As soon as my head went under the water, I panicked. The muffled underwater sounds were claustrophobic. I felt my heart beating wildly and heard all my irregular breathing, gasping for big gulps of oxygen! After several tries, I bailed on my scuba dive session. I didn't even make it off the entry platform. I was so dejected that I had chickened out. Of all places, the Great Barrier Reef was a diver's dream but I couldn't do it! ARGHGH! John was still ...

Wow! We are tired. Kill Bill Vol 1 is playing in the background while I try to get out some thoughts on paper. John's snoring is intermixed with Tarantino's overuse of pan flute. We are in Cairns (pronounced "Cans") now. It's been only 5 days since we landed and every day seems to be jam packed with go go go activity from 8am to 10pm. How is it that we are busier as tourists than back in the working grind?!? Why do all the tours start so bloody early?!? ...

Merry Christmas! To think that to everyone here, Xmas has ALWAYS been a summer event. It's a rainy, grey day with very little movement outside. We went in search for any restaurant open for lunch. "Pie Face", a 24 hr chain, was serving piping hot meat pies piled with mashed potatoes, mushy peas and gravy. YUM! I had a quick walk through Hyde Park trying to properly capture the beauty of these grand fig trees but failed to do so. I can't believe that the...

It was a wonderful flight! How many people can really say that on an international flight? I certainly was dreading this part of our trip. Sitting beside a very broad and annoyingly sick husband loudly coughing on an 18 hour flight was not something I was looking forward to. Unfortunately, it was a booked flight with a person on either side of me. ARGHG! No matter. We prayed for the best. Possibly an upgrade, a no-show, or an extremely skinny person. ...

Alberta got hit with a massive blizzard a few days ago. We've never seen this much snow in a very long time. Cars, semi trucks, and even fire trucks were stuck in the deep drifts! Schools were cancelled. Highways were shut down and / or had a tow ban in effect. (Apparently, that literally meant that no one was allowed to tow a vehicle / trailer or essentially rescue a stranded car out of a ditch on the highway because it was too dangerous.) Nasty. Well, I ...