Come Together

All the details are finally coming together, falling into place, into line, panning out, working out. The air shipment was delivered to our apartmen today, and so was the wireless modem. So now my beloved wife is no longer without internet, and no longer without most of her household gear. In the positive, she now has her household gear, and she has the internet.

I am tired.

Air Freight

The Air Freight will be delivered to our apartment tomorrow. It spent a week and a half in transit and a week in customs, and now it's going to spend its time with us. I hope its all in good shape.

By Special Request from Anthony...

Banana Bread
- 1/2 Cup Crisco Shortening
- 1 1/2 Cups Sugar
- 2 Eggs, Well Beaten
- 1/3 Cup Sour Milk or Buttermilk
- 1 Cup Mashed Bananas (The Closer They are to Rotten the Better)
- 2 Cups Flour
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
Beat shortening and sugar, add eggs, beating until well blended. Add bananas and beat. Add dry ingredients and mix just until blended. Spoon into greased and floured 9" x 5" x 3" loaf pan. Bake at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 1/2 hours.

The bread is done when you can stick a toothpick into the center and pull it back out clean. Do not bake the bread ny longer than 1 3/4 hours, or it will start to dry out too much.

When the bread is done, let it sit in the pan for about 20 minutes, then take it out and let it cool for several hours before bagging it up. You can leave it under a towel overnight to cool if you bake it in the evening. Do not refrigerate the bread.

I recommend letting the bread age in a plastic bag or tinfoil for about 3 days before eating it. This way the top crust becomes moist, and tastes better than pretty much anything else I've ever eaten in my entire life.

Home Group

They call small groups/bible studies home groups over here. We went to one connected with Holy Trinity Anglican Church last night, and met some great people: Nandor, Tim, Mary, Helen, Verity, and another Mary. Nandor's wife Annie was working a 24 hour doctor's shift, so she wasn't there. They call dessert supper over here too. They said they would have supper after the study, and of course I just up and assumed that meant a meal, but instead it was a delicious cream pie cake thing. Very good, but much less filling than what I was hoping for, so I ate 4 fried eggs when we got back home. Anyway, they seem like very good people.

The guys were telling me that Trinity is one of about 4 evangelical/conservative Anglican churches in the area. They have a reputation for being rather fundamentalist, which is not very popular with the rest of the Anglican churches in the area, which are quite liberal. So it seems we stumbled upon one of the right ones. God is good, and he is providing for us in every way.

Finally, a Cloudy Sunset

The Social Tour

On Saturday we went on a "social tour" of the McLaren Vale, which is the wine country just south of Adelaide. Here are a few of my co-workers "discriminately" tasting the goods.

Here's the chairman of my company, and the technical director of the project checking out "Mr. FruChoc," the mascot of a confectionary company we dropped by for a quick tour. Only in Australia.

Here's me and a sculpture in the private woods of an Australian sculptor.

A nice view from the restaurant at one of the wineries.

The Surroundings at Night and Mt. Lofty Lookout

We droce up to the top of Mt. Lofty (the tallest of the hills behind the city) the other night to see the sunset and look around. We only caught the last 30 seconds of the sunset, but this lookout tower was pretty spooky. The drive down was the best part for me: extremely curvy switchbacks all the way with a sheer drop on the left. It was not Sarah's favorite part though, I think she almost crushed the armrest with her white knuckled grip.

The next two are from our balcony at night.

The Surroundings

This is looking off our balcony to the east. We drove up Mount Lofty last night, and it was higher up there than it looks from this shot. The roads in the hills are a blast.

This is our tennis court, wading pool, and barbie facilities.

This is one of the government buildings in the CBD. The architect, I'm told, put lock towers on every building he designed, inluding his own house.

This is the sunset through our blinds.

I don't believe I've ever seen a slanted people mover/flattened escalator before. Wierd.

Some Pictures of the New Place

Here's my lovely wife on the balcony, with the east side of the city in the background.

The living room.

An action shot in the living room.

The longitudinal kitchen.

A Temporary Home

Sarah and I just moved into a furnished apartment last night, which we will stay in for the next eight weeks or so. It's a very nice place, just outside the greenbelt which surrounds the Adelaide CBD (Central Business District, or downtown). It's got a view of the hills to the southeast, the city and the ocean to the southwest, and a view of the CBD to the west. We'll update again when we get internet service set up there.

We visited an Anglican church on Sunday, twice. We went to a service in the morning, met a few people, and then went again at night to a more contemporary service, and met even more people. They were all extremely friendly and very eager to have to us keep coming. We talked to one of the pastors for a while, and found out that he had gone to a Brethren church in Adelaide for a long time. He's going to set us up with a visit to a small group sometime soon. Good stuff!

Tour of Adelaide Part I

We were given a tour of Adelaide yesterday along with several of my coworkers. It was very sweet. We went all over the city, toured several apartments and a house, and visited a few restaurants and a winery. The whole deal took from 9 AM to 8 PM. Good times.

This is my friend and coworker Joe with the Johnny, the son of another coworker before we started the tour.

This is the sweet bus we took all around town. Our driver had skills.

A Cooper's Pale Ale trailer, brought out especially for St. Patrick's Day.

Tour of Adelaide Part II

The Hemp Party was throwing a little demonstration outside the Adelaide City Center. Elections were on Friday, I think.

Here's Sarah and Megan riding the bus.

This is one of the fermentation vats at Penfold's Winery in Adelaide. It was bubbling like crazy.

These are brand new French and American Oak barrels used to age the wine and give it its "oaky" flavours.

This is some wine going through its second aging, in the bottle.

And here's where it starts.

Watch yourself! These operations involve a lot of polyester and at least the three top buttons undone.

A nice little sunset over the vineyards to finish off the day.

View from the Admiral's Lounge

This is the view from the AA Admiral's Lounge in Los Angeles before our flight over to Sydney on March 12.

We're Finally Here!

Thirty Six Hours and One Lost Bag later we've made to the Oaks Embassy hotel in Adelaide, SA. The apartment is nice and has a sweet view, see the following pictures. We've got a Ford Falcon to drive around, which is much nicer than the Ford Focus we has last week, but still not up to my Japanese standards for vehicles. It is so nice here I don't what to think. If late fall is 85 degrees and perfectly sunny, I don't know if I'll be able to handle summer when it rolls around.

Here we are in LAX

We have completed the first leg of our trip. It was about 7 hours total. Now we have an 8 hour layover here in LAX, and after that a 14 hour flight over to Sydney. After a 4 hour layover there we'll be flying over to Adelaide, which I think will take about 2 hours. I admit I'm a bit daunted by what lies ahead. Here's a picture of what lay below as we "began our descent" into LAX.

The Last Week Begins

Back at it for another week before the final move. Sarah and I had a great time visiting our families and friends back in Michigan. We are sad to leave them all, and the friends we've made here in the DC area too. However, we are real excited about going to Adelaide.

No More Transportation

This used to be our car. It was pretty sweet. But, since we are moving to a country where "we drive on the LEFT side of the raod in THIS country!" and it is very difficult to import any sort of titled vehicle, we had to sell it.

The car we hope to lease while in Australia is the Subaru Impreza WRX STI. It has a turbocharged boxer flat four worth 300 hp and 300 ft-lbs of torque, and AWD. It is sometimes used with little modification as a rally car.

We also hope to purchase some transportation of the two wheeled sort over there, maybe a little something like this...