Well, the itinerant writer’s tour is heading down under!  I’m off to Sydney in two more days.  When I was in high school I was an exchange student in Australia, in a smallish town in Queensland named Toowoomba.  Since that time, I visited Australia as often as I could to see old friends and travel.  Generally that meant once every five years or so.

Over the past ten years, however, as commodity prices soared, Australia got very expensive.  The economy is highly dependent on mineral resources, so their dollar went up, up, up.  Now, as commodity prices have crashed in the past six months, suddenly it’s much more reasonable down there again.  So, after an 11 year hiatus, I’m headed back and can’t wait to catch up with the friends I haven’t seen in so long, and maybe have a few meat pies and Aussie beers, too.

Often when I’m leaving my home town of Laguna Beach and heading off to spend an extended period abroad, I feel a bit sad knowing that I won’t be able to surf for a while.  This time, as I’ll be taking a board along with me, I have none of those misgivings!

So off we go, to spend some time down under, catch up with people, surf, and of course, write.  What I end up working on next, and how long I’ll stay down there,  I haven’t entirely decided.  Sometimes it’s nice to just go with the flow a little bit.  Or in my case, most times. 🙂