A Word from Bill Bryson

So in anticipation of this trip, I have been reading Bill Bryson's A Sunburned Country, courtesy of Ru. For those of you who find him agitating, I'm sorry. I have been enjoying his humor immensely. Thus, I would like to share an excerpt about flying to Australia, which is highly pertinent at the moment since today I will be flying to LA on the first step towards Melbourne.

"Each time you fly from North America to Australia, and without anyone asking you how you feel about it, a day is taken away from you when you cross the international date line. I left Los Angeles on January 3 and arrived in Sydney fourteen hours later on January 5. For me there was no January 4. None at all. Where it went exactly I couldn't tell you. All I know is that for one twenty-four-hour period in the history of earth, it appears I had no being.

I find that a little uncanny, to say the least. I mean to say, if you were browsing through your ticket folder and you saw a notice that said, 'Passengers are advised that on some crossings twenty-four-hour loss of existence may occur' (which is, of course, how they would phrase it, as if it happened from time to time), you would probably get up and make inquiries, grab a sleeve, and say, "Excuse me.' . . . . .

So there is a certain sense of achievement just in arriving in Australia - a pleasure and satisfaction to be able to step from the airport terminal into dazzling antipodean sunshine and realize that all your many atoms, so recently missing and unaccounted for, have been reassembled in an approximately normal manner. In the circumstances, it is a pleasure to find yourself anywhere; that it is Australia is a positive bonus."