{"id":1776,"date":"2007-05-10T09:08:59","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T14:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2025-06-03T21:44:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:44:30","slug":"hello-from-cairns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2007\/05\/10\/hello-from-cairns\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello from Cairns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>May 10, 2007<\/p>\n

Hello from Cairns, which according to my GPS (yes, Sondra, I did bring it!) is at 16 South and 145 East. That means it\u2019s a long way from home–8811 miles as the GPS flies.<\/p>\n

It seems longer after the plane ride. I used to think Chicago-LA was a long ride, but that was before travel to Asia.<\/p>\n

That was leg one of our trip, Chicago to LA, a 3 1\/2 hour ride on a cramped domestic plane. We were supposed to leave at 5:20, but got to the airport and discovered we’d missed the 12 o\u2019clock plane they had put us on. Fortunately, we had room on the 420 to LA, which left us with about 4 hours at LAX for the 14 1\/2 hour ride to Sydney and the 2-hour layover there, then the 3-hour ride to Cairns. The Pacific is a big place, and so is Australia. Australia fits roughly into the US, but has the population of Shanghai (21 million), which is to say there’s room for lots of kangaroos.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Cairns is as far north as we’re going–as I mentioned 16 degrees from the Equator. It’s tropical forest, or would be if we could see the forest for the construction. We’re booked pretty solid here–today at the Great Barrier Reef (a prelude to the Keys?), the only natural object visible from the moon (I’m gonna have to check that out sometime). We’re going on a catamaran which means possibly some sailing. I guess the one thing I keep being reminded of the few times I’ve been in the tropics is that the days are only 12 hours long of daylight anyway at most. And since it’s fall here, the daylight is even shorter. It is hot and humid though!<\/p>\n

Well, we’re about to depart. Hope you have a great weekend, and a great mother\u2019s day to all the mothers reading this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 10, 2007 Hello from Cairns, which according to my GPS (yes, Sondra, I did bring it!) is at 16 South and 145 East. That means it\u2019s a long way from home–8811 miles as the GPS flies. It seems longer after the plane ride. I used to think Chicago-LA was a long ride, but that … Continue reading “Hello from Cairns”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-term-2007"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9410,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/9410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}