Riding across from the island this morning on the ferry I was struck (as I often am) with the beauty of the place where I live. The sea was glistening, the air was crisp - but not cold - and the golden light of early morning revealed the gullies and crags of the surrounding landscape. I sat on the upper deck- alone - and viewed the world as if I were a tourist.
This brought to mind the many times I have been a tourist on boats. The ferry to Madeline Island off the northern coast of Wisconsin in my beloved Lake Superior - the car ferry to Bainbridge Island across Puget Sound from Seattle - sightseeing on Milford Sound in New Zealand - funny old rusty ships to the Greek Islands when I was a child and car ferries across the English Channel on the same trip - canal boats in Amsterdam - a cruise ship sailing into Cape Town - for that matter the first time I rode the ferry to Magnetic Island back in the mid 1980's when I was young, fit and invincible... What beautiful sights I have seen from the water!
It is a long love affair, this relationship with the water... I rode a ferry across Sydney Harbour to school for 7 years and I always loved it. The relaxation of a leisurely trip across the water releases the tensions of the day and creates a separation between home and the outside world. This afternoon on the ferry I enjoyed a lively and cheerful conversation with a woman a barely know and another I have never been introduced to, as we pulled up to the wharf on the island I saw TLOML's ex, who always makes me smile, poking his tongue out out me because I had failed to see him sooner. There is no one who could have mistaken the genuine pleasure that showed on my face when I saw him. He is a wonderful guy and I really like him! TLOML was there to pick me up in Shermie, with both the dogs wagging their tails and happy to see me. We went right to the beach and walked for a while as the last of the daylight faded from the sky. It's not bad living on an island in paradise, especially not when the rest of Australia is suffering through a chilly winter and I am warm on a beach in shirts-sleeves at dusk.
The ex of TLOML (P) brings me to another point... Now I have never been a man hater, a separatist, or in any way anti-men (after all I do have a son!) but as a general rule, throughout my adult life, I have not really made friends with all that many men. I have a very close friend in Minnesota, a gay guy I used to work with, but other than him most of my friends have always been women. Here things are different. In all my life I have never met so many men who I REALLY REALLY like! This place is full of beautiful, gentle, men. Three of my favourites have the same name (P) LOL and quite frankly there is another P, who I don't know very well, but who I really like too! Up until moving here I would really have only counted The Best Friend's hubby, The Optimist, and The Actress's hubby, The Percussionist, among my favourite people - men were very poorly represented! This is no longer the case. Now I know that the rest of the good guys were hiding up here!
OK gang - Day Two is done - only one to go (of my stint over at the University)... I think I can... I think I can... I know that the ride on the ferry adds time to my long and tiring days... but there is something else that it adds which more than makes up for the deficit... It gives me a boost to the spirit and a lift to the heart.
But I am very glad to be home.
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
Tropical thunderstorms and whacky weather...
Last night there was the most amazing storm! Thunder, lightning and torrential rain. We were all awakened and the poor dog quivered and shuddered between TLOML and me.
My darling lost more sleep from an already shortened night. I did too, but I have such low expectations regarding sleep that if it wasn't the storm waking me it would be an aching shoulder or a stabbing pain in the hip. This was much more exciting and more fun. I actually like storms. If I had my druthers I would probably have been outside on the verandah watching nature's fireworks, but the dogger was scared and the g/f really needed to get as much sleep as possible.
The weather is different in Australia than it was in the US. There seem to be so many more drastic weather events in North America.
I lived in Minnesota and the whole idea of a place where you are sweltering in summer (temps over 100F sometimes and quite humid (probably from all those 10,000 lakes)) and then dealing with temps well into the negatives in winter is beyond imagination in Oz. The freezing rain, snow, and the days when it is too damn cold to snow, make winter a real endurance sport in MN. I strongly suspect that it is unfit for human habitation but that those Scanderhoovians are too damn stubborn to admit it.
Then my stint in Oklahoma was interesting. In that wonderful English film "Shirley Valentine' Shirley talked to her wall, "hello wall"... in Oklahoma it is "hello wall cloud". I know where Frank Baum got some of his inspiration for The Wizard of Oz. There are few things more alarming than to see the sky turn green with banks of clouds that appear impenetrable! If I had experienced the storm we saw last night while in Oklahoma there would have been tornadoes for sure! It was a definite "super cell" and yet for some reason it is very rare for these huge storms here in Australia to create funnels. Another thing about a storm like that in Oklahoma there would have definitely been downed trees and power lines and thousands of people without power etc etc.
Northern California is really beautiful and as I managed to avoid any earthquakes I have no complaints... but... it is kind of interesting in some weather ways... Mid summer The Boy and I were dying in the 104 degree heat in Willits when only 30 odd miles away, as the crow flies, at Fort Bragg where we went to have a swim, everyone was wearing jackets! On top of that when we did try to go in for a swim the water was SO COLD that I, literally, lost all feeling in my lower legs. Then on another day driving from Cloverdale on Hwy 101, where we were being broiled alive (sans butter and garlic), to San Francisco we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to find wisps of fog against the hills of SFO. There is of course that wonderful quote, often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." We certainly experiences the truth of the saying no matter who actually said it first!
Then I did some time in Houston, Texas. Here the fixation on those incredibly destructive hurricanes that spin through the Gulf of Mexico and then tear up some unfortunate area of shoreline is really quite justified. A trip through Galveston, about 45 minutes from Houston, still reveals the destruction of the 2008 hurricane "Ike" which at one point was over 600 miles in diameter and caused damage from the Florida Panhandle to Corpus Christie.
Now Australia isn't completely devoid of weather we do get cyclones (hurricanes by another name) and they have been known to damage this beautiful island on which I live. TLOML's shade cloth over the pool is still sporting some substantial rips from the most recent cyclone. There have been some very nasty cyclones in the past but most of them affect areas of quite low population. Cyclone Tracy that decimated Darwin on Christmas Day in 1974 was especially significant as it did wreak havoc on a major city.
I have no idea why storms like last night don't drop twisters. It might have something to do with the ocean. Maybe if Australia had more population in the middle there might be more reports of tornado like phenomena. We Aussies cling to the coast like born-again lemmings refusing to either jump or move inland.
It seems to me that when I was a child in Sydney you could pretty much set your watch by the "southerly buster" that would roll in to cool us all down around 3.00pm. Sydney has been doing a fine impersonation of San Francisco this summer quite cold and damp. It is really giving all those anti-global warming wowsers good ammunition for their argument.
It's just all different. Nothing is the same as it was and no two places are alike. The only constant is change. Thank goodness I subscribe to the "Variety is the spice of life" philosophy!
My darling lost more sleep from an already shortened night. I did too, but I have such low expectations regarding sleep that if it wasn't the storm waking me it would be an aching shoulder or a stabbing pain in the hip. This was much more exciting and more fun. I actually like storms. If I had my druthers I would probably have been outside on the verandah watching nature's fireworks, but the dogger was scared and the g/f really needed to get as much sleep as possible.
The weather is different in Australia than it was in the US. There seem to be so many more drastic weather events in North America.
I lived in Minnesota and the whole idea of a place where you are sweltering in summer (temps over 100F sometimes and quite humid (probably from all those 10,000 lakes)) and then dealing with temps well into the negatives in winter is beyond imagination in Oz. The freezing rain, snow, and the days when it is too damn cold to snow, make winter a real endurance sport in MN. I strongly suspect that it is unfit for human habitation but that those Scanderhoovians are too damn stubborn to admit it.
Then my stint in Oklahoma was interesting. In that wonderful English film "Shirley Valentine' Shirley talked to her wall, "hello wall"... in Oklahoma it is "hello wall cloud". I know where Frank Baum got some of his inspiration for The Wizard of Oz. There are few things more alarming than to see the sky turn green with banks of clouds that appear impenetrable! If I had experienced the storm we saw last night while in Oklahoma there would have been tornadoes for sure! It was a definite "super cell" and yet for some reason it is very rare for these huge storms here in Australia to create funnels. Another thing about a storm like that in Oklahoma there would have definitely been downed trees and power lines and thousands of people without power etc etc.
Northern California is really beautiful and as I managed to avoid any earthquakes I have no complaints... but... it is kind of interesting in some weather ways... Mid summer The Boy and I were dying in the 104 degree heat in Willits when only 30 odd miles away, as the crow flies, at Fort Bragg where we went to have a swim, everyone was wearing jackets! On top of that when we did try to go in for a swim the water was SO COLD that I, literally, lost all feeling in my lower legs. Then on another day driving from Cloverdale on Hwy 101, where we were being broiled alive (sans butter and garlic), to San Francisco we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to find wisps of fog against the hills of SFO. There is of course that wonderful quote, often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." We certainly experiences the truth of the saying no matter who actually said it first!
Then I did some time in Houston, Texas. Here the fixation on those incredibly destructive hurricanes that spin through the Gulf of Mexico and then tear up some unfortunate area of shoreline is really quite justified. A trip through Galveston, about 45 minutes from Houston, still reveals the destruction of the 2008 hurricane "Ike" which at one point was over 600 miles in diameter and caused damage from the Florida Panhandle to Corpus Christie.
Now Australia isn't completely devoid of weather we do get cyclones (hurricanes by another name) and they have been known to damage this beautiful island on which I live. TLOML's shade cloth over the pool is still sporting some substantial rips from the most recent cyclone. There have been some very nasty cyclones in the past but most of them affect areas of quite low population. Cyclone Tracy that decimated Darwin on Christmas Day in 1974 was especially significant as it did wreak havoc on a major city.
I have no idea why storms like last night don't drop twisters. It might have something to do with the ocean. Maybe if Australia had more population in the middle there might be more reports of tornado like phenomena. We Aussies cling to the coast like born-again lemmings refusing to either jump or move inland.
It seems to me that when I was a child in Sydney you could pretty much set your watch by the "southerly buster" that would roll in to cool us all down around 3.00pm. Sydney has been doing a fine impersonation of San Francisco this summer quite cold and damp. It is really giving all those anti-global warming wowsers good ammunition for their argument.
It's just all different. Nothing is the same as it was and no two places are alike. The only constant is change. Thank goodness I subscribe to the "Variety is the spice of life" philosophy!
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