Ted Ralphs

This morning, I arrived home at last. Ah, it’s good to be home. More thought and reflections in later posts.

I took the train down the coast from San Luis Obispo to catch my flight back to Philadelphia from LAX. If you’ve never done it, I really recommend it. It’s a very beautiful ride right along the water. Unfortunately, I ended up on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak, but it will still very nice. Tomorrow, I’ll be home!

Stopping off to visit old friends in San Luis Obipso en route to L.A. for my flight home. Yeah! Almost there!

Finally back on U.S. soil! I’m in San Francisco for the MIP workshop for the next few days. It’s nice to be home. Not too much longer until I make it back to PA!

I had a brief layover in Fiji on the way back from Sydney to San Francisco via L.A. I didn’t do a whole lot there except hang out at the cute little resort where I stayed. It was very relaxing and peaceful. I did some sea kayaking and swimming in the pristine waters and spent the rest of the time sitting on the beach with my laptop. Not a bad place to get a little work done. No Internet or phone, though! Pictures soon.

I’m flying out of Sydney back home tomorrow and decided to take an extra day there to look around. A really beautiful city! Quite amazing, really. I wasn’t sure it would live up to the hype, but I would say it did. I walked around the downtown area, Darling Harber, The Rocks, Circle Quay, the Harbor Bridge, and even took a ferry over to Manly Beach for a few hours to take in the whole harbor. Unfortunately, it was raining most of the time, but I got some pictures anyway. Coming soon!

As today is my last day in Newcastle, I decided to take a last look around on bike and saw some of the beaches and the waterfront areas for the first time! Guess I was too busy looking elsewhere! Pictures coming soon.

Cape Tribulation, along with the Daintree river and forest are in the far north of Queensland. This area is home to the oldest continuously existing rain forest in the world. It is said that the forest has existed unchanged for 250 million years or more. It’s a true tropical paradise, very isolated and beautiful. Pictures coming soon.

I had a wonderful time diving the amazing Great Barrier Reef off Cairns, Queensland. This was actually my first open ocean dive since getting certified 5 years ago. I knew it would pay off eventually! Below are a bunch of videos I took and uploaded to YouTube (these are in random order and some are better than others—I’ll try to move the best ones up in the order later). Pictures coming soon, too!

For the next few days, I’m visiting Cairns in northern Queensland, the tropical part of Australia and near the Great Barrier Reef. Pictures of the town of Cairns coming soon.