And so it begins...

This is the beginning of a series of posts about my vacation to Australia.

This all started about 3 or 4 months ago when a friend of mine that I know from online gaming with The Stormcrows invited me to come to his 50th birthday party. There are 7 or 8 folks from the Crows guild that live in the Melbourne area. I thought it would be great to actually meet the folks I have talked to on Teamspeak for some time now and shared so many online adventures with.

The other motivator was needing a change in my life. While trying to help my best friend last year when she was battling a very aggressive form of breast cancer, I realized what a rut I was in with my own health and life and that life is precious and short and time is ticking. (Cheryl is doing great now, and I am working on losing weight and taking better care of my health, also.) I figured what the heck, going to Australia sounded like just the sort of treat I needed.

Nothing is ever simple, though. Sometime over the past 6 years, since I moved into my house, my birth certificate, marriage license, divorce decree, social security card, prior passport all got lost or misplaced. Sooo..., before I could apply for my passport, I had to replace all or most of the above. (Good thing I started planning this early.) fortunately, the forms and instructions for all of the above are now available on the internet. That made things much easier.

I finally got my passport and my visa for Australia (also available online -- ...took about 5 minutes to apply and secure this since I was just visiting) and was able to book my flights with confidence -- sort of. I shopped all the online cheep fare sites such as www.travelocity.com, www.airgorilla.com, www.expedia.com and others. I was a bit annoyed, however, to find that they all wanted to book the Philadelphia to Los Angeles leg through American or United, both of which were looking financially very shaky at the time I booked. My brother in law suggested Southwest as being reliable and solvent. That turned out to be the solution. I just booked the two legs seperatly and paid $1300 for Los Angels to Melbourne round trip and $200 for Philadelphia to Los Angeles. I, also, had the peace of mind of flying on finacially stable airlines.

The adventure had really begun.