What's an iPod?

Sorry for not posting in a couple of weeks, things have been pretty busy. At Sarah's request, here is another:

Over Easter weekend (a four-day holiday weekend here) we went with a few friends down to Byron Bay and it was very nice. Surfing, blues-festival-attending, hippie-town visiting, bronzed people-watching and dolphin-spotting. I will refer you to Eirin's blog posting for that experience, but here are a few pictures:

Byron is legendary for surfing and it is easy to see why. Perfect waves just roll in one after the next almost perpendicular to the beach at the edge of the bay, so you just ride several of them in and then walk back.

One thing that wasn't so nice about the weekend was when someone smashed our rental car window in Ballina at 4 in the morning to grab my ipod. We were in the motel room about 20 feet away but when I went out they were already gone. Found the rock in the back seat though. The New South Wales police came and had some good advice. After some puzzled look and a few minutes trying to describe what exactly an iPod is, I asked for some advice on where I could get the window replaced in town.

Male Cop: "Well, I think you could probably go to one of those…" turns to girl cop "What are they called?"
Female Cop shrugs.
Male cop: "One of those car places. You know, a place where they fix cars."

Thanks. I am being unfair though because they were quite nice and genuinely empathetic. I thought this would be an annoyance to them but apparently it was the biggest thing to happen in town in quite a while. Or at least that shift. They even wanted to take fingerprints but decided against it because it was raining.

Anyways, everything worked out fine in the end. I was very pleasantly surprised by Hertz customer service. I had declined the extra insurance, so I called up the next morning, they were sympathetic about my iPod and able to tell me exactly what the window would cost ($400, less than having it done myself), and sent me over to the local branch to get a new car. Done. It's amazing how much good customer service can mean in a bad situation, it was the difference between a ruined holiday weekend and moving on to have a great time.

Next up, Sydney! (preview: it was fantastic).