Everybody needs an Aunty Jan in their lives. Aunty Jan is one of those people always willing to help out and go the extra mile for others. Arriving back in Sydney after a fantastic flight in business class from Heathrow to Sydney (amazing, lying in bed whilst flying kilometres above the earth. Note to self, win the lotto so I can fly like that all the time), Aunty Jan was there waiting to pick me up and take me back home. Only problem was that there was a last minute change to the car and instead of a big campervan we had to somehow squeeze my bike box and luggage into a Hyundai accent!

Problem: Bike box big. Hyundai not so big. MMMMmmm. I am an Ironman, so this little poser was not going to beat me. I was going to fit everything in, somehow.

Well, there was enough pushing, shoving, squeezing and panting to make a good indecent German movie but eventually we somehow got everything in but not sure if we had just added a permanent 'bike-box' feature to the car. So just a short 2hr+ drive home crammed into the front seat with Joey the dog together with customery dog cushion, bike box on the back seats digging into the vertebrae and four suitcases in the boot. No sweat!

That turned out to be the easy bit! Once home, my joke about a permanent bike box feature was coming true. It just would not come out and those thoughts of 'I am an Ironman, blah blah blah' were wearing thin. Time for drastic measures. Out came the hammer and spanners! Another half-hour or so and the rear door was off, balanced on a bucket whilst I yanked with the little energy I had left to finally set the box free! (pictured above)

Lining up the rear door again so that it shut properly proved another challenge but eventually after a couple of hours, I had recovered all my belongings from the jaws of the Hyundai and it was back in one piece.

Big thank you to Aunty Jan. We got there in the end.

The next day I was down at our new pad in Wahroonga, Sydney transporting and unpacking our stuff. This time, I was not going to be squeezing anything as I had 'the beast' at my disposal! My brother-in-law's 5.7litre V8 Ute (pick-up) (pictured above). I had never been behind the wheel of such a large engine, they sure do like going big with their cars over here. Needless to say I fitted all our stuff in comfortably, the only battle was the post-Ironman hobbling between the house and car carrying stuff.

All our other belongings arrived on the same day but thankfully the removals company had a good team on hand to cart all the stuff into the house. It was good to see our stuff again although with the house being that much bigger than our place back in the UK, it hardly filled the rooms! I sense shopping sprees coming up. Speaking of which. Went to the big shopping centre down the road the other day and noticied this very clever parking lot system (pictured above). Everything electronic and green lights obviously let you know where the free spaces are whilst red means they are taken. These Aussies sure have some good ideas.

At the moment we are still working our way through the boxes, hooking up electricity, water, etc and generally settling down but it is going well and for Kate it is a more reasonable 40min train ride into work (as opposed to the 1h30 done back in the UK).
Best I get back to unpacking and looking for work.
Laters,
Simon