They All Start with T: Three Reasons We’re At the Airport, Again!

We like the airport. No, we don’t like pat-downs, delays, mind-numbing microphone announcements, or being smushed nose-to-nose with other passengers on a bus ride out to the tarmac to catch our plane.  (United thought of a new way to torture passengers! Way to go, United!)

We seldom complain about airport indignities because we love what the airport does for us. Kind of like how we stuck with algebra, since it was our ticket to college. (I like algebra now, truly I do, math buddies out there…) The airport gets us to the three T’s and much more, so off we go again.

My always-supportive sister-in-law follows our travels closely, and she was so sweet when she asked, “Where are you going NOW? I can’t keep track!”  Hey, sometimes we can’t keep track either, so below you’ll find the low-down on our latest adventure. It’s good I put it on the blog so Padre knows where he’s headed – hope he likes the Tahiti part. 

But first, let me tell you one reason we’re not leaving home.

We’re not escaping because we’re bored – far from it. We never have enough hours in the day for all we want to do, and in the few short weeks we’ve been home, Padre took a glass-blowing class, I worked a bit, we caught up with family and friends, and we completed house projects. We fixed a water leak; the hole in the ceiling from the repair still looms overhead, taunting us. And we’ll get to it eventually, right after we return from another adventure in search of the three T’s.  

And Seattle is gorgeous right now! Yesterday it reached 72 degrees. Crocuses, daffodils, and red-breasted robins made tentative appearances in the yard this week; masses of delicate pink blossoms adorn our fruit trees. I do hate to miss spring’s profusion of glorious surprises, especially the creamy camellias, the color of wedding cake. They’ll be long faded by the time we return because we’ll be gone a spell. Good thing one of the sons guards the homestead (he loves to fish off the beach) while his footloose retired parents wander the globe.

The three Ts are bucket list items I suppose, although Padre’s never liked the bucket list thing. He just says his list has only one item on it: not to kick the bucket any time soon. And he better not. That’s because someone has to drive on the left side of the road around Tasmania, and it’s not going to be me.

And that’s the first T: 

TASMANIA. After a week on the Big Island of Hawaii (more on Hawaii when we get to the third T), we’re winging our way Down Under and across the Tasman Sea to Hobart, Tasmania, for a week-long driving journey. First up: Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), which IS on Padre’s bucket list even though he denies he has one. 

When we first prioritized a list of must-visit locales for our 10-year travel plan, he just kept repeating mantra-like, “Tasmania!” Why? Just one reason: Because he read a fascinating magazine article about MONA, and had to see it someday. 

Be careful what you read in magazines, my friends. You might make two trips to Australia in two years, spend down your children’s inheritance, and fall madly in love with cruising. Maybe all three, which is what happened to us just because Padre reads too much.

Australia was not tops on my bucket list, but I spotted a repositioning cruise that would take us to Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan. That made us both happy (compromise = happy marriage), but didn’t leave us enough time to visit MONA last year.

Why I didn’t want to visit Australia before, go figure. One magical cruise on the Manly ferry hooked us on the place, and now I can’t wait to visit the Tauranga Zoo, make more Aussie friends, and practice walking on the left side, since most ship passengers are from Australia or New Zealand. Last year, these clueless Yanks kept walking on the right, smack into our fellow ship passengers – not cool Down Under.  So now I walk in the middle, mostly. 

And the more I read about MONA the more excited I am to finally see it. 

If I survive.

Now why do I say that? Well, here’s why. MONA is a museum dedicated to all acts carnal and all ends charnal, as the New Yorker describes it. In simple speak, that means it’s a museum of sex and death, but please don’t stop reading yet  – it’s not as awful as that sounds. 

In fact, it may be worse.

No, not the sex part and death part. And, so you don’t get the wrong idea, one important clarification. What intrigued Padre about MONA wasn’t the sex stuff; it was the death stuff. He’s spent his lifetime helping others with issues of aging, dying, grief/loss, and his Divinity degree started him speculating about such mysteries at a young age. 

According to descriptions, MONA explores weighty themes such as life, death, beauty, ugliness, creation, and destruction. And of course sex is all a part of that (wouldn’t be here without it, right?). David Walsh refers to his museum as “a subversive Disneyland” and the New Yorker’s Richard Flanagan found it to be “a mashup of the lost city of Petra and a late night out in Berlin.” I’m all in for the subversive Disneyland part, but I’ve got to survive something that might be even worse than all those heavy themes: the special exhibit that costs an extra $25, in addition to the regular admission price. 

When I read the following description to Padre and asked him if we should do it, he said, ‘Sure why not?’ and I realized I’d been married to a crazed man for 30 years.

Climb in and hang on for your proverbial hallucinatory artwork crossed with a neurological experiment…..’Unseen Seen’ is an intimate experience for just one or two people. After signing a lengthy waiver – guaranteeing that you do not have epilepsy and effectively promising not to commence legal action if you experience any long-term effects – you’re led through an aeroplane-style door into a large white orb, and up a curved staircase. At the top, you lie down on a tilted bed and stare at the curve of the white ceiling. You’re handed a panic button that you can press at any point if you find the experience too intense and are asked to choose between a ‘hard’ cycle and a ‘soft’ cycle. Ben Neutze, TimeOut, 1/24/2018

So we’re going to do this, and I’m going for the ‘soft’ cycle – who knows what crazed Padre will do? 

We’re also fortunate enough to have met some new cruise friends online, so while in Hobart we’ve been invited to dinner in their home. And we plan to hike down to the beach on Freycinet National Park’s world-famous Wineglass Bay, as well as visit Port Arthur, the former notorious gulag for convicts, for our history fix. 

After Tasmania, we board the Golden Princess in Sydney for a 30-day cruise to several stops in New Zealand, which we visited 28 years ago for an educational exchange program. That was long before all things Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, so we’ll see how fame has changed the North Island’s bucolic countryside. And I’ve arranged to visit the Hobbit House, because, well….how can we not?

South Island stops include Dunedin and Christchurch, the locale for last week’s horrific terrorist attack. Our tour guide and his family were deeply shaken when they found out the shooter lived right next door to their daughter’s school, and the Dunedin/Christchurch community is reeling from all the horror. 

Of course they are. Sadly, Americans are all too familiar with the tragic aftermath of mass shootings. I’ll never forget the first time I practiced a school lockdown drill several years ago, huddled in a far corner of my classroom with my charges, playing cards to keep the students calm and silent. 

So we look forward to showing our solidarity with Kiwis in the face of tragedy, if only to prove with our visit that despicable terrorists can’t stop the good people of the world from joining together in love and friendship. Rick Steves is spot-on when he tells us, “Do not be afraid. The people of the world are wonderful, and the planet we share is spectacular. But the only way to really understand that is to go and see it for yourself. So go.” 

So go we will! So on then to the second T:

Tahiti

So why Tahiti? When I was growing up, my Dad the sailor would grump, “I’m just going to sail to Tahiti one of these days!” when life felt too stressful. He spent lots of time in retirement happily prepping his sailboat for some trip or other, and once he realized he was getting a bit old for his South Pacific dream cruise, he changed it to “I’m just going to sail to Juneau one of these days!” 

We never knew for sure our geriatric Dad wouldn’t actually sail off to Alaska since he still owned his own sailboat at age 88, only a few short months before he died. 

Dad was a sailor from birth, I think, but World War II gave him the Tahiti idea, when he served in the South Pacific and fell in love with his tropical island. He’s lucky he didn’t die there, though (and lucky me, or I wouldn’t be writing this). I know how close he came to getting killed – by cannibals, torpedoes, or Kamikaze pilots, because I’ve read his journal, which I’ve tucked in the luggage to reread for clues to his South Pacific adventures. 

So Dad’s finally sailing to Tahiti, sort of – or at least his journal and his daughter are. I always wanted to see this real-world paradise he spoke so glowingly about, to better understand what he experienced as a young Merchant Marine, way back when.

And finally, the last T:

Temperature

We returned home from Florida a few weeks ago to find almost two feet of snow blocking our driveway, thanks to Seattle’s Snowmaggedon. Worst winter in a long time. While our Conch snowman was the coolest ever and we’re glad we saw a smidge of snow, we’re soooo glad we missed most of it. These creaking old bones don’t handle the cold so well any more, and we’re looking for places near water (in addition to Key West) where we can escape during Seattle’s chilly winters.

We hear Kona, Hawaii, is a lovely place, so we begin this trip with a week on a Kona beach to see how we like it. We’ve already found the most amazing bookstore! Books and a beach, what could be better? Our Winter Escape reconnaissance also breaks up the excruciatingly long flight Down Under – as good excuse as any to do some Big Island snorkeling and eat shaved ice. 

And to be warm, of course. Sure, it was in the 70s in Seattle when we left, but for how long? What’s that saying, April showers bring May flowers? Last year it was April/May/June record deluge brings massive mudslides and floods. So in Seattle, a warm March day is just a tease, and we know better than to be seduced by a pretty spring day. 

So we go to the airport to raise the temperature a bit, as well as wing our way to interesting adventures, new travel friends, and who knows what else? Hope you’ll stay tuned for all the fun! We’ll try to post every few days, especially if we see something cool like a Tasmanian Devil or a kangaroo in the wild. And we’ll let you know if we survive the hallucinatory psychedelic acid trip museum! 

So Aloha for now and G-Day, mates – thanks, as always, for following along. FYI: If you subscribe at the bottom of this page, you’ll get a notice every time we put up a post.