My Austrailian Adventure - Friday

Friday, July 8th, I arrived at Indianapolis International Airport.

International‽ They only got me to Chicago!

But let's back up.

In March of this year I was contacted by a guy named Dan from Austrailia.
Apparently they have some famous caves ( http://www.jenolancaves.org.au/ ) down there and they want their self-guided audio tour to be in Klingon.

Okay.

That time last year I was translating for England-based Sophos and produced a Klingon anti-virus.

And so things moved on.

I completed the translation and assumed that everything was over.

Wrong.

It's an audio tour.
It needs to be recorded.

I recommended qurgh.

Someone was going to be in the States late June and they would do the recording then.
But I still wasn't done. They wanted me to be present for quality control.

No one on their staff speaks Klingon, and if qurgh were to make a mistake, they wouldn't be able to detect it.

Allright. We live only a few hours apart. If they book a studio in Kentucky, it'll be a day trip.


And then things turned seriosly cool.


They couldn't fit the recording into their schedule.
Aince they couldn't come to us, they invited us to them.

We were going to Austrailia. To speak Klingon.

Wow.

Unfortunately, qurgh was unable to make the trip.

So I sent them audio samples of two other Klingonists; they chose Tracy.


Back to July.

Tracy and I made our way from IND to ORD to LAX to SYD over the course of 21 hours.

Our seats were never close.

The flight from Chicago to LA was the longest I had ever been on.
They even played a movie!

And then there was the 13 hour flight to Sydney. Wow.
It was so long that they gave us food. (Yes, I have seen such things in the movies. But movies lie all the time.)

I fell asleep before we even left LA. Several hours later, I awoke.

What time is it? Where are we? I wondered.

Then I realized how unreal those questions were.
We were not on some road trip where you can point out a highway sign and X miles to city sign.

We were somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. There was no way to know where.

And what time is it where? In LA where we left? In Sydney where we're going? In the random time zone that we're passing through?
Surely there's not a "ship's time" to go on.
No, the time was also to remain an unknown.

Soon enough, the random TV show playing ended and a map was displayed; complete with all of the info I was looking for.

Thanks United.

Hours later, a stewardess walked down the aisle collecting "rubbish".

I knew we must be close.


...to be continued...