Trip of a Lifetime

The Board, The Birds, The Pooey Mess.

Greetings, readers! It's been a while since I've posted, which is again due to the lack of cool new things I'm doing/seeing/experiencing/ingesting. Over the last week, however, a few interesting things did happen. I'm still loving the job, still surfing most every day, and still enjoying Noosa very much. I leave one week from today (Monday in Australia, Sunday for most of you), to go down to Byron Bay and Sydney, and finally New Zealand. I'm getting excited to go somewhere new now, not because I don't like Australia, but because it's almost exactly the same as Canada. Again, don't get me wrong - I love Canada to bits, but I don't think any of you would pay thousands of dollars to fly to Banff or Vancouver Island, if you get what I'm saying. New Zealand promises to be exciting and new, and should be an excellent, albeit expensive end to my trip. But of course, Australia still has many things that Canada, and especially Calgary lack, one of which is surfing! I am absolutely loving it - I get to surf every day for free and I'm actually getting half decent! I may have some pictures for you guys by the end of my stay in Noosa, but I can't promise anything - it rains most days here, making it fairly stupid to bring my camera to the beach with me. I also do some boogeyboarding, which is basically just bodysurfing with a piece of plastic under you - it's fricken awesome! I went out three days ago and the surf was massive - the waves were getting as big as 9 feet that day. But I was not intimidated! I took my wee boogeyboard out there on the waves and I got my ass kicked! It was brilliant fun, just getting tossed here and there by massive waves, and occasionally riding one all the way to the shore. One exceptionally large wave decided to break before I thought it was going to, thereby tossing me like so little salad onto the ocean floor, and turning me over a few times for good measure. I slammed my side into the sand, bruised my shoulder and hip and felt somewhat like potatoes must feel after being mashed. I finally reached the surface of the water and I took in some air and thought... "THAT WAS FRICKEN AWESOME!" I pulled on the leash of my boogeyboard, which seemed oddly light... And along came the boogeyboard skipping across the water. Well, some of it anyway. As it turns out the wave not only rolled me like a sock in a dryer, it snapped the boogeyboard in half. To this moment, I've no idea where the other half went, but it was definitely not attached to the plastic backing. Take a look at the end result. http://www.geocities.com/spiker43940/P5050045.JPG Luckily the staff took mercy upon me and didn't make me pay for the board, since it was one of the old ones and was going anyway. But surfing isn't the only cool thing about Australia, there's tons more, including all the colorful birds here. There are a bunch of them living in the trees next to the hostel, with a Koala, who come every morning and eat pretty much everything they can find, with a distinct preference for jam. In fact, just about the only thing they won't eat is the Vegemite. Most of you probably don't know what Vegemite is. This is a good thing. It's yeast germ extract. And it tastes just like it sounds like it should taste. Basically, take the sludge at the bottom of a brewery's beer fermentation tank, and put it in a jar. Welcome to Vegemite. Anyway, these birds will even eat out of your hand if you've got some jam! They're called Rainbow Lorikeets, and they're cute little buggers - if they weren't cute, I think they'd just be annoying. Reminds me of children... Here are some pictures of said birds, and me feeding said birds. http://www.geocities.com/spiker43940/P5090057.JPG http://www.geocities.com/spiker43940/P5090058.JPG http://www.geocities.com/spiker43940/P5090059.JPG I quite like the one where the bird is nearly transparent - it started to fly away halfway through the exposure. It looks like it was digitally placed there. Another lucky picture, what can I say! As I've said, it's been raining quite a lot lately, so we've been forced to entertain ourselves by any means possible, which on one sad night meant playing dressup. You see, there's this closet in the flat I'm staying in, where everything you could ever imagine exists. An old dartboard, a cowboy hat, a computer, hoolahoops, an actual kitchen sink, a large metal crucifix... The list goes on. The girls decided to dress me up as a cowboy fairy thing and take pictures of me... Warning - shocking pictures to follow, may cause blindness and nausea, or in severe cases coma and death. http://www.geocities.com/spiker43940/P5060050.JPG alright so it wasn't my shining moment... Then again, it was much better than what happened last night. I have no pictures of what I'm going to tell you about, and you'll see why once I'm done. So, Chris is sitting on a stool by the bar, chatting up a couple of Swedish supermodels, when Chris gets a tap on the shoulder. It's the receptionist, Becky. Becky whispers to Chris that there is a "Situation" in the washroom in the second building. Naive and innocent, Chris asks what this trouble could possibly be, on such a wonderful night full of Swedish supermodels. Becky calmly replies that someone has had an accident in the shower. Accident? Someone slipped and fell and can't get up? No Becky says. Someone let one slip... And didn't pick it up. Chris wonders aloud who in the universe would shit in a shower, and ponders that it must have been some drunken idiot, acting on a dare. Chris entertains the notion that it could have been a powerful unanticipated sneeze. Chris notes that only a man could be capable of something so stupid. Becky goes a brighter shade of red and clarifies the coordinates of the mess - it happens to exist in the GIRL'S shower. And now, Chris finds himself cleaning up someone else's poo. In the girl's shower. Not a night to remember, and now you understand why there are no pictures of this significantly disgusting event. Well, I'm trying to put that one behind me, though I did get a free slice of cheesecake for my job. But the cheesecake just didn't taste quite as good after cleaning up poo. Apologies for the tastelessness (and stinkiness...) of this story, but it just had to be told :) I hope everyone back home is enjoying spring and early summer, and I hope no one else has had to clean up someone else's feces in the last week! Only 7 weeks to go, and I'll be back in Canada. See you all then! Spiker

posted by Spiker @ 10:07 pm