My longtime business partner always used to warn me against overselling. That is, don’t tell your audience that what they are about to see is the greatest of its kind because it’s impossible for the reality to live up to the hype.

Well, screw that. Because what you are about to read is the best story ever.

I was reading an article on the internet the other day when I ran across someone whose last name was Ackland.

All of a sudden a long forgotten name popped into my head. A name I hadn’t thought of in forty seven years.

Here’s the back story:

On my first trip down under, right after I graduated from college, I thumbed my way around the country. One rainy afternoon I found myself hitchhiking on the main thoroughfare in Liverpool, one of Sydney’s southern suburbs, when the skies darkened and sheets of rain began pouring down. I found refuge in a nearby fish and chips shop while waiting for the skies to clear.

When it hadn’t cleared up after an hour or so, I began pondering my possibilities and wondering where I might spend the night. Just then I noticed an old, abandoned house sitting directly across the street. It looked like it hadn’t been painted in decades and its lawn was overgrown and mostly weeds. It was surrounded by the kind of wide veranda that grace so many Aussie houses.

That, I thought, would make a dandy, dry place to spread out my sleeping bag and spend the night. I gathered my meager possessions, paid my bill, and dashed across the busy intersection. Within moments I was setting myself up on that deserted veranda.

I was warm and cozy and growing increasingly drowsy when the wind shifted directions and rain began pelting me in my sleeping bag. I climbed out of the bag and went scouting around the exterior of the deserted house for a spot that was better protected from the elements. Out behind the main house I found a small shed. Its door was unlocked and the shed was warm and dry and empty and appeared to be exactly what I needed for the night. So I moved all my gear from the front veranda, closed the door behind me and again prepared for a cozy night’s sleep.

I had just slipped back into my sleeping bag and was again beginning to drift off when I heard a car turn off the street, roll up the gravel driveway, and come to a stop right outside the shed. I heard the car’s engine turn off, followed by the opening and closing of the driver’s door, and then a woman’s footsteps walking toward the house. I peered through the shed’s dusty window just in time to see her enter the house and close the door behind her. Then the house came ablaze with lights.

Hmmmmm, I thought, maybe this old house isn’t as abandoned as I thought.

I recalled the words of my favorite college professor who said, “Always confront a situation before it confronts you.” After giving it a few minutes thought, I once again rolled out of my sleeping bag, walked up to the back door of the house, and knocked. When the young woman opened the door I introduced myself.

”I’m hitchhiking around the country,” I told her. “I thought your house was abandoned and I was going to sleep in your shed to stay out of the rain. Is that ok with you?”

She was very nice. Instead of screaming and calling the police — the reaction I expected — she said, “Well, I suppose it’s alright.”

Situation resolved, I went back to the shed and climbed back into my sleeping bag. I was once again falling into the arms of Morpheus when another car rolled up the driveway. This time a man was driving. He also went into the house, but a few moments later I heard him come back outside and stride rapidly toward the shed. He began pounding on its rickety door.

”Come out of there,” he said. “You don’t belong in there.”

Crap, I’m in trouble now, I thought. So I quickly wiggled out of my sleeping bag and opened the door to face my fate.

The man looked me in the eye and said, “You cannot sleep in our shed tonight.”

This is not going to end well, I thought.

”Come inside,” he continued, “and sleep in the house.”

That was my incredibly surprising introduction to Greg and Helen Acland. They graciously brought me into their home and invited me to join them for a warm, home cooked dinner. Greg carried my belongings to their guest bedroom and insisted that I sleep there for the night. And best of all, I was able to take a long, hot shower, a rare luxury in the world of hitchhiking.

Greg was a 26-year old veterinarian who had recently opened his first practice there in Liverpool. And it turns out that the Aclands had just completed remodeling the interior of what I thought was an old, abandoned house, and the exterior renovation was scheduled to begin the following week.

When Greg found out that I had grown up on a dairy farm, he quickly decided to take the next morning off work to show me a miracle of modern dairy science, Liverpool’s Rotolactor, a merry-go-round for cows that was designed to speed and improve the milking process. (As I recall, he told me this mechanical milking marvel had actually been an immense financial failure, but it was worthy of a sightseeing tour nonetheless.)

Greg and Helen Acland were absolutely wonderful people. They couldn’t have been any kinder nor any more generous.

Seriously. If you came home and found a long-haired, bearded stranger camped out in your backyard shed, would you invite him into your home, cook him dinner, and invite him to sleep in your newly remodeled guest room?

No, I didn’t think so.

And that brings us back to last night. I read that online article that mentioned the last name “Ackland” and the Greg’s name popped into my head for the first time in forty-seven years.

I wondered what had happened to Greg and Helen, so I began Googling “Greg Ackland” and “Liverpool” and “Veterinarian.” Google failed me. I was unable to find any vets named Ackland in the Sydney area. The only promising lead was a research scientist at Cornell University in upstate New York, but that man spelled his name without the “k.”

After a frustrating hour or so the proverbial lightbulb went on over my head. “What if Google is trying to tell me that my spelling is incorrect,” I wondered.  “Maybe the correct spelling of Greg and Helen’s  last name is actually Acland, not Ackland?”

Eureka!

Within moments I learned that Liverpool’s Greg Acland had moved to the United States in the late 80s and had become one of the world’s leading experts in genetic canine vision problems.

But even that trail quickly turned cold because I could find no references to Greg after 2008. Had he died? Been imprisoned? Abducted by aliens?

Google told me that Greg had done much of his research with another vet named Gustavo Aguirre, now a Professor of Medical Genetics and Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania.

I tracked down Gustavo’s email address at the university and sent him the following message:

Hello, Dr Aguirre:

I’m trying to track down Greg Acland. I can’t find any recent references to him on the internet, but I found many references to the two of you working together. So I’m reaching out to you to find out what has happened to Greg. I hope he’s still alive and doing well. If so, can you give me his contact information?

To tell the truth, I doubt that he will even remember me, but he was very kind to me when I was a young American hitchhiker traveling around Australia back in 1970. I haven’t thought of him for many years, but my wife and I are in Australia right now and his name suddenly popped into my head tonight.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Regards,

Jim

Much to my surprise, Dr Aguirre responded within a matter of minutes.

Jim – Greg is alive and kicking, and now retired from Cornell. His email address is: Greg Acland <gregacland@*******.com>

Unbelievable. What an incredible turn of events. However, it was late at night here in Australia, so I decided that I should wait until the following morning to contact Greg. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him and had very serious doubts that he would remember me no matter what I said.

Mere moments later my iPad dinged to let me know I had received an email. An email, if you can believe it, from the man himself, Dr. Greg Acland. I hadn’t noticed, but Gustavo had copied Greg when he replied to my email.

Hello Jim,

What a great surprise and pleasure to hear from you. Helen and I certainly remember you very clearly, even though your stay with us was so brief. I am very glad to hear that you are doing well, and I am sure that your current trip to Oz will bring back many memories.

All the best

Greg

Greg and I have now emailed back and forth several times. They now live in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles outside of Philadelphia.

Although our current journey is not yet over, Jamie and I are already in the early stages of planning a Spring driving trip from McKinney, Texas to Middletown, Connecticut to visit our god children. Google Maps says Kennett Square is just a few miles off our route.

I told Greg and Helen that I would love to see them when we pass through town. It might be forty seven years late, but I think I owe them a dinner.

A few years ago we found ourselves in Lugano, Switzerland just in time for its annual Blues to Bop Festival. Now by happenstance we’ve ended up in Port Fairy, Victoria on the weekend of the Port Fairy Jazz Festival.

This festival makes me feel young again. I’m not attributing my renaissance to the music, but to the demographics of the attendees. Good Lord, man, this isn’t a jazz festival, it’s God’s waiting room.

I haven’t seen this many wrinkles since I left my favorite T-shirt in the dryer overnight. The attendees have more cataracts than the Nile. It looks like central casting put out a call for people with walkers. If they write a book about this festival it will be called Fifty Shades of Greying. There are very few hipsters, but a lot of hip replacements. Jack Black couldn’t make it, but the Heart Attacks are here. Jerry couldn’t make it, but the Pacemakers are here. The Rolling Stones couldn’t make it, but the kidney stones are here. The musicians only need to know one song because the audience won’t remember that they’ve already heard it. The late night jazz club closes in time for the early bird special. If the police crack down on drugs, it’s Viagra. The lines for the restrooms are longer than the lines for the venues. The attendees aren’t tone deaf, just deaf. It’s the greatest jazz festival in the continent and the greatest jazz festival for the incontinent. It’s known for its cool music and its hot flashes. Half the songs are arrhythmic and half the audience has arrhythmia. The venues are kept small, but the prostates are enlarged.

Our nineteen year old god daughter Stella is an incredible jazz pianist. Too bad she’s not here this weekend, because her presence would immediately raise the quality of the music and and simultaneously lower the average age of the attendees.

And now for your entertainment pleasure, here’s the greatest jazz song of all time not performed by Stella:

This blog item inspired by the great Herb Caen and the even greater Huckleberry Chuck Clemans.

I’ve been a baseball fan, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, since the night of May 7, 1959.

From all the way over here in Angaston, South Australia, I can hear every JimandJamie.com reader loud and clear when they groan as one and say, “There he goes again. How the hell can he possibly know the exact date he became a baseball fan?”

Hah! I have a simple answer to your collective query.

I was a scrawny, freckled ten-year old on that day in that year. It was a night just like every other night except for one thing — my mom had taken me downtown that afternoon to buy me my first radio. It was a tinny, red plastic transistor about the size of a pack of cigarettes and it had been shoddily manufactured with the compete lack of precision for which goods from Japan were famous in the post-war years.

I loved that radio. It may have been the best gift I ever received. So instead of finishing my homework and going to sleep as I did every other night, I stayed awake late into that early May night, carefully moving the inaccurate tuner from one station to another. My first stop was at 590 on the AM dial, but KFXM, the station that inhabited that frequency, didn’t interest me because it was a local Top 40 station that my older sister had been listening to for years. I carefully turned the dial to the right in search of something new, something different, something more exotic. When I reached 710 AM, I was stopped by the roar of a crowd and a magical voice emanating from the red radio’s tiny, tinny speaker.

The station was KMPC in Los Angeles and the voice belonged to Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully. He was broadcasting a special game that night, a one-time only exhibition contest between the Dodgers and their mortal enemies, the New York Yankees.

Roy Campanella, the Dodgers catcher, one of the game’s best and most beloved players, had suffered a horrible injury in a car crash a year earlier. He had been left a paraplegic, sentenced to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. This very special exhibition game between two bitter rivals had been organized to raise money for Campanella’s medical care.

A crowd of 93,103 — still the largest crowd in baseball history — jammed the Coliseum that night. I still remember the moment they turned off all the stadium’s lights and Vin Scully, he of the magical voice, asked everyone in the crowd to light a match or flick on their cigarette lighters to honor Campanella. The crowd complied and Scully painted the dramatic scene in words as only he could do.

Scully transformed little Jimmy into a baseball fanatic that night and I tuned in again the next night and the next and the next. A few weeks later my mom chastised me for running down radio batteries so quickly, but getting in trouble was a price of admission I was glad to pay for the privilege of tuning in night after night to hear Vin Scully weave words into baseball poetry.

I’ve loved baseball and the Dodgers and Vin Scully ever since that warm night in May 1959. I’ve listened to his lyrical way of describing a baseball game — invoking references to Spartan tactics during the Peloponnesian War and Shakespearean sonnets and Freudian psychology and Broadway musicals and the Large Hadron Collider and countless other deep thoughts that have never entered the heads of any other baseball announcer — thousands of times in the intervening years. Spring training games, regular season games, play-off games, World Series games, and, of course, that first exhibition game.

We’ll get back to Vinny soon enough, but now let’s make a quick jump from that baseball game played in Los Angeles on May 7, 1959 to a cricket game played in Adelaide, South Australia last week.

Jamie and I were sitting in the front row of the second deck at a Big Bash game when a young man said, “Excuse me,” before squeezing past us to get to his seat. I noticed that he was wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap, something you don’t often see in South Australia.

A few minutes later, when he squeezed past us again on his way to the concession stands, I asked if he was a Dodgers fan. (I had to ask, you see, because many Aussies wear caps and shirts adorned with American sports team logos, but most of them don’t know if those teams play baseball or football or ice hockey nor if they play in Cincinnati or Seattle or San Diego. They just think the American logos look cool.)

Much to my surprise he answered in a distinct American accent. “Yes, I am. Are you?”

“Absolutely. I love the Dodgers.”

“What about the Angels?

“I hate the Angels.”

He stuck his hand out and said, “Nice to meet you. I hate ‘em, too.”

“What are you doing in Adelaide?” I asked, fully expecting him to say he was on vacation.

Instead he surprised us by saying, “I’m playing minor league baseball for the Adelaide Bite.”

He introduced himself as Chris Powell and said he plays in the Dodgers minor league system. Oddly enough, he grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, California, a proverbial stone’s throw down the road from my hometown. (Hey, we 909 area code guys gotta stick together.)

Chris told us he was scheduled to pitch the following Saturday night, so Jamie and I immediately said we’d drive down to Adelaide to see the game.

“Really?” he said with a huge grin. “If you come to the game, I’ll have free passes waiting for you.”

Well, nothing (and I mean nothing) is more appealing to a Dutch dairy farmer’s son than the word free. So we made the 90 minute drive down to Adelaide’s West Beach baseball complex to see the Adelaide Bite face off against the Sydney Blue Sox. We arrived just minutes before the first pitch and settled into our seats behind home plate, but much to our surprise a stocky Japanese pitcher started the game instead of Chris.

After three innings we wandered down to the far end of the Bite’s dugout and Chris rushed over as soon as he saw us.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “They changed my start from Saturday to Friday, but I had no way to let you know.”

Damn it! We missed a good game. Chris was the winning pitcher, striking out five and giving up only two runs in seven innings.

Oh, well. We had a lot of fun anyway.

Good luck, Chris. You already have the Dodgers cap, and we hope you soon get to wear the rest of the uniform, too.

I promised you a return visit to Vin Scully and we have now arrived at that moment.

One afternoon back when we lived in Southern California’s Orange County, I was window shopping at Newport Beach’s glitzy Fashion Island shopping center. People were coming and going, entering and leaving shops as people are wont to do at shopping centers, when I happened to notice one man exit a store about 200 feet ahead of me. At first I thought nothing of it. He was just another stranger walking in the same direction in which I was walking.

Nevertheless, a wee voice inside my head whispered, “That guy looks like Vin Scully.” But then a competing voice immediately said, “Nah, what would Vinny be doing down here in Orange County?”

Well, I couldn’t take my eyes off of that stranger, and the further we walked, the more he looked like what I imagined the back of Vin Scully would look like if he were walking 200 feet in front of me. I increased my pace just a little.

The closer I got to him, the more convinced I was that this man was, in fact, the world’s greatest baseball announcer, someone I had admired for so many years.

I swear I wasn’t stalking him, but every turn he made took me in the direction of my car somewhere out there in the middle of the immense Fashion Island parking lot. The deeper into the lot we ventured, the more convinced I became that I really was mere steps behind baseball royalty. I increased my pace just a bit more.

By the time I arrived at my car, I was just a few steps behind the man. He turned to open the trunk of the car parked next to mine, and my heart stopped.

It was, in fact, Vin Scully, a man I’d never met, but someone who seemed like a friend, because I had invited him into my home almost every spring and summer night for the preceding forty years.

I make a point of never bothering celebrities when I run into them in public. I just cannot imagine how horrible it must be for someone like Brad Pitt to have absolutely no privacy, to have every stranger begging to shake your hand, demanding your autograph, and wanting to include you in their selfies.

But for god’s sake, man, this wasn’t some young upstart like Brad Pitt, it was Vin Freakin’ Scully. I was just as excited at age fifty-something as I would have been at age ten. So instead of getting into my car, I walked over to where he was busily stowing shopping bags in his trunk.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I make a point of never bothering celebrities, but I have to make an exception with you. I just want to thank you for all the joy you’ve brought into my life for the last forty years.”

Vin, always reputed to be a complete gentleman, stuck out his hand, shook mine, and said, “Thank you very much. That’s very kind of you.”

“It’s going to be a sad day in Los Angeles when you decide to retire,” I told him.

“Well, then,” he intoned in that special Scully voice, “I guess I’d better just keep callin’ ‘em.”

And that he did. Vinny was just twenty-two when he broadcast his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950 and he just kept callin’ ‘em until finally retiring at the end of the 2016 baseball season. In other words, he spent 67 years behind the microphone and he sounded just as good as ever at the end.

With that, Vin got into his car and I got into mine and we went our separate ways.

But now that I’ve met Chris Powell, I have to admit that I have one regret — I’ll never have a chance to hear Vin Scully say the words, “Chris Powell on the mound.”

There just aren’t enough pixels for us to put together a complete list of things we’ll miss about the Barossa, because we love it with all our hearts. But here are just a few off the tops of our heads.

– The ungodly squawks of the white cockatoos as they soar overhead

– The black and white maggies (magpies) that come to John & Margaret’s back door to be fed.

– The crazy antics and loud screeches of the pink and grey gulars (a bird whose name the Aussies use as a substitute for the word “stupid”)

– The rolling green hills in spring

– The rolling yellow hills in summer

– Eating breakfast at Darling’s while talking sports with Antonio, the barista

– Finding yet another gorgeous old stone Lutheran Church in the middle of nowhere and wondering who built it and where they found enough Lutherans to fill the pews

– Friday night Thai food at Barossa Siam

– Jamie’s daily double espresso tonics at Darling’s

– Jim’s daily ice coffees at Darling’s

– The remarkable glow of the Barossa’s golden hour

– Immense round bales of hay haphazardly strewn across golden fields of buzz cut wheat

– The patchwork green and yellow of vineyards and fields of wheat stretching off to the horizon

– The pride on the faces of all the locals when we tell them how much we love the Barossa

– That lone alpaca that hangs out with a small flock of sheep on the road between Angaston and Tanunda. She looks like just another wooly sheep except for her long neck, but she knows she’s not one of them and always keeps her distance from the flock. We’ve been told that the alpacas know their job is to protect the defenseless sheep from foxes, but we can’t quite figure out how that might work.

– Amy at the gym. And the same Amy at Darling’s (she was the first one to greet us with an excited, “You’re back!” when we arrived in the Barossa)

– Shopping for farm fresh fruit and veggies every Saturday at the farmer’s market

– Elani’s cinnamon buns at the same farmer’s market

– Taking the train into Adelaide to catch a movie or to grab a lunch or to attend a cricket game

– The warm, welcoming attitudes of everyone we meet

– All the Aussie friends we’ve made over the years (Ken and Sue, the Mustard clan, John and Margaret, Andrew and Toni, Mark and Mandi, Scottie, John and Angus, the gorgeous girls at Darling’s, Trevor and Lizzie, Ryan at Fleur Social, and all the others, too.

– Morning coffee and tea with the doctors and listening to their tales of Barossa days gone by

– Angus, the Scottie dog who lives next door and who watches our every move through the fence

– The excitement of spotting a kangaroo hopping through a field or down the road

– Driving out Gomersal Road (its views are a lot prettier than its name)

– Lunch at Pindarie Winery with its view of sprawling vineyards, grazing sheep, and golden fields of wheat

– A thousand varieties of eucalyptus trees (or “gum trees” as they’re known here)

– Laughing at some of the crazy Aussie words and phrases (and being laughed at for our American words and phrases)

– Watching Australia defeat England in cricket (“Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi”)

– Getting up early on Monday morning to watch Sunday NFL football on TV (especially when we do it over breakfast at Ken and Sue’s house)

– Trading explanations: Ken explains cricket to me and I explain football to him

– Taking tours of the Barossa and surrounding areas with The Doctors.

– Iced coffee at Darling’s

– Iced coffee at Fleur Social

– Iced coffee at El Estanco (probably the only Columbian restaurant in all of South Australia)

– Iced coffee at Bean Addiction

– Iced coffee from cardboard cartons

– Any iced coffee in any form

– Rummaging through dusty antique shops we stumble upon in every little village

Thanks to everyone who makes our stays here so memorable. We’ll miss you all, but we’ll be back.

Among the many odd habits I’m willing to admit to is this one: I like to keep the radio on all night. The odder the broadcast, the more likely I am to keep it droning on at all hours.

This drove a number of otherwise rational ex-girlfriends absolutely stark, raving mad.

For some inexplicable reason they didn’t enjoy waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of that strange talk show host who believes a race of lizard people dwells beneath the surface of the Earth and that some of them now live among us. They didn’t appreciate static-filled broadcasts of Top 40 music from far away cities. They didn’t care for the genius of Paul Harvey commentaries accompanied by my snores. They didn’t love outrageous infomercials as I did.

And that brings us to the subject of Jamie’s ongoing physical distress.

We try to keep JimandJamie.com light and fun, so I have not previously mentioned this worrisome ailment. On this trip she has occasionally suffered from extreme, debilitating pain in her abdomen.

When we were in Broome, for example, it got so severe that I found her one day curled up in a ball on the floor, drenched in sweat and writhing in agony.

I, of course, wanted to rush her to an emergency room, but she refused, gasping, “I’ll be fine. This is nothing. Just let me lie here for a few minutes.”

Sure enough, half an hour later she was back on her feet and said, “Are you ready? Let’s go to the beach.”

The woman is clearly a lot tougher than she looks. In fact, she prides herself on it and often teases me about how delicate I am in comparison to her.

That being said, her severe abdominal pains have returned over the last week or ten days and I’ve been urging her to see a doctor. Apparently the nagging pain finally grew severe enough that she agreed to hobble across the street to ask Dr John and Dr Margaret for their opinions.

They are retired, of course, but once a doctor always a doctor. John took her into his home office, did a quick examination and then urged her to visit one of the doctors now running his former practice. He wrote a letter for her to give that doctor and suggested that I should sit in on the appointment.

The doctor quickly scanned the medical history she brought along on this trip, asked a few questions, poked and prodded her abdomen, and then got on the phone and personally made an ultrasound appointment for her at the regional health center in Gawler.

“I’m using my pleading voice,” he told the scheduler. “Is there any way you can fit her in today?” The sense of urgency in his voice scared both of us.

Then, turning back to us, he said, “I’m pretty sure you don’t have stomach cancer, but we need to get it looked at.”

We jumped in our car and raced twenty miles through the vineyards to the hospital. The line was mercifully short and Jamie was soon whisked back to get her ultrasound.

”We’ll read the results right away,” the technician assured her, “and get a report to your doctor this afternoon.”

A few hours later Jamie’s cell phone rang. The doctor had already received and reviewed the ultrasound report and was calling to give her the results. His diagnosis was filled with ominous-sounding Latin medical terminology.

”What does that mean in English?” Jamie gasped.

”It means,” he replied, “that you’re full of shit.”

No, seriously, that’s what the doctor told her. Verbatim. An exact quote. Word-for-word. “It means you’re full of shit.”

I can already hear regular readers saying, “There he goes again, making up stories and making Jamie the butt of a joke.” But you would be wrong in this case, because those were the doctor’s exact words.

Jamie started laughing. She was convulsed, but this time it was with laughter instead of pain.

”It happens,” the doctor old her. “Just eat lots of fruits and vegetables and the problem will solve itself.”

And that takes us back to those all-night radio shows I used to listen to.

In the early days of our relationship I used to listen to one particular infomercial over and over and over again in the middle of the night because I thought it was so outlandish. It advertised some sort of laxative — I can’t remember its name — that promised to clean out your innards like nobody’s business. I’m pretty sure the first time I woke Jamie up at three a.m. to listen to this infomercial was the moment she realized that her new boyfriend was, shall we say, a bit odd.

The infomercial gave a graphic explanation of how impacted feces can back up in your bowels and cause extreme abdominal pain.

I absolutely loved one line in that informercial, a line Jamie and I still laugh about to this day. It was, “When John Wayne died they found forty feet of fecal matter backed up in his bowels.”

How could you not love a line that is simultaneously so outrageous and so euphonious.

Well, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost for Jamie. She now understands how poor John Wayne must have felt in his final days.

And although her pain is gone, I imagine that the diagnosis itself must be a bit painful for her.

After all, she will no longer be able to respond to one of my stories by saying, “You are so full of shit” without knowing that I will immediately say, “Yeah, but at least in my case it’s not a clinical diagnosis.”

We took a drive up to the Clare Valley, a neighboring wine district about an hour from the Barossa Valley. That’s where we spotted these two neighboring businesses.

Although they seem at first to reflect conflicting, inconsistent philosophies, I must admit, in honor of full disclosure, that I’ve known several good Catholic girls who had no problem whatsoever with nakedness.

Ahhhhh, those were the days.

Our buddy Daryl Mustard invited us to take a tour of his place of employment, which he described as “the largest bottling plant in the Southern Hemisphere.”

We had no idea how large it would prove to be. Holy crap. The numbers are absolutely mind boggling.

Daryl’s at the top of the org chart at a plant that bottles 400,000 dozen bottles of wine per week. In other words, 4,800,000 individual bottles go out the door every seven days.

The plant is immense, more than a million square feet, filled with robots, but empty of people. Well, not exactly empty, but the operation is so automated that they are able to do all that bottling, packaging, and shipping with only about six workers on each of the three daily eight hour shifts.

They had rules against taking photos inside the plant, but trust me — the Mustard clan is a lot better looking than the robots.

We’ve finally found someone who is worse than I am at taking selfies. Here’s half of Lisa, Daryl, a portion of daughter Ebony, my young pal Lochie, Jamie and me. Older sister Jamiee had the unmitigated gall to think showing up for her job was more important than this tour.

Australia has two national pastimes — Australian Rules Football, a fast and violent game also known as footie, and cricket, a slow, plodding game known as the dullest thing this side of watching paint dry.

Baseball has been called genteel and leisurely. Yet the pace of a baseball game is absolutely frenetic compared to cricket.

Nevertheless, Jamie and I have come to love this odd game. We originally agreed with those who criticize its glacial pace, but the more cricket we watch, the more it grows on us. So much so that we went into Adelaide the other night to attend a Big Bash game at the Adelaide Oval.

If a flying saucer were to land next to my car in the middle of the parking lot at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, the first thing I would do (well, the third thing really, after paying the aliens’ astronomical parking fee, and then buying them each Dodger dogs and beer) is explain the game to them.

It would take about a minute to cover all the basics. Maybe less.

For example, the names of the positions in baseball are pretty self-explanatory: You have first base, second base, and third base plus left field, center field and right field. The pitcher is the guy who stands in the middle of the field throws the ball and the catcher is the guy who squats over in one corner of the field and catches everything the pitcher throws. The only position on the field that isn’t self-explanatory is shortstop and it’s easy enough to explain that he’s the guy who plays between second base and third base.

But the names of the positions on the cricket field seem to have been determined by throwing a bunch of unrelated words into a hat and then pulling them out at random. It has positions with inexplicable names like deep mid-wicket. Wide long-on. Silly mid-off. Fine leg. Fly slip. Extra cover. Cow corner. Off stump, middle stump, and leg stump. And then there’s the most confusing position of them all — deep square. How can a position be called “square” on a field that’s oval-shaped?

And the positions are just the beginning of the confusion. When we watch cricket on TV, we hear the announcers say things like, “He was out for a duck” or “Oh, it looks like he bowled a dibble-doubly” or “He got a wicket with his googly.” They toss in words and phrases like “Yorker” and “Reverse tang” and “LBW (Leg Before Wicket).” And we mustn’t forget “sticky wicket,” the one piece of cricket terminology that’s well-known, but little understood in America.

Then there’s this: All the players scurry to the opposite end of the field after every sixth ball has been delivered. And then, as if that weren’t confusing enough, they all run back to their original positions six balls later.

Every other year, England and Australia battle each other in an epic series of cricket matches called “The Ashes.” It’s the greatest rivalry in the world of international cricket and has been waged semi-annually since way back in 1877. “The Ashes” series includes five games spread out over nearly two months. Each game can last as long as eight hours per day and can be contested for five consecutive days. If your skill set does not include higher mathematics, please allow me to calculate that for you: Eight hours a day for five days equals forty hours. (As if to prove the gentlemanly roots of the game, they break each day for morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea.)

And then, despite the heroic efforts put forth by both teams during that five day, forty hour marathon, the game may end in a tie even if one team is hundreds of runs ahead.

For example, Australia just regained the much-coveted Ashes trophy by defeating those detested limey bastards four games to none in the five match series. Despite the fact that Australia was ahead 590-491 toward the end of day five, game four ended with no winner.

(Note: Due to the world’s current critical pixel shortage, it will be impossible for me to explain how that is possible.)

The winner of the Ashes series takes home what must be the world’s least impressive trophy, a wooden cup about six inches tall. In the photo below, Steve Smith, the captain of the victorious Aussie squad is holding the diminutive fruit of his team’s labors.

As I said earlier, Big Bash is a relatively new type of cricket and it is taking the cricket world by storm. Instead of spreading out over five days, a Big Bash game lasts only about three hours, about the same as a baseball game. In Big Bash, each batsman is expected to smash the ball as far and as high and as often as possible. It’s become immensely popular and is being played in front of sell out crowds across the country. One Aussie TV network broadcasts Big Bash games in prime time seven nights a week and it is experiencing a ratings bonanza.

So Jamie and I bought tickets to the Adelaide-Melbourne game last Tuesday night. We were joined by 43,000 other people at the beautiful Adelaide Oval.

Think about what a remarkable number that is. There are only 1,700,000 people in all of South Australia and two-and-a-half percent of them gathered together to watch a Big Bash game. If a similar percentage of California’s population bought tickets for a Dodgers game, the stadium would need to seat nearly a million people.

It was a great game. The Adelaide Strikers put on a Ruthian display of power and handily defeated the Melbourne Stars. We joined all the other fans in screaming our approval.

The Big Bash League is sponsored by KFC and its marketing people created something called the Buckethead Army. Somehow they convinced thousands of fans to wear their chicken buckets upside down on their heads.

I know exactly what you’re thinking. Who would be crazy enough to wear a KFC bucket upside down on their head?

Who, indeed?

It was a perfect evening at the Adelaide Oval. A very strange, but beautiful cloud formation rolled in right at sunset and lit the western sky on fire.

Every public event in Australia begins with a traditional aboriginal blessing. You can see the ceremony on the digital scoreboard above.

It can’t match the grandeur and scale of climbing the Sydney Bridge, but some fans enjoy a sunset tour atop the Adelaide Oval.

I’m about to say something that’s hard to believe. Very hard to believe. Almost impossible to believe, in fact.

Our goddaughter Stella turns nineteen today. No, wait, that’s just not possible. Let me go back and recalculate.

Let’s see. This is 2018 and she was born on January 23, 1999. Eighteen minus nine equals nine…carry the one…ten minus nine equals one. Oh, my god, she really is nineteen today.

I am tempted to tell you that Stella is beautiful and brilliant, but her father has always reminded me to reverse the order of those words.

When she was just seven or eight years old I asked her what her favorite subject was in school. She quickly said, “Spelling. Go ahead. Give me a word.”

Well, I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but in an hour of trying, I could not stump this petite Brainiac. For god’s sake, man, I’m a professional writer with an extensive vocabulary, yet I could not come up with a single word this eight year old was unable to sound out and easily spell.

Stella has only gained brain cells in the intervening years. She and brother Jack currently attend the same elite east coast university. When we were texting back and forth last week, I asked what classes she’s taking.

“This semester,” she said, “I’m taking Italian 2, intro economics, history of global cinema before the 1960s, and Neo Confucian Chinese philosophy.”

Crap. I barely got through English Composition in junior college and Stella’s taking Italian and Neo Confucian Chinese philosophy at a school whose admission committee would have enjoyed a hearty laugh at my expense had I been foolhardy enough to submit an application.

Stella’s also an accomplished jazz pianist who’s played at some of Los Angeles’ top venues. She’s an outstanding athlete who medaled in tennis at the Maccabi Games, and who won a basketball game for her high school team by hitting nothin’ but net from the corner of the court as time expired. She has an infectious sense of humor and a huge, beautiful smile. And as you already know, she’s a damn fine speller.

Happy birthday, Stella. Jamie and I love you and would do anything for you.

(But if you need help with your Neo Confucian Chinese Philosophy homework, we’re probably not the right people to call.)

Scientists now believe there’s a “wanderlust gene” that encourages some people to pack their bags and hit the road.

Oddee.com, one of my favorite websites, explains:

Some people are satisfied to spend their lives in one place without venturing far from their hometown. Others make it a priority to travel the world. The difference can be found in variations of the dopamine receptor gene. A certain variation of this gene, DRD4-7R, has been associated with curiosity and restlessness and is often referred to as the “wanderlust gene.”

Studies of DRD4-7R have shown that people with this variant have an adventurous spirit and are more open to new experiences. About 20 percent of people in the world have this gene variant. The variant is more prevalent in countries that are farther away from Africa.

This finding relates to the assumption that all human life began in Africa. If the earliest humans originated in Africa, then human populations that are far away were started by ancient ancestors who traveled quite a distance to find their new home.

If geneticists were to delve into my DNA, I think they’d discover that this travel gene has been passed down from both sides of my family.

Someone traced the family tree on the Savage side of my family and discovered that my great great great great great (I don’t really know how many greats to use) grandfather had already established himself in Canada in the mid-1700s. Within a couple generations the family had migrated south to Illinois and then my grandparents moved on to Kalispell, a small town in remote northwest Montana.

On the deYong side of the family, my greatgrandparents boarded a ship in the Netherlands and settled in Holland, Michigan, a magnet for Dutch immigrants in the late 1800s. My grandparents moved west to Kalispell, Montana. Then, during the Depression, my dad realized there was no future for him in that state, and flipped a coin to choose his new home.

Heads, Alaska. Tails, California.

It came up heads, so he headed north. He spent one summer swinging a sledge hammer and laying railroad tracks, and then spent the winter washing dishes in an Anchorage restaurant. Luckily, he was a terrible dishwasher and got fired, so he packed his bags again and headed for Southern California.

If we investigated these moves a little closer, I suspect that the travel gene may have had less influence than the I-like-to-eat-but-can’t-make-enough-money-to-buy-food-here gene.

My dad’s travel gene failed him twice. The first time resulted in that ill-advised year in Alaska. The second failure came in the very early 1940s.

He moved to rural Orange County with a bunch of his Dutch Montana buddies. They all went into the dairy business, first milking cows for other dairy farmers, then starting their own farms.

My dad rented forty acres at the angled intersection of Newport and Harbor Boulevards in Newport Beach. He had an option to buy the property for a couple hundred dollars per acre, but didn’t like the weather in Orange County. His travel gene led him to rent another farm 60 miles inland in San Bernardino.

He was a very smart man, but that was a very bad decision. Because the Orange County land he left behind is probably worth about ten million dollars an acre today.

In other words, my bank account would have about six extra zeroes if it weren’t for my dad’s travel gene.

My own travel gene has taken me from San Bernardino to Eugene, Oregon to Los Angeles to Huntington Beach to Dana Point (three different houses) to San Luis Obispo to McKinney, Texas (two houses). Despite my best intentions, I’ve never lived in a house for more than nine years before I get an itch that can only be scratched by moving.

Oh, well. I guess the travel gene is sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse. But I’m writing this from a beautiful, hundred year old stone cottage in South Australia’s incomparable Barossa Valley, so I guess I can’t complain about the gene’s impact on me.