Driving to and then exploring Alice Springs is touristy but nice. I'm
tempted to buy this thick oilskin trenchcoat some long-ago sailor
designed out of torn sails; maybe I should to look like a cowboy for
my move to Austin, Texas in a few months. Roughing it is OK with me,
but so is gorging myself: lunch's salad bar's mostly salad but
pleasantly stuffing.
Black-footed wallabies are funky creatures that resemble half-pint
kangaroos. Appropriately enough, they have black feet; their overall
color scheme's a lot like a kangaroo. I spot one at Simpson's Gap
after climbing slippery quartz along some really chilly water. It
doesn't let me get anywhere near close, but it still makes the climb
worth it. Or it doesn't: I climb back to find everybody looking at
another one.
The evening is stealing camping (they wanted $9 per person per night,
they'll get maybe $20 total after 2 nights) and a good argument over
wine: Erik and I debate how dick it was of me to leave a hometown bar
at Thanksgiving early, saying I feel sorry for a lot of the people we
went to high school with and didn't want to be around them. I argue
that it's sad when there's a massive rift between what people have
done / are doing and what they say they want to do, which was
frequently manifested that night as people with much more money and
time than me going "I really wish I could travel, or at least get out
of this town." Erik counters that people don't have the resources /
ability to do what I've done. A huge support for my argument walks up
3/4 into my liter of wine (we're sharing a 4-liter box, minus Lisman's
lightweightedness): the plumber we met yesterday, who's certainly
doing what he wants resources be damned, happens to be staying at the
same place as us. The wine's hitting me as we bullshit with him and
his wife, but I definitely wake up enough to laugh at a great
compliment he pays me: "if I had a daughter your age, you're the kind
of guy I'd keep her away from."