visit us!).

Saturday morning I get an email that says Jeff Grand is due into Sydney May 15th and due out May 29th.

Back to the drawing board.

But the more I look through the brochures, the more frustrated I get. Suddenly there isn’t time to do anything, none of the dates are working and that damn koala on the cover seems to be laughing at me!

Ok.
Stop.

Where’s the frustration really coming from, because normally brochures don’t make me cry (Almost everything else does at times, but brochures…come on!).

I feel helpless over here.

I wish I could be with her and hold her hand
I want to laugh at how feisty she is, even in a hospital
I want to be able to tell someone with certainty that she’s “looking a lot better, a lot stronger”
I wish that I could say I’ve made my peace with whatever happens while I’m over here and not be lying
I want to show her my pictures when I get back and regale her with crazy stories – like the ones I grew up listening to

I want to tell her again and again how amazing my trip has been, how much I’ve learned about myself and the human condition and how it never would have happened if it wasn’t for her…my first story-teller…my glimpse into the world unknown…my number one supporter since the first mention of my journey…my adventurous Grandmother.

I know better than to count her out.
She is strong.

But the news of her hospital visits and weakened state have forced my mind to go to places that are more real than I’d like

Leaving on a trip like this, you tell yourself that nothing will happen and everything will stay the same or even get better by the time you return…

that’s how you get on the plane,

that’s how you get through the first few weeks,

and that’s the thought you carry with you each and every day you cannot see those that mean the most to you


If she could decide, where would she want me to be right now?


Pick up the brochures and begin again


Our tentative travel plans:

End of May, probably May 30/31st we fly out of Sydney to Bangkok, Thailand

We do a 15 day tour of Northern Thailand – it sounds amazing…visiting temples, biking through small towns, riding trains, rickshaws, riverboats, visiting war memorials, staying overnight in local villages, learning Thai cooking, RIDING ELEPHANTS !!!

We fly from Bangkok to Darwin, a northern city of Australia…where we meet up with Nick. We see the sights Darwin has to offer (perhaps skydive there) then hop on the bus tour.

We make our way into the Outback…make sure to see Uluru, maybe even take a camel ride and have breakfast in the desert at sunrise

The tour then takes us to the East Coast where we can stop in Cairns to do some scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, maybe some bungee jumping, you never know

We work our way down the east coast jumping on and off the bus to see whatever we want (including a 3-4 day sailing trip which I’m pumped for)

Work our way all the way down to Melbourne

From there it’s either Tasmania or New Zealand…both of which are going to be mighty cold…so perhaps some night skiing in New Zealand or something…we can figure that out later

Then fly back to Sydney, giving us 2-3 solid days to say goodbye to the beautiful city and do it up right before flying back to Chicago, August 1st

We’re going to see most everything we want, and Nick’s going to join us for the majority of the trip through the Outback and down the coast…it works out perfectly


I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.