The Island Tour

About forty miles off the eastern coast of Australia (north of Brisbane) is Lady Elliot Island.  As one day of my entire trip....I ended up on a 10-passenger Cessena and flew into the island.

First, its safe to say that it is one of those unique things that you probably will question.  I looked at the runway as we circled on approach, and kinda questioned the length.  The island is roughly a hundred acres, and I'd take a guess that the runway was no more than 2,000 feet long.  You could feel a good hard braking effort once the wheels touched the ground.  Then I kinda noted that it was all grass and a fairly bumpy landing.

The guy lets you know right off the bat that there are no snakes on the island....but ten thousand birds.

With the package deal.....you get roughly six hours on the island.  If you wanted to stay at the resort overnight....you could.  But then you'd be living life on the high-end.

You are at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.  Turtles, sharks, etc.

If you were looking for a permanent structure on the island.....the only thing of a brick nature is the lighthouse.  Otherwise.....everything else is wood or aluminium.

Lunch?  The resort guys run a decent service and at least offer a better than average deal.

After a while, you just start viewing this as a Gilligan's Island type situation.  If I had to spend months on such an island.....I'd go nuts.  Between the bird noise and constant waves hitting shore....it'd drive me crazy.

So, if you were in Brisbane and wanted to do something unique.....I'd suggest the tour.  It is an eleven hour total package deal.....from your hotel to the island and back, and likely gives you one of those rare moments in life to ponder upon remote places.

The Airline Seat Discussion

Over the weekend, I finally returned from a long extended flight from Sydney.  I looked at US news, and there's this piece from US Senator....Chuck Schumer....from New York.

The Senator wants the FAA to establish seat-size standards for commercial airlines.  Chief reason?  He says they (the airlines) have been cutting down on leg and seat width for years.....it's time to reverse the trend.

Back in the 1970s.....you had 35 inches of room....from the pitch to the next seat.  Today?  It's closer to 31 inches with most airlines.  The seat width used to be 18.5 inches but with most airlines....it's 16.5 inches now.  There's even some talk that they want to advertise certain seats as wider but charge more for the benefit.

From this trip, I was lucky.....I rode business class and for the first time in my life....had ample room.  
Back around 2011....I had the privilege of riding US Air from the Philly to Frankfurt....and rode eight-plus hours in one of this 16.5 inch seats and 31 inches of leg room.  It was without any doubt....one of the worst flights in my life and toward the sixth hour....I actually got up and stood near the bathroom for almost forty minutes before being chased off by the Stewardess.

The thing is....if these flights were all just 90 minutes in length, then we wouldn't be discussing this.  The minute that you start talking about three hours of sitting and no real leg room....it's more of a torture to travel.

A couple of years ago, I was reading on a Japanese plan to make people stand for all flights of 90 minutes or less.  You'd be leaning and buckled into some standing and leaning seat.  The guy designing this figured that you could cram 400 people onto a plane that typically carried 180 passengers....if they were all standing.  The swap here was that you'd pay probably half the amount of money for such a trip.  I kinda questioned this but it is true....we'd all like a $45 one-way ticket from Atlanta to Orlando and be willing to stand as part of the deal.

Mandating this through Congress?  It's hard to imagine how you'd sit and trust these guys to fix this problem and not screw it up.  In the end.....they might mandate something enough.....to trigger prices going up by forty-percent and you just getting one inch more of legroom.

Do we really need the House and Senate working on things like this?  This is one of the sad parts to our democracy.....where everything becomes political in the end.  A Republican agenda against this?  More than likely.

We probably will end up with another group working on Greyhound or Trailways seating arrangements, and then some fool jumping in to assess seating arrangements in mini-vans and SUVs.

The best seating arrangement in my life?  I hate to admit it.....but when the Air Force tagged me to ride in the cargo planes and you rode in the web-seats.....you had tons of leg room and it was the best seat possible for eight hours of flight.  Course, you had to accept the five-star box lunch from the Air Force as part of the deal.

Twenty Observations Over Australia

I spent roughly 17 days in Australia.....staying mostly around Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.  So this is my list of observations.

1.  When you sit at a regular Aussie restaurant.....they let you know of a dozen-odd steaks that they have (Tasmania grass-fed, Tasmania corn-fed, Victorian grass-fed, New South Wales grain-fed, etc).  The thing is.....when they finally come out with the steak, you kinda have to admit it's some pretty fine steak....no matter what you selected.

2.  The typical Aussie guy is some guy with a wrench, hammer, and screw-driver....that you call with some big emergency situation, and after thirty minutes.....he's fixed the problem and caused himself a fair amount of sweat.  He'll turn to you....noting that he's a bit dehydrated.....and perhaps its' time for a beer.  You will ask where, and he will note there are sixteen pubs within walking distance and these are the five that he'd recommend.  You go with him and find yourself getting easy acquainted with the guy in a matter of minutes.

3.  Yeah, toilets once flushed.....do go the opposite direction of toilets on the top end of the planet.

4.  There's a Krispy Kreme operation on just about every street corner in Aussie towns.

5.  Aussies make about the worst coffee in the civilized world.  No one can explain this....except that they'd prefer a beer over coffee.

6.  Everyone has a snake story to tell....but I spent the whole time there and never saw a single snake.

7.  Most Aussies are charged-up and positive.  It's hard to find anyone who has some negative prospective.

8.  Mushrooms are served on a breakfast plate.  I've yet to figure this out except they have a major farm industry and can produce just about anything you desire.

9.  The Sydney international airport side.....once you exit the immigration area.....kinda reminds you of some third-world country.  The entry area to the airport?  Worth a million bucks and designed to impress you.

10.  About every tenth Aussie gal that you meet....is six foot tall and reminds you of that Xena warrior gal.

11.  If you walk around Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.....shooting black and white pictures.....the architecture and design would all remind you of the 1950s.

12.  You just don't find many homeless people.

13.  Aussies hate their politicians about as much as Americans.

14.  There are Chinese everywhere.....on vacation.

15.  The Coastal Road.....south of Melbourne....is probably the best scenic drive you can find in Australia.

16.  Aussies can make some fine beer, and they know it.

17.  Generally, Aussies hate their version of NPR (ABS and SBS).

18.  If you were graduating from some city-design degree program.....you really ought to go to Australia and observe their design of cities.  Their one and blaring failure?  Rapid transit and interstate roads within the major cities.

19.  It gets to being awful hot in Australia.  You need not ever worry much about snow or needing a sweater.

20.  Some of the best city parks that I've ever seen in my life.....are in Australia.

A Sign to Ponder Upon

I stood a couple of days ago in Singapore....in front of a pub in Chinatown there.....with this unusual sign out in front.

The question is.....what kind of music is dope music?

In 1978.....it would have invited a dozen responses from the my barracks crowd (my old Air Force days).  At least forty bands would have been mentioned.

The thing is...in Singapore.....life is pretty laid back and non-drug.  If you got into any kind of dope.....you'd be dragged down for some harsh cop attention.  So, you have have some pretender dope music, some fine Asian craft beer, and some tapas.

But this led me to consider this.....would any American bar put up a sign like this?  Cops would quickly jump into the middle of this, but then find it's a fake gimmick and just done to draw people in to drink beer and listen to Little River Band or Johnny Cash tunes.

The Hotel

I've been on "R and R" for the past three weeks....traveling via Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.....so I'll have a dozen-odd blogs to write over the next week or two.

This one?  I stayed at an unusual hotel in Brisbane, which deserves commentary.  I won't name the hotel because of certain reasons....which will become apparent.

I surveyed to forty-odd options for hotels in the center of town and eventually came to this one unique hotel which was an computer engineer's dream.

They had taken all available technology items and tied them into this one hotel.

So, it was a four-star place and once you entered the room.....you sat and were amazed.  A dozen-odd spotlights and landscape lights covering the bath, the hall, and the bedroom area.  All of these were tied into a Samsung phone left on the bed table.  then you had the AC unit tied to the Samsung app.  Then you had a menu of food and beverages.....tied to the Samsung app.  The cleaning gal?  Tied to the Samsung app.

So I picked up the Samsung phone.....to discover it (coming off the charger) was dead.  I called the hotel IT guy.  He came and put in a new battery and for twelve hours.....I enjoyed this interesting gimmick.  Then it died.....never accepting a charge from the room charger.

Yeah, I checked....the charger was perfectly OK.  Then I noted.....a little sign....if the Samsung was damaged.....it'd amount to possibly 500 Aussie dollars.  I kinda put down the phone and figured it was best not to do much else with it.

Various things didn't work over the four days there.....I had four calls that went in.....to get things fixed (like the typical office environment with gadgets).

I admit...if they'd all worked....it might have been awful impressive.  But it's just like in real life.....you'd like for the 'toys' to work, and they just never work the way as designed.

The sad thing is that it was a perfect location, a perfect hotel bar, and a perfect hotel restaurant.  You'd like to say something pretty good about the place but all these failed technology stuff.....left a bad taste in your mouth.

The Best Bar I Ever Walked Into

Around fifteen years ago, my wife sent me off on a weekend trip to Rome.  I picked my hotel....about three blocks west of the train station....quiet place....three star situation.

On the first day of walking around....I returned to the front of the hotel.  I had a feast of a lunch....a five-star ice cream in mid-afternoon, and was fairly tired.  I looked across and there was this little pub across the street from the hotel.  It was a no-name Italian pub.....nothing fancy.  This was mid-November....so there's not a lot of tourists around.

I stepped in.

This was an establishment of roughly 1,200 square feet.  Certainly not big in size or ultra modern.

I stood there for a moment....looking at the character of the place.

Tables were designed and built with chess or board games in mind.  Across the wall were literally dozens of board games in boxes....in English and Italian.

In the back was a billiard table, with a number of seats facing facing a soccer game running.

In the mid-section was a library of sorts.....Hemingway, Twain, Hugo, Shakespeare, etc.

I sat mostly in a daze for the next two hours.  The crowd never went past twenty in number.  They sat playing Risk with some associate.....discussing some finer points of Shakespeare in Italian.....or engaging in political talk.

It's the kind of pub that probably can't exist in the United States and if it did....it'd probably fold up after a year because of limited or marginal profits.

An American is used to the saloon-type atmosphere....music in the background....talk over NFL games....etc.

I came back the second day.....repeating the two hour visit to the pub.  It's a fascinating atmosphere.....maybe it was a one-of-a-kind situation there in Rome, and maybe there's not another place like it in Europe.

If I ever won a lotto and had a million to throw at some business idea....I'd like to put this type of pub into operation.  Course, it'd probably be a failure within a year or two.....but I'd just run it for my own entertainment.

The Ten Things You Learn After Four Years in the Military

I never thought too much about the first four years in the Air Force.....at least til the last year or two (thirty years after the fact).  In retrospect, there are a couple of things that you gain from wisdom or stupidity....depending on the way you look at things.

1.  There are a lot of stupid people and crazy folks in the world.  You need to develop a quick method of recognizing the two groups and ensuring a fair amount of distance between you and them.  They aren't your friends....your associates....or people that you should trust.  If you are lucky, the military will realize their issues and help them return quickly to civilian life.

2.  As bad as chow hall food might be.....they really can't screw up any breakfast menu.  It doesn't matter if we are talking about pancakes, waffles, omelets, or bacon.  So it's smart to attend every single breakfast and enjoy the one meal of the day without burnt edges, 200-percent salt added, or tasteless food.

3.  You learn this nifty trick of just laying down and getting 25 minutes of a nap....to help make up for the four hours of sleep that you missed last night due to a false fire alarm (two or three times a year), a barracks fight around midnight (usually every other weekend), or a recall by the squadron (every other month).

4.  You eventually learn that just about everyone you meet from New York City is interesting and deep into character flaws.  You also learn that most everyone from Arkansas are accommodating and genuine in terms of humbleness.  And you learn that anyone from the upper peninsula area of Michigan are capable of hunting bears, boars, elephants, and various exotic creatures that should only thrive in Africa.

5.  You learn that the BX only sells clothing that fits some male model style guy....who likes the colors of red and yellow.....and it's stuff you'd be embarrassed to wear anywhere except to the TV room of the barracks.

6.  You eventually learn that the TV room of the barracks is the point where intellectual discussions often take place.  These talks include the possibility of aliens, the family burdens of the Ewing family of Texas, the finer points of professional wrestling, car repair, travel tips on cheap hotels, and pick-up advice on young women who hang out at the NCO Club.

7.  You learn that some places around America are boat-anchors for miserable feelings and frustrations.  Then you learn of places where you seem to be happy....365 days out of the year.  It makes no sense, but you learn that by traveling.....you will eventually find the perfect place.

8.  You eventually learn that barracks parties are occasions where stupid things occur, and potential downfalls in life might occur.  So, you learn how to avoid such parties.

9.  You learn that a pair of combat boots....after they get broke in.....are the most comfortable shoe on the face of the Earth.

10.  You learn that patience is a great skill in life.  You learn this....mostly by waiting and waiting, and waiting, and waiting for various things to occur on time.....but they never do occur at the time they were supposed to occur.