Broken Wings

I've arrived in Tasmania, after not nearly enough sleep.

Qantas kept us on the ground at Perth for an extra 3.5 hours yesterday due to a broken aeroplane. What made it a whole lot worse that we were actually on the bloody thing (and had pushed back away from the stand) when the problem was discovered. So, we had to go back to the gate, get back off the plane and sit around for a couple of hours whilst the correct engineer/screwdriver combination could be found to do the requesite fettling. We eventually got into Melbourne about 22:30 and it was well after 01:00 when I took to my bed. Suffice to say I was not overly enamoured when the alarm went off at 05:00 for me to go back to the airport.

By the good grace of the airplane God though, no problems with the JetStar service into Launceston (pronounced 'lawn-cess-ten' and not 'launce-ton' as we do for the one 10 miles down the road at home) this morning. I'm presently in Scottsdale and about to head over the the east coast to explore for a couple of days, prior to making my way down South (and a beer or six with John Sturm) on Saturday.

My couple of hours here so far remind me of Devon. I had to pull half an hour ago and pull my jeans on instead of shorts and now there's some funny wet stuff falling out of the sky, the likes of which I haven't seen for at least 6 weeks. To be honest, I actually don't mind. It's nice to be cool again after the oppressive humidity we had for the last couple of days in Perth.

Hoopy's mission in Melbourne whilst I'm over here is to locate a venue for Christmas dinner. I suspect he may manage to locate a bar or two as well, so the pool championship can continue. Wasn't such a good session for me on Tuesday night - Hoopy raced into a 1 rack lead at 36-35.