On day 2, a Sunday, I woke up about 7 AM. Actually, I woke up about 3
AM, which would have been 8 AM in Los Angeles, but after a little tossing
and turning I managed to get back to sleep again. When I finally got up
I walked out to the living room of my suite, and beheld two hot air
balloons hanging in the air outside my window. I grabbed my camera and
took a picture.

Sleeping until 7 AM counts as a major victory; my first morning in
Canberra in 1999, I woke up around 4:30 AM or so and simply could not get
back to sleep. That set a bad tone for the rest of the trip.

I took a quick shower, and then drove down Canberra Avenue four or five
blocks to St. Paul’s Manuka, a vaguely gothic brick church of the Anglican
variety. It’s not
nearly as pretty as All Saints Ainslie, the church I went to in 1999, but
it’s the local church so that’s where I went. Just my luck–they were just
beginning their planned giving compaign. I didn’t get warm vibes about
the place–I don’t think I’d pick it as my regular church, given a
choice–but the service and especially the Eucharist was joyous and
comforting. God is good, and I was glad to praise him.

Then I returned to the hotel and called John the Tester as we had agreed
the night before; no answer. I called him at intervals, getting no
answer, until he finally called me about 10:30 AM; apparently he’d been
out drinking until about 5 AM with folks he’d met in a bar up in City
Center, and my last phone call woke him up. (Whoops!)

Well, anyway, we went out to the Australian National Museum, which I’d
not seen before as it had opened just a couple of years before. It’s
got some interesting stuff, but I have to question the judgement of both
the architect and the folks who approved his design.

Canberra is divided into north and south halves by Lake Burley-Griffin;
the halves are joined by the Commonwealth Avenue bridge. The museum sits
on a peninsula just west of the north end of the bridge; the site is
incredibly scenic. You’d think the architect would have taken advantage
of this, but instead he built a museum that looks inward onto a
courtyard; and the courtyard is filled with a strange mixture of
rubberized concrete, fencing, and pond called “the Spirit of Australia
Garden”. Personally, if I were Australian I’d be insulted.

Next we toddled of to Woden Plaze, one of the local malls, where
we had lunch; I was also able to buy some books by
Reginald Hill, Peter Lovesey,
Iain Banks, and Terry Pratchett.

On the way back to the hotel we saw another car coming at us head on.
It honked at us madly, and we realized that indeed, we were in the
right-hand lane. John quickly swerved into the left lane, and we escaped
injury, though John was a bit shaken. But then we remembered that we were
on Canberra Avenue, which, like many thoroughfares in Canberra, is a
divided road. There are two lanes each way, with a thirty-foot-wide
island in between. In other words, the other driver was the one driving
the wrong direction.

At one point I heard an ad on the radio about some store called The Lettuce
Connection. They have lots of different kinds of Lettuce in stock, or
you can have your Lettuce custom designed. It wasn’t until the ad was
almost over that I realized that the store’s name was really The Lattice
Connection.

Around 6 PM we walked down to Manuka and had dinner at a place called El
Rancho. My dinner was nothing special; but following John’s lead
I elected to try a half-pint of Toohey’s Old Black, and that was really
nice. It tasted good and went down smoothly. I don’t drink beer very
often, and a half-pint is usually more than enough, but I was almost
tempted to have another.