The Rundown

So I guess it's time for the rundown for any of you who don't know the story of why I'm in Australia. Oz has always been somewhere that I've wanted to go but it's always been a far away dream. I had the idea to do some backpacking after I graduated from college, and successfully convinced Taylor, my brother, to come with me. However, plans fell through when he got a job offer that he couldn't pass up. I had no other travel buddies to coax into going, so the plan of traveling went on the back burner. I decided from there to move to Toronto (Sept 07) to pursue a career of my own in the fashion industry, if I could! I ended up working for Quiksilver, where I met an Aussie working in Canada for a year. Sam had the aspiration to play real Canadian hockey, and he managed to drag along his more than willing sister, Sophie, to come with him. Due to high cost of living and frequency of bar hopping and dinners, Sam and Sophie ended up staying in Toronto instead of traveling. I became very good friends with Sam, but only saw Sophie once and a while. However in the times that I did see her, a Combi trip across her home country came into conversation, and she was gracious enough to extend an invite out to me. How could I pass up a road trip accross Australia with a resident? It seemed too good to be true. As my ideas usually run, I had it set in my head that I was to go to Oz in the upcoming year. Mind you, I don't think my parents were too convinced that I would actually follow this dream though. As the year drew on, we all became great friends and it looked like this trip might actually happen. Fast forward to March ('08) as the hockey season wound down and Sam decides to leave early. Luckily by then, myself and my good friend Carley, who also worked at Quiksilver, were obviously too good of friends for Sophie to leave, so she stayed. Summer came and went quickly, but not without plenty of bike rides, bar nights, dinners, walks, ice cream, and swimming. By this time the idea of Australia had florished into a plan and I was now looking into flights. I decided to visit a travel agent, and finally in mid-July, I booked my flights. This included a stopover in L.A. for 4 days and a stopover in Fiji for 3 days all with Carley who decided to come along as well. What could be better?! In the next blog entry, I'll give the full run down of what we did over the course of those seven days.