World Tour Update #3

Random observations of visiting down under to date:

1. Australia is much bigger than it appears on maps. It is, after all, a continent. It encompasses multiple time zones, and it takes hours to fly from one major city to another. One interesting -- and confusing -- aspect of the time zone changes is that the time change between zones is 30 minutes, not one hour. It really confounded us the first time we experienced it.

2. The weather so far has been absolutely drop dead gorgeous. It's winter down here, and the rainy season to boot, but so far the days have been bluebird cloudless skies (CAVU for all you aviators) with high around 60 and lows in the mid 40s. Crisp, clear, low humidity, light breezes - just perfect. Couldn't ask for better. 

The forecast for tomorrow, however, is 90% chance of rain, so maybe our run of good luck is over.

3. The Aussies have a peculiar habit of making up new words by chopping off existing words after the first syllable and adding a "y." For example, chocolate becomes choccy, breakfast is brekky, football = footy, etc.Not bad, once you get the hang of it.

4. We saw our first wild kangaroos yesterday. It was exciting to us, but to the locals the roos are like white-tailed deer back home - exciting and exotic at first, but very soon they become pests, eating everything in sight and being four legged traffic hazards.

5. I drove on the wrong side of the road for the first time today. At least it seemed wrong to me, but according to the folks down here it was the right (that is, left, or correct) side. Initially it was disconcerting, but you get used to it pretty quick. The biggest problem I had was that the turn signal switch and the windshield wiper controls are on the opposite sides of the steering wheel than from what I'm used to. Every time I went to signal for a turn, I flipped on the wipers. We had the cleanest windshield in Australia.

6. BACON!!! This place has the world's most incredible bacon. Not only is it smoked, seasoned, and salted to perfection, it is lean and mean. Picture a pork chop sliced horizontally into pieces about 1/8" thick, and then fried until they were just short of crispy, but still soft and chewy. Not at all like what the Aussies call American bacon: streaky (referring to the large alternating streaks of fat and lean meat in a typical package of what passes for bacon in the states).

It is to die for...

We left Adelaide yesterday and are now on Kangaroo Island. More about that in the next day or two.