It’s Below Freezing in Jindabyne!

Trevor and I have been trading texts using a great free app called Viber.  Viber allows you to text and phone call all over the world for free.  Let me repeat that—FREE.  My mom just purchased a new smart phone, and we tested the Viber connection.  I called her from my iPad.  You can use any smart phone, iPod, or iPad with 3G and/or Wi Fi.  This is how I am planning on keeping touch with family stateside while we are on our road trip.

Now that I’ve given my sales pitch, back to the issue at hand.  Our messaging was a discussion of appropriate clothing.  Remember, Australia is a study in Deconstruction—flipped—so that while in the US we are in the middle of spring, heading into summer, Australia is in autumn, heading into winter.  Trevor says he has been cold when it is 50 degrees in Sydney.  Well, I prefer cold to hot, so that’s okay by me.  But then he says, “Be prepared. Jindabyne has been below freezing,” and “I may have mom give you some long underwear for me.” 

Okay.  That got me thinking a bit.  Earlier in the week, I had had a talk with my sister Dana, in St. Louis, who rides horses regularly.  Jindabyne is in the Snowy Mountains, and Trevor and I will be on an all-day horseback ride through the Snowy Mountains.  This is one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me. 

The stables organizing the ride has stated that participants should wear appropriate riding clothes.  Since I haven’t ridden in years, I don’t have the current, necessary gear, so I am opting for a pair of jeans and those hiking boots in the Shoes Blog entry.  But Dana starts talking about long underwear.  I have never used long underwear in my adult life, and while I prefer the cold to heat, being too cold on an all-day horseback ride would not be fun.  So I texted Dana through the Words with Friends Chat option (another good and fun app with which the chatting via Wi Fi or 3G is free) to get the long underwear information that I had not really paid attention to during our phone conversation.

As a result, here’s what I purchased from Wintersilks, top and bottom in black:

I almost purchased these for fun:

I also decided that I should use some real riding gear, and when I last visited Dana in St. Louis, we spent some time at the barn.  She also instructed me that all the things we learned about horseback riding were pretty much changing, and instead of wearing full chaps, as some do, there are half chaps.  I hope wearing some half chaps will help with the all-important leg-gripping while riding.  Since Dana rides regularly, she purchases quality gear, but I found some reasonably priced—and appropriate looking, I think, for the Snowy Mountains—half chaps at Stateline Tack:

What’s neat about these half chaps is that you fasten them with Velcro to fit rather than a zipper which—what if I couldn’t get them zipped?

Ah, me.  Time to get those papers graded.  The next exciting thing is I just received an email from my travel agent friend from high school who has a travel agency in Minnesota that specializes in trips to the South Pacific called Indigo Journeys.  The travel documents are on their way!