Away I go!

Well it's really official now! Last Wednesday July 2nd, I got the email that my visa was approved, 5 minutes before leaving for the holiday weekend. What a surprised that was. It happened in just 1 week. When I was expecting it to take 4 to 6 weeks. I have to wonder if all the nasty emails I send to GW Bush helped expedite my departure in some way. haha... Little does he know he'll still get them from down under!

After the initial shock and flurry of calls to family and friends Wednesday evening. I tried to put the big move out of my mind and went camping at Crater Lake in Southern Oregon for 4 days, like I had planned. The trip was AWESOME! Ed and I found a nice camp site at Whitehorse campground, just outside of the community of Diamond Lake. The area only had 5 tent sites. It was very relaxing and the mosquito population was at a tolerable level. The plan was to hike Wizard Island. (the island in the middle of Crater Lake) But once again, on my 4th attempt, it was not to be. The national park officials had postponed the start of boat trips 1 more week at the last minute. We made lemonade out of our lemons and ended up taking in some short waterfall hikes and the Umpqua hot springs that were close by. These hot springs are great! Set high on a bluff over looking a river with 6 or 7 sulfur formed pools down the side of a very steep hillside. All of the pools were around 95 to 103 degrees. I managed to not get sunburned very badly and was able to release all the tension from my body. I highly recommend the natural hot springs to anyone that has a chance. They're so much better than the commercialized ones around the Portland area. We did spend a day hiking around Crater Lake. I crossed several snow fields to get up to the Garfield Point. Which starts out at 7000' (the crater rim) and goes up to 8100' and has some magnificent views! Of course I played my saxophone at 2 different spots on the crater's rim. The echo off the lake was exhilarating! Crater Lake was an incredible sight 16 years ago when I came to Oregon and once again it did not disappoint! It should be on every one's must do list! On our way home we took a different route and went to McCredie Hot springs too. This was much different than Umpqua. It consisted of 4 pools along the Salt Creek. Each a different temperature. Ranging from about 103 to maybe 75 and without the sulfur formations. Still a recommended spot because this was just off highway 58 and a 2 minute walk from the trail head. Not so lucky here and manage to get sunburned on my chest and face pretty good. I'm waiting to get some more pictures from Ed of the trip and once I do I'll make another posting.

Upon my return home and to work. I started to work out the finer points of my departure. Just this morning I purchased my airline ticket to Melbourne. My last day at URS Portland will be August 8th and my flight takes off at 5pm on Monday August 11th. 22+ hours later I will arrive in Australia. On a direct 15 hour and 15 minute non stop flight from LAX to Melbourne. The local time will be 7:55am Wednesday August 13th. The company will put me up in a furnished apartment for a few weeks until I can find my own place. I found a gay apartment share website and plan to use it to find me a room mate that can show me around the city a little. I do actually sort of know someone in Melbourne too. My coworker, Luke Olson's wife Chelsea is Australian and her sister, Melanie, lives in Melbourne. I owe a lot to these people already! Luke is the one that showed me the job posting more than a year ago and while that has put him on several people's shit list here at work. I really appreciated it! Chelsea and Melanie have been so nice answering all my questions about the little things in life that this naive American will have to figure out on the fly. Wish me luck!