Day One - Brisbane

Day 1

After leaving the Omaha airport, Tom and I landed in Salt Lake City for about 10 minutes and then got on the connecting flight to LAX. PS – the flight to SLC was pretty bad. We had a tiny plane 2-2 plane, which was full, and we were seated near the bathroom, which smelled like the most pungent urine smell the whole time, especially if someone opened the door. Which only happened about twenty times. Anyway, I ate my peanuts and drank my tomato juice and we were already in LA. The girl that sat next to Tom didn’t stop talking for one second the whole time, and was almost louder than my headphones could go, and I was in the row ahead of them. We had about two hours to kill, so Tom and I went to Chili’s and had a beer, a shot, and I had some southwest eggrolls. We met a couple next to us who were about to do North and South island New Zealand in about 11 days, and, as we were about to do the South Island in about 5, we had a bunch in common. They were from Oregon, and were fun to talk to. We then made our way to the terminal<>

Got into Brisbane at 605am and went through customs and such. I had to report my DUIs and got a little extra security attention. It was all good, though. Brent picked us up and we loaded our bags into his Nissan Tiita, and headed to his apartment. His place is only a block or two from the riverfront, and his place is nice, and roomy. We showered, shat, met up with Kristin, and went to breakfast at a cool little outdoor restaurant. I had egg and soldiers, bacon, and I tried Vegemite and toast. Vegemite is an Australian tradition, mostly popular with older people. It’s made with a yeast extract, and is pretty salty. In small doses, it’s good, though. Brent and I both enjoy a bit of Vegemite. “Mate” and “Cheers” are very common, and the people here wonder where our accent is from. Brent wanted to keep us up as late as possible to acclimate us to the time change, even though I would have loved a nap. But we packed a full day. We drove around the city after breakfast, went to a really cool lookout over the city, then B and K dropped us off downtown, and we rented bikes to ride in the park, and they were gonna meet us with their bikes later. We rode to the 7-11, got drinks, and browsed a skate shop. Australia doesn’t have pennies, they just round to the 5. Their lowest bill is also a 5. They have 1 and 2 dollar coins. And getting used to the left hand driving was weird. I almost got in the driver’s seat, and most times we turned, I thought we were gonna wreck. Brent met up with us and we rode around for about 2 hours through a really cool riverfront area called South Bank. It was beautiful. Their riverfront has miles of paths and it’s really cool. It was as cool if not more than when I rode across the Golden Gate bridge. We saw where we were going to climb rocks, and rode across the main bridge in Brisbane, the Story Bridge. We went shopping at the grocery store and I bought a bunch of candy and fruit that we don’t have here. After that, we went and hung out at Brent’s place for a bit and went to dinner at a Moroccan restaurant. We split some chicken pastries, bread and dips, lamb kebob, and a Moroccan pizza. Everything was great, the lamb a bit overdone, but otherwise, everything was awesome. After the meal, I just wanted to crash. We got some beer, went back to the house, played a few games of dominoes, and went to bed.