Kiwis, Koalas, and Kava... Oi, Mate!: The Prologue

Back in 2008, the World was a very different place.  Children still played outside way past dark.  Candy still cost a nickel.  The "Spider-Man" movie franchise was only in its seventh "reboot" and no one would have EVER thought to base a musical on that property.

It was a simpler time.

Back in 2008, I swore I would never (1) have a profile on MySpace or Facebook, (2) set up a Twitter account, or (3) write a blog.  One by one, the "InterWebs" made a liar out of me.  I still firmly believe nothing I do (or what just about anyone does) is so important that my friends and associates need to know about it instantaneously.  Nevertheless, thanks to my Twitter account (@hueyesquire), you, too, can be alerted when I arrive at the train station to commute to work every morning, and thanks to Facebook, you can enjoy a seemingly endless (and up-to-the-minute) string of non-sequitors and photos of cartoon bears from me.  Who could ask for anything more?

 It was also in 2008 that I wrote my first blog, detailing one man's quest for CAKE!!!, the very best Wagyu beef, and finely tailored clothing during one very hot month in Asia.  But the blog novelty - the "Blogelty," if you will - wore off almost immediately upon my return to the US.

Fast forward three and a half years, and just like that OTHER famous guy from Austin known by just one name, I am "going for 7."  Continents, that is.  My love of travel is no secret, but what many DON'T know is that I set an arbitrary goal to visit all 7 continents before I turned 41.  That deadline came and went a few months ago, but the goal lives on.  ("41 is the new 40, kids....")

When today, 9 October 2011, began, I was three flights, 17 time zones, and about 11,000 miles from Continent Number Five: Oceania.  As I type this, I am just hours away from boarding a 13 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand.  Three weeks from today, I will have visited the North and South Islands of New Zealand, Australia (Melbourne, Cairns, and Sydney), and the main island of Fiji.  Three weeks from now Africa and Antarctica will be all that's left to be conquered.

For those of you who remember the Asia blog, with this new blog you can expect the same self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek, flippant approach to blogging you've already come to love (or loathe).  For those of you reading a Huey blog for the first time, I won't promise you funny.  I won't promise you insight.  I won't promise you hard-hitting, in your face journalism.  I CAN promise that on more than one occasion, you will read this blog, scratch your head, and think to yourself, "WHAT?!?!?!?!?"

To kick things off, here's a strange, but true story from the first day of my Oceanic (no foreshadowing intended) excursion.  I'm sitting in my seat on my Dallas to Los Angeles flight today, eager to get the second leg of my trip started in order to get to the third and final leg.  Staring out my window, marveling at the rain - yes, RAIN... IN TEXAS!!! - who should board my flight and sit two rows in front of me, but one of the Jonas Brothers.  Which one, you ask?  $@&# if I know... but a diligent Internet search on my Blackberry commenced and the answer was revealed: NICK JONAS.  Nothing turns a 757 full of weary travelers in to a bunch of cell phone picture-taking, whispering, giggling, texting, pretending-not-to-look-at-him teenyboppers faster than one of those Jonas moppets sitting in plain view of everyone who boards the plane!

And so it begins: "KIWIS, KOALAS, AND KAVA... OI, MATE!!!"