Hyatt is actually in Australia too.....

Dedicated readers,

This is Hyatt, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Brandi's elusive husband who hasn't contributed to this blog at all up until this point. However, I can now put those claims to rest.

As the main driver and navigator of "Lois the Lantra" (See previous post), I thought it may be valuable to describe driving in Australia. Two words = It Sucks. Sure, getting used to driving on the left hand side of the road is easy enough, until you lose focus for some reason and your driving instinct kicks in, say in a Woolworths parking lot where you confuse and anger any driver around you. I may or may not have done that at one point, Brandi was really impressed.

Another example would be when I decided to pass a car going an anemic 100km/hr, 10km below the speed limit, however once I passed him in the other lane, I forgot to get into the original lane until I almost collided with the cars going the opposite direction. Although I will say that although I have been the one doing most of the driving, my lovely wife did drive for a few hours down the Hume highway back to Melbourne on Monday. She did really well, except for the times she ran over the rumble strips to wake me up, because apparently I've done that once or twice since we've been dating.

However, driving in general is not all that bad, especially in the country. Getting to see the countryside by our own car somehow reminds me of home. I get to feel like a good old American again, although when I go to the fuel stop I have to remember to buy petrol or ULP instead of 'gas', which here means pressurized natural gas that only certain cars can drive. I imagine most of you reading this in the US are also pissed off that gas prices are flirting with $4.00 in the States... well here it costs about $1.50 a liter, which comes out to about $6.00 a gallon!

All in all, I am very glad we have a car and we're definitely getting the hang of driving it, plus it gives us the freedom we haven't had to go to the store and not have to carry groceries home for 30 minutes. We could actually buy a watermelon if it would fit in our fridge, whereas before it was just too much weight to have to carry home.

Well, that's all I have to contribute for now, hope everyone back home is doing well......

Until next time, if there is one,

Hyatt