A grey and vermillion-colored sky outlines the majestic palms that stand in our neighbor's yard...The sunset was not quite as magnificent as this last night but it's a good image to take with us as we depart this evening on Qantas 7366 for Australia. We'll leave this California coast, ascending 39,000 feet into the sky for a fourteen hour (!!) flight to Sydney. It will be midnight when we depart and we're hoping for sleep to occupy at least the first eight hours of it. But we've got some good books to read for the rest of the journey--Suite Française, the recently discovered novel by Irène Némirovsky, a writer who died in Auschwitz in 1942 and whose daughter Denise "discovered" it among her mother's papers and sent it to be published in France; Dear Shameless Death, by Latife Tekin, which is a novel about contemporary Turkey; and some history books about Australia. We might decide to add Don DeLillo's new novel, Falling Man, and The Assault on Reason, Al Gore's new political tract to the collection before we take off. Nothing really very light in the stack, but that's what we like.
And for those of you wondering, we have managed to get everything we needed to take into two bags and one small carry-on each.
We will arrive at 7:25 AM on the morning of May 31 and our journey will have reached its first destination: Sydney, Australia. We're lucky that our reservation begins from May 30 and we'll be able to get into the room and settle ourselves. Or at least figure out what time our bodies think it is!
Amy leaves on Saturday for Melbourne and Kathy stays in Sydney for lectures she's giving at the University, then flies to Melbourne to join Amy on June 7.
Stay tuned for pictures from the flight (maybe) and arrival/first impressions...And thanks to all of you for the wishes for safe travels and much fun.
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