Road Trip? Road Trip!

18 November - Up and atom and into the 30 year old merc for the start of the return journey home - said goodbye to Chiaki and Erasmus and made our way out to an obscurely named suburb of Brisbane to pick up Master Grey from his bro's hoos and before we knew it on the way headng south. Not far out of the city on the expressway we had the first little disaster of the journey - driving along saw a small dog running across the road, the car to the lane left of us managed to slow down enough for the canine to make his way across to the middle right in front of the jabberwocky - no chance of stopping or swerving and he was given an almost direct hit and was smashed off to the side of the road. being on the expressway meant pulling over was not really an opton and all credit to the driver for not panicking and keeping the passengers safe but in hindsight I think stopping would have been the right thing to do. In any event, the dog was almost certainly instantly killed and we could only hope his sufferingwas minimal. Made for a rather somber rest of the leg before hitting Byron for a brief stop with a late breakfast before I took over the driving for the rest of the journey towards Coffs Harbour - entertainment was word games (its amazing how many names the three of us actually know) but it wasn’t distracting enough to hold off the return of the buttock and leg cramps originally developed in the USA trip that come with any bout of extended driving. Jabberwocky may be 30 years old but still has a pretty powerful engine and we motored to Coffs very steadily and checked into the Zebra Motel, apparently an african themed motel but couldn’t really be sure. A very slow wander towards the beach on foot where all of suspected the car may have been more appropriate transport (especially the one of us who chose to wear flip flops) where chishnfips were eaten and a stroll across the bay for a little while then headed back where I managed to convince the troops that shirking on the night on the town would be a bad idea. Nice pub, although bombarded with stray ping pong balls followed by a very decent kebab (is any kebab not very decent after a few pivos?) and a warning that bananas were still very expensive despite this being the current banana capital of the country.