Leaving Sydney today. The trip plan includes San Francisco first stop, then a continuing arc through NA and Canada and on to Europe in March.
First stop is San Francisco, where I hope to get a bit of rest from the flight and see some old friends. I’ll be travelling south into Silicon Valley overnight before getting out to Phoenix.
It rotates, this thing. It’s got drawers like something out of a Dali painting, but it rotates as well. The drawers of course should be full of foodstuff like sugar, flour, and other commodities. The drawers are made of hot dipped zinc steel and the whole thing is very chic and perfect for the new gourmet kitchen without cupboards. This is an imported Rotary Kitchen Canister Cabinet. The interesting bit is the stand which has a circular cup around the axle. This circular cup, you fill with water. It keeps the bull ants at bay and out of the sugar. The kitchen ant proof cabinet was made by an American company and this obviously a perfect import for the Australian bush. If you are desperate to see one and muck around with the drawers looking for bull ants, you can find this one in the Berrima museum, NSW == not far south of Sydney.
Australia, Girt by not just the blue ocean, but by it’s inner unknown sea. All red dirt and tufts of grass for the ‘roos to eat and the lizards to hide. A car drives past. At night the sky’s milky light from millions of stars above.
there a tracks in the earth
of red at this center of mine
under the milky black galaxy’s face
where the night owl’s pass the time
my country where the gravity pulls
hard and hot to Uluru’s place
there the never never lies sublime
ever in timeless endless space
So I’m standing there, no skates, but with a Ralph Lauren beanie, gloves from somewhere in california, and some really nice Cole Haan – waterproof boots on. The rest of my clothes were Aussie [made in all sorts of countries]. Standing frozen to the spot on the icy flat Rideau canal in Ottawa. My colleague helpfully agreed to take me down to the canal that evening. Of course I assumed that – 20C conditions would be ok for him. But I’d been told get down to the canal and go skating and eat beaver tail by earnest other colleagues from Ottawa.
This canal, built around 200 years or so back by the Royal Engineers [a strategy for defe
nse].. I can just imagine the royal command of empire, get some immigrants and go build a canal, just alongside the river – for around 200 kilometers – or so and you have 5 or 6 years to complete.
The canal starts in Ottawa and goes upstream and generally southward to Kingston Ontario. Canal’s have locks to allow boats to climb mountains, but after the first set of locks in Ottawa, the canal is flat for around 5 miles and becomes a skating rink in winter. The one lock I saw was frozen shut with just a trickle of water flowing through under the ice.
A beautiful set of beautiful arch bridges span the canal, and now i know that i can walk about that far and back before having the cold seep up so that my feet and legs were slightly uncomfortably numb. We called in for a photo [try handling a camera with gloves in -20 C] and a taste of the local ‘Beavertail’ – [secret recipe] but i can tell it’s a lot like a flattened doughnut 
[no hole] with some cinnamon and sugar.. you can have other things on it. Of course beaver tail should be eaten fast on skates so is not designed for hanging around and getting a photo, Which is why the people in the kiosk are smiling. Crazy Aussie braves sub zero conditions with no skates for a photo with Beaver-tail.
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