Sputter! Sputter! Lurch! Stall - The Grand Cali Tour Begins

Sputter! Sputter! Lurch! Stall.

“You have to put it in first.”

“ I am in first. “

“ No, Here. Now you’re in first. “

“Ok, here we go. “

Sputter! Sputter! Lurch! Stall.

“ Damn this thing!!!”


This is G’s first attempt at manual driving in about 10 years. His dad is giving him a crash course lesson. I’m in the back biting my lip and holding on as tight as I can. We haven’t left the neighborhood.

The vehicle in question is a 1986 Volkswagen Vanagon Camper Van . The plan is to take this puppy on road trip exploring California – a trip we’ve been wanting to take for years. On the one hand, the engine has been newly rebuilt and thanks to my ready-for-anything mother-in-law, Carolyn, it is completely stocked with camping gear. On the other hand, it has no power steering, no horsepower, and no AC. Every time Greg goes make a turn, he has to put the full force of his body into it. The stick also seems to get stuck a lot, thus, shifting gears looks really tough.

Sputter! Sputter! Lurch! Stall.

Greg’s family has had ”the bus” -- as it is affectionately called -- for years and years. When G was kid, they’d take the bus camping everywhere and they have many good memories of their trips. However, the ol’ girl is definitely showing her age.

We take the bus out on a test run. By the time we reach the gas station, Greg is an extremely grouchy state. Not that I can blame him. I’ve never driven manual in my life and get frustrated at mechanical problems easily. I would be positively ornery, so I just keep quiet . . . breath held and gripping my armrest.

After a few minutes, I can tell Greg’s motor memory is kicking in and there’s A LOT less sputtering and lurching. I have no doubt that with a little more time he and the bus will be in synch again. Still, I can’t help but think ahead to some of the mountainous parks we intend to visit and shiver at the thought of how the bus will handle the hills turns.

“You know honey, we can turn around right now. We can just stay at your parent’s house tonight, rent an SUV, borrow their tents and camping gear, and set out again tomorrow. It is totally up to you though.”

A few minutes pass. “ We’re going back. I need to think about this a bit.”

God bless him, he decided we’d rent. Greg says he feels a little defeated, but as soon as he makes the decision he looks much happier. The bus will be for another camping trip . . . one with fewer mountains.

“I’m just thinking about all the stop we’re going to make. It would be great if we were making one or two stops, but with everything we want to do, a vacation in this thing is not going to be a vacation at all.”

I am so thankful to have such a wise husband.

2010 – My Year of Regression and Limbo

Poor 2010. It’s kind of about to get shafted. I have to fast forward through most of it, seeing as how I spent all of 2010 finishing up the end of 2009. Oops.

It’s not to say it wasn’t a great year. Actually, it was pretty big year. Greg and I did a lot of traveling – which I will touch on soon. There were loads of good times with friends – old and new. Greg and I celebrated a decade as a couple. Yeah, that’s a long time, but it’s been good times. And dare I say it . . . I turned 30.

In keeping with the year's theme, we celebrated our 30th birthdays with a Pinata.

More than anything though, I’d have to say that 2010 was my year of limbo and regression. Limbo because we were waiting around for half the year to find out where Greg would be getting a job after B-school. Regression, because while we were waiting around, I took a few steps backwards in a few areas.

Regressing, however, can be a lot of fun. I feel like I got to back to go back and cover some lost territory. I have to give the majority of the credit of this to Greg’s being in B-school. Already, as you know, I’d got the chance to go on study abroad – even if I wasn’t the one doing the studying. This was something I’d always regretted not doing in undergrad. Then we got I got to go back and redo some other adolescent milestones. For example, in 2010 I got to go to Prom again, but with my husband this time.

Yup, we're adults now.

We also went on a Boozy Spring Break, something usually responsible me never did when I was younger. We headed to Mexico on a cruise with a big group from Anderson. We had a lot of fun, but I’d like to think our boozy escapades were at least age appropriate. By which I mean, I think we were at least marginally less obnoxious and a touch more classy than all the undergrad spring breakers. By which I mean, we got champagne at the art auctions onboard and actually listened to the speaker at the tequila tasting.

The booze cruise was soon followed up by Dis-O (Disorientation) – three days of debauchery in Vegas to celebrate the end of B-school for Greg and his class. Kind of a fun side note -- every year Anderson Dis-O has a party in the Real World Vegas Suite at the Palms. This was exciting for me because the Vegas season was probably the last one I watched.

We recreate the drama of Real World Las Vegas in the Confessional.

Of course, all of this was leading up to Greg’s graduation. I was so proud! Top 2%. My honey the smarty-pants.

After vicariously going back to school through Greg for all of that time, circumstances literally took me back to school. Over the summer, my friend Naomi got married in a beautiful sunset ceremony in coastal Maine.

Here's Greg's slideshow from that trip:

It turned out it was cheaper to fly in and out of Boston, so we took advantage of the excuse to visit. Of course, we couldn’t go back to Boston without visiting the old Alma Matter, so we went back for the first time since commencement eight years ago. It was weird, but it was also fun. We subjected Amy, who we were staying with, to a whole lot of “and this where X happened.”

Thanks to Amy and Mike for putting up with us.

I also took a step back on the professional front. Before we went off to Australia, I quit my job of five years . When we got back I still really had no desire to make a commitment to new fulltime work situation. I might still have been a little scarred from the last one. Seeing as how we were in limbo anyways, it didn’t really make sense to look for one either.

For a long time, I had wanted to try going in a different direction. I wanted to try production – physical production rather than working at a production company – but this meant going freelance, which I’d been hesitant to do. I also kind of knew that it would kind of mean starting over again and going back to being a PA (production assistant) since it’s kind of a different world. Now there was no reason not to give it a shot.

I got really lucky. A friend of a friend hired me onto a job working on a commercial. From that I got onto another job, and then another. I ended up working pretty consistently. Commercials and music videos were kind of the perfect thing to be doing because of the shorter time frame. Thus, no long-term commitment during our time of uncertainty and it also meant that I had the freedom to travel around with Greg while he still had the time.

To tell the truth, even though it was a slight ego blow to be at PA level again – it’s often the first jobs people get when they join the entertainment industry -- I was way happier doing these jobs than I had been for most of the last year and half at my old job and I got to work in some cool places as well.

That first job was in Palm Springs, but I did a lot of back-and-forth's between Palm Springs
and LA, so I had to make a quick stop at the Cabazon Dinosaurs of Pee Wee's Adventure fame.


I worked a job near Vegas. At the end, I ended up being one of a few people who were cruelly
forced to go to Vegas for a night to do some errands for the shoot. Sometime work is rough.

Regression can be a good thing.

The Aussie Playlist

My little Qantas rant brings and end to our adventures is OZ. However, I really don’t want to end an otherwise fabulous trip on such a sour note. Soon enough I’ll be fast-forwarding a bit to bring myself back up to date, but first, let’s put things back on a more positive track. So, for my final Aussie post and apparently my 100th on this blog, I’m going to share with you my playlist from the land down under. I’ve already mentioned that Bulletproof is the theme song that plays in my memory for New Year’s 2009. Here are a few more songs that, for better or worse, are inextricably tied in my mind to our stay in Australia.

Australian Idol, Guy Sebastian’s song, I like it like that, was super popular while we were there.

Continuing on Aussie Idol train of thought, Michael Buble performed on the finale. They made his performance almost as flashy as the New Year's fireworks show. He was super popular there at the time and I Just Haven't Met You Yet was one of those songs that was nearly constantly on the radio.

I’ve mentioned that Pink is a bit of a Goddess there, so no Aussie playlist would be complete without one of her songs.

Now, as you know, I've complained a few times about the quality of Aussie radio. As bad as US radio stations are about playing the same songs over and over again, they're even worse in Oz -- and the slate of songs on repeat is somehow even smaller. Kesha and Miley Cyrus had two of the songs constantly on repeat. Greg complained and complained about these constantly! He could not stand these two songs. So, imagine my surprise when a couple of months after our return, he's added them to our playlist at home. They'd forced themselves into his psyche. Oy Vey!

Were going to staying on the club track, but maybe taking a couple steps away from the cheese. You know my girls and loved going out and one our favorite spots was a latin club Vivaz. They played a lot of live merengue and salsa, but when they switched to a DJ, Pitbull's I know you want me, was my favorite song to get down to.

We've come to the final song on the play list. This Mika song came out while we were in OZ. It’s upbeat and quirky and I really dug it. I think this might be my overall theme song for my time in Australia.

And with that, I say my final goodbye to this amazing trip.

The Journey Home

We came home from Oz one year ago yesterday.

It may seem a little silly to still be writing about events a year in the past, but this was such a special time in our lives, that it was really important to me to record as much of it as I could. I mean, when else are we going to get the chance to just put everything aside and travel for four months. It was truly a golden time in my life, and even though it was only four months, somehow, in my memory it seems like so much longer.

I was so sad to leave all of our new friends and the constant adventuring and to have to come back to real life. The journey home didn’t make it any easier. Our flights to Sydney had been so easy! The flights back were like a brutal snap back to reality. EVERYTHING went wrong.

Our journey home can best be summed up by two clips from the Ben Stiller movie, Meet the Parents. On our flight from Sydney to Brisbane, this is basically who we were dealing with:

Rather than this brunette, imagine a decrepit Ann Coulter and age her a decade or two. The attitude, however, was spot on. Our flight attendant completely embodied this fake civility and complete lack of reason in favor of unwavering adherence to the rules, even when it doesn't make sense or serves no purpose. Now you have a picture of just who we were dealing with.

Greg had a carry on that was especially designed for overhead compartments. It however, was more cube-like than those measuring racks they have at gates. So true, it didn’t fit in that slot, but it was actually much smaller than most carry-on rollers. We’d never had a problem taking it on a flight or fitting it into any overhead bin. Still, our heroine, we’ll call her Ann, decided to take issue with the bag and hold onto it like steak in mouth of a rabid beast.

She pulled us aside, made us wait, and would not be reasoned with. She was determined to take our bag away. We tried to explain that the bag is specifically designed for overhead compartments and it really does fit – Couldn’t we just show her? If it didn’t fit, then we’ll agree to check it. NO. Then we tried to explain that the time between our flights was razor thin, and we were likely to miss our connecting flight if we had to wait for our bag – everything else had already been checked through to LA. NO.

At this point, a second flight attendant who came to the conversation late, started to agree with us. She commented to Ann, on an aside, that we really might have a problem between flights. Ann would not be deterred in her mission to screw us over.

We should have taken the second flight attendant’s doubt at the timing as a red flag, but somehow, after 15 minutes of arguing, Ann was able to pry the bag away from us. When she saw our weakness, she snapped it away so fast that we didn’t have time to think about what we’d need to take out of the bag – like for example, Greg’s laptop computer. Before we could say anything, the bag was taken and dropped down a chute.

So guess what? At the other end of the flight, no bag. It was lost. We waited and waited, but nothing. To add to the fun, we found out that our next flight was leaving out of a completely different terminal. We finally had to give up hope and book it to our next flight. The only reason we made our flight at all was because they’d implemented extra security measures for New Year’s travel and getting people through multiple security checks had caused a back up.

To add insult to injury, a woman ahead of us in the security line wheeled right onto the plane with the exact same bag as Greg.

We got on the plane, but every obnoxious thing that could go wrong to make our flight uncomfortable did. My kindle short-circuited, so I had nothing to read, Greg’s TV didn’t work, so he had nothing to watch and he didn’t have anything to read either. Seats didn’t work. You get the picture – it was going to be an uncomfortable 14 hours.

To give credit where it’s due, our flight attendant on this flight was Ann’s opposite. We had a super nice bald guy who genuinely tried to help fix the irksome little issues we were having, but to no avail – we were destined to have a shitty flight.

When we landed in LA, still no bag. We didn’t get it back for 3 days. When we opened it up, this is how we found the computer:

Of course we tried to complain to Qantas and to get reimbursed for the computer, but because a different company had delivered the computer from the airport to our apartment, liability was transferred to that company. We tried calling the delivery company customer service repeatedly but got nothing but an answering service. When we finally managed to jump through enough hoops to speak to got to speak to Qantas’ customer “service”, they just told us that they don’t recommend checking computers. Gee, really?! You forced us to check the damn bag!!!

Thanks Ann and Qantas for this absolutely awful flight experience!


Next time, I think I’ll be considerably more likely to act just like Ben Stiller in this clip:

Just as a little addendum, our friend Matt happened to be on the same flight out of Brisbane as us. When he got to customs in LA, he was detained for hours for no other apparent reason that I can see, other than that they found him to be too tall. So it was peachy keen travel experience for everyone.

Museum Madness

One more thing before we finally leave Australia. While we were there, I made a real effort to hit up as many of the museums and cultural spots as I could. I’ve already covered a few of them, but as you may have noticed, I got a little behind schedule. Thus, I decided that I would one big museum round-up. I think I hit every major museum in Sydney, except, ironically, for the Australian Museum. Well, I guess something had to be left for next time.


Museum of Contemporary Art

I think the MCA was my favorite art museum. It was well curated and most of the exhibits on show while I was there were interesting and also had a real sense of whimsy and fun. The museum also is a really nice size – it’s the perfect to spend an afternoon, but compact enough that you can really take your time to see everything without feeling overwhelmed.

Art Gallery of New South Whales

If the Museum of Contemporary Art is good for an afternoon, you can easily spend a full day or more the Art Gallery of NSW. They do have a lot of very interesting work in many different genres. The audio tour is quite good and only $5 at the museum, or you can plan ahead and download it onto to your ipod for free. They also have a beautiful restaurant, café, and bar.

Museum of Sydney

A visit to the MoS is a good way to get a quick overview of the history of Sydney. You can also glimpse the remains of the first Government House, and they have cultural exhibits as well. The day I was there, they had a really fantastic photography exhibition by Martin Mischkulnig on small town Australia.

The Customs House

Nowadays, the Customs House is a beautifully renovated library. Additionally, they have a beautiful exhibit space on the first floor and a fantastic replica of the entire city below a glass floor. The café and bar on the ground level are a nice place to take in Circular Quay on a pretty day. And although I didn’t make it there, Café Sydney on the top floor is famous for its spectacular views.

The Justice & Police Museum

This is a tiny little museum that should take normal people about an hour to get through. I, on the other hand, got engrossed by the Femme Fatale exhibit that was on at the time and ran out of time. Still, it’s cool to see the courtroom and jail cells.

Australian National Maritime Museum

This place is huge and entrance is free. The exhibits depict the good, the bad, and the ugly of Austria’s history on the high seas, and there is some very cool stuff in there. You can also tour the ships and submarines docked outside on the harbour, including a replica HMS Endeavor on which Capt. James Cook first voyaged to Australia – although this will cost you extra. I’ll admit, Kate, her boyfriend Ryan, and I took advantage of the lighthouse, which we could climb up for free, and then just took pictures of the ships from the dock.

Hyde Park Barracks

The Barracks were built by convicts, for convicts. The buildings served many purposes throughout its history, including as lodgings for convicts working for the government, an immigration depot for female convicts, and as a female asylum. It’s definitely an interesting place to get an idea of how Australia’s early forced immigrants lived.

Hyde Park

While you’re by the Barracks or the Australia Museum, take a stroll through Hyde Park. It's not a museum but it is beautiful and it has a lot of history, and it is the perfect place to spend a lazy afternoon reading or to just take in some greenery.

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi Art Walk

Alright, this isn’t a museum either, but if you happen to be in town during the Art Walk, DEFINITELY take advantage. You already know how much I loved the walk along the Bondi shoreline walk, now imagine the cliffs and beaches transformed into a sculpture park. There's one interesting, beautiful, and sometimes crazy sculpture after another. So much fun! I LOVED this and it’s amazing that this public arts event is sooo accessible and absolutely free.

So there’s the round up.

If that's not enough museums to satisfy, the Historic Houses Trust has a few more places to explore.

Here a few of the cultural spots I’ve already visited on this blog:

The Aquarium
Chinese Gardens
Wildlife World
The Opera House
Powehouse Museum
The Rocks
The Royal Botanical Gardens
Taronga Zoo