I find myself in Canberra, in mud. I’m regretting not having had a chance to change out of my dress shoes and into my boots. My gracious host has taken me to the Farmer’s Markets where I can ogle the produce. Cherries for $20 for 2kg! Sigh. I think Canberra is currently experiencing a wet period, which is probably really only a lead up to another fire season. In the meantime they get to reap the fruits of the rain. Yummy chocolates, fresh veges, peaches etc.
Then it’s off to dump my gear (once again, no checked luggage). This time the evil computer put me in the middle seat of a 3 seat row in an A330-200, so I have to attempt to sleep without leaning on either of my seatmates. I obviously manage to achieve this as I wake up while they’re both eating dinner. Fortunately I wasn’t feeling like a second dinner of airline food this evening anyway.
The in-flight movie is “Must Love Dogs”. For added realism a large dog has been loaded into the hold of our aircraft. It barks while we taxi. Fortunately it also barks after we’ve landed, so we know it survived the trip. I did enjoy the movie though, John Cusack getting to throw a Prius around in the wet, although it looked suspiciously like they had to speed some of the driving up (probably can’t disable the ABS or something 
After dumping the luggage it’s off to Tilley’s, which besides having my friends drop in also seems to have a lot of people who look very familiar. One person spots my shirt, stops me and talks to me about World Solar Challenge. He was with the Lake Tuggeranong team.
Patrick, Margot and Karen show up, and exchange tales of Canberra and their various public sector employers. Patrick seems very enthusiastic about the orchestra he’s performing in tomorrow with the ballet. (Which unfortunately I didn’t make it to in the end). Went for a bit of a walk around the various park-like bits and then returned to Nicky’s place to attempt to keep Zoie occupied, then dinner and bed.
