Big News!

Hi all,

well, some of you know this already via one-on-one emails, but for the rest of you......

I'M GOING HOME!

For a combination of reasons, but money (and lack thereof - or more to the point, a rapidly diminishing available credit on my 3 credit cards!...) being the main one.

It's not a decision that i'm entirely happy with. In fact, to be totally honest, i'm not sure at all how I feel about it....happy, sad, disappointed, excited, angry, nervous - a little bit of each emotion all in the same breath. But mostly nervous to be honest....so much has changed in my friends and families lives since i left. how will i fit in.

I guess you would have read my last batch of 3 emails, and i suppose that gives some kind of indication of what emotional point i was at.

In truth, i think i booked the ticket in a moment of weakness. After the troublesome period with little decent work, the idea of going home entered my head - all was not nice in paradise at the time - and even tho I have since secured a decent work contract and things are on the up again, the seed of the thought was planted, and I really couldn't shake it. The clincher was when i was in a Flight Centre office making general enquiries and a deal that honestly couldn't be refused was on offer.

The thought process was that I wanted to make sure I had a flight home in the event that my funds totally dried up, and so i booked it.

There is one small problem with this tho - and i hope it doesn't come back and bite me on the bum.......given that its such a sweet deal, it has very restrictive conditions placed on it.....NON-TRANSFERABLE, NO REFUND POSSIBLE, NO DATE CHANGES ACCEPTED (NOT EVEN WITH ADDITIONAL FEES).

Why is this a problem? Well, because the dates I have chosen are quite a ways away, and the plans for the duration of my last few months are quite busy.

So the details?

28th August: Fly to San Francisco.

30th August - September 5th: backpacker company "Green Tortoise" trip out to the Nevada desert for a 5-day arts & music camp & wierdness festival called 'Burning Man" (http://www.burningman.com) .....I'll write more about this another time, but its gonna be nuts!!

September 6th - October 4th - travelling around California and Arizona, taking in visits to friends in Oakland, Carmel/Monterey on the So Cal coast, Los Angeles and Phoenix, as well as seeing San Diego, a quick jaunt over the border to Mexico for a few days (possibly on my birthday, Sept 22nd), and of course Las Vegas.

October 5th: Fly home to Melbourne.

Pretty mad huh? I'm looking forward to it, but i'm also crossing my fingers that the money will be there (i'm estimating $3000 for the trip)

Anyways, arriving home on October 7th (i lose a day....i want my day back!!), i would have been away from home 2 years, 3 months and 2 days. SO, thats 823 days..... (okay Mabs, i concede...mate, you win!! 1100-odd days on the road was always gonna be a huge total to overhaul ;-) )

In the meantime, I've got a 6-day trip out to Banff in the Rocky Mountains, encompassing a quick visit to Calgary to catch up with a good buddy Tricia from my Edinburgh bar-tending days, and hopefully a week or a long-weekend over on Vancouver Island.

What will I miss out on from my plans?....a lot. In America, I was gonna swing down to Yellowstone National Park (another Asia-travelling buddy, Alison, down there in Cody, Wyoming, yee-haw!), I was gonna drop right on down to New Orleans to suss out the jazz and blues and general crazy-ass music scene they got goin' on down there, and the real biggy that i'm majorly sad to miss out on - New York. Damn.

My Canada misisons to Montreal and Toronto, and up to Whitehorse in the Yukon are scrapped (sorry Matt. maybe another time) - and Alaska was only a hop-skip-and a jump from there too...

But, as people keep telling me, I can always come back. I've had a good run.

Anyways, thats the latest.

Talk soon,

Tony