Yikes – we're leaving for Australia in 13 days!  And, as usual, I'm completely unprepared!

I am so psyched for this trip for so many reasons – a two week holiday, visiting a country I've never been to before, sun, warmth, beaches, not going to work – the list goes on.  The only thing I'm not looking forward to is being stuck in airplanes for 20+ hours each way.  That will be a challenge – and it's the main reason I've never gone to Australia before.

We start off in Sydney – and hopefully we'll be functional when we get there.  It would be a shame to be down with jet lag when we only have three days to knock around the city.  From Sydney we head to Port Douglas where we'll have four days to explore Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef and… we're not quite sure what we're going to do, but that's half the fun of being on holiday.  We really enjoy not being locked into a strict itinerary and not making ourselves crazy trying to cram too much in to a short amount of time.

From Port Douglas we head down to Melbourne.  We'll have seven days there.  The last three days Barb will be in conference, which is the primary reason we're going, so I'll be knocking around on my own.  Which is not a bad thing – I already have most of the time booked.  I'll spend one day at the Phillip Island Circuit, which is the home of the Australia Grand Prix.  Unfortunately, I'll miss the race – it starts about a week after we leave – but there will plenty of great gearhead things to keep me happy.  I'll be doing some go kart racing on a track that's a true scale replica of the Grand Prix circuit (Youtube video) and I've signed up for a ride-along on the actual Grand Prix track.  It's three laps with a professional racing driver in a real Porsche 911 GT3 race car, which is sure to be an amazing experience!  One another day I'll be renting a Triumph Bonneville for a full day of exploring on the Great Ocean Road, which is supposed to be a great motorcycle road with amazing views.  Hopefully I won't have any surprise encounters with wombats or wayward 'roos!

Oh, did I happen to mention that I was excited about this trip?