Look out for crazy

One of the best things about traveling is creating an international community. Australia is a HUGE country, yet we are always running into people we've met again and again. Just two days ago, we were walking through the Sydney central business district and literally crossed paths with our friend Rachel from our Whitsunday trip! The night before, we ran into our friend Craig from our stay in Noosa Heads on the steps of a bar. We saw a french couple in three different cities after we said goodbye in Airlie Beach. On Fraser Island we came upon our friend Jill laying out in the sun. We saw a woman who seemed perhaps to have schizophrenia and was our roommate in Brisbane and then again in Noosa. We met up with Vinci and Caro in Townsville and will see them again tomorrow in Sydney. And the list goes on...we text our friends from the Outback and from all the places in between...we share our lives with so many. I am so blessed with this community.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) we also run across "crazy" people. Here's a couple unbelievable stories...

1. In Noosa, we met a woman who had fusia hair and was clearly chugging whiskey (she showed me her Jack Daniels bottle in her purse). She sat with us and proceeded to spin this tale that she had met a man in an Irish pub down the road and went back to his place for a "root." He had stolen her money (yet her purse was with her?), so she got him back by breaking into his hotel room and stolen his Jack bottle. She said she had climbed up a pipe and went in through the window, all while not waking his roommate. We had quite the colorful conversation about all things inappropriate before she started hitting on me. About that time (thankfully), she was kicked out by the hostel authorities. The whole way down the hill she screamed at the hostel workers. Our friend Craig had told us about how this crazy fuscia hair woman was talking to herself in the 7/11 earlier in the day. She had approached him and said she couldn't believe that a guy had stood her up! Then she showed up at our hostel! Later, we all went out dancing. Yvonne came running up to find me as I was paying to get in and she pulled me to the stage. There was the fuscia hair woman doing a drunk dance as a challenge! Eventually, she was kicked out of there too. Just not her night...

On our way to Newcastle from Sydney about a week ago, we had just arranged all of sprawling luggage on the train seats, when a guy approached us and asked us if we were ok. We said we were and then he asked again. Again, we're ok. I kind of gave him a bewildered look because he kept asking Tara if she was ok. When he turned around and saw me, he proceeded to flip me off, then laugh crazily, then said he was only kidding. He walked away. Then he walked back through the car. He introduced himself. We ignored him. He stationed himself near the door and began asking other passengers if they were ok, then freak out on them, etc. He introduced himself as "cannabis" to one guy. Explains that one. He was all over the place until he left the train a few stops down but didn't bother us after more passengers were around.

Tara and I joke about watching out for "crazy" and are fascinated by social dynamics wherever we go. We often mutter "social experiment" under our breaths. As a lover and studier of people, there is nothing like traveling.

P.S. I was just about to publish this when my friend Amelia from William Creek stuck her head in front of my computer screen and gave me a big hug!!!! The last I heard she was in Alice Springs and now we just had an extremely girly moment of hugging and chatting! Unbelievable.