SPORTING SPACE SUITS IN SYDNEY

John Paul and I both had meetings in Sydney last week, so we extended our trip through the weekend to spend some time looking around the OTHER big city in Australia. We woke up early on Saturday and wanted to kick off our day of sightseeing by climbing the Harbor Bridge. I had made an appointment to be with the 9:00am group – which wouldn’t have been a problem – if we were a little better with public transportation. I had insisted on staying at a Marriott right outside of the city because we could use our hotel points, blah, blah, blah. Well 20 minutes outside of the city in a car = AT LEAST 1 hour of public transit. Factor in my genius time management skills and you’re looking at close to 2 hours. As I was sitting in the McDonald’s eating my Egg McMuffin, I saw the bus we were SUPPOSE to be on, zoom by. Plan B: Walk to the tram station. Needless to say, we hopped in with the 10:00am group instead. No biggie. We checked in at the Bridge Climb and went through all of the preliminary ‘training.’ Eventually we were issued our ‘climbing suits’ and we were sent into dressing rooms to change. As I was pulling on my suit I noticed that it came almost up to my calf and was pretty snug, but didn’t want to make a fuss. When I walked out, everyone else’s suits seemed to be nice and roomy. After making this observation, I immediately questioned the integrity of the little twit that passed out the suits. Although I was smaller than the other women making the climb, I have never fallen into the small/petite category. I was convinced that she was mocking me by giving child sized space suit with a torso suitable for a prepubescent 12 year old. Although my outfit was borderline x-rated, I decided to embrace my fashion faux pas. I mean, seriously, how good can you look in a gray nylon jumpsuit anyhow?

So the climb was great – we had absolutely beautiful weather and the views were spectacular. The tour itself was a little long, but I’m still glad that we did it. After we rid ourselves of the space suits, we grabbed some lunch and headed towards the Opera House. Unfortunately, there were no shows playing, but it was still awesome to see the building so close up. We finished the day by taking the ferry over to Manley – which is a cool little beach town on the other side of the harbor. By the time we got back, we were pooped from running around all day and made the trek back to our hotel to pass out.

Oh, and stay tuned…we actually decided to immortalize our space suit hotness by purchasing an overpriced 5x7” picture of us on the bridge. I’ll be scanning it to my computer in the near future for you all to enjoy!