Melboune - Day 1 & 2
We landed into Melbourne yesterday at 11am or so. Aus time, I mean. So that's 1pm NZ time. We'd been up since about 4am, to make sure we had plenty of time to get to Napier airport. What losers we were, we got to the airport at 4:50am and the damn thing doesn't even open until 5am. That's the second time Sarah and I have gotten to an airport before and it's been closed! Better to be there early though rather than late.
Flight up to Auckland was uneventful, we walked over from Domestic to Intl and then walked through Security and down to get on our plane. We didn't really have that much time between flights, we didn't even stop to get breakfast even though we meant to. Once the in flight meal arrived I wasn't going to say no. The flight passed pretty quickly, we watched movies etc and we were lucky because the plane even had free In Flight Wifi! Never had free Wifi before I don't think, maybe once?
We arrived in Melbourne and went through immigration and customs - that took a while because the quick ticket machine broke down right as we got to it with "this is unavailable". I wanted to punch it. Anyway we went through the slow line and got manually processed then got our bags. Boring. Got out and met up with the other Boys Trip people, waited around there for 30 minutes for everyone else to get through customs then got on the coach for what must have been an hour's drive to the hotel? It stopped at two other hotels. I asked the Boys Trip lady how many people were on the trip and all up she said there's 200 people, so it's quite an impressive number of people they've organised! The logistics make me feel ill!
We checked in then went for a walk and bought the kids a T-Shirt in the worlds smallest basement that was full of F1 stuff. Then walked around Myer and David Jones for 20 minutes, I had a quick chat to Dad and was glad to hear that he's OK to fly still. Which means he's going to fly up to Blues Fest next Tuesday so I won't be extending my stay in Australia. Which is good really, I'd miss the kids and Biscuit. And Sarah too obviously just in case this gets read in the future and someone thinks "What the hell?"
Once we'd finished shopping we came back to the hotel (Mantra on Little Bourke) for a rest, before catching a tram (at first going the wrong way, whoopsie Timothy) to see Julian D. Annoying the Tram broke down 10 minutes shy of the destination, the Tram drive made an annoucement that he had to "Reset the Penagram" or something. I just googled and what he said was "pantograph" but it didnt' sound like that. Anyway a few attempts to make it go and he said "Best to get off" so we had to walk the last 10 minutes which wasn't very fun for Sarah in her heels!
Had a lovely dinner with Julian D though, so nice to see him. He's as funny/happy/kind as he's always been. I forgot to get a photo with him which is a bit shit, but oh well. We had some good laughs.
Today was TRACK DAY. We went and got some breakfast, came back to the hotel quickly so I could find the directions to GET to the track and we got on the express tram to Albert Park. And we basically spent a good half the day there. We got there, got our barrings, looked around. Got a "Driver Selfie" at a thing where two virtual drives pop out and get a photo with you. Went and found a place to watch some of the streetcars, then found another little spot (the kids area) to get some food and sit down for a while (we'd done a bit of walking) - Then we found a grandstand to check out, watched the Porsche's go around for quite a few laps. It was good to see another Grandstand just to get an idea what it's like, hoping our Grandstand tomorrow is good. Today was free range access, tomorrow you can only go in your Grandstand, not any of the others. As we were walking home we found a "Change a tire like in the Pitstop" challenge and so we lined up for that. Probably had to line up for ~40 minutes or so to get a turn, but it was great fun. There were teams of 3, 3 people per team. We found a random ring-in called Oscar, his Dad was in another team. Oscar really wanted to beat his dad and our team did it! We came first! So that was pretty cool. It was also good to experience what changing a F1 tire is like (though I'm sure it's not QUITE the same thing). Then we caught the tram back into town (it was packed and it's only the nothing-on day!), got a litlte bite to eat at Rolled and then came back to our room. Now we're about to go out to a comedy show I think and then get some dinner before getting up bright and early tomorrow to try and get to the walk where all the drivers turn up, see if we can't get something signed.
We had a quick video call with the kids at Holly's. Beth's SUPER excited for the Disco tonight, Theo looked sad, tired and dejected. I hope he's ok. I think he was going to go for 10 minutes and see if he wanted to stay. Poor fella. Joseph was exicited with a silly wig on!
Anyway, time to go.
Tim