And so we get to departure day with around 4300 words of Travelogue content done and dusted in an exercise that has achieved everything it set out to achieve.
We've sorted out the laptop issue, had 4000 words worth of practice, and successfully avoided pondering most of the imponderables one's thoughts turn towards when you've outlaid a substantial sum en concert tickets and airfares.
It's a situation where a realist might suspect that Murphy's Law good kick in big time. Murphy, of course, repeatedly stated that if something can go wrong it will; and when it does go wrong it will go wrong at the worst possible time.
There that there's Flannery's corollary to Murphy's law: Murphy was a bloody optimist.
Given the state of the world at large, there are any number of things that could go wrong, but there's no point in worrying about events on the global stage. The concerns of the average man in the street in downtown Bowen carry no weight in the corridors of global power.
And once we're on our way, any number of contingencies may arise; as they do, one counters them to the best of one's ability.
But the one thing that could have caused considerable preoccupation is getting to the point where one is actually on the way. That will come somewhere around 3:30, hopefully, after we've watched the aircraft land and taxi across the tarmac at Whitsunday Coast airport.
And that's item number two on the list of the things that could go wrong on Sunday the 22nd.
The first involves the possibility of not being able to get to the airport.
There is only one road between bold and Prosser Pine and only one road that I know of between Proserpine at the airport. The last bit of that road passes over the Goorganga Flats, a stretch of wetland that apparently sits on top of a substantial oil shale deposit.
That was the issue of significant ecological concerns a few years back and the notion of mining the deposit was knocked on the head.
Of course, if they had proceeded with the mine they would have been forced to relocate the airport. Possibly to a site north Proserpine on the way to Bowen.
Around the same time there were suggestions that the regions new airport should go in at Laguna Keys, a golf and residential development further south that actually lies within the boundaries of the city of Mackay rather than the region of Whitsunday.
But the airport remains where it was when Hughesy landed there on his way to Townsville back in 1963, on top of the wetlands that have been known to cut the highway, particularly at high tide when flood waters can't drain away.
There are several places between bold and Proserpine where the highway has been known to go underwater in a big wet season as well. So back around Thursday morning, with the long-range forecast suggesting thunderstorms on Sunday afternoon there was a cause for concern.
And, of course, it is the wet season.
If the monsoon trough decides to make its way south, The resulting deluge good The highway, and keep it cut for days. That's part and parcel of living in the nought.
So are those nasty little clockwise circulations around the centres of low pressure that we'll come to know as cyclones. While we love the rain, because a couple of cyclones guarantee a good wet, We can do without the disruptions to the highway thank you very much.
But, mercifully, circulation's have been absent through the first half of January and the highway south of Bowen looks clear for would-be travellers.
Today's forecast does refer to a possibility of the showers and or a thunderstorm so that could still be an issue.
That's why Hughesy will not be breathing totally easy until he sees that aircraft taxi up to the terminal.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I can't fly out until the aircraft I am going to board has landed. And aircraft can't land at Whitsunday coast unless the pilot can see the runway.
No instrument landings there, or across the water at Hamilton Island.
While one might expect the aircraft to land at Mackay with passengers transported onwards by bus, and, maybe, outbound passengers being bussed south join the flight, aircraft tend to turn around and head straight back to where they came from.
It's not something I've experienced myself, but I went within a whisker of it on the way back from the Springsteen concert in Sydney in 2013.
With the choice of a direct flight from Sydney to Hamilton Island or the two leg trip from Sydney to Brisbane to Whitsunday coast, I took the direct option which still worked out cheaper even with the ferry transfer from Hammo to the mainland included.
And, since I knew I was going to a three hour concert the night before the flight left with a choice of services on two airlines, I chose the one the departed later.
Just as well.
The other one, having departed around the time I was waking up in downtown Sydney got all the way up to the Whitsundays, encountered visibility issues, and flew all the way back.
The flight I was on also had its issues with seeing the runway, but managed to land.
It took me back to a Monday morning around forty one years earlier, when I was heading back to Palm Island after a weekend in Townsville. It had been raining all weekend, and when I joined several of my colleagues for the 7 o'clock flight everyone was very interested in the prospects. So we asked the pilot.
Don't know, was the response. Won't know until we get over there. Then, if we can see the strip, We can land. Questions about safety issues were greeted with a reassuring statement that the highest point of the island was around 3000 feet. So if we go up to 3500, our friendly flyer informed us, we probably won't bump into anything.
That's more or less the way it was.
We took off, flew straight into cloud, circled round sighting hilltops and such comfortably below us, found a clear approach to the runway and headed into land just as a squall came down the mountainside.
With that, the pilot lifted the nose and headed straight back to where we come from.
And, at around 9:40 in the morning, with a projected departure around 11:00, Hughesy heads off to complete the packing process with the narrative to be resumed somewhere between Bowen and Brisbane airport sometime between now and Tuesday morning.
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