A day in the life of the Jucy

There is just something about a road trip...the open road, wind in your hair, sweat dripping down your back and mustache area, as you are too poor to afford AC because it just uses too much petrol. We have been loving life on the road with our Jucy van #2. Every morning, I wake up and check the water levels and the oil to make sure that her fluids are high and the right colour...I am totally a mechanic and may add this to my list of possible new careers in the future. We both have our daily jobs on the Jucy before we embark on the road for that day...as I said, I check the liquids while Alex pulls the bed/tent on top of the roof of the Jucy down,which is just a very challenging endeavour, as air gets trapped and you have to patiently pull and yank the cord down. Sometimes, i have to get all the way on top and jump on it to help push that bad boy down. Then, we have to organize all of the bits in the back and lay out all of the wet towels and clothing in the sunny patches on the back seat to dry. No matter how hot or dry it is, or even if it is raining, the Jucy has this smell to her that is kind of like musky dog with a hint of BO. There is a sweetness to this smell, but overall it is just gross...no doubt due to the sweating profusely for the first few hours in the evening while trying to sleep and the scent of our delicious ramen noodle mixed with canned veg dinner or the bagged cheesy rice mixed with canned mushrooms. After we have sorted out the tent and the odds and ends in the back of the Jucy, we sit down to a delicious breakfast of Weet Bix (as they call them in Australia) with a chopped banana and some raisins with some luke warm milk, as the refrigerator has been turned off all night long. We then clean all of the dishes and take our showers and then off we go. For the past 2 days, we have been driving 13 hours a day and into the night, as we thought we could make it all the way to Darwin and then over to Carins, but because we already booked a dive on the Yongala and were unable to change the reservation we had to race down and across to the east coast from Katherine, a lovely little place with hot springs in a mad 26 hour dash to Ayr. This was a very stressful car journey and the Jucy handled herself brilliantly. The night we drove from the Three Ways to Mt Isa was a night of mass homicides of bugs, frogs and unidentifiable rodent like creatures. Alex took a photo of the windscreen, as no one would believe how many bugs we slaughtered...it was really quite sad, but then it became a safety hazard, as their guts coated the entire windshield causing poor visibility. It was so bad that we were actually relieved to be subsequently caught in a rain storm that flooded several roads, as it cleaned off the bug entrails brilliantly. We found ourselves riding the Jucy closely behind a huge road train, which is a big rig with 4 other rigs attached to the back...it is a scary beast on the road let me tell you. But, this truck was able to see way ahead of us and dodge any road debris and navigate us through the flooded roads...it was scary, but we were safe and made it through in one piece to Alva Beach in Ayr for what was the worst experience either of us have had on a boat in all of our lives. Despite the weather, the dive company did not cancel the dive, though we thought they would so we went out on the choppiest boat ride ever to dive the Yongala wreck. We were so looking forward to this dive, but literally puked for 6 consecutive hours over the side of our boat and then into our regulators when we got into the water for dives. I could not even do the second dive and was just praying for the day to end. I was so sea sick that I did not care that my back and neck were getting totally burnt from leaning over the boat throwing up for 6 hours...and we all know how obsessed I am with my SPF 50+++ sun block. Alex was so brave and carried on with her second dive, but the buddy she was partnered up with due to my absence just left her and it was a scary time for her in the group. We did see some amazingly huge fish, sharks, rays and the wreck was amazing, as it has become a sort of coral reef in and of itself, but this was just masked by our retched sea sickness. Have you ever vomited underwater into a regulator? Not fun! Needless to say, we were so relieved to get back to our Jucy and just sleep the night away despite the heat and the bugs, there is a kind of safety and homey feeling to the Jucy and we loved being cozy in the sweat tent watching The Soft Kill and other movie classics like The Santa Claus and Klepto. Today we are off to Airlie Beach for a 3 day 3 night boat trip to the Whitsundays and let us all pray that there will be no bouts of sea sickness because being stuck on a boat for 6 hours is far less traumatizing than being stuck on a boat for 3 days; however, this is a yacht and we have our own air conditioned room...it is called the Anaconda and the pictures on the Internet look amazing so fingers crossed and let us all say a little prayer for us...