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Well we made it to Perth on rainy day. And my traveling companions from the Land of Sunshine (i.e. England, for the atmospherically challenged) were complaining.
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Farewell to Yesterday's Rain

Tctraynor
2005-11-04 21:46:00

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to the Oceanographic Institutes in the US and asked them to send me info on whales. I just couldn't get enough. Maybe that is also something I could pursue since I am without a profession now: professional whale watcher. I did see a whale do a back flip in the ocean. That was spectacular.

After whale watching, then there was dolphin watching in Bunbury. Bunbury is what Monkey Mia should be. Wild dolphins come to the shore here too but there isn't that carnival atmosphere that you find in Monkey Mia. This was relaxed. I donned a pair of fisherman's overalls and waded into the water to see dolphins swimming right by me. Amazing. Oh yeah, it was raining too.

Western Australia has left me enthralled. It vastness and variety of beauty make me give it a huge thumbs up. Even with the wind, rain and hail. Western Australia, I learned, has a moniker for the abbreviation WA similar to the abbreviation for the Northern Territory (the NT - meaning "Not Today" or "Not Thursday"). WA stands for "Wait Awhile". Wait awhile and the scenery will change, wait awhile and the rain will clear, wait awhile and you will have a new outlook on life.

Yesterday

I am having the most troubling time writing this travelogue. The terrorist attacks in the US have left me a bit out of sorts. When I watched on TV the city that I love so much and have called home for over the past decade being devastated, I went through the range of human emotions: from disbelief to horror, from shock to sadness then to outrage. I turned the TV off when I got to outrage. I didn't want to feel revenge but I did in that moment. I still feel this is all a horrible nightmare and will wake up any minute in a cold sweat. But this is our present.

I find this excerpt from a commencement speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen at Villanova University comforting:

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, ...