I sit in Alice Springs doing absolutely nothing, with all the Things I Need To Do go round and round in my head and are no closer at all to being done.  As I am away from Brisbane until Monday, my hands are tied.  Tuesday, I am on reserve, Wednesday is a day off, and Thursday I fly to Kenya.  I feel like there is no Time Left, and it irks me to be simply sitting here with nothing to do until my flight in another two hours (having already sat here for almost two hours).

The hardest thing is to do nothing.

Mind you, the last few days have been full of Everything, and there has been hardly a moment to breathe!  My new climbing shoes arrived on Thursday so we got up at 0250 on Friday morning before work, to climb Beerwah for sunrise.

Sunrise, with my new red shoes on the right

The shoes were incredible!  Even grippier than my guide tennies, and that’s saying a lot.  (D’s guide tennies on the left).

Moving on, swiftly, flying a 717 isn’t half as much fun as flying in the Tiger Moth, or the SNJ, or even trolling around for a jolly in the Cessna 172RG.

In formation with a Chipmunk 

The second Tiger formatting behind us

Both Tigers back on the ground

It was decidedly interesting landing into Alice Speings today, however.  At forty degrees with the associated thermals and turbulence, it was quite a roller coaster on approach.  A clue that it was bad was the tower controller advising us of a dust devil on a half mile final.  Thankfully, the aeroplane didn’t generate any wind shear warnings and we continued the gusty approach to land.  And after, I felt quite breathless.  Always a fun workout!

Once we get going, it is off to Darwin for the night.  I have taken a photo of the weather plan for the day

Surrounded by two cyclones, with an apparent volcano off Brisbane (there is no volcano, that volcano is in PNG so I don’t know how it made it to Brisbane!!!)

It will therefore be quite “interesting” flying into Darwin tonight and Cairns tomorrow!