Melbourne

Tonight is my last night in Melbourne and its been a very interesting couple of days... I flew in and rented an SUV to carry the 26 boxes being shipped here for Samudra.  Melbourne is sort of a European style city.  Normally I don't mind driving, but driving in a city is one of the few things that is super stressful for me and one of my least favorite tasks.  Melbourne people have a very different psychology than Australians that I have met throughout the rest of the country and they definitely hold themselves in very high regard.  However, I made some wonderful friends here and really connected with some great people.  But the reality is that being in a city and being away from surf is not a reality that I can exist in very well.  Driving in Melbourne is intense!   There are trams running right through the streets (San Francisco style from what I am told) and sometimes when you're driving, you're going right on top of the tracks, parallel to where a tram would be going.  I still don't know what you're supposed to do if a tram shows up on the tracks while you're driving along in the other direction!  Also, they have a unique driving maneuver here call "hook turns"  I'll explain this one from the perspective of American driving (driving on the right hand side) because the maneuver is so confusing on its own that for American readers trying to picture it from the left hand side might melt your brain.  Imagine you come to a light and are planning to turn left across oncoming traffic, BUT instead of pulling into the left hand turning lane, you have to pull into the far right hand lane, wait until all the cars going straight from both directions have gone through, then make the left turn!  But wait, that's not the best part!  I've been here four days now spending large parts of my days driving all around the city and I just found out about the hook turns today!  I've been doing it completely wrong for four days and had no idea!  I can't believe I didn't have a major crash (or a smash as its called here).  Alas, that didn't last long.  Finally today I was backing out of a narrow alleyway and there was a 1 meter high pole that was below my view out the rear window and I smashed right into it!  Then I realized that I had forgotten to lock my car earlier and that my iPod had evaporated... oh well, today was a major lesson in non-attachment.  Can't wait to get back to Dunsborough, nature and waves!  So excited to get on that plane tomorrow!

Good news from today- Vitamix has agreed to let me keep the vitamix they have let me use for the demos on the tour... this is awesome, especially as vitamixes cost over $1000 in Australia!  Stoked!