A good and frustrating day. Early start 4am to get to the airport (thanks Mum, AKA the saint of support) and after a breakfast in the Koru we climbed aboard the pretty new A320 for a good ride to Sydney. I watched Invictus, a movie about Nelson Mandela and the Spring Boks in the 1995 World cup, the All Black were the baddies…. How could they? Good movie all the same. Dad watched Avatar, commented that the Kids must have had nightmares after watching it. They did. Dad didn’t seem too bothered by his first International Flight and even said this evening that he enjoyed the flight. After the usual explanation to quarantine about the details of living on a lifestyle block with no livestock other than heards of children, got through the stamp merchants and into a taxi to head off to Penshurst to an Insurance broker to organise Third party insurance. Another taxi (driven by a Lebanese DJ in his mobile juke Box) over to Port Botany to find our bikes. The bikes were bought out and some Monkey at Quarantine who had not evolved to the degree to understand how a screw driver works had smashed the end and sides of my bikes crate, and essentially destroyed the crate, in order to examine the bikes for rodents.. F*%$ing idiot what will I now use to get the Bike home! Despite this astounding stupidity and ignorance the bikes were pretty much unscathed and we spent the next couple of hours or so in the baking sun pulling the crates to bits and reassembling the bikes. Loaded the bikes up and had an anxious ride (as the bikes were running on vapour) to the nearest Servo to fuel up. Then off to find the Bank that Dad had sent money to, only to discover that they would not issue a card as arranged as we do not have an Australian residential address! This lead to a red-faced tantrum from Dad as at this point we were pretty tired, dehydrated and fed up so to have these guys not come through as arranged and then spin some lies about phoning, emailing and thinking about telling him it was not a goer, was really not well received. After an hour or so they agreed to issue a card and courier it to us when it is through, bloody Westpac if you can’t do it then don’t say you can , if you can do it then just get on with it instead of spinning yarns about why it isn’t done.
Next headed off to the Old Rectory, a B&B advertised as being on a quiet road (off course it is on a quiet road on one side but on the other side it is on a 6 lane highway! I don’t think it will matter as we are both pretty knackered. It is also on the flight path at the end of the Runway, other than that it is a nice old building and a friendly atmosphere. Went down to the local pub to watch a bit of footy and enjoy a cold bear and a thai Beef salad, nice. Dad is in bed at 7pm sleeping, and I will not be far away. Tried to phone Di but XT seems to be letting me down, some one must have forgotten to stoke the boiler that runs the network.
Will start the trip tomorrow from an iconic location. Riding in Sydney is a piece of cake (thanks to talking GPS lady who politely tells me where to go).
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