10/17/2005 to 10/20/2005 - Pre ride: Sydney

We were met at the airport by Megan and Meredith – the Amazon Heart founders – as well as Marie (my roomie from last year) and my friend Kitty – who moved to Sydney in January and has been befriended by Marie, who lives very nearby her. They swept us all off to the beach for a breakfast bbq and lots of champagne! After breakfast, the others went their separate ways – mostly to the hotel – and Marie, Kitty and I went off in search of strong coffee so that I could try to acclimate to the local time zone and not just pass out! After a few hours of sightseeing, Marie dropped us at Kitty’s place so that I could unpack for my few days stay with her and her husband Paul. They have a great place with a terrace rooftop view of downtown Sydney.

Spent those few days hanging around seeing the local sights – had dinner with Marie and her partner Mark one evening, and basically just tried to get over my jet lag!

On Thursday, I checked into the hotel and met up with all the other girls who had been coming in throughout the day. My roommate Lisa and I got an unexpected upgrade to a great room. Little did I know it was as good as it would get for the rest of the trip, but more on the accommodations later…

Around 6:00 on Thursday we all grabbed drinks and went off for our first meeting. Megan and Meredith had put together a slide show from the ride last year and from the other 2 rides this year which was very powerful and emotional. An equally emotional round of introductions followed where everyone shared a bit of their stories that have brought us together, and then we were officially underway!

We mostly decided to hang around the hotel that evening since there was a drag queen leading a trivia contest – who would want to miss that? Considering though that our group was mostly Americans and we were in Australia, we didn’t do so well with the trivia…But a good time was had by all as the pictures attest!