Australia Day Zero

"Well Zani... Good Day Zero" my friend Paul said somewhat facetiously as we pulled away from his brother Michael's house and back towards the suburbs where i am staying at his mother's house. My hair was tied back in a tight bun to prevent any more bleeding from my head.

It WAS a good day zero.
A very eventful entrance into this country that already in less then 24 hours i love.

So i will rewind to March 1st.
(i find it very bizarre that March 2, 2012 didn't happen for me this year.)
Anyways... The day i left LA was also the birthday of my guardian angel as i travel... Devin Petelski. She died two and a half years ago when a police car going about 80 MPH smashed into her while speeding down venice blvd. with no lights or sirens.
her car spun and hit a tree... she hit her head and died in the hospital with all of her friends and family around.

i talk about her a lot as i travel. the memory of her and the tattoo on my wrist that reminds me how fragile life is and reminds me to live every day as though its my last... hence my world travel love ninja-ing.

The day flew by running around collecting last minute things and piling my bags into Bianca's car with wet hair, a giant hot pink poster board card from jessica with a giant photo collage that took up a ridiculous amount of room but i couldnt leave it behind.... double checking that aside from my photo collage and ten bags of kale chips, I had the essentials...

Passport? check.
Shoes on my feet? check.
(this may seem silly, but i have arrived at many a location without shoes. middle school was the worst)
Nalgene? check
Rose quartz travel amulet from New Mexico? check.

I was ready to do this.
Heading down under with less expectations then i've ever had going anywhere.
My heart was totally open and i was really excited to see what the universe had in store for me.

I boarded my Virgin Australia flight and found my seat... a window seat, pinned in by shrieking babies and their very apologetic looking father.
I took a deep breath and realized that it was all good. I would take a xanax, put in my headphones and just zone out the screaming.

Two guys sitting in the bulkhead flagged down the stewardess and asked if i could sit with them instead of back there in shrieksville, so together me and my two new friends somehow got repositioned up in a better cabin of the plane with killer bulkhead seats alongside the rest of the guy's band. They're called Good Charlotte... I can't say I have ever actually listened to their music, but my new friend was the drummer and kicked ass. We realized that I had actually seen him perform years and years ago at the Greek in Berkeley when he was the drummer for Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals - a show i went to with my sister Lara who was in college up there.

We drank and talked about music for hours, sharing love for a lot of the same artists and songs...
One of my favorite songs from the album "Diamonds on the inside" is called "She's only happy in the sun"...

the story of your life is hello, goodbye.
she's only happy in the sun.

I've always felt like that song was about me... or at least the kind of person i am.
I found out that my new friend who i was sitting beside had written that song for Ben Harper.
Love it.
He ripped a picture of me sun worshipping off Jessica's collage, sticking it to the wall of the plane while we searched for a splitter so we could listen to the same ipod.

This IS the story of my life... hello, goodbye.
Meeting amazing people, falling into the flow, crossing paths, weaving back out away from them and then trusting and laughing at this game we play and call life.
Thank god for music.
Sometimes it feels like the only sort of sense i can make of this whole thing.

Finally we all fell asleep and woke up an hour outside of Sydney.



I parted ways with my friends, wishing them a good show they were heading down to Adelaide to play that night and walked out of the terminal to find my friend Paul waiting for me!

Off we went into the somewhat stormy, muggy Australian morning.

We arrived at his mom'm house where i had my tenth cup of coffee for the morning and met mum, dad and the sweetest German Shepherd dog. We visited for a bit and then headed off to meet brother Michael, a guy i met snowboarding in the french alps over 5 years ago and somehow have managed to stay in touch with... and sister Anna, who is a yogini and hopefully will be able to help me figure out what i need to figure out down here with regard to the yoga market.

We had brunch and then went to a lookout point that really blew me away.
The bay is absolutely stunning... with all these incredible alcoves and little beaches... boats and tiny islands in the harbor... the gorgeous bridge next to the Opera House (where i am still manifesting a ticket to see Bon Iver on the 11th)...

For a girl who is only happy in the sun, i was pretty happy to be there on this foggy, misty cliffside being pelted by intervals of sideways blowing rain, getting soaked but also soaking up the beauty around me.
We were next to a lighthouse.
What is it about lighthouses that are so romantic? What was it about this whole city?

Back at Michael's house we started drinking wine and dancing around as usual...
I was spinning in circles and blabbering about how much i love the trees here.
I gasped so many times in the car with Paul when we would drive beside or underneath some huge, magical looking mangrove style tree.

I don't actually know what kind of trees these are, but i am in love with them.


Michael walked us over to his particular tree to show me how beautiful it was...
Moments after this photo was taken i lost my balance and fell off.
Moments after THAT happened i decided to try to tarzan swing from one of the vines...
i mean... Tanzani, Queen of the Jungle, right?

maybe not.

i kinda sorta cracked my head open a little bit when the vine decided that i was infact NOT tarzani, and rather some stupid tipsy american who should not have been climbing on her beautiful vines.

point taken.


We drove back to the burbs and i fell asleep to the sounds of animals and birds chirping next to the river and woke up at 3:30am.
Gooooo jetlag... and meditated to the sounds of nature until the sun crept up and over the hill illuminating the river and this STUNNINGLY gorgeous day.