Dear internet,

An Aussie Magpie (They about as big as a fryer chicken and not to be messed with)

It has come to my attention that my dream of being able to write at a pace that would keep up with amount of data I am taking in is both overwhelming and impossible.

My brain works on stories and tries to tie things together.  I tend to sit on a story for a long time.  Remember when I told you I once spent two years working on a chuck box and most of that was planning?  Well, I caught myself trying to write stories in my head with out actually writing anything.  This way of thinking has turned my thoughts into a jumbled mess.

In the past 60 days of traveling I have not written nearly enough.  I need to be getting more out of my head.  Thus, I have decided to change the way my blog works for me.

This blog is for the folks interested in following our journey through my eyes and folks wanting to know what it may be like to travel the world with wife and kids.  I have discovered it needs to be for me first and foremost because my memory is crap.

I have notebooks of what I see, hear, and experience on our travels.  These notes are not pretty.  They don’t say more than a few words about a topic or subject.  I wouldn’t want anyone to try to decipher what I had jotted down in the back of a bouncing car.  Future blog posts will contain some of these ramblings.

Please think of this as more of a journal from now on or until I change my mind again.  The information I’m trying to hold on to is too great.  If I don’t log it, it will escape me.

This is still my photos and all that.  I’m just looking to increase the posted information.  I may, from time to time, surprise you with longer stories with more depth.

The Australian Magpie is known for “swooping” during the spring breeding season.  so mush so that the cyclist wear helmets with zip ties sticking out all over.  This technique makes you look like a porcupine head.

I first thought the young cyclist had forgotten to remove the decorations from her helmet since a recent parade.  Not so.  Apparently, the Magpies will swoop so mush so that there are signs up in parks warning folks that this is a thing and that the damage can be pretty horrible.  Loss of eye and or cuts on head and ears happen quite frequently.  In other words they are total ***holes.

But wait, there’s more.  The Magpies have friends called Butcher Birds.  Smaller and slightly different in coloring.  Both are black and white but the Butcher has a full white apron.  Butchers also like to swoop.  (Well there’s another sentence that I didn’t know I would write.)

We lucked out and didn’t have any issues and survived the spring.  Back home I think this would be called a “hunting season” but the Magpie is a protected bird in Australia.  In that case there should be free helmet or umbrella (they work to protect you as well)  stands all around.