Lightning trip to Melbourne. I'm still reeling from the experience

I have just returned from a lightning trip to Melbourne with Nick and Andrea and I feel quite shattered. We were gone from our quiet, comparatively thinly populated, and terribly laid back home state of Tasmania for a whole 24 hours to go to Oz' second largest city - and in that time had our patience tested (we don't cope with peak hour traffic very well when we are only used to peak quarter hours here), navigation skills (very, very bad) and irritability thresholds (frighteningly low).

Frankly, I'm going to need a week to get over it.

Let me go back a bit...

Both Nick and Andrea need orthoses for their feet. A few years ago I found a fantastic biomedical scientist from Queensland who used to come to Tassmania every so often. He did wonders for both of them, but alas, he doesn't come any more. He does however still visit Melbourne once or twice a year.

Now Andrea is keen to train in hospitality when she leaves school - a profession that naturally involves long hours on her feet - and her orthotics needed replacing. Nick's were worn out too. So I bit the bullet and arranged for the three of us to go to Melbourne for the day. We would visit my family overnight, get new moulds made and be back home in time for tea and feed the cats. Easy!

I set to and found some cheapish airfares with Jetstar. Well, they seemed cheap at first. But let me say that having to pay extra for seat allocation and to use my non-JETSTAR credit card was a total rip off.

Since my folks live in country Victoria, I had to work out how best to get there. After pricing all the forms of public transport we would need I opted to hire a cheap car - a Hyundai Getz - from the airport instead.

I'm not sure if it was quite the right thing to have done in hindsight.

Some of you may remember the main character in a story I wrote a while back who had a really bad sense of direction.

Well, as much as I hate to admit it, so have I. (Now for the record, this is the ONLY characteristic I shared with Fee.)

But the sad thing is that this particular lack of ability has bred true. Neither Nick nor Andrea are much chop at map reading either. So for much of our day it was the blind leading the blind.

The irony is that their Dad is a fantastic navigator. But of course he wasn't with us today.

So perhaps it WAS foolish of me to decline the offer of the GPS for the hire car, and to say we would manage with a street directory only.

Oh. My. God.

I'm afraid I lost my cool somewhat when Nick almost had us going back to the airport instead of to the suburb we needed, but at least he redeemed himself on the way back - to a certain extent. Unfortunately for him it was during peak hour. I figure that the constant stopping and starting (which drove him nuts) allowed him plenty of time to work out the maps.

But until then, we roared around the Eastern suburbs, missing most of our turnoffs and having to double back over and over and trying not to get streamed into the wrong lanes of traffic.

At one intersection, I had to try to slip into a gap ahead of a guy who was too busy snogging his girlfriend at the lights to be paying attention to what I was trying to do. I was 'ahem' a bit over it all by then - and all I'll say it was just as well for him that my window was wound up when I expressed my opininon!

Just about the scariest moment of the whole day was when we were congratulating ourselves of getting back to the airport in good time. All we had to do to finish off was find the petrol station to refill the car. Anyway, despite our best efforts I managed to be in the wrong lane and we found ourselves driving at top speed down the freeway AWAY from the airport. I was convinced we were NEVER going to get home.

There were some very bad words coming from the driver AND the navigator until we reached the first available turning point about 5km back down the road.

That really should have been the worst moment of the day - but there were two other incidents that would give it a run for its money.

1) The gear lever that would stick inexplicably in Park position, threatening to leave us stranded in several car parks. Somehow I managed to unstick it each time, without knowing how I'd done it. It wasn't until we got home that I learned that it only unsticks IF you are applying the brake! Unfortunately this little fact was not written anywhere in the manual AT ALL - nor did the hire car guy bother to mention it either.

Bastard!

2) You can imagine how pleased we would be to find an apparently vacant parking spot in a public car park not too far from our destination. That was until my return a few hours later to discover a (big) parking fine on my windscreen. Apparently I had parked in one of the three private spots in the car park. AAAGhhh

The parking guy was still in the area and so I asked him (nicely) to explain.

Now, get this...

The three slots were signposted, but he admitted that it wasn't clear and that as someone not familiar with the area, it would have been easy to miss. He actually suggested that I write and appeal the fine - and that he would support me in his daily report. I figure I've got nothing to lose so I'm going to do that tomorrow.

You might think that this trip was all one disaster after another. Well it was certainly memorable and not all of it was traumatic. Although the water main at my parents' house burst while I was actually in the shower, which was a bit of a shock to the system. But that's another story.

No it wasn't all bad. We did have some successes and besides, it all could have gone SO much worse.

Our flights all left on time. This is always a good thing.

We had a lovely, albeit late, dinner at my sister's place in Geelong last night. Note to self - next time, use the ring road properly.

We were able to celebrate my mother's birthday with family for the first time in yonks.

The gripey tummy I had for most of this week settled down just in the nick of time for the trip.

The health fund will cover about 70% of the cost of the orthotics. Pity I can't get them to come at the airfares eh - or the parking fine? LOL.

I bought some very good luggage accessories on sale - for the Italian trip later in the year - Although I have to wonder if I really ought to be let out on my own after today.

Oh and I didn't prang the car. This must be regarded as a positive in anyone's book. Of course, if I'd not paid the damage waiver, who knows what might have happened?

I think I need a lie down after thinking about that little lot.