Dispatch, Week One - 07.07.2014 - 13.07.2014

DATELINE: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA. MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014

It had happened on the first day, the very first day, goddamn it. It was supposed to be at least a little smoother than this. After finding the perfect occasion, a nearly twelve-hour flight from San Francisco to Aukland, New Zealand, to finally be able to actually sleep on an airplane, and getting through customs without a hitch (it appears that going through the wrong line and seeming mildly stupid to the exasperated agent may be an asset, here), I found the shuttle train into downtown Sydney with ease, then the bus to the home in Birchgrove where I was being hosted with even more ease. I had arrived. I was on my way. Nine months, around the world. Here we go. With a strong sense of “New Chapter Beginning!” swelling between my ears, I knocked on the door.

And, nothing.

No answer. I knocked again. Nothing. I double-checked the address; yes, right house. I walked around, and found another door. Still, nothing. No one was home. Despair. As I trudged to find a cafe with wi-fi so I could email my host, with my gargantuan bag aiding and abetting gravity's wickedness on my shoulders, all of my fears curb-stomped my positivity into dust blown towards oblivion. Now, I hadn’t been so deluded to assume that I was going to go on a nine-month trip around the world and not run into a single problem overseas, had not been such a Pollyanna that I discounted any possibility of any obstacle presenting itself, but on the first day? In an English-speaking country? Less than two hours after I had arrived? This was already a disaster, and had nine months of a nightmare pregnancy followed by giving birth to a demon of self-loathing and regret written all over it.

In the Charlotte Cafe, after I had emailed my host (my phone service had already been disconnected, how naive had I been? Did they make a rube more stupid than I was? Just because I said, "than I" that didn't mean I wasn't stupid...), I drank cappuccino and fretted. Where was I going to stay? What was I going to do? Was the future going to be this difficult? Was it an omen, a clear sign this all had been a terribly misguided notion? Should I just turn around, take the bus and then the train and then the plane right back to the States? No matter; I was probably going to die, right there in the Charlotte Cafe, wasn’t I?

I heard my name. “Bill?” the counterwoman asked me. I nodded. “Your friend is coming here to pick you up and drive you back to her house.”

“Wow,” I said, relief filling my lungs like oxygen. “She doesn’t have to make such an effort. I can manage.”

The counterwoman shook her head and smiled. “You’re in Australia, Bill,” she said.

And so I am. Sydney is lovely, and strikes me as so naturally and effortlessly hip that a hipster couldn’t possibly create it on a drawing board if he had a lifetime and an endless supply of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon, a ripping pair of block-framed glasses, and the coolest muttonchops since Jeff Tweedy. I keep being reminded of New Orleans’s French Quarter combined with the beach cities of the South Bay in Los Angeles. To me, it combines a sophisticated, modern downtown, with all the fresh, sparkling glass and metal of Vancouver, with neighborhoods that have stood the test of time, their buildings not torn down but reutilized and revitalized until they look like something out of “Lovely Quirkitude” magazine (copyright pending). The city has caused me to begin work on a theory that a bustling and effective ferry transportation system is essential to a cool city. I’ve taken a million pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, and I feel like that hasn’t been nearly enough. I’ve gotten my coffee at the Charlotte every morning - “You’re the American. I remember you.” - and have walked the city’s neighborhoods every day. I’ve hit four museums in as many days, strolled the Botanical Gardens, watched kids learning to play rugby, and failed only in my quest to find a pub that was showing the World Cup Final. The businessmen wear black suits and bright shirts with no ties and the businesswomen wear long, straight hair and off-white raincoats. Everyone has a confidence and most everyone walks, and I try not to catalog every single difference I note with chagrin between this town and Los Angeles. I merely smile to myself whenever anyone apologizes for the city's public transportation system.

There are concerns, of course. With natural hipness comes expense. I have my morning coffee at the Charlotte despite clenching my teeth each time at hearing the price, and I try to limit my drinking to one or two pints per evening. I keep telling myself, “You’ll save money in India. You’ll save money in India. You’ll save money in India,” to the point where I’ve hypnotized myself to convulse should I have to even open my wallet in Mumbai. But while sharing the bar at the London Hotel in Balmain Friday with a man who claimed to have traveled the Earth “more than a few times,” the man advised, “Don’t pay attention to a budget. Don’t pay attention to an itinerary. Just live and have fun until the money runs out.” Which is great, provided the money doesn’t run out before I board the train for Melbourne on Wednesday (it won’t).

Everyone I tell my plans to here not only doesn’t laugh at me, but is encouraging and pleasantly envious and occasionally even claim to be inspired themselves, continuing the wonderful energy everyone back home (and presumably, you who are reading this) gave me to the point where I can’t possibly thank you all enough. No one save one or two of you (the “I hope it works out,” with a shrug hilarious in its solitude) has been anything other than magnificent in your encouragement of this idea, to the point where I wonder just how fucked up I was, how much of a desperate mid-life Hail Mary this might be, that everyone who knows me thinks this is just the solution for what ails me…

If you're reading this, chances are excellent that I miss you specifically, and chances are only slightly less excellent that I miss you enough that it aches.

I hope you’ll indulge some of my thoughts regarding how this trip treats me in order to get some of the more basic details and the pictures. I hope you’ll endure the running gags. People keep telling me this trip will change me. We’ll see, and you’ll read, I guess. So thanks for reading, too. I don’t want this to be so masturbatory that it turns everyone off, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to see what effect this whole thing has…

Whatever. It’s too late for me to wonder or worry about that. You’re in Australia, Bill.