It takes two...to drive

Day 1: Terrifying. Lots of screaming, stalling and drifting to the right side of the road.

Day 2: Still pretty much a disaster. Severe clenching when any other cars were around us.

Day 3: We got our official Queensland licenses in less than 30 minutes. Too soon?

Day 5: The chance of using our insurance decreased by 50% (this matters because we got healthcare on day 5)

Right after we ran over a couch cushion on the motorway...

A week later, we're walking, swimming, and dreaming on the left. Cate is mainly behind the wheel still because Taylor has a lot of hours to put in before Australia can rest easy. Taylor acts as the human GPS slash emergency brake releaser for steep inclines slash instant therapist for Caitlin when the tires screech (eg. "breathe...it's the pavement's fault, not yours").

We're in the process of naming our precious hunk of metal and we need suggestions. It's definitely a girl...a feisty little girl with a temper. Maybe a 3-letter name because she's compact, maybe a "cute little cafe name like Zoe or Eve" as Cate describes her. We need ideas!

They still gave us licenses

At the end of week 1 we headed south to the kids' grandparents' beach house because they get 2 weeks off school between semesters. Our official practices have started and we're being whipped back into shape at a rapid rate. It feels good to be practicing regularly again and the pool we train at is the bomb.com. Warm water, outdoors, right next to a harbor and lots of nationally ranked athletes by our side for motivation :)

In our next post we'll show you some of the fun activities we were up to before our first practices...

TTFN

*We have a video to accompany this post but we're having technical difficulties trying to upload it :S