OUT OF ORDER

I've got way too many papers to keep track of and realized that I'd neglected to enter our adventures in Sydney. So - her is Monday, October 20. To bed at 9 P.M. means up at 3 A.M. Still getting used to things here. So a bit of dozing, a bit of street noise, and a general givingitup around 5 A.M. when my hero goes off in search of coffee and returns with a lovely French press. Ah, bliss. We walk toward the harbour, consult various maps, and arrive at the Bridge Climb after a stop off for some above-average yogurt, muselix and fruit. Good food is a little hard to come by. Thus fortified, we join our group to climb the bridge going over Syndey Harbour. We have fun meeting 6 new friends, only one of whom is from the US. To get things going properly, I announce that I am not a lover of heights but that I'm going to project lam and gain the summit without issue. The leader suggests I take first spot, just behind him. excellent plan, that. We're then treated to a lovely bit of Aussie organization and excellent tutelege, get hooked up,literally, to the guide wire and, in our flight suits, headsets and strapped-to-our-bodies foul weather gear, off we go. It's gloomy with rain forecast, but we had none of it, thank you very much. First test, walking at height on the mesh wire footpath across several lanes of traffic. The walkway is wider than a balance beam, but it would not accommodate anyone extra chubby. Soon I'm face to face with test number two, stairs steep as the up arrow, yes, that would be 180 degrees up, terminating on a small platform, then another up arrow with small platform and repeat twice more, one person at a time. I wanted to rush but kept banging my shins, so it was steady as you go. There, oddly, in the open air with firm steel beneath my feet, i quite liked being truly on the bridge in spite of the open sides. yes, water below here. Good steel hand grips and the lovely steel tether made it a good walk that I really enjoyed. At the summit, 443 feet about the Harbour, I was fine until we crossed over from one side of the bridge to the other. I was pretty unhappy when we hung out in the middle and I decided that the tour guide was a perverse ass. I locked and loaded on the horizon while Ron pointed up, down and all around, commenting and asking questions. I was pretty much practicing sensory deprevation at this point, recovering only enough to espy the four sets of descending ladders that lurked ahead of us. Off goes the guide, who'd again decided to be a good person, and here are the stairs. Okay with the first stairs but then there's that goddamn platform wherer you sidle to the next set of stairs and you do have to sort of send your foot into space and teh hand rails have to be searched out. At this point, my beloved guide wire gets twisted as I'm poised on the second ladder but cannot go either up or down. There is literally no one in sight. Good sense overtakes me, welling down the panic as I waited for my hero who said, "Just do this and do that". I obeyed although loosening my grip on the hand guides while I was necessarily in the straight arrow position was counterintuitive. I'm going down this ladder! Of course you can see that it all worked out and, yes, I did a little speed climb down the last part of those bastards, barking shins be damned. I was very busy congratulating myself on completing the climb, which was, actually, pretty damned memorable. Now it's mid-morning so we take a self-guided walk of The Rocks, Sydney's most historic area, settled by the convicts and the British soldiers in 1788. We had a great lunch outside at the Gumnut Tea Garden - isn't that the best? We then walked to the Opera House for an informative tour accompanied mostly by Americans. designed by Danish architect Joern Utzon, it took from 1959 to 1973 to build and cost $102 million. Cheap by today's standards. Sadly, Utzon never saw his completed work, but his firm is now in charge of all planned renovations which are being overseen by his son. He is now 90 and now longer travels. Our guide and the place are wonderful. Such beautiful construction. We loved the tour. I can't say why, but we walked home, me pretty much dragging ass and just a little ill-tempered. Deciding to hike a distance in my flip flops was not me at my cleverest, but it did make the solace of our room that much sweeter. We ate at a fast food place (it had to be very close to the hotel!) and remaked on the hoards, throngs, masses, sea of human beings with the crowd kind of undulating. The people were almost all young, almost all Asian, and almost no one spoke English.