West with the Sun

I dreamed of Australia when I was a boy in Michigan.  In one of my elementary classes, we had a book that had color pictures of kangaroos and the sun on the Outback as if it were a light that had no off switch.  When we were freezing in the Lower Peninsula, and as the drifted snow rose to the window box, I wondered about a world where it might also be summer while we were cold.

My first trip to this continent has yet to disappoint.  I’ve not seen a cloud and I’ve thought often of my brother Tim, who is in the snow and gray of the American Midwest.  I wish he were here with my buddy Jack and me and we were all collecting our motorcycles to ride off and be young.  Jack and Tim are both resolute types who are boys on the inside and men as they walk through the world.  Either one of them is good to have at your side in times bright or dark.

Oz has been only sunny, however.  I stopped in Sydney for under 48 hours to assess the city and its transportation so that I might know my way around when I roll back to town out of the Blue Mountains.  My forehead is red with sunburn after walking around Darling Harbour and Hyde Park.  I think there is reason to believe this continent is special but I do not want to indulge just yet in superlatives.  I will say, however, the environs are clean and the population appears young.  Maybe, because I am a man of a certain age I am more acutely aware of youth but I constantly have seen young families and children and very few people gone to gray.  My unscientific assessment would indicate that Australia has a very bright future.

Darling Harbour, Sydney

Sydney, I should mention, is as beautiful as it appeared on television in the Olympics.  The architecture comports with the water and the hills and everything an outsider sees suggests possibilities.  Everyone who lives here has reason to be excited and proud.  This country commands attention.  Nothing, however, is inexpensive and a few things make little sense.  Avoiding a taxi, I took the train into the Central Station from the airport and discovered that the fare was $15.80 AU.  A connection on the light rail was just under $4.00 AU and I was a hundred yard walk from hotel.  I’m wondering if the taxi might be less pricey and I thought about how inexpensive it is to ride the MARC train from Baltimore-Washington International to Union Station in Washington, D.C.  The light rail route stays to one side of Darling Harbour and the bus tours and more expensive rail lines are on the opposite shore.  I was unsurprised to see that the most compelling sites of Sydney require spending more money on the rail lines or buses.

But the endless sun makes everything okay; at least it does to me.  The culture appears to have been established around the out of doors.  Train stations and hotels are open and there is a flow from the outside into each structure.  The streets are full of people and restaurants and cafes line every sidewalk.  People lunch beneath palms and umbrellas and take for granted the comfort of the weather.

I am tonight, though, chasing the sun westward across the continent.  Outside the jet, looking down on the Outback, you can almost see the shadows as they move toward Western Australia.  There are very few lights twinkling 30,000 feet below us as we make a 530 mph beat toward Perth.  I am thinking of what it will be like to sleep out there under those stars and look up and see the Southern Cross and I am wondering about the lives people build in the cattle stations and rail towns and what gives them happiness.

I wonder if it was the wind or the temperature but I noticed in Sydney that there was no brown cloud and the air has seemed almost as clear as it must have been before engines started knocking on the planet.  If this is a romantic notion of mine, I will be disappointed when I look toward the sky while laying in the Outback darkness.  But I expect a clarity in the air that I have only known while camping up along the Continental Divide in the Rockies and while resting in the loving arms of the Chisos Basin in Big Bend National Park in West Texas.

I also need to mention that since arriving in Oz I have had a sense of familiarity.  This may be nothing more than my enthusiasm for a motorcycle trip I’ve dreamed of for too long to remember but there is much about this place that feels like home.  The geography is as splendid as America’s and the country had similar beginnings; criminals cast off from England on ships to this fatal shore founded Oz.  America has in common with Australia the inescapable fact that we have risen to greatness after being considered undesirable.  What finer compliment might history offer?

Still, the empire resonates on this continent.  Prince William is touring the nation this week and spending a bit of the crown’s fortune to meet with the prime minister and show the flag of the United Kingdom.  Australia is only slightly less fascinated with the British royalty than are the taxpayers of the United Kingdom.  January is summer here, though, so a rich prince is not the only royalty down under.  Lance Armstrong and his Team Radio Shack are rolling around the hills of Adelaide in the Santos’ Tour Down Under and Andy Roddick is here with Americans playing in the Australian Open.  One of his biggest fans is Terrell Owens, the U.S. professional football player who knows a thing or two about physical discipline.  Owens seemed taken by the sunlight in Oz and the scenery and the way this place feels like a younger version of America.   He wrote on his Twitter feed, “I can’t frickin’ believe I’m in Australia.  Never even imagined this could be possible.”

Me neither, TO; me neither.

And tomorrow, we ride!!!!!!

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