Australian Hiatus


Characteristic hand gesture suggests Kylie's singing "It's In Your Eyes", from the European 'Showgirl' tour.

Off to the Antipodes! I will endeavor to blog, but there are no guarantees - it may be sporadic. Pictures will likely have to wait until I return.

This time of year, I believe Queensland is 18 hours ahead of Sacramento (which sometimes works out as 6 hours behind and 1 day ahead). So, if it's 8 p.m. Sunday in Sacramento, it's 2 p.m. Monday in Brisbane. Note that Brisbane and Sydney are one hour apart (Queensland doesn't go on daylight savings time, unlike Victoria and New South Wales). Since I'm such a night owl here in California, in Queensland, I'll be an early bird! Coming back, I'm sure I'll be seriously screwed up with jet lag, but that's the price to pay! This world clock is helpful.

The time zone change is weird - like the twilight zone. Formally, it takes about 41 hours to fly there, and two hours to get back. I'll be taking three flights in quick succession to get there (SMF to LAX: LAX to SYD: SYD to BNE), and two back (BNE to LAX: LAX to SMF). The actual trans-Pacific flighttime is about 14 1/2 hours. The weather forecast looks great almost all the way across, but with the chance of some of the normal storminess to be expected in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ; 10 degrees north of the equator), and also there will be a cold front just east of Australia that may provide some significant bumpiness as we fly in.