Got up in the morning and did some last minute shopping for camping gear - bought a cooler, sleeping pad, and most importantly a mosquito net. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to need a new stereo in the car since the one I have doesn't play tapes loud enough for me to hear over the engine - and most of my drive is going to be outside the range of radio - so I did some stereo shopping, but I couldn't find anything that was interesting at a price I wanted to pay.
Had lunch with Susie - we were going to go to this great Thai restaurant that I've been trying to go to since I got to Sydney (It's been closed most of the time), but they weren't open for lunch so we ended up at her local pub. Did my final bit of packing and loaded up the car. Ended up leaving later than planned (3:45) and had to deal with bad traffic out of the Sydney suburbs. The first 50 kilometers took the same as the last 250. My car seems to be running hot and I stopped to let it cool down about 45 min out of Canberra - I'm a little worried about that. The bad news is that my air-conditioning quit - less than a week after paying nearly A$ 200 to have it charged it's dry - it must leak, and now I'm going to have to decide whether to get it fixed or not.
Got a bed at the same backpackers I stayed at last time. Met up with Alex and had diner - weird to see her almost exactly two years later (Czech Republic February '98). She's taken a year off school and is getting ready to go to South America. Talked and had diner and a few beers, then went back to my room to read. I should be making plans for tomorrow - I don't even know where I am going, but I just can't be bothered.
