The big decision

Written 17 February 2009

Photos are gratuitous kids shots.

Wow, things have a way of drawing themselves out, and time slips past quickly. Like the speed at which the ground beneath you flows as you keep your eye on some distant object on the horizon that stands immobile.

That immobile object could be any of a number of new acquaintances, be it the Australian immigration service, the internet service crews here, or the construction across the street from our apartment. A solid six weeks have gone by, but the only change I have yet noticed is that I finally got my visa a couple of weeks ago, although I am still waiting on physician identification numbers and the like to come rolling in.

My hope is that the nine months will pass as quickly as the first few weeks. That I can keep my eyes on something slow, say, my learning, and the days of 2009 will be little more than painted lines on the highway.

Ana is headed back to the States, as most of you know. Trey and Ryan will of course go, as well. Despite living frugally over the past several months to accumulate some savings for the move, Sydney was more expensive than we had estimated. Additional delays in getting documents finalized meant that starting work could not happen for a then-undetermined amount of time. When there began to be a zero sum on the horizon, that no money would be in the account after a very close and estimable amount of time, decisions had to be made—find a way to cut expenses or increase, even obtain, income. Even breaking even when the paychecks started was questionable.

The stress was heavy. From my standpoint, the assurance of provisions for wife and kids was dwindling, and any answers on the horizon required preparations. If Ana was going to work here in Australia, the visa limited her to twenty hours weekly. That not only halves the income she could earn, but it limited her options of potential jobs. Many more are available for those willing and able to work full time. Furthermore, those jobs that accept part-timers are rarely lucrative to the level she could and has earned in the states. A final back-breaking point was that time at work for her would be time the two kids had to be in someone else’s care, and childcare here in Sydney is exorbitant, exacerbated by the recent shutdown of the largest childcare chain in Australia due to financial mismanagement. Decreased supply with stable demand means both high costs and increased length to wait lists. The childcare facility on the hospital grounds has a list now two years long.

At the point I could not ensure security, I came home, dropped my bag, and told Ana that the only answer might be for her to try to get her position back in Louisville. The look on her face and the excitement in her voice at the mere prospect was a strong argument in favor of that decision. She got right on it, and her phone call back to Cogent was met with equal excitement. It took a while to confirm her return with the executive office, but it was done, and her first day back will be the first of April.

Ryan will be back in school, and Trey will stay home with Lola, who thankfully is going to stay with them. Things for them will return to something similar to what it was less than a year ago. Sans Dad.

It is a tough but worthwhile decision. The security is a great lift of my shoulders. Ana will clearly be happier, and I can see that nine months of not working has been a task. I hope that it won’t matter that much to the kids in the long run, and that the difference made in the job I have, the place we live in the future, the opportunities provided them will outweigh the change to family structure they have the next couple of weeks.

As for myself, there are days when I look at the good differences the upcoming months hold—the time I can dedicated to reading and learning, more opportunities to exercise, ease of travel to go see Australia, maybe even other countries while here. It turns out Trey and Ryan aren’t as impressed with the harbor bridge as they are with jumping castles and dessert.

There are other days where the obvious losses seem greater. But the decisions are made, and we will have to see how it goes. Fortunately, all of it is transient.

The irony is that an increase in understanding of the system has led to less taxation. They give large rebates to those who work in the hospitals, splitting the tax deduction with the business, so my taxes will be half what it would be with other jobs here. They also give returns through a program that compensates you for coming to the big city with much higher standard of living as a result of a given job. And let me tell you, the cost of living here is higher than Louisville, Kentucky! But the rebates have made it more affordable. The job has started, so there is the assurance of income. Now making ends meet is doable. Estimates look like Ana’s end is doable with her income. It is nice to have that stress off, but the fact that going into debt didn’t come to fruition somehow makes the circumstances seem less real. But it all has worked out in the end, for now. So on the bad days, I'll just keep my eye on the horizon and let the painted stripes fly past. On the good days, I'll look a little closer and post the photos that I take.

Home found

Written 10 January 2009

Day five in Sydney, the first Saturday. A chance to kick back? Hardly. We have gotten to celebrate reaching a couple of goals, on time I might add. Yesterday we got our apartment. Today I am resting more assured that we will have all the necessities when we move in on Monday. There is still a good deal to do tomorrow, however.


Photo 1: balcony view south, towards downtown. Some buildings just east of downtown are in the distance.

Each tour of the neighborhoods had made us decrease our radius from the hospital considered suitable for living. Before my trip to Sydney at the end of November Ana had made an excellent list of houses and a couple of apartments within a maximum of an anticipated ten minute drive. In retrospect, that seems like a drive from a county away. First, ten minutes estimated on a Google map ain’t ten minutes big-city style. My guess is that the main thoroughfare past the hospital was not expected to handle the daily traffic it takes these days. While this area is nothing like Manhattan, it is far more congested than, say, North Dallas. Maybe the best comparison would be Austin. The roads here are fairly narrow and the undulations of the terrain lead to winding roads. When people are packed together, they have little room for others of different pace or knowledge of the area. You better have a plan when you hit the roads, keep your mind on it, and execute.


Photo 2: the view west, directly across the street. The nearest building the Royal North Shore Hospitals dialysis center. Middleground: the new research center and medical school library. Brown building in distance: the inpatient hospital, i.e., workplace. Commute time: four minutes, with traffic.

Another factor in shrinking the search was expense. Everything costs a good deal here. And the more we have hassled with making purchases to get settled in, the more we think about having to sell or give it away in just a few months. The beauty of it is that it keeps the contrast between need and want fairly clear. We aren’t going to rough it, but I also don’t think we will be hanging any Rembrandts on the walls. Or perhaps anything more than family photos, for that matter.

Photo 3: balcony view north. High-rises in distance is Chatswood, the upscale district of the city, proported best schools, etc. In between, the offices of two of the city's television stations, the main highway northward.

Maybe we will decorate by fate, searching only for huge bargains, or be okay with putting up nothing whatsoever. Point being that we finally decided on a place right across the street from the hospital complex. There are several apartment towers that oppose the huge grounds of the hospital. Our place will be lined up just a few hundred yards from the inpatient and surgical building, the hospital proper. Call should be pretty good. Additionally, the train station is even closer, due south about 200 meters. And the station is not just a platform and a ticket window. The tracks mainly travel above ground throughout the city, but it is very much a Metro layout and system. As a result, the “station” is placed amongst high-rise buildings and covered with a layer of commerce. An open-air plaza is right over the tracks, and the perimeter is lined with restaurants of quite a range. Of course, Mickey D’s is there, but there are a couple other fast food places indicative of the ethnic diversity of the city, a fresh fruit market, a very good restaurant with low lighting in the evenings, good wine it seems, and great coffee also served at a walk up counter. There is a pharmacy, a newsstand, and a grocery store. With everything so close and convenient, it is worth a little more to be in this area.


Photo 4: the view from the south balcony looking westward. Train tracks below and out of view (the train is electric, nearly silent). About 3 miles away: Tasman Sea.

Searches for a new home, new technology

Written 8 January 2009

Okay, I was just wrapping up the last blog, discussing some of it with Ana, when we realized that I should make an entry for today. So while I will post this a couple of days after the previous, realize that it took place on our second full day in Australia, amidst apartment hunting in the big city. Now it is the same big city that I was saying that I wouldn’t enjoy as much, but I also said that I was keeping an open mind and meant that I would unabashedly embrace the good things.

Our great revelation was compounded by two factors. First, while many blessings have befallen Aotearoa, the internet has hardly recognized the place. In fact, some study that a coworker quoted me listed New Zealand as having the poorest internet structure of any developed nation. Any. How did they let Ireland or Portugal slip past them? Even the way you get internet there is different. It is not just a matter of downloading or uploading speed. Only the big companies, such as the hospital where I worked, had unlimited access and high speed. And by high speed, I mean relative to dial up. You will see what I mean in a minute. The rest of us outside of the corporate world purchase quantities of download per month. For example, we bought a middle-of-the-road program allowing three gigabytes of download at high speed for NZ$40 per month. More downloads would cost more, and the same download quantity at higher speed would cost more. A lot more.

And for clarification, 3 Gb is enough to handle all our emails, web brousing, facebooking, and iTunes downloads, almost. We still ran over a little a couple of months. But we couldn’t venture into videos much and had to avoid sites that kept spooling information to you, updating their information every few seconds. We also couldn’t pull up Youtube videos of Sesame Street and the like for Ryan.

The second factor in this compounding process that I alluded to is that nothing progresses like technology. Six months in New Zealand has let other lands carry on at breakneck speed.

Zoom in to the four of us strolling (actually three of us strolling and one in a tike-toting backpack) along the sidewalk in a high-rise section of North Sydney after seeing the last of the open viewings of apartments that we had listed for the day. We stopped into a computer store to get some opinions on internet connections, companies, the quality available, etc. The very pleasant Chinese fellow, the presumed owner, was happy to talk to us about it and gave us a brochure from one of the many providers in the area, one with which he was apparently associated, since a blank on the brochures application page for the provider representative had already been filled in with his name. The plan provided 50 Gb of warp-speed downloading of 20 Mbps for AU$50 (about US$30). “So what plan did you have in New Zealand?” he asked. We responded that we got 3 Gb of high speed download for NZ$40. “Thirty gigabytes?” he questioned, as though his Mandarin ears had misinterpreted my American accent. The look he gave when he counted the fingers I held up to correct him told us what we needed to know. Things were about to get a whole lot better.

Bill Gates. NOT a Kiwi.

Sydney Wildlife World

One of the first places that we made weekend excursions to was the Sydney Wildlife World. Despite how it is normally in the states, this place is located on the harbor right near downtown. It is wonderful to have such a menagerie for the kids to see just a short walk from the train station. Additionally, it was an air-conditioned facility, making it a great refuge during the hottest days of summer. We bought annual passes for entrance to both the wildlife park and the aquarium, wonderfully located next door to each other. The next posting will be about the aquarium.

The great assortment of wildlife, so different from North America, makes for some great photos. I only put five here, but I should add more in another posting. I have also put them on an album on my Facebook page.

Photo 1: Would any Ausie wildlife park be complete without the koala. One of the symbols of Australia, the mascot for the national airline.

They are less slothlike than I thought, but not by a whole lot. They apparently conserve energy, since they reap their energy from eucalyptus only. This is one of their survival skills, living off a food source that no other animals really compete for.

Look closely at this koala's tummy.

Photo 2: This mother is toting her little one around. Both spend a lot of time napping.

Photo 3: Ana meets with one of them. Actually all four of us were allowed to mill around with four koalas in a small area. Most napped. One was designated as the petable one for the day. Unfortunately, today's koala was the grumpiest of them, according to one of the guides. Note his social interaction in the photo.

Photo 4: Maybe even more Australian than the koala is the kangaroo. They had one adult and a few adolescents in a large enclosure, no girls so that there was no competitive behavior. Here the oldest is the boldest, feeding close to the path for the people.

They are scrawnier than I expected.

Photo 5: Equally exclusive to Australia, but less known, is the cassowary, touted as the world's most dangerous bird, according to the Guiness Book of World Records. Note the pleasant look on this fella's face. In the same family as the ostrich and emu, he is a little smaller but has sharp talons and a powerful kick, admittedly in defense of self or nests.

And that horn! So attractive.

There are three different breeds, differentiated by the pattern of the red waddle.

Sydney Aquarium

The Sydney Aquarium has some of the same benefits of the Wildlife World-- location, convenience, air conditioning-- so it was a good place to hole up when we first moved here. As expected Ryan got a huge kick out of it, though I wasn't far down the excitement scale.

The loggerhead sea turtle

This boy was in the big tank with numerous fish, sharks, manta rays, and others. But he holds his own. Big old boy.









This smaller tank was no doubt organized to elicit screeches from every child from ages two to eight. Clownfish and friends: "NEEEMO!"















When you run into Ryan, and she goes on about dugongs, this is what she is talking about. The southern world's relative to the manatee. I think he smiled for this photo.
















The cuttlefish. I wrote a middle school paper on mollusks (very enthralling read, I am sure) and became a big fan of the octopus, and to a lesser extent, the squid. I intentionally skipped over their other relative, the cuttlefish, since there wasn't much in the encyclopedia about them. Since then I have learned some incredible stuff about them. The abilities of the smaller ones to dupe the larger ones is, well, inspiring. It throws off the survival of the physically fittest, but maybe they are advancing in other ways faster.

Jellyfish. Just a photo that came out nicely. I think the middle one of these posed, as well.

No, these are not the poisonous fellas found up near the Great Barrier Reef.

The market and Palmie

One more blog posting that from a couple of weeks ago. We rented a car for the weekend, and while we could have used it to venture much farther out, we decided just to make closer, more convenient trips, since there was plenty still to see more proximally. So Saturday included a day trip to Palm Beach. Like other Palm Beaches, this is also known for the nicer homes. It is a weekend getaway for the more affluent but includes a very nice publicly accessible beach. One of the current popular television shows is base here, at least in storyline.

The first photo is just snapped climbing out of the car. Not much doctoring required here. Just a lovely sunny beach away from town. Objects may be closer than they appear. There were more people than this photo lets on. What it also doesn't show is the strength of riptide. The incoming waves were pretty tough, but the undertow was like standing in an intermittent, fast-flowing, river.

The second photo is of the same coast line, a little further south as we took side roads and turnouts on the way back to the city. One of the beauties of Australian culture is utilitarianism. Take Ana's hat, for example. During the week, an ordinary flower pot holder.


This third photo is of the weekend market at the Rocks, a district just north of downtown. In fact, it is just a very short walk from one to the other, the difference being that the buildings become shorter, a good bit older, and a little more historically significant as you near the harbour (spelling as when in Rome). By the time you are at the north end of the market, as we were here in this photo, you are in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge. All the goodies that you would hope

to find in a market are here. Nothing that you need, a lot that you might want.


Finally we decided on something that we might want, a caricature of the kids. More for marking history than historically accurate, the drawing was whipped out in just a few minutes as one of the last efforts of the day. Ana likes it, and I hope others do as well. It includes a squiggle representing the Sydney Opera House, and a bridge in the background-- both great landmarks just a stones throw from this point. But Ryan looks to be about fourteen in the photo, and Trey, who just is on the verge of mastering running, holds a skateboard. But it was fun to get it, and I was surprised how well both of them held still for the artist.

First thoughts on arrival to Australia

The blog entry below was written during the first week we were here, when Aotearoa was still on my mind regularly, when we were living out of a hotel room. I am glad that I took a few moments to document a mindset in transition.

It is a shame that the most cathartic times are also the busiest. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings that you run through when moving like we are right now. The nostalgia for the place you are living; the separation from friends, knowing that there is very little chance that you will have closeness of that degree with those people ever again; the fondness for the memories that you have made; the appreciation for the things you have learned and seen.

Within a matter of minutes your perspective changes, not much longer than looking away from your rearview mirror to the road ahead. Different thoughts prevail. The stresses of the move; the stresses of the budget; concerns for safety; the need for basics, such as where to find groceries, the papers for the customs, or even how to get to where we will spend the night. It is a rapid and rough change that doesn’t leave enough time to revel in the beauty of what has been created over the past few months. Perhaps that is something that should already have been done-- an easy perspective to take consciously, but the reality is that the physical separation is a much more effective stimulus for these feelings.

Point being that I am taking this time now to document what cannot be documented when you are pushing three trolleys of luggage around a couple of airports, when you are looking at your kids, comparing them to how they were six months ago and imagining what another twelve will do for them.

If these are feelings I feel alone, I am not the only one going through his mental scrapbook. As I write, Ana and Ryan lie in bed looking through video clips from Louisville on Ana's phone. The only reason they are not clips of Christchurch is because she had to use a different phone there. I am sure that the impetus to start looking at those videos was the same as mine.

I miss New Zealand a great deal, and while I try to keep an open mind. Realistically I don’t think that Australia will measure up. When I look back a couple of years from now, I think that my love for New Zealand will have faded very little. I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t come across the same caliber of people here as there, or Louisville for that matter. In both places I made friendships that I hope I keep up for life. And there are surely going to be amazing sites here (Australia). But the intangibles, the very things that I have come here to absorb, are so great there. The rhythm of the people, the generosity, the knowledge of other peoples and humility about their own; I am sure that these will be very different here, not just because we have changed countries, but the entire scene is different. Small city to big, small economy to strong, a more intramural lifestyle. I’ll take it all for what it is and love it. I just know which one fits me better.

An interesting point is starting to twinkle on the horizon. Many of the differences between the Kiwis and the Ausies also exist between the Americans and both of them. It’s just another big step to realizing what my homeland is, appreciating others for what they have and at the same time recognizing what we lack and what negative things we unfortunately do not lack. But you cannot change things unless you know what changes to make. And some are not to be changed, just accepted. Yes, we have a lot of good things, and I wouldn’t even suggest absolutes, but in my current state of mind, missing what we have lost, I am just taking a long look around, seeing the familiar and wondering what to make of the unfamiliar.

Biking Wharfedale and duathlons

I still have some blogs, three of them, to post from New Zealand, so those have to come before I get to all the goings on in Sydney. There are plenty of tales from here as well, so now that we have internet access, I hope to have plenty of photos and stories to post on a regular basis.

Looking back on these photos, I realize how much there is to tell. This first is of a dream garage. And for a day it was ours. Granted, it lacked the motorcyles, but the non-motorized stable was impressive. My mountain bike sits in the foreground. I was preparing to do a duathlon the weekend these were taken, so I borrowed a great bike from Eric Dy, a friend of mine at work. It is the carbon-fiber Giant seen in the background. It turns out that the shoes that were compatible with his pedals were just a little tight, so I called Heath, the same good bloke from the Queen Charlotte Track expedition, for his pedals and shoes. Turns out it was easier to just borrow the whole bike, a mighty loaner, a Scott carbon fiber with sweet components. This being the bike I have been drooling over in brochures and a couple of bike shops (my apologies to the shop owners), who was I to turn down that one? So here it sits in the middle of the stable in the above photo. I was proud of the collection, even if it only lasted for a day.

I did that duathlon, the next day, my first ever. It was a short run (about 5 minutes, maybe 1 km) followed by a 20 km bike then a 5 km run. The same course Ana did the weekend before. I got third in my age group!

These next photos came from Wharfedale, one of the highly touted trails in the New Zealand mountain bike guide. It took a good drive on private land, opening and shutting about eight gates before getting to the trail head. When we got there, I was shocked to see that one of the two SUVs that got there before we did had a Washington Huskies window sticker! So far from town, yet so close to the states.

The trail used to be a beauty, but I suspect that every winter Mother Nature tries to impose herself on the unused tracks. Downed trees were abundant, and there were multiple creek crossings that had become unridable washouts. See photos. So what could be a challenging trail was a slag, as Walter says. Numerous times the rhythm of the trail was broken up with hikes around or, more often limbos under, clusters of felled trunks.

Don't get me wrong; it was a great day. Another cool morning, perfect by the time you got rolling and working up a sweat. But the challenges did take their tolls. Each of us took turns with rough dismounts. For Walter, these have been rare moments, so being the trailing rider I was able to witness his mortality. As for my own turns, well, it is good to be the trailing rider so that he doesn't have to be reminded repeatedly of mine. Both of us had worse falls than usual; while bumps and scrapes are the norm, we had large bruises and, in my case, a gouge out of the leg from a limb in a brook my bike decided to wallow in.

The end point of the down-and-back ride was a hut, seen here. These shelters dot many of the hiking trails in New Zealand, as the weather can change rapidly. On this day however, all was stable and beautiful, and the sandflies celebrated with a feast, starting with my legs. I was happy to get back on the trail and head for the car.

It is nice to have these stories to still write, reminding me of the details of our time there...

Northern Loop of South Island

After a flurry of stories about our adventures, the recent vacuum of entries has been called to my attention. Since work has ended at Christchurch Hospital, I would have thought that I would be better at regularly sitting down to blog, but the change in schedule, the irregularity of the schedules of wee ones, and the traveling that we have finally gotten to do has made it more difficult, not easier. When I came home at a regular time, the evening was pretty well timed. I reckon that the loooong daylight hours have made it more difficult as well. I have also been trying to reemphasize my studies and to catalog photos of our time here. The time just seems to drift away in large plumes.

We got home a couple of days ago from our first adventure longer than a weekend. We circumnavigated the northern half of the south island over a four-day period (hemicircumnavigation?). Being off work made it great; we got to travel during the less busy, less costly weekdays and still missed none of the weekend activities, such as dining with friends, duathlons, mountain biking adventures.

Ryan delighted by the purple flowers on Arthur's Pass

The first day was a chance to see the west coast. Opinions are fairly unanimous about the place. It is the most beautiful part of the country, it is very sparsely populated, and there is little to do but gawk at the scenery. That is fairly true, but I should mention some outlier comments, including that it often is sunny there while rainy over here on the east coast, and vice versa. This also may be true, but weigh in that it stays sunny here a lot, and you have to reckon that west coast sunniness doesn’t measure up to elsewhere. =The average annual rainfall also tells a tale. It comes to about five meters per year (You do the conversion. It is time we switch over anyway.), and that comes at a rate rivaling Seattle’s. It tends to just hang there until you run into it or a breeze blows it onto a hillside. Collecting five meters at that rate means a lot of cloudy days.

The Pancake Rocks of Punakaiki

We had delayed our trip by a day to improve the chances of catching sunny days, but to no avail. Photos might have been better, but otherwise there was no point in waiting. The scenery wa still great and the rain wasn’t a soaker. And for us there was not a lot of time that we needed to spend there. We just needed to lay our eyes on it. So we cruised the west coast in no particular hurry, making it to Westport a little after eight o’clock, a good hour before sundown. This is the second largest town on the west coast, weighing in at a population of 4000. It had its heydays in the late 1800’s, as the gold rush here was a couple of decades behind California’s. Later it became a home for many coal miners, but now it seems that tourism keeps it afloat. Mind you the water level seems pretty close to deck level, but it is afloat. “Half eight”, as they say, is late enough to miss out on the cookings from any of the restaurants in that town, and forget about a Denny’s or McDonald’s. We subsisted on a couple of plates of munchies that the kitchen fried up to accompany the drinks at a restaurant/bar just off the main street. I even passed on that, preferring a PBJ when we got to the motel.

We had to stop the car when we got this view.

The bustle the next day was much more like what you would expect, but after stop at a café, we were on our way to Nelson. Now this was a town that you could fall in love with; Ana and I both remarked on it. Our skin wasn’t pruning on the west coast long enough to skew our judgment; it was just that great. Situated on the north coast, it boasts the most sunny days of all New Zealand. The cloud fronts literally blow around the alcove provided by the hills to the south. We rolled into the motel and immediately spread out our wet clothes to save them from impending mildew. It seemed a world away from Westport, defying the short distance, some 150 km.

Great climate makes for an appealing population, which opens great shops and restaurants, makes more art, stays very active. It is an infectious atmosphere. Everyone seems to smile more, move about with more vigor though maybe less directness. More seemed to stop on the sidewalk, chat it up with acquaintances. We decided to bask in the atmosphere, spending the entire next day milling about the downtown area, basing our sorties out of a coffee shop at the base of the cathedral that sat on the hilltop corralling the central city from the south. The shop sat just above the sidewalk crowd, with some more tables out under parasols roadside. The storefront windows were actually retractable glass doors, so we essentially sat on a small balcony on a perfect day, people watching, chit-chatting. Later Ana took Ry to bounce around the shops, looking at sunglasses and checking out the toystore, while Trey and I kicked back, reading Shantaram while sipping on seconds of the mochaccino (I did.) and napping the siesta hours away in their entirety (Trey did.).

The return to Christchurch the next day was mainly road I had covered on the Queen Charlotte Track expedition a couple of months ago, so the final six-hour leg was a bit of a slag for all of us but Ana. It took us past Kaikoura, photos from which you may recall from one of our first trips and blogs here, pictures with the seals, ocean surf, and snow-covered mountaintops in the same view. Ana took some summertime photos which will be great for comparison now that we approach the summer solstice.

We will stay around Christchurch for the holidays, graciously joining Walter’s family for holiday celebrations and hopefully finalizing the paperwork to get our visas for Australia. Then we are off again to take in more of the south of the island. Ah, sweet summer.

Just an additional shot of our girl showing off her Christmas dress.

-or-

The destruction of the lowlying flowers. The culprit remains at the scene.

Canterbury Show Day

From last month:

Last Friday was the beginning of another three-day weekend. It was Show Day, the Kiwi equivalent of the county fair. But this county is the District of Canterbury, by a good margin the largest on the more agrarian south island. The fair only runs three days, but the first two are sort of warm-ups, with the early competitions and school field trips. We joined the masses on Friday to visit the show.















The weather was beautiful, perfect. In good Christchurch fashion, the commute from driveway to car park was less than ten minutes, even with cars pouring in at the rate you would find at the state fair. We loaded the kids into the double-wide (stroller, that is; pram; trolley), each weighing a pound extra due to sunscreen, and headed in to meet the McKenzies and Lettinks inside.














The surprise of the event was the paucity of surprises. For the most part, the event was a proportionate version of the Texas state fair. Show animals were there, and people mingled among the barns, but it was a more commercial affair, with rides, restaurant booths, shows.


Among the surprises was the popularity of horse events. There were two arenas running simultaneously, one for youth events, another for the big people. Another difference was the increased variety of species showed. It makes sense that the fine wool and meat production species of sheep would be abundant, but the cattle breeds were also wider ranging than we would normally see. They didn't have the heat tolerant breeds that we would see in Texas, like the bezu breeds, but then why should they. Another difference, though not surprising, was the variety of foods. They had both the standard state fair affair, the we-can-fry-anything booths. Cotton candy (or "candy floss" as they call it here) was there, hamburgers and hot dogs were there. But they were not what you think; for that you would have to go to the AMERICAN hot dog stand, the one with the American flags on it. Otherwise your hot dog was a crispy fried corn dog! But they also had a good variety of ethnic foods-- Indian, Chinese, German. There were also vegetarian booths! Anyone see that in Dallas last month?


Mostly we milled around. Ryan learned about honey bees, as we see in the photo, including letting a male crawl on her hand and arm. Brave girl! The freestyle motocross show was scratched because of wind gusts, but I noticed that their bikes were not exactly tuned. Knobbies worn, a couple of years old. Maybe it was best that their show was reduced to a few power slides around the main show arena, where the horses had been jumping earlier. The tractor pull went as scheduled. There were the wood chopping competitions, tractor displays, and helicopter rides! We got together and ate on the grass and took some great photos, as you see here. Trey joined with Antoni to debate the latest tractor models while the rest of us spoke of simpler topics.


All in all, it was a great day. The walk back to the car took longer than the drive, so we still had the evening to prepare for Trey's first birthday party. But that calls for its own blog entry and photos.