People Movers

After spending much of my time in airports without the feeling that I would almost certainly gouge the eyes out of the next person that hurried past me with one of those annoying rolling travel bags that always seem to wander and strike my feet, I assumed that airline travel had improved over the past few years. However, I discovered yesterday that all was right with the world again when due to an hour’s delay in Hobart, after moving from my seat in the lounge to escape the babble of an old British couple only to have a clueless mother move in with her screaming offspring, I found myself flying to Brisbane without the accompaniment of my until now reliable backpack. It of course didn’t get the memo that it would have to rush to make the connecting flight in Sydney (figures, those backpacks are all body and no brains). Actually this worked in my favor in the end since I didn’t have to lug the heavy pack onto a 30 minute train and 20 minute bus from the Brisbane Airport to Coolanghatta, where I’ll be staying for the next week.

My opinion of public transportation and the quality of people that utilize the service was also reaffirmed on my rail trip through the city and on to the Gold Coast. I couldn’t help but be distracted from my reading of Bill Bryson’s ‘Lost Continent’ (a hilarious anecdote on American life by the way), by the nagging chatter of 2 elderly women on my right discussing the popular subject of the Australian snake variety, with their increasing intensity of venom, from ‘will kill you in 2 seconds’ to ‘will kill you before you have a chance to piss yourself and think about how long the venom will take to kill you’. Then there was the strange expressive yawning sounds coming from the unidentified most likely morbidly obese man behind me, as if he had just awoke from a deep and satisfying coma. And of course there was the overarching general talk of weather and the cricket (a game similar to baseball played in the “other” countries). It was all very mildly interesting; I wonder what the yawning blob behind me was dreaming before he started serenading in my ear.

Now I find myself back in a hostel, drinking beer and eating junk food after a successful morning of surf at Snapper. It’s like freshman year of college all over again, luckily beer, potato chips and bags of cookies made with chemically enhanced ingredients are just as readily available here as in the US. God Bless Australia.