Dana,

You can pass this on to the class. Who'd believe that the US govt would send little ol' me to the opposite side of the globe to look at cylinders! I sure didn't - still don't. I'm not sure how many of you have made this trip but it is inconceivable. Aside from driving on the opposite side of the road, people speaking English with a decidedly odd accent and perhaps more beer being drunk at lunch than anywhere outside of Germany, I would not have believed that I was in Australia last week. The people are friendly, the food great, the countryside normal - although the population is very sparse away from the coast - and I didn't feel like I was standing upside-down. The Sydney Opera House was convincing, but the city was Seattle facing east instead of west. No, I didn't see any kangaroos, wallabies, koalas or duck-billed platypuses - or is that platypusii (better watch out how you say that out loud) THAT WOULD HAVE CONVINCED ME. But I was super jetlagged and working, so it still doesn't seem real.

I left last Monday for the 24 hour trip and returned one of two Saturdays. Yes, with the international date line my week went like this: Mon Wed Thurs Fri Sat Sat. We left DC Monday evening arrived in Canberra Wed morning and went straight to work. Want to hear something really cool! The govt allows travelers going over 14 hours to fly business class, but because of delays in Los Angeles the airlines bumped us up to First Class. I was in the nose of a 747 all the way to Sydney. I note that it was dark, you couldn't see much and you needed to try to sleep, but First Class - Wow! I was a little disappointed to have to fly business class back, but I was upstairs in the 747. I'd never even attempted to walk the stairs before.

If it matters, we are trying to find out why a perfectly good oxygen cylinder would suddenly explode inside a Quantas airplane and nearly take it out of the sky. Luckily, they were able to land safely in the Philippines. We are assisting the Australian Transportation Safety Board.

Dana will be sorry to note that I didn't see any Redback or Funnel-Web Spiders, thank God! He tried to make me sleep less that I already did with that email. Fraz will probably be disappointed that I didn't see any real unusual birds - there were Ibises running around and sitting in trees, like pigeons in one area and I saw a white pelican. The Magpies were cool, like a black and white Blue Jay. But no Kookaburras or other exotics. The people were very friendly and the food was fantastic! I'd recommend the trip - if you can survive on about 6 hours of sleep in two days both ways. Maybe the trick is to island hop your way across so the trip doesn't kill you. You definitely need to suspend reality - but sleep deprivation will do that for you.

Jim Henderson