[Updated] Living In A Hotel, It Eventually Sucks

Back in the early 2010s I was a jet-setting dude with a cloud to sell and I was often in Sydney early Monday morning and then elsewhere in Australia doing the do, selling the stuff.

It was a lot of fun, to start with.

Eventually my early morning Monday flight crept into Sunday evening before oozing back in time to Sunday afternoon. I started to hate it, even dread it. Away from the family, doing stuff for people in a country I hadn't set out to do things in (again).

I resigned and never looked back.

For the past week Nat and I have been stuck in Alice Springs. We headed down with a fellow teacher, Liz, last Friday to have a weekend away from Papunya and the events happening — you know the deal, a few drinks, do some shopping, eat some food we didn't cook etc.

A week later and we've been stuck in Alice Springs because I, the Welsh Rain God, have brought the water to the dry red heart of Australia. It rained just before we left Papunya and it was touch and go if we could get out of town as those were more like lakes than puddles but we slowly persevered and arrived in Alice just fine.

Nat and I went to the pub.

Saturday we did our grocery shopping.

The clouds swept in from the northwest straight over the continent and dumped a shite load of water. We attempted to leave on Sunday only to met by a "Road Closed" sign at our turn off. Back we went and, after checking the official roading status, we re-booked ourselves into the hotel for the night.

Each day we have checked the roads, closed, and re-booked a night.

Sounds lovely eh, stuck in Alice Springs, at the Hilton no less. Yeah, for the first day or so it was an "adventure", it was fine. Yay, the rains seem to be going and then it went bonkers, thunderstorms galore and the Todd River flooded, bank to bank, shutting the roads again including those into the CBD. Nat has been seconded to a local school and she couldn't even get to that.

As the weekdays past we were approaching Friday where, weirdly, we had already booked another weekend down, this time to take Liz, the teacher, to the airport, as she's had enough and had resigned a few weeks ago.

I write this on that Friday, we're still here, in room 341 of the Hilton. We are over it all and just want to go home to Papunya where we have all our stuff, where we signed up to be. It sounds like it should be a good time eh, and some of it is, but like the forced jet-setting it gets to you after a while.

We have become weather watchers, hoping that the hot sun and a cloudless blue sky returns soon, that the River Todd becomes a dry river once again, and that the roads open.

The craving for normality, even one that involves us working in a school community 3 hours from anywhere, has become all encompassing.

Please, rain, fuck off and let the roads open! We want to go home.

Our grocery shopping is still in the back of the car, who knows what state it will be in when we finally unload it all.

[Update] This from an Aussie work colleague made me laugh 😂