Australia Day 2008

This is the first Australia Day I have ever spent out of Australia.



Not that Australia Day is exactly a Big Deal to us Aussies. It is usually a chance for a long weekend or a looooong weekend, depending on what day of the week it falls on. Still, it is a time for me to reflect on what I like about being Australian.

Hmm, well, let me see.

After our last prime minister's efforts, I feel our country has degraded its international goodwill (but to nowhere near the same extent as the current US administration). We are not as tolerant as we used to be (fancy having race riots in Australia! Godsakes!). I could go on, but well what is the point?



To me, being Australian means:

• Living and letting live
  
• Being tolerant
  
• Giving others a "fair go" (which is pretty much the opposite of "never give a sucker an even break," a very American attitude)
  
• Being able to kick back and have fun
  
• Dissing anyone who is not Australian, particularly our Kiwi neighbours (cos we do actually like them - just look at how we congregate with them and Canadians when we are overseas)
  
• Being able to ask where the toilet is without people curling up and dying of shame
  
• Having our own lingo (though it is on the move itself)
  
• Laughing at fart, gutter and other crude jokes
  
• Giving a mate, or anyone else for that matter, a hand when they need it or even better before they need it
  
• Forming deep, if unspoken, friendships, or what we call mateship
  
• Not speaking like any other peoples on the planet
  

and lots more.

Living in the US has given me a fierce faith in my own Australianness, so to speak. This may be the land of freedom and opportunity but y'know it really doesn't always seem that way. I look at the people sleeping on park benches and the people hanging around a local Home Depot hoping to be picked up for some menial job and I wonder. I see people buying cheap and nasty because that is all they can afford. I see ads on the tv offering people cheap health cover. I hear people whinging because they have to pay state sales and other taxes (and why? because without those taxes the roads don't get mended and the hospitals close). I am told I am free but I am invisible to the government here. I am not free to do as I please - I am not allowed to work and if I did work illegally I could get kicked out of the country along with DH. OK, it might take them a while to catch me but the risks are just not worth it. I am not allowed to get a social security number which means I can never get a credit card in my own right, nor open a bank account, nor get a credit rating or buy anything based on that credit rating, we have to pay double security bond on an apartment, etc, etc.

Living in the US has given me an appreciation for what I had Back 'Ome - friends, family, understanding of the culture around me, a feeling of a deep connection with where I lived. During my one month trip to the US and England in 1999 (nearly 10 years ago!!!!) I felt like a rubber band was pulling me back home. This time the rubber band is pulling harder but I am not going. Not yet. There is too much to experience here and DH is less than a month into his new job. Homesickness is pretty much a constant, like a dull toothache but there are distractions here.

I leave you with a favourite Monty Python poem:


"This 'ere's the waddle,
Symbol of our land
You can stick it in a boddle
You can 'old it in yer 'and.
Amen. Crackatube."

(Pictures taken along the Los Gatos bike trail in San Jose. I've chosen these because they could be around any lake or trail in Melbourne.)

Random pictures around SJ

Peoples are asking for pictures.

So pictures you get!


Driving down one of the highways on our way to Santa Cruz. Redwoods apparently make their own mist - it is easier to pump the water part way up a large tree and transpire it out and then absorb it further up than it is for capillary action to pull the water all the way to the top. Weird, huh?



Looking west from Skyline Road.



Looking over Mountain View/Sunnyvale/almost SJ from Skyline Road.


Spring comes early to these parts it seems, though not today - we had a cool change at about 2:30, just when I was walking to Trader Joe's, Michael's and Target. It was wet and horrid and the supposedly half mile walk felt like about 10. I was Bad Girl :-* and spent more $$ at Target cos I need some new clothes (I spent $$ on jumpers and bras at Kohl's yesterday). I now have a new pair of shoes, two new pairs of pants (one casual, one good for work not that I am allowed to work), a new dress and 3 new tops all for about $70! It helps that only two items were full price and the rest were 80% off... Now all I need is new undies and I am set for the next two or three months.

I have plenty of pics of SF to show off and of Pigeon Point Lighthouse and surrounds. All I need is enough time to blog them - we've been apartment hunting and running around after that stuff, and I think I've had about 8 hours home without DH for the week, which is not enough to blog properly (DH hogs the computer at night. Hooray for getting our stuff next week! I'll have my own computer again!)

Agnosticism

Whilst tramping around Bonny Doon beach, we had opportunity to think about the creation of the world.

Is this proof that God made ze world? Concrete stuck between two layers of rock?


And a culvert cut through the rock, creating a creek around the edge of the beach?



Oh no!


Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster be *dead*???? I would've tried mouth to mouth if
a) I could figure out what was the mouth
b) it didn't stink pretty badly.

Getting to know you

Ah, I think I am starting to settle in to SJ. I hope.

Going for a drive on the weekend was good. Very, very good. We don't have a car but we hire one once in a while. Visiting the beach was very good for me. I love the beach. Even nudie beaches are good! And no, mrsp, we will continue to have LOTS of white bits. I have lovely fair English skin that turns beet red if I stay out in the sun for long - I am a Sunscreen Queen! nathan tans but is wary of Too Much Sun, mainly cos it hurts. He is not completely convinced that sun causes melanoma, but we are convinced that Not Enough Sun = bad bones as you don't make enough vitamin D. Apparently there is a rise in diagnosis of rickets in kids as they are being made to cover up all day long = no vitamin D. Vitamin D is supplemented in milk but some of us don't drink milk.... yucky stuff!

Anyway, enough blathering. You want pictures!

Today's pictures are still from Bonny Doon beach.



I *love* the rocks there - zebra type rock. Hope you do too cos most of the following pics are of rocks :-)

Lynne and Nathan go to a NUDY beach

Oo err!

We stopped at BONNY DOON! We sang the BONNIE DOON song! Bonny Doon here in the Bay area has a beach! A big pounding, secluded beach! The Pacific isn't exactly pacific here - the waves were really thumping in. I was so excited - I love a good ocean beach and this one reminded me of some of the beaches on the Southern Ocean Back 'Ome.

One thing that was a little unfamiliar -it was a nude beach. My first ever nude beach.

Can anyone tell me why all the nudies on this beach were male? It was mid-afternoon on a winter's day. At least they all sucked their guts in, including the older chap who paraded in front of us.

And can I just say that male genitalia are silly looking things? Quite obviously a sex-driven display because they really are obvious. Except when men are cold, of course. You don't easily see the dongles on other male great apes.

What no pictures of rudie nudies? Like I want anything that could be interpreted as porn on my blog! (Plus I didn't want several streakers running after me trying to break my camera - if nothing else most of them looked quite fit and I would not have been able to outrun them.) Instead, you get a lovely few pictures of the same scene with different waves pounding in.








(That last one is the sort that makes you squeal and flee as you still have runners on and don't want to get them both wet *and* sandy.)

(Oh and if I don't reply to your comment, it is either a) I am too stupid to try using blogger's newly upgraded commenting system (I don't want my own replies sent to me) or b) blogger tells me "no reply" possible as your email account is not hooked up to your blogger account so my email system can't send an email to you.)

Lake Louise

What a mixed bag Lake Louise was!

This is a most gobsmacking area, both for the quality of the views and also the ahem breadth of cuisines available in the area. At the same time as I struggled to find food to eat in the local mini-market, there is a hotel with fine dining room and pub that has European trained chefs, including pastry chefs, just around the corner. And I don't mean the Fairmont hotel at Lake Louise either! (Hint for coeliacs - BYO food!)

The village is small and has a shopping plaza with a very nice book shop. Not what one expects but it was a good shop. Wish we had bought something there. The national park place was interesting but dull at the same time. (Just like my notes accompanying these pictures!) Since we were whacked by the time we looked at the national park place, we just sat down and watched a kids' doco on how the Rockies formed. We enjoyed it. We watched all bar the credits at the end (and probably would've watched the credits but we got a subtle hint that they were closing - oh! People! You watched all of it????). The host of the doco was a complete whacko but we learned stuff. Like how to tell if rock is shale/mudstone (wet it and rub it). Sandstone feels rough against your teeth (!!!). Limestone dissolves in acid (not many of us carry vinegar around but maybe someone has a little sachet left over from some fish and chips! Not that I found fish and chips there. Gosh I miss fish and chips, not that I could have them Back 'Ome either....). The park ranger said we are about the first people to watch the whole thing. Well why not? It is amusing and educational, even for big Know-It-Alls like us!


Here's some shots taken walking up to the Lake from the village. It is only about 4km. We can eat 4km of walking normally, but this was in quite sub-zero temps (about -15C, I think almost subzero F as well) up a steep hill on ice and snow.


Along the way we met another AUSTRALIAN. How on earth do we do it? We are halfway around the world from home and we meet Aussies. Like doooods, we want to meet other people!


Even worse, he was from the same suburb of Melbourne where I spent the first 25 years of my life (Ringwood). He says it has gone downhill since I was there. He and Nathan had a good chat.




Crikey! The picnic ground is CLOSED? Y'kidding me! Whyeverso?


Aren't these chalets cute in the snow - it is dripping off them just like icing on gingerbread houses!


Nathan demonstrates how cold it was - our breath was forming hoar frost! It was driving me insane cos I could keep my face covered (so it didn't freeze) or I could see (my glasses kept fogging up if I breathed with my face covered). I chose to not see as well as I could. Mostly. After all, the scenery is on a grand scale and not being able to focus on it was not really impairing my ability to see it.


These were the best icicles we saw on the whole trip. Imagine one of them breaking off! Be like a spear through someone's head....


It might have been so cold that the hoar frost was building but the creek was still bounding along with some open water here and there.

Finally we came in sight of the World Famous Lake Louise Fairmont hotel. Have you ever heard of World Famous sites (or burgers/food) that you've never heard of before you came across them at their World Famous site? Well this one I reckon really is World Famous! This is one of the few World Famous sites that I've ever heard of!


Next - Lake Louise itself.

en route to Lake Louise

Despite a warm round of apparent indifference, I persist in posting more! Your feedback is welcome* - I can only imagine that photos of snow capped mountains don't do it for most people. I guess it is very normal for those in the north, but it sure as hell is different for someone who comes from a place where it NEVER snows. Also Australian mountains are in general pretty pathetic. Our ranges have been ground down over so many gazillions of years that there's only a couple of thousand metres (6,000') left if we are lucky. Mostly we aren't lucky. Plus not a whole lot of them get snow and nothing like the Rockies do.

The highlight of the short trip from Banff to Lake Louise on the Greyhound bus is this:


Castle Mountain.

There are other mountains and pretty views along the way


and a very interesting and pretty parkway to drive along if you have your own car, but this is The Big One.





We arrived at Lake Louise just at sunset.


After dragging our suitcases a few hundred metres through the snow, we found our lodgings for the night - the Lake Louise International Hostel. It's in two parts so if you go there you'll find reception at the back of the larger building on the left. Just follow the deck. Don't stand at the door to the rightwards building, like I did, and wonder why you can't get in. Duh!

At this point I should I found the international hostels in Calgary, Banff and Lake Louise to be clean and good places to stay, particularly if you are on a budget. I recommend them and would stay at them again, even if the Banff hostel is two km out of town. The Banff and Lake Louise hostels are quite new, which means they have nice furnishings and have not gotten shabby around the edges. (Though I would very much like it if the girls who shared the toilets with me, though not at the *exact* same time, had figured out that they were NOT auto-flushing - EWWWW!). I was surprised by the bed at Lake Louise when I flung myself on it - it was a 4" mattress pad. We had private rooms at each of them, though not always private bathrooms. The central Vancouver hostel was very interesting and they've tried hard to make it really funky, but it has challenges associated with old city buildings (including vermin problems) and does not have stoves/cookers/ranges due to fire regs! The Vancouver mob did fix our toilet promptly, as it kept flushing every 10 minutes, and the room was fine - rather cute in a vaguely art deco sort of way. Just don't get a room on the lower floors as there is a dance club under the hostel and boy does the noise travel! I have no idea why the Canadian hostels leave most of those in the USA so far in the dark - mebbe we have not stayed at the right hostels in the US.

Next - Way Too Many Pictures of a Very Snowy Lake Louise!

(*mrspao - this does not mean you need to comment on every post ;-) It is very sweet of you though)

Name change

Y'know Colorado Dreaming was no longer appropriate for a blog when the writer is no longer in Colorado, and is doing a bit of California Dreaming instead.

Considering this is in essence a travel pics blog, I decided that for the time being an old slogan for my home state of Victoria would be fairly appropriate. So Victorians and some other Aussies will get it and the rest of you? :-)

Banff 2

We walked a lot around Banff. It was an education, walking in my snowboots (and discovering that they would rub my legs raw if I laced them up to the top! Ouch!). We don't get much snow and ice in Oz, and Banff had had a warm snap and rain and then cold temps, so there was plenty of ice. Shuffling seemed to be the best way to stay upright and minimise likelihood of slipping, and let me tell you there was PLENTY of opportunity for stacking on the ice. Some shops and homes kept their sidewalks clear and others? Welllll..... One of the slipperiest places was the Safeway carpark - lord knows what the local drivers do there but.

Speaking of the Safeway, it always surprises me when I go to a town and can't find gluten free food. After all, we were in a tourist town and gluten free food was pretty scarce. In retrospect, Calgary was a coeliac heaven - we did find a good organic supermarket, right by a light rail station, that stocked a good range of GF foods, including corn thins and a local GF bakery's products (GF/DF pumpkin pie! Oh it was YUMMY! I shall never see its likes again, alas!). An organic bakery had what they called "gluten free" brownies but when I asked, they said "oh, no, we can't guarantee they are gluten free!" So why call them gluten free? Low gluten is truer! We did have a good meal at the Rose and Crown pub - they did what I call pub food. They are one of the many eateries that are upstairs and are accessed by a set of doors and lots of stairs - hole in the wall type doors. The Safeway did not have a good range of GF foods. Indeed it had hardly any that I could find.

Enough crabbing. Banff was pretty, just not coeliac friendly.


(I am also terribly surprised that NOONE was using the bike rack by Bow Falls! Those are the rapids above Bow Falls in the pic below.)



(And NOONE was using the picnic tables. Like DOOOOOODS, it was only -17C, what are you, a pack of wusses? (If I wrote nancies, would anyone spank me?) Just cos your butts would freeze off if you sat on the snowy seats.... The odd crow/raven might steal your food cos they will be hungry too!)

But Banff was not about food. Banff was about cold and walking EVERYWHERE. Y'see they advertised a bus service that went past the youth hostel. The bus ran every 40 minutes. So after our meal the first night, we waited at the bus stop. We made sure that we had the right change, and then we saw the bus turn right one street before it reached the stop we were waiting at. We were confuzzled by this, and cranky cos it was cold and dark and we Had Had Enough. The map said the bus went past our stop.


(I am very cold in this shot - I don't have a nice lined tuque yet)

Turns out that we had the NEW new map. The bus had not been going along the main street as it had been closed due to extremely icy conditions. We had the map/timetable that was correct for the day after we left, not the current timetable. It made for crankiness as the walk was reasonably long and up a steady hill.

We never did manage to catch the bus.

It didn't run past these places:

Why do people like houses that are EXACTLY the same as the house next door? I must just prize individuality more than most (though you can find 20 of our house in our neighbourhood Back 'Ome, but at least the houses around ours are not the same as ours).

But jeez we saw a lot of prettiness.

(Cascade Mountain)

Lots of pretties!

(Mt Rundle)

Even more pretties!

(Mt Rundle)

More pretties than you can poke a stick at! Or maybe a hoodoo at


Pretties all round!


(up the river)


(down the river)

Too many pretties?


NEVER!




Some old railway hotel for you - the famous Banff Springs?


And from afar, on the road to the hoodoo gurus!

(The funny thing is that you think the hotel is up the hillside a fair way but really? It is in the valley!)

It has a great view along part of the Bow Valley - what a fabulous, ground out valley it is too!


How's this for a snow plough?


Looks just like the prow of a ship, for a similar reason, but it really is attached to this:


But alas, all good things must come to an end, so we moved on to LAKE LOUISE!