The Joys of Friday Take-Away

For the most part Leah and I try and live frugally.  We do our shopping on the weekend and try and plan our meals for the week.  We both pack lunches daily and avoid eating out.  Our dinners are home cooked and we enjoy the time together since we're apart all day.  However, one night a week we order take-away.  We're really enjoying the variety in our neighborhood.  There are plenty of options within a few minutes walk from our front door.

In the last few weeks, we've eaten at two different Chinese restaurants, a phenomenal Indian restaurant (twice) and the best Thai food I have ever had.   In fact I'm sitting here right now sweating from a combination of green curry and Moo Pud Prig Khing (pork with curry paste and green beans) and dreaming of the next time I can eat it.  It was that good.  

There are Asian restaurants aplenty that's for sure, but I have yet to find anything that you could call uniquely Australian.  I need to find a kangaroo steak somewhere.  Further research to follow.

On a different note, I've finished my fourth week of work and am feeling much more comfortable in my new job.  There are still some growing pains but I feel pretty good considering.  Nothing has made me feel at home here as much as working.  Plus, being around and having real conversations with Aussies all day gives me plenty of practice on my accent.  Which at this point varies, in the opinion of my coworkers, from "pretty good" to "weird".  I reckon by the time we've been here for two years I should be able to fool most locals.  We'll see.

My Internet Tubes are Clogged With Lard

Um yeah, turns out really slow internets are most annoying.  I'm not sure I'm gonna make it to Monday like this.

At the moment we're sitting in our apartment and sweltering from the heat.  Our aircon decided that it doesn't like us and refuses to cool us off.  We don't actually use it very often but the last few days have been particularly hot and almost unbearable at night. Have we complained loudly about the heat yet?  It's bloody hot and humid.  We've been told that February is the worst month as far as heat goes.  Here's hoping it isn't.

Today at work Kevin was picking my brain about America and we somehow got on the subject of roasting pigs.  You know how I love me some roasted pork, so I was telling Kev all I know about the subject.  Well, Kev, being the enthusiastic sort, decided that he really wants to roast a pig for his birthday next weekend.  He did quite a bit of calling around today and we found a place to buy a whole pig for $8.50 a kilo.  We're looking at a 20 kilo piggie (44lbs).  We also found a spit roaster to rent for $50.  It's on now.

Of course while on the subject of pig roasts we also discussed beverages. The idea of getting a keg was totally off of Kev's radar and now I know why.  We did some calling around and found the only place in Brisbane that sells kegs for private parties.  The price? $315!  That's including the $75 tap rental (non-refundable).  Some quick maths told us that is the same price as buying beer in bottles before we thought about ice, cups, a bucket etc...  What a shame.  Back home I was buying a keg of PBR for $56.  And I'm not even going to mention all the partial kegs of Sierra Nevada that we took home from parties. (What up Grand Lake Crew?!?)

And that, friends, is why you need not worry about us not returning to the US. Like I told the guys at work, I really like it here, but the price of beer is a deal breaker.

Some observations for today:

-Maths = Math

-Whinging = Complaining loudly, whining about stuff

-Struth, Bloody Oath = Yep, You Betcha

-bludgering = slacking off at work

Wha happen?

Whoa, we missed a day there, sorry about that.  Yesterday was in fact Australia day and we celebrated like a couple of true Aussies.  We spent much of the day on Skype, drinking with friends in Denver.  We started about ten am and didn't get done with Skype until almost five pm.  By the time we were done talking with Sarah and Dave we were both feeling pretty drunk. (looking at the fridge today, we put a serious hurting on the carton of beer we  bought)

After the marathon chat slash drink-a-thon, we went out to the back yard where one of our housemates was having a bbq.  We met some cool people and had several more beers with them.  When the sun went down we grabbed a quick bite and then walked over to the pub to meet some of Leah's new school friends.  By the time we were finished at the pub neither of us was in any shape to write the blog.

Five thirty am comes pretty early when one has been drinking and today I felt a bit rough around the edges.  Thankfully I wasn't the only one.  Just about everyone I work with was hungover and the collective mood was pretty chill.

I had intended to post a few photos tonight but, unfortunately, we have run over our download allotment for the month and our internet speed has been slowed to a crawl.  I just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to get one photo uploaded and abandoned it in frustration.

Our internet usage was quite high because I had to download all of the software updates for my new hard drive and Skype does tend to use a lot of data.  We've decided to give ourselves a couple of months to gauge our average usage and if we keep getting slowed down at the end of the month we'll upgrade our internet plan.  For now though, I'll not be able to post photos until February 1st.

I've been itching to post some photos from work actually.  When I first started I had to put all the parts away from our stock order.  When the parts are shipped from Honda, many of them have tags held on by rubber bands.  I, of course, took all the rubber bands and made a rubber band ball.  I've made a rubber band ball at every job I've had since working with Ben in VA.  I didn't really think too much of it at the time.  I mean what else do you do with a hundred extra rubber bands?

Kevin, who sits next to me at work saw me bouncing the ball off of the wall by my desk and imediately became fascinated by it.  He asked me to show him how I did it, so I helped him get one started.  Little did I know that Kevin would be a rubber band ball overachiever.  Very quickly we had used all the rubber bands in our office and Kev was calling his grandmother who lives in the area to bring us some more.  Kev's Nan brought us two really large bags of rubber bands and soon his ball was twice the size of the one I had made.  Of course most of the dealership makes it's way through our office during the course of a day, and I soon started to see other people with rubber band balls.  It was hilarious.

Now that was over three weeks ago.  Every morning Kev comes in and opens his backpack and hefts out his ever growing rubber band ball.  The guy is seriously obsessed at this point.  I've been documenting the ever growing mass of latex and the other day we got the idea to weigh it.  The thing weighs over two kilograms! That's about four and a half pounds. The diameter is over six inches.  It's massive. I haven't asked him yet but it must be getting close to fifty dollars worth of rubber bands.

I've done a GIS (Google image search) for "rubber band ball" and Kev has quite a way to go to break the record, but he's off to a good start.  I look forward to documenting the progress.

I'm off to bed early tonight, it's been a long day.

Taco Monday?

It's a little after ten pm.  Leah and I had dinner at the neighbor's tonight, but this time we cooked.  We made carnitas tacos and guacamole.  I think they really enjoyed them.  Tacos are sort of hard to come by in Australia and usually don't go much beyond the realm of ground beef and taco seasoning in a packet.  I'm convinced that if you set up a stand in one of the weekend markets you could make a killing with an authentic taco stand. Ah, to dream.  We usually have Tacos on Tuesday, Taco Tuesday, duh, but since tomorrow is a holiday we bumped up the schedule.

Tomorrow we have the day off for Australia day.  Jan 26th is the anniversary of the landing of the first colonial expedition that landed in Sydney.  Mush like the 4th of July back home, most Aussies will celebrate by drinking and barbecuing.  I think there are fireworks planned but I'm not sure where they are going to be. I do know that you can get just about anything you could ever want with the Australian flag printed on it right now. Every other car is flying a flag or two and shops are bursting with flag printed party supplies.  There's a real sense of nationalism in the streets.

We are quickly settling into routine with school and work.  It's nice, frankly, after months of not working and being rootless, to settle into familiar.  I'm enjoying my job.  I like the guys I work with and am learning a lot.  Leah is busy with school and I feel she already finds it challenging.  Of course she is not the type of person to procrastinate or take things for granted, so she gets after school pretty hard.  She seems to like it so far and is starting to make some friends.

Back home the NFL championships were played today, the Australian open is the big sports story here, but they are showing the games on TV.  I missed the Vikings (sorry Chucker, looks like you were right about Favre) and Saints and the Indy NY game just started.  I think I'll watch for a while even though I already know how it turns out.  This seems really weird for me to say, but I miss Football way more than I ever would have expected.  Those of you who know me well know that I'm mostly a baseball fan and football falls a distant third after Hockey. But it's so prevalent back home that you can't help but follow it.  Here, it's totally an afterthought, horse racing gets more attention.  And the lack of constant football coverage has left a void in my life that I am really surprised of.  And Hockey, as in NHL, might as well not even exist here.  You never see hockey here unless there is a really really brutal fight.

I'm still getting our photos arranged back on the computer so I don't have any to post tonight.  I've just about gotten back to where I was with the computer before the crash.  It won't be long now and we'll have the blog cranking again.  It feels like it's been a long time since I was writing every day.  Hopefully it won't take me too long to get back in the swing of things.  Being at work has given me a whole new perspective on living in Oz and I look forward to writing about it for you.

Enjoy your Monday. We'll be celebrating with our new country.

And, We're Back!

It's 1:30 am.  I got my hard drive today and started loading it after work.  I've just about got everything I need loaded on it.

I'm not going to write a bunch tonight, but just wanted to let you guys know we're back to being connected.  I'll also let you know we are taking steps to insure that we are never out this long again.

If you are friends with us on Skype, keep your eye out for us as we should be around some this weekend.

We have some stuff to write about but it will have to wait for now.

Enjoy your Friday, it's Saturday here and I'm sleeping in!

Holding Pattern

Hi guys sorry we have been MIA for so long. I'm still waiting for my new hard drive to get here. It's supposed to be available on Friday and I should get it Saturday morning. The way my luck has gone with things of this sort I'm not holding my breath.

Assuming I can get it on Saturday it should take me most of the day to get it loaded and ready. We should be back up and running on sunday.

I hope you understand, it's kind of a pain typing on this teeny tiny keyboard.

We have had a few adventures since we last posted and we've been taking some great pictures so hold on and we'll satisfy your curiosity as soon as we are able.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPodtouch

Two Steps Forward...

Last night when I got home from work my computer wouldn't start up.  I used all of my Jedi trouble shooting skills to determine that my hard drive has taken a dump.  Needless to say I'm feeling a little annoyed right now (read: furious).

I sent an email off to HP tech support and they've responded and asked me to do a couple of other trouble shooting steps that I hadn't taken yet.  After doing that I still have an inoperable computer sitting on my desk just asking to be smashed to bits.  I'm keeping my cool.

This could turn interesting for a few reasons.  HP never sold this particular model of computer in Australia, so I'm dealing with HP USA, who are being helpful right now, but we'll see what happens if they have to ship me a replacement.  And there is something in the wording of the warranty about being out of the USA.  I'm not going to go into that just yet because the implications make me want to cry.

The implications for you, dear reader, are my posts are going to be hit or miss for a while.  I usually write them in the evening and since we only have one working computer now Leah's school work comes first. Also, Leah's laptop doesn't have a web cam so Skype sessions will be on hold until I can get mine up and running.  Hopefully it won't be too long.

Leah is already super busy with school.  In fact she's gone over to the Uni this morning to write a research paper.  She has three papers due next week alone.  Turns out graduate school is demanding.  Who knew?

So that's it for today, I'll try and keep you posted about what's happening.  In the meantime, you can still reach me at the usual email addys, or leave comments on the blog.  In fact feel free to leave more comments slash questions on the blog in general.

It's Only Thursday?

I guess you could say I'm not used to having a job.  It's only Thursday and I'm exhausted.  I have blisters on my feet and my body is sore.  I hope I get used to this quickly.

My job is going quite well.  Aside from some terminology differences and getting used to different software it's remarkably similar to what I did back home.  Well, that is to say parts of it.  In fact I have much less responsibility than I did there and subsequently much less stress.  I think I'm going to enjoy that.

The first day I showed up for work they handed me a new employee packet that contained a paper called the workers bill of rights or something to that effect.  The second item on the list was a statement that employees are entitled to four weeks of paid vacation per year!  It took me five years at my last job to earn three weeks of vacation.  And even though I had earned it they gave me a hard time when I wanted to use it.  I'm going to like working here.  They have a thing called a long service leave that entitles you to three months paid leave after seven years of work.

I had to buy a pair of shoes for work cause I didn't bring any with me from home.  I've been pretty much wearing nothing but sandals since we've been here.  Actually most of the last year if I'm being honest, unemployment has it's benefits as far as foot comfort goes.  The upshot is my feet are in rebellion.  Breaking in new shoes while being on my feet all day is just about all I can take.

I've been getting up early to eat some breakfast and leaving the house about 6:50.  That gets me to work about 7:40.  I leave work in time to catch the 5:17 and get home right about 6:00.  I'm living the suburban dream.  It's weird.

I don't have the energy needed to post anything interesting tonight.  We're trying to plan something fun for the weekend.  Maybe if I feel ambitious tomorrow I'll take the camera on the train with me and get some pictures of my commute.  We'll see.

Leah has been really busy her first week.  I've been trying to get her to post, but she's been tired as at the end of the day.

Some observations for today:

-Australians refer to the trunk of a car as the boot

-the hood is known as the bonnet

-this one has been bothering the crap out of me.  The word debut is pronounced dayboo.

-I'm somewhat of an oddity at work, and I feel a bit like I'm on display.  Several people have commented about how strong my accent is.  And way more people know my name than the other way around.

-a common thing to say here is something is ---- as.  Like this: that was cool as. or, I was sick as.  I'm not sure why they don't finish, but It's fun as to say.

Summer Vacation Part VI: New Year New You

I think I failed to mention in the last post that we got certified on the last day of 2009.  If you had told me at the start of the year that we would be living in Australia by new years I would have thought you were crazy.  In the words of Ferris Bueller "Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it."  Never has this been more clear to me than it is now.  2009 was the first time since I was fourteen that I didn't have a job at any point.  Now we live on the other side of the world from home and I have a job.  It's kinda trippy when you think about it.

When we got our certificates it was about 4pm.  We had decided to get out of Byron and head back to Mt. Warning and take another shot at getting to the top.  The weather looked promising for the next few days and Leah had her heart set on it.

It was a strange feeling when we left town.  We both fell in love with Byron Bay.  We like Brisbane, but a city is a city.  Byron was the first place we had gone on an adventure and it was hard to leave. On the way out of town all we cold talk about was how much fun we had scuba diving.  I think we're both addicted to it.  I'll be putting scuba gear on my Christmas wish list.

As we started up the coast Leah got a little headache.  She took some advil and drank a big bottle of water.  Now there are a lot of benefits to having a parent who is a doctor, but there are some negatives too, namely a penchant for being a bit of a hypochondriac.  Leah was convinced she was getting "the bends".  I had to talk her off the ledge a bit.  All of the diving we did was well within the limits of us not getting "the bends"  but she got a little paranoid.  It was funny.

We grabbed a sandwich (did I mention that subway doesn't have mustard here?  They also charge $2 for a soda refill) and hit the road.  It isn't far from Byron back to Mt. Warning but we kind of took our time.  We stopped in town and picked up some items for dinner. Back at Mt. Warning Holiday Park we found another camp site.  It started to rain again and we cooked our dinner (mac and chee with tuna and peas) under our umbrellas.

We chatted it up with our camping neighbors. The wife was aborigine and had some really amazing stories about her Grandma and family. If you've seen Rabbitt Proof Fence, she said that her Grandma experienced that exact situation since she was light skinned, a "half-blood." She was chatting Leah's ear off. The husband was Australian. They have a daughter who is married to an American. They live in Sacramento. The daughter/American husband are moving back to Australia to start having children. The daughter is really freaked about raising kids in America. She thinks that police are extremely scary with their guns and she once saw an officer tackle an  elderly woman for "no reason." It was really interesting and fun to chat with this couple.

In order to make the top of the mountain by sunrise (5:45am) we figured that we'd have to get up about 3:30am.  The campsite had some fun New Years Eve festivities going on and it was packed with kiddos. We were so exhausted from scuba-ing that we could barely keep our eyes open. We fell asleep at 9pm. First NYE that we didn't make it until midnight in a LOOOONG time. However,  I'm not sure why but we both woke up right at midnight, told each other happy new year and fell right back to sleep.

At 3:30 our alarm went off and we poked our heads out of the tent and saw stars.  We figured that we had a good shot at seeing sunrise so we got up and drove to the trail head.  We didn't even make coffee.

The sign at the bottom of the mountain said to allow two hours to hike to the top.  Usually we can hike a lot faster than those kinds of estimates, but as we started out we realized that we only had one head-lamp  between the two of us.  This was going to slow us down.  The rain forest that we were hiking through was pretty dense and it was 4 am.  It was pitch black and the trail was rocky and muddy.  We started out pretty slow, but found our stride quick enough.  We hadn't been walking long when we noticed what looked like small lights in the woods.  Turns out there are mushrooms that glow in the dark.  No, we weren't/aren't on drugs.  There really were glowing mushrooms in the forest.  Australia is weird.

We had hiked for almost an hour and a half and we were getting near the top.  Mt. Warning is an extinct volcano and what remains is just the plug.  The whole area is now a national park.  The mountain was named by Captain Cook but was called Wollumbin by the Aborigines.  Wollumbin means fighting cheif of the mountains.  Whatever you call it, it's awesome.

The final stretch of the climb is a nearly vertical scramble up bare rocks aided by a chain.  The clouds had moved back in and nearly the entire climb we were actually in the clouds, the humidity was 100%.  We were both sweating and tired by the time we made the top.  And of course when we got there you couldn't see a damn thing.   I took this picture of a sign up there because all we could see was cloud.

We asked someone to take our picture and it looked almost exactly like the one at the top of the blog right now only there was no scenery in the background.  There were quite a few people on top and we had passed and been passed by quite a few on the way up.  We rested a bit and in a few minutes lots of the people had started to head back down the hill.  And then all of a sudden the cloud was gone.  Literally it took 1 second and you could see most of the valley below.  We had another picture snapped and took a few for other people.  And again the cloud was back and you couldn't see more than ten feet.  It was really strange.  As we stood around talking on top the clouds came and went about ten times.  It was so windy you could see the clouds race across the valley and sweep up the mountain. In between clouds we tried to get as many good pictures as we could.

Though we were hot and sweaty while we were hiking, we got cold quickly on top, the wind was howling.  An hour was all we wanted to stay at the top.  Hiking back down the very top stretch was a little tricky.

The hike down took about half the time as the hike up (1:45 btw)  and it was really cool seeing all the scenery that we had missed.  All we really knew hiking up in the dark was that the track was rocky and muddy.  What we didn't know was just how impressive the rain forest was.  Here are a few pictures.

When we got back down the hill we packed up our camp and it was time to head home. And that was that,   full week of awesomeness.

Some observations for today:

-The letter H is pronounced HAITCH

-Hyundai is pronounced Hee-yun-die

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Summer Vacation Part V: Certification

Once we left the dive center we still had to find a place to set up camp for the night.  We went to a campground a little further out of town from the football field and explained our situation. They agreed to let us set up for $50.  They had really nice showers facilities and the toilets were clean, they also had a pool, game room, camp kitchen and a ton of other amenities that the football field couldn't offer.  We chose a spot under a couple of small frangipani (plumeria) trees.  It was picturesque almost.  It surely was nicer than the football field.

After setting up we spent the rest of the afternoon walking up and down the beach. Byron Bay has gorgeous beaches.

Neither of us slept very well that night.  The campground was much more crowded and noisy and since there was only a little rain people seemed to party a little more than they had all week.  We got up pretty early even though we didn't have to be at the dive center until ten.  When we did get up we discovered that the ants were back with a vengeance.  This time they had started to chew holes in my tent.  I've never had food in it, and I haven't got a clue what they were after but my rain fly has a bunch of tiny little ant holes now that weren't there before.  I was annoyed.

We packed up the camp and loaded the car and headed to the dive center.  We grabbed a coffee and got to the center a little early.  We took the opportunity to talk to Mick about other places around Australia and the world to go diving.  He loaded us up with ideas.

Again we got our gear and loaded it on the boat.  This time we were to be joined by the UK girl who had done our second pool session with us.  She needed to do dives three and four to get her certification.  Also, surprisingly the husband came back from the sea sickness episode, this time he took some meds.  We were happy to have him back.

This time we were all more comfortable with the ride out to the rocks, except the UK girl.  She was complaining about feeling sick right away despite having taken sea sickness pills.  The wind had shifted around from the north and this made the rain move out but the seas get higher. Thursday the swell was about two meters.  Choppy for sure.

This time I felt way more comfortable and didn't have a lick of the nerves I had the day before.  Gearing up was a breeze.  It probably took half the time to get ready as it had Wednesday.  When we entered the water we all grouped together on the mooring line again and started our descent.  This time UK girl wigged out.  She couldn't even make the dive and had to be taken back to the beach.  That's four for the scorekeepers.

We had a great dive for number three.  We made just about 16 meters deep and demonstrated our skills.  This time we had to take our mask off completely and put it back on.  That should be avoided if possible.  About scuba masks, you have to spit in the lenses and rinse them out before you dive or your mask will fog up.  I must have waited too long between rinsing and putting my mask on because on the third dive my mask kept getting fogged.  Having your mask fogged is not fun.  The visibility was only about 3-5 meters and with a fogged mask I started to get a little claustrophobic.  I had to keep letting water in my mast to clear it and sea water in your nose is not a pleasant sensation.

This dive lasted 35 minutes.  By the time we came up Leah was pretty cold and the mother was shivering uncontrollably.  Leah and I were the last two to get back in the boat and by the time we did, mother was out of her wet suit and bundled in the skipper's coat shivering away.  That's a fiver good buddy.  She got on the other boat and headed to shore.

So for our fourth and final dive there were only four of us plus Mick and Jen (our Dive master).  We finally felt at ease on a dive.  We saw a huge bull ray and a black and white spotted eagle ray.  We saw more wobbegong sharks and a ton of fish.  We were swimming between two huge corals and the husband got his air hose caught on an outcropping, even this didn't faze us.  Leah and I were right behind and I made my way over to help, by the time I got there he had managed to free himself.  And then we had some excitement.

Leah started to swim above where the husband was caught to avoid getting in the way.  And we learned a valuable lesson about buoyancy. When you go down the pressure gets greater it takes more air in your vest to make you float, as you rise the pressure decreases and it takes less air to make you buoyant.  In order to keep from bobbing to the surface like a cork you have to continually let air out as you go up.  Just the little movement she made to avoid the stuck diver was enough to cause a chain reaction that sent her rocketing towards the surface. I noticed her moving up and reached out to grab her.  I let all the air out of my vest but it wasn't enough,  The Jen grabbed my leg and Mick grabbed hers.  We made a chain of people to try and keep Leah down but it wasn't enough, she slipped out of my hand shot to the surface.  It was dramatic, like in the movies.  I yelled NOOOOOOOOO under water.  It was kinda scary.

Leah's head pops out in top of the water and looks around and there is another dive boat who signal her the "are you ok?" She signaled back and looked below the surface to see Mick signaling her to let the air out of her BC.  She did and a few seconds later she was back at 15 meters with the rest of us.  She initially was scared that she was going to fail the certification, but really it wasn't a big deal and Mick was sort of glad it happened so we could go over the scenario anyway.

After about 30 minutes we surfaced and Mick told us we were now officially certified open water divers.  Pretty awesome.  Back at the dive center we put our gear away and Mick printed us up some temporary cards to use while we wait for our permanent cards to come in the mail.

Three of us got our certs that day. Leah and I and the Son.  The husband still needs to do a dive and so does the mother.  I doubt very much that UK girl and UK guy (no relation) will get it done.  Both seemed pretty freaked out by the experience.   The mother might make it and I'm sure the Husband will.  After he took his sea sickness pills he was a rock on the second day.  He confessed to us that he had only agreed to try scuba because his wife wanted to do it.  He had always considered water to be his biggest fear.  Good on 'im.

I know it may be disappointing to some of you that we haven't included any pictures on or under the water.  We thought briefly about taking our camera out with us and decided against it.  Since we've been home I've done some research about waterproof cases for our camera and have found one for about $2000US.  If anyone would like to make a contribution to the fund I'll send you all the pictures you could ever want.  Otherwise, sorry you'll have to make due with your imaginations.

Tomorrow:  New Year New You

Second day of work today and I feel pretty good about it.  Leah had her second full day of class.  She'll be in class from 9-5 four days a week for the next six weeks.  The last two days we've only seen each other for a couple hours a day. We're both pretty excited about our new situations.

Summer Vacation Part IV: Julian Rocks

Tuesday night it rained really hard.  We got back to the tent and barely had time to eat before the skies opened up.  Unbelievably it was the best night's sleep we had all week.  I'm not sure if it was just the white noise but we shut our eyes at eight and didn't open them again until five.  It was awesome.

We had spent three nights sleeping on the football field.  The shower and toilet facilities were not exactly what you would call "nice" or "clean".  And on Tuesday night the hot water pipe broke in the women's showers so Leah couldn't use them.  We decided to pack up and move camp for Wednesday.

We woke up and bailed out.  When we packed the tent we discovered that a colony of small ants had used our tent as a nest to get away from the rain.  When we took the rain fly off we discovered they had moved into the sleeve where the tent pole connects to the tent.  There were about eight million of them.  (maybe I exaggerate a little but there were a lot)  They were just little buggers but they were really pissed that I was disturbing the nest.  I got about fifty painful little bites around my ankles.  And then all of a sudden my foot felt as if I had stepped on a live electrical wire.  I had been bitten by a different kind of ant, this one called a "green ant".  Let me tell you it hurt like hell and continued to hurt for the rest of the day and itch for the rest of the week.  Not pleasant.  Leah got bit my one on her knee and it became a big red blotch the size of a silver dollar and is still itching today.  But enough about ants for now, I was going to write about scuba!

We grabbed a cuppa and got to the dive center by six.  Mick was there already and we got our gear ready to load on the boat and head out.  This morning we had a new member of our team, a guy who had done his pool work in the UK and was needing his open water dives to get his certification.  Mick introduced us to the boat's Skipper a really funny bloke named Waz.  (These are all nicknames by the way, Mick's real name is Michael and I'm not sure what Waz's given name is)  Our boat was called Reef Runner and wasn't as big as I was expecting.  This is the only picture of the boat I took.  Pretty lame of me.

We loaded up the boat with all of our gear plus two air tanks for each of us.  It took about an hour for us to set up our gear and load up.  The boat launch was less than five minutes drive from the dive center.  We were heading out to sea two and a half kilometers to Julian Rocks Marine park.  If you look at the picture to the left you can just see the rocks in the distance.  the whole area is a protected marine park.

The boat launched off of the beach and we had to help wrangle it off of the trailer and into the surf.  The whole operation runs pretty smoothly and you can tell they do it a lot.  The lifeguards have to use a bull horn to make sure the surfers give way to the boat as it launches.

The ride out to the rocks was bumpy to say the least.  The swell was about 1.5 meters and the boat crashed down hard each time we went up and over a wave.  All of us students were feeling nervous already and the motion of the boat wasn't helping.  It took us about ten minutes to make it out to the rocks and find our mooring line.  Then it was time to gear up.

Gearing up on a boat in rough seas is much harder than gearing up on a pool deck.  The boat was really moving around a lot and as I struggled to get my fins on I think I spent too much time looking down and started to feel like I was going to lose my breakfast.  Only I hadn't eaten any.  I looked up and around and instantly knew I wasn't the only one.  The guy whose wife had dropped out the first day was absolutely green.

I spent a couple of minutes looking at the horizon and trying to take deep breaths and got myself under control.  Honestly I think being nervous really contributed to the feeling.  Once we were geared up we were given the clear to enter.  Just like on tv we held our masks and regulators and feel backwards off the boat and into the sea.  It was fantastic and scary.

The rough seas made the visibility pretty poor.  Looking down you could see about 5-7 meters.  Considering the average out there is 15-20 we had crappy conditions.  The class all lined up behind Mick on our mooring line and waited for the ok to go down.  Just as Mick gave us the signal, the guy from the UK who just joined our group kinda freaked out.  He started flailing around and knocked the mask off of Leah's face.  That scared the crap out of her and she started to freak out a little.  She got the mask back on and calmed down.  Then we let the air out of our buoyancy vests and went below for the first time.

I'd like to say that we instantly took to scuba like we were born to do it, but truthfully the whole first dive is a bit of a blur.  We followed a rope down to the bottom behind Mick.  He gave us a few minutes to get our heart rates under control.  While we were down there the guy from the UK was sort of coming unglued and those of us who had been together for a few days all were really put off by it.  We were all confident in and trusted Mick and this guy was ruining the group dynamic.  At one point he knocked the regulator out of the husband's mouth.

Our first dive lasted twenty two minutes and we got to a depth of 12 meters.  Mick had hoped to keep us down for thirty minutes but UK guy went through his air so fast that he was nearly empty while the rest of us were about half full.

When we got to the surface we took our tanks and weights off and handed them up to the boat.  We then floated for a few minutes while the crew changed out our tanks.  It felt great to get the gear off and float for a while.  The wet suit makes you really buoyant and it took no effort to float.  I did get a mouthful of sea water sucked into my snorkel and thought I was going to puke.  Nerves and near seasickness was getting the best of me.  I started to think about going back to shore.

When our tanks were changed out we climbed back in the boat.  Two things happened then.  Husband started to puke and Mick told UK guy that he wasn't going to dive with us anymore.  Both of them were put on another boat and sent back to shore.  That makes three if you're keeping score.

The skipper and the staff were joking around and passing cookies (bikkies) around the boat.  At first I couldn't imagine eating a cookie.  I was feeling pretty bad, but I had a drink of water and when the cookies went past me I grabbed one.  And as soon as it touched my lips I felt better.  And that was that, I never even felt close to sea sick the rest of the time.  It was weird.

Our second dive happened about 45 minutes later and this time went much more smoothly.  No freak outs and we actually made about 30 minutes of bottom time.  We started to relax more and were able to actually see fish.  We saw a bunch of stingrays and a few small sharks called Wobbegongs.  It was cool.

By 11:00 we were back in the dive center with 2 dives logged in our log books.  Half way to our certification.

Tomorrow: Julian Rocks Day 2


I meant to write the rest of the scuba story tonight but I had my first day at work today and I'm totally beat.  I had a bunch of paperwork to fill out when I got home and it took longer than I expected.  One quick, stupid story:  I had to apply for a tax file number so I can get paid here.  I didn't know about this until today so when I got home I got online and found the application.  I filled it out and clicked send and when the confirmation screen came up only then did I notice that I had misspelled my own last name!  Of course by this time the office was closed so I'll have to call back tomorrow during work.  I R SMRT!

Summer Vacation Part III: Scuba Scool

Less than a block up the street from the coffee shop is the Byron Bay Dive Center.  Looking at the outside, I'd have to say we didn't exactly know what to expect.  Within a few minutes we felt as if we were in good hands.  To say the staff is professional is an understatement. Every aspect of our training was top notch, from the people who greeted us at the door to our instructor and dive guides.  I couldn't recommend them more strongly.

We were signed up to do an introductory scuba course called "scuba diver" it was supposed to consist of one day in the pool and one day at sea.  We found out that this was really just an introductory course and wouldn't really get us certified to dive.  We met our instructor and started the class with the "open water" students.  The open water course is four days and consists of two days in the pool and two days at sea.  At the end of the four days you are a certified open water diver and can dive up to 18 meters deep anywhere in the world.  Within ten minutes of the class starting we decided to stay in with the rest of the class and go for our certification.  The price difference was only $100 each plus the cost of a dive medical, about $60.  I think I twisted Leah's arm a bit, but in the end we're both really happy.

Our instructor was an Aussie guy named Mick. We both found him to be great.  He has been an instructor for ten years and has dived all over the world. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him to anyone who wants to learn to dive.  Learning a skill like scuba where the slightest problem can be deadly, you want someone in charge who is really knowledgeable .  Mick is a great teacher.

The first thing we did was sit in a class room for about half the day, reading manuals and watching videos.  There were six of us in the class, a husband and wife (a few years older than me), a mother and son (late 40s? and 17) and Leah and I.  After lunch it was time for us to get in the pool.  We changed into our swimsuits (togs) and selected our equipment.  By the time we did that we had a good idea of what we needed.  Mick helped everyone select wet suits and the rest of our gear.  The dive center has hundreds of people come through every week for snorkel and dive trips so they have a ton of equipment to use.  Here's a shot of the equipment room:

What you can't see here are the racks and racks of wet suits in the back by the pool.  The first thing we did in the water was demonstrate some basic swimming skills.  We had to swim three laps of the pool and tread water for a time.  Of course Leah is a fish and I had no trouble with the tests.  One person in our group though (the wife') started to hyperventilate and just like that we lost one person from the class.  This would become a theme.

After the basic swimming tests, we geared up.  By this time it was starting to rain pretty hard so we were happy to be getting under the water.  Mick walked us through the steps of getting into wet suits (tight as) and prepping our tanks and vests.  The tank attaches to the vest (called buoyancy compensator) and the you adjust the amount of air in the vest to keep you neutrally buoyant in the water.  Once we were geared up it was time to dive.  We entered the pool by stepping backwards off the deck and dropping in the pool.

The pool was really no bigger than most backyard swimming pools you might have seen with a depth of about two meters at the deep end.  The water was nice and warm, about 24C.  In the pool we learned the basic skills that we would need to know in the open water.  Things like how to get your regulator back in your mouth if it gets knocked out.  How to clear water from your mask if it leaks and most importantly how to equalize the pressure in your middle ear as you dive deeper.  Apparently lots of people have trouble with this, but again Leah and I had no difficulties.  We spent about two hours in the pool and Mick sent us away for the day feeling pretty pumped and ready for what was to come next.  Needless to say we learned a ton on the first day, but we still had lots to learn.

Here's the pool, this picture was taken a couple days later when the sun was out.  And since it was mostly raining and we were mostly wet, I didn't have the camera out most of the time.  This is about as exciting as the pictures from scuba class get.

The second day we started in the class room again.  This time we got into some deeper theory of diving like decompression and emergency situations.  We got in the pool again after lunch and this time had much less trouble gearing up and getting dressed.  Leah looks pretty good in a scuba kit and she told me I look like Aqua Man.  I must admit to having a cool face in my gear despite the fact that I selected a wet suit just a hair too small and felt like fat man in a little coat.

For this pool session we were joined by a british girl who started her scuba training somewhere else but was unable to finish because the visibility on her third dive was less than one meter.  She joined us for the pool session so Mick could be sure of her skills before we went in the open water.  More on her later.

This time in the pool we worked on emergency skills.  We had to remove our masks entirely and get them back on under water.  We also practiced the procedure for sharing an air source if one person runs out of air.  Not something you want to be doing, let me tell you.  I haven't mentioned it yet but Leah and I are "Scuba Buddies"  you never dive without a buddy and never let your buddy out of your sight while in the water.  That way if either of you have a problem, it's not a problem.  If you were by yourself and ran out of air, you'd just bite it.  If your buddy is there you can share air.  Comforting.

Mick joked with us when he heard Leah and I calling each other buddy (we do that all the time anyway).  He said Australian guys get weirded out by the buddy system, they're always like "why can't we be dive mates?" and he has to tell them that the certification agencies are American and mate means something totally different there.  It was kinda funny, but you probably had to be there.

Also funny, in the scuba workbook, they talk about some of the fish you can see during fresh water dives.  They mention Crappie.  Aussies find it totally hilarious that there is actually a fish called a Crappie and Mick made us explain just what the hell one was. I think he still thinks we're messing with him.

Here's Mick and Leah and Me:

We finished up our skills in the pool and got out of the dive center about three pm.  We had to return in the  morning at six am.

Tomorrow: The Open Water!

ps.  Tomorrow I start my new job and Leah starts school.  We're both excited and nervous.  I haven't been to work in over a year.  I think it's going to be a rude awakening.  Back to the real world for us.  Wish us luck.

How We Spent Our Summer Vacation, Part II

Rebuffed by rain at Mt. Warning we headed down to Byron Bay on Sunday morning.  The ride down was a piece of cake.  It's only about 60k further south from the mountain.  When we arrived the sun was shining and the town was packed.  Byron Bay is a small town built on the bay from which it takes it's name.  James Cook (Yep, Captain Cook) named it such on his expedition to map the east coast of Australia.  Cape Byron is actually the eastern most tip of Australia.  On top of the hill on the cape is a gorgeous white light house.  It really makes an idyllic setting.

We got into town about 10:00 and set about finding a campsite for the night.  This turned out to be a real pain.  Every campground in town was packed with people.  We had been told that everyone was on vacation this week, but we didn't think they literally meant EVERYONE. The town was over run with people on holiday.  We actually had to sit in traffic for thirty minutes or so just to get into town.  We quickly found out that the prices for camping during the week were out of control.  Most places wanted to charge us $35 per person per night.  That's $70 a night to sleep in our own tent.  We weren't going to have that so we decided to drive a bit and check our options.

We checked at least five different campgrounds or "caravan parks" as they're called here, in Byron and then started going to other towns. Most of the other towns were just as packed and not nearly as nice as Byron was. We drove all over the place with no luck. So we spent most of the day driving and after nearly 200k we wound up back in Byron and camping on the high school football field for $40.  We felt defeated.  The woman hosting at the football field told us that they had just raised their rates to sort of keep up with the rest of the town, but she felt that the prices people were charging were "just ridiculous".
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We had been sitting in the car all day so we decided to check out the beach.  It was the best decision we made all day.  We had done very little (read: none) research about Byron before we went there and were surprised constantly by the beauty of the place.  We first drove up the hill to the light house and found the parking lot full.  We snapped a few quick pics and drove back down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill we found a trail head that climbed back up and around the point.  The hike did us a world of good.  We both felt a lot better after streching our legs a little and working up a sweat.  Plus we got a bunch of great pictures.

Here's one of Leah at the eastern most point of Australia

                                  

 and here she is after we climbed the hill, you can just see where we were in the last picture down below.  I was a wee bit sweaty by the time we made it up.

After the climb we went back down and walked on the beach for an hour or so.  By the time we were ready to head to the campsite the skies were looking a little dark.  Here's a picture of me doing one of my favorite things, sitting on a rock by the sea.

Tuckered we grabbed a sandwich at Subway (Seven, Seven, Seven dollar foot longs!) and ate a quick dinner before it started to rain.  Once it did start to rain in earnest we fell asleep pretty quickly.  Despite the camping frustration we were feeling pretty excited to try scuba in the morning.

It rained most of the night and it actually helped us sleep.  We woke up about 6:00 and headed into town to get some coffee.  We're both getting used to drinking one cup of super strong espresso instead of the normal pot of joe.  I have noticed that people look at us a little funny when we drink a "long black" without sugar.

Our class was scheduled for 8:00 and we took our time having coffee and actually ate a nice brekkie.  A luxury we don't allow ourselves too often these days.  Full and rested we headed up the street and into my new obsession.

Tomorrow: Discover Scuba!

Happy New Year and How We Spent Our Summer Vacation Part I.

Welcome to 2010.

Leah and I rang in the new year by waking up at 3:30am and climbing a mountain, but that's getting ahead of the story.

We Started our week on Boxing Day by heading down to Mt. Warning National Park in New South Wales. It's just over the border and about 1.5 hrs from home. We packed up the Rav 4 and Leah jumped behind the wheel. Driving on the left is not as strange as it sounds. We got the hang of it pretty quickly with a few exceptions. The wipers and turn signals are on opposite sides of the wheel, so we had the cleanest windscreen in Australia most of the week. Just about every time we went to make a turn we turned on the wipers instead. You don't realize just how unconscious most of driving is until you switch up the basics. We also are having a hard time adjusting to the rear view mirror being on the left of the driver. And backing up can be a bit hairy. Other than that we're pro.

We had taken our time getting ready and left Brissie about 1:00pm. The drive down to the park was pretty easy, though we did make a wrong turn and went about 30k out of our way. We found a campground on the road leading up to the park and got ourselves a tent site.  The camp ground (Mt. Warning Holiday Park) was packed with people.  We soon found out that this would be a theme of our trip.  We set up the tent and planned to hike the mountain first thing in the morning.  Sunrise is about 5:45 am and since NSW is an hour ahead of Queensland that meant we'd have to get up around 2:30 Brissie time to make the summit by the crack of dawn.  Not gonna happen at that point.

Once we had camp set up we met a couple of travelers who were in the middle of a three month trip around Australia.  Turns out they are Americans and believe it or not they live at 37th and Lipan in Denver.  (That's not far from where we were if you're not familiar)  What a small world this is.  We had fun with them drinking a few beers and enjoying each others accents.  It felt quite homey for the evening.

Around sunset the clouds rolled in and it started raining.  At the time we didn't think too much of it and went to bed. We got up about six and headed to the trail head to start our hike.  Just as we were about to get out of the car it started raining again only this time with a vengeance.  This was full blown sub-tropical rain forest rain.  We made it about 100 meters up the trail before we were both soaked and decided to call it off.  We were both pretty bummed out.  At that point we only had two solid plans and the hike was one of them.

Since the rain had kept us from heading up the hill we decided to head over to Byron Bay and secure a campsite, on the way out we noticed this sign on a car offering what I'm sure is the best deal on a spray tan in Australia.

We didn't take them up on the offer.

Tomorrow: Byron Bay