I see dead people.

If there’s one thing we’ve noticed about the state of Pennsylvania, there are a *LOT* of cemeteries. Many of them are where you’d least expect them, such as right in the middle of a downtown city block. It’s very odd.

Spent the morning trying to find free places online to list the van for people to buy, but there is a fee for a lot of sites, we’ve found. Fair enough, since they are providing a service, but also, many of them are useless to us because we have to provide a phone number and address before we can register as users. So, it’s been a little frustrating. If anyone knows of any free US-based car selling sites on the net, drop us a line because we’d love to know about them!

In other news, we spent a diverting hour in a Borders bookstore yesterday and learned many things about Australia we never knew, through the use of the guide books on sale.

For example, visitors to Melbourne are amused and often repelled by the fact that the first question asked by locals is not “what do you do for a living?” but “what school did you go to?”. The preferred answer is “Melbourne Grammar”, or “Grammar” to the initiated.

When it comes to Universities, the best one to go to is “The Shop”, also known as “Melbourne University”. Newer universities such as La Trobe and Monash don’t even rate.

This was all very interesting, especially since in all the time that Di and I have been at the Uni, we’ve never ever heard it referred to as “The Shop”.

Then again, another travel book was specifically written to tell people what to do if attacked by a crocodile or snake. Not sure why it took a whole book. Here’s our version :

1. If attacked by a crocodile, scream a lot. You don’t have a lot of time left to live, so you might as well use those vocal chords for the last time.
2. If attacked by a snake, it’s because you were trying to be Steve Irwin and poked it with a stick, wasn’t it? You deserve to die for that. Possibly in a nastier way than just a snake bite, but it will have to do.

On that cheery note, we’re off to do something else now…

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001