G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 63. Today is the first day of our first trip in our Winnebago. We are going to spend 5 months travelling around Australia. I’m going to put this online journal on hold for a while. All entries will be on your online travel journal at www.eriksfjord.net
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 62. Today we packed for our huge trip around Australia. We are going to be gone for quite a while, so we have to make sure we’ve got everything. The Winnebago is pretty spacious so we managed to fit everything in okay. We’ve got all the kitchen equipment we need, plenty of camping gear and all of our clothes. Most of the stuff seemed to be for you: pram, cot, clothes, nappies, etc. We’ve left one cupboard each for Peter, Kate & Jake. When we pick them up from the airport, they will have to unpack out of their hard-cased bags into shelving. We still had some space left over for some port and wine. We parked the van next door at Kate & Mel’s so that we could refill the water tanks. We got some travelling tips from them as they (like us) had also spent quite a bit of time travelling in a Kombi van. We also said goodbye to our other neighbours Steve & Emma who will be renovating and extending their house whilst we are away.
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 61. Today was my last day of work. I went in and wrapped up the last of my work projects. The guys threw a morning tea for me and we went out and played pool at lunch. In the afternoon we had a farewell for another one of my colleagues. Everyone was pretty happy that I’d made the decision to do the trip. My health hasn’t been that great lately, so I really need the break. On the way home, I picked up the Winnebago from the panel beaters who had repaired the damage to the cabin. It looked pretty good, so I was relieved that we are now ready to head off on this trip.
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 60. Today we dropped the Winnebago off at the smash repairers to get the hole in the cabin fixed. After work, we went out for dinner with our friends from our Holden Car Club. We continued onto the club meeting, which would be our last one for the year. They were pretty excited that we were going on such a long trip and devastated that we had bought a Ford to do it in.
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 59. Today I had my last massage at Griffith Massage Centre. I’ve been getting a massage there once a week for the last few years. It’s been the only way that I have been able to maintain a full-time job. However, now that we are going away for the next five months, I’m going to miss out for a while. Your Mum came in and had a massage aswell – Kay & Jess gave your Mum a voucher for a free massage when you were born. All the girls at GMC will be following our progress on the trip via this online journal.
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 58. Today you had your 8 week immunisations – three needles in the leg. You slept for quite a few hours afterwards, then Mum cuddled you while you grizzled all afternoon. Lately you’ve been sleeping pretty well – up to 9 and 10 hours a night. Your hair hasn’t grown much but it is getting blonder. (So much for Erik the Red, we’ll get a DNA test done later).
At lunchtime, we hired a real estate agency to manage our Theodore rental property while we are away. This was our first home that we bought in November 2002. Unfortunately, just before we are due to leave on our holiday, our tenants have moved out. We let them break their 12 month lease as they have bought their first home. For the last couple of days, Mum has been going down to Theodore to patch cracks in the walls and organise new carpets. Anyway, we aren’t going to be around to manage the property ourselves, so we hope an agency can find a tenant soon. We can’t afford to have it empty as we’ve got a five year 100% fixed interest investment loan.
Later this afternoon, I went around to pick up the Winnebago which had its service at the Ford Dealership in Belconnen. It seemed to go okay, they did a pre-trip safety check, plus oil and filter change. Then they told me that one of the mechanics had driven the Winnebago into a hoist and punched a hand-sized hole through the fibreglass canopy above the cabin. This is now the second time in a row this year that someone else has crashed (or crashed into) our car within 24 hours of it being registered. They will be pay to have it fixed, but it means that we’ll be without the Winnebago on Thursday and Friday.
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 57. Today we had the Winnebago inspected and transferred across to ACT registration. The ACT registration inspectors are starting to get to know me by name now and wish us well on our trip. I didn’t want the standard ACT ‘Centenary of Federation’ number plates, so I got ACT Brumbies Rugby plates instead. They even had 0958 spare which continues with our FC Holden number plate theme. FC Holdens were sold in 1958 & 1959, so our other plates are YFC059 and 058. You could have gotten a Canberra Raiders number plate, but it would have taken four weeks to arrive (and you go for the Eels anyway). When I came home, your Mum started loading the Winnebago with all of the accessories and provisions for our big trip. That’s you in our home-made bean-bag on the floor!
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 56. Today the Chants & Spencers came around for a farewell BBQ. We were given a bottle of port which we believe is the best camping accessory ever. You also received a very cool Viking helmet with the strict condition that a photo is taken of you wearing it at all the major outback attractions we visit. Hopefully by the time we come back from our big trip you will be big enough to play with your friends Josh, Natalie, Erin & Flynn.
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 55. Today I gave Byron his dream task: We’ve got $3000 left on our GE Finance card and we need a laptop today. We had a quick look online to checkout the best laptop available online. Then we hit Harvey Norman and Domayne to get the best deal we could locally as they were both having a 42 months interest free promotion. We ended up getting a Hewlett Packard Pavilion Dv7 2111TX. The features don’t mean much to me, but its a 17″ widescreen, quad port processor, 4MB RAM, 1 Terabyte Storage, Webcam, DVD Burner, HDMI and SD card ports and best of all a HD TV tuner. It means we can now keep in touch with everyone whilst we are on our trip. In particular Mum and Lyndel & Steve after they’ve had our niece in late October. We also bought a Garmin GPS and Telstra Wireless Internet Card. (I bought a Garmin instead of a Navman or Tom Tom because they sponsor one of the Tour de France teams). It was a lot of money (just like the Winnebago) but my new saying this year is ‘let 2010 Tim & Bec worry about it, 2009 Tim & Bec are living life today’
Lotsa Love Dad
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G’day Erik
Welcome to Day 54. Today I set up a new online travel journal for you titled Eriksfjord Longship Adventures at www.eriksfjord.net It is the first sub-journal of this journal which I’ve created to focus specifically on your travels in your new viking longship that we bought this week. The 2003 Six-Berth Ford Transit Winnebago Freeway. We’ve named the Winnebago and the travel journal ‘Eriksfjord’. Eriksfjord is the area of Norway that Erik the Red is from. Eriksfjord also sounds like Erik’s Ford (lame, but Dad’s are allowed to make ‘Dad Jokes’). We wanted to name the Winnebago after Erik the Red’s (or his son Leif Erikson’s) Viking Longship. However, Vikings don’t name Longships. The Winnebago will be your home for the next five months as we tour around Australia. Hopefully its just the start of many journeys.
Lotsa Love Dad
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